I liked this article a lot. I'm a swe in Chicago and I had stayed away from HN previously, not knowing that there was a humanist side to the site that would appeal to someone like me.
The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
711–720 of 812 posts
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#712Earlier quoted context omitted.
In defense of the article, what you are talking about is a different story more "finding the Internet and programming" that isn't really unique to Hacker News. It can surely be used that way, and people likely do, but you can also find those things by searching for "top programming books" (or hanging around twitter, quora, medium or other sites). They did sort of talk about that with the early motivations for Hacker…
I don't see HN as an intro course to programming, but more of like that older kid on the block who you notice is listening to bob dylan, and then you try again, you start to get past that nasally voice, really listening to the lyrics this time, and now you're turned on to a whole world of good music.
And sometimes people think Bob Dylan is overrated, that's okay too.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#713Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#714One thing the article got wrong is that the Hacker News community is not limited to Silicon Valley. For instance, the person who has the highest karma is in Brazil. Very few of the people I have met on Hacker News are in the Valley and San Francisco, but I have met people from North Carolina, Philadelphia, Portugal, India, Singapore, ... If you're interested in both technology and business and you've had enough of th…
>not limited to Silicon Valley
"Silicon Valley" is more of a state of mind that a physical location.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#715Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seem to be confusing the skeptical movement, which is indeed a specific group of people, with skepticism, which exists before and outside of that movement.
Perhaps the meaning has changed, but at the very least that is how the word is used today. As an example /r/skeptic is a large community of people that self-identify as skeptics.
Your arrogance continues to astound me. The guy is an actual professor of philsophy talking about his specialty. The word has been used for hundreds of years. Yes, it has a particular meaning in its community. Reddit is not the whole of the world.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#716Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#717Earlier quoted context omitted.
That isn't relevant either. I never said it did nor does any of my arguments rest on that. You and "cloakandswagger" are making claims that aren't supported by article, which I have addressed, and should back those up to have an argument. This is exactly why fact based discussions not only don't work, but don't happen on hacker news. Because you can just say something different. And that is how it always is. Someone…
So you decline to provide evidence that the article positively > state[s] that well-executed, fact-supported, scientific arguments are a superior (or even valid) form of policy debate We both agree that the article goes on at length about the recklessness of fact-based arguments on HN. Furthermore, I point to two direct quotes that I characterize as anti-fact and elevating non-factual or (debatably in the case of the…
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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#718Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen both opinions, and many more nuanced variants thereof, argued in a well-reasoned, persuasive manner here on HN. Adding my voice to the "good riddance" side of the aisle: thanks to what freedom of speech, association, etc. actually mean in the legal / constitutional context, said twats are guaranteed a space for communication - the real world! They can stand on a corner or picket their local City Hall and sp…
Private entities can put restrictions on their private space, but doing so implies that they no longer provide the same freedom of speech guaranteed to citizens on public spaces, so they are indeed restricting the freedom of speech.
...and now we've touched on a fundamental philosophical question: is freedom of speech a natural right or a legal right?
There's also potentially an assumption here that free speech is overall reduced through restrictions on it. As a thought experiment: suppose that, within a society of _n_ people, some small _k_ of them are "louditarians": they believe that part of the right to free speech is the inalienable right to speak as "loudly" as possible (for whatever value of "loud" matters over various media) so that no one else can effectively speak. This raises a few difficult questions:
1) To what degree the free speech rights of louditarians and non-louditarians mutually exclusive? 2) If you were a non-louditarian in this society, what would you do? 3) If you had control over this society, would you let the louditarians speak? Would you limit their speaking rights?
My general position here:
1) Almost entirely: when louditarians speak, they prevent the effective exercise of free speech rights by non-louditarians; non-louditarians can only meaningfully have free speech if louditarians are carefully managed. 2) As a non-louditarian, I'd advocate for limits on louditarianism (as best I'm able; this may first require the creation of non-louditarian-only spaces where I can be heard). In the absence of those limits, I'd probably feel like I was being effectively silenced by louditarians. 3) This is the difficult one, and I lean towards "yes - reluctantly, warily, and with limitations". Some examples: maybe louditarians can only speak at certain times (see: nighttime "disturbing the peace"). Maybe the practice of louditarianism is banned from certain spaces, like offices and legislative chambers (see: contempt of court, noise bylaws). My reasoning is utilitarian: I'd rather _n - k_ non-louditarians be able to speak, even if that means curtailing the rights of _k_ louditarians.
In other words: I strongly believe that, by imposing limitations on louditarians, I'm increasing the overall freedom of speech in this hypothetical society. (Not to mention the quality of life, mental health, and vitality of public discourse.)
My secondary reasoning is that louditarians seem to think that speech is a right without responsibilities - in effect, they believe that their right to free speech is more important than that of non-louditarians. IMHO, this violates the social contract of functioning modern societies, and for what? So an obnoxious fringe group can be really, really loud?
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#719One thing the article got wrong is that the Hacker News community is not limited to Silicon Valley. For instance, the person who has the highest karma is in Brazil. Very few of the people I have met on Hacker News are in the Valley and San Francisco, but I have met people from North Carolina, Philadelphia, Portugal, India, Singapore, ... If you're interested in both technology and business and you've had enough of th…
>One thing the article got wrong is that the Hacker News community is not limited to Silicon Valley. I thought the article was pretty clear that Hacker News user base is predominantly North America and Europe, not just the valley? I don't have any data to back this up, but based on the sources that are posted and gain traction in the community, I suspect majority NA & Europe is accurate. But that's just an observatio…
For one thing, all content on HN is English, which is well-known to people in NA and Europe.
Japan is famous for its indigenous forums; Japanese people seem to sneak some English words into every anime theme song, but they do awful on the TOEFL.
When you look at South America and Africa I think that educated people are often good at English but even though there are a lot of people in those zones, the size of the "startup sector" or even the "modern sector" is small compared to NA/Europe. (e.g. look at GDP as a proxy)
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#720Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is true, still today I saw a BBC article stating that July was the hottest month recorded - https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49165476?intlin... A minute later I go back to the home page and it was wiped out without a single discussion comment. I don't see any reason why this type of articles should be taken down, they are scientific in nature and highly relevant. Things like climate change denial sho…
>If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. There's plenty of climate change reporting about the web. I just don't care to see HN lists articles that are ultra hot topics. You just get the same comments over and over again.
I feel that a huge amount of people have still a hard time accepting that it's true, especially if doing something about it means changing something so deeply ingrained as their food habits.
On the other hand, major announcements like the latest UN report frontally calling for a diet change are still allowed on HN, so there is some filtering going on - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02409-7
Many of the same comments that we read each time is that its not clear that the weather is changing due to human action, or that its not clear if stop eating animal products would help that much, etc. which shows that a lot of people are still misinformed about the topic and in a state of denial.