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Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

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Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#141

Post by tlb »

codesushi42 wrote: post #140
tlb wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked in the places you suggested but none of them seem like cesspools of misinformation. Political opinions from across the right-left spectrum, if presented in a civil and substantive way and without fake facts, are not against the rules here. Extreme opinions tend to get downvoted pretty quickly, though.

I guess you didn't look hard enough. Because the top comment is a lie: If you outlaw this, people like me (who think inflicting stupidly and ill-health on their children by withholding these technologies is morally wrong) will just fly to Singapore. Even if you could enforce this, not every country will. 5+ standard deviation increases in many traits is on the table Nope, 5+ std deviations is not on the table.

You might disapprove of the sentiment, but that does not appear to be a lie. A lie has to be factually incorrect. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#142

Post by codesushi42 »

tlb wrote: post #141
codesushi42 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you didn't look hard enough. Because the top comment is a lie: If you outlaw this, people like me (who think inflicting stupidly and ill-health on their children by withholding these technologies is morally wrong) will just fly to Singapore. Even if you could enforce this, not every country will. 5+ standard deviation increases in many traits is on the table Nope, 5+ std deviations is not on the table.

You might disapprove of the sentiment, but that does not appear to be a lie. A lie has to be factually incorrect. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie

Claiming 5+ std deviations is a statement, not a sentiment. The author cites a paper that makes no such claim. That counts as a lie.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#143

Post by tlb »

codesushi42 wrote: post #142
tlb wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might disapprove of the sentiment, but that does not appear to be a lie. A lie has to be factually incorrect. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie

Claiming 5+ std deviations is a statement, not a sentiment. The author cites a paper that makes no such claim. That counts as a lie.

The citation by Gwern mentions a number of traits which could plausibly be improved 5 SD, like height (which would be +20 inches -- ie, a 7'5" man).

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#144

Post by dang »

codesushi42 wrote: post #139
dang wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We post thousands of moderation comments about things other personal attacks—though of course personal attacks are not ok on HN. I don't understand this reasoning where, if X is not ok, X must be the only thing moderators care about. Surely it is not so hard to understand that we have more than one rule. It's not against the rules to be wrong, though. How could this be otherwise? We don't have a truth meter.

I don't understand this reasoning where, if X is not ok, X must be the only thing moderators care about. That is your reasoning, not mine. It's not against the rules to be wrong, though. How could this be otherwise? Do you think we have a truth detector? This smacks of the same kind of arrogant obliviousness that is insidious at Facebook and Twitter. Do you really think misinformation is not a problem there either? Y…

> That is your reasoning, not mine

It's what you seemed to be saying with "And yet the mods only jump in when".

While I have you: you have a long history of breaking the HN guidelines by arguing in the flamewar style, directing acerbic swipes and personal insults at people, and so on. We've asked you many times to stop:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21105692

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20709082

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20559290

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17932924

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13605136

If you keep ignoring our requests instead of fixing this, we're going to ban you, just as we would any user who persisted in abusing HN this way. Other people posting bad things does not make it ok, and there's zero conflict between correcting misinformation—if that's what you're trying to do—and following the guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#145

Post by codesushi42 »

tlb wrote: post #143
codesushi42 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claiming 5+ std deviations is a statement, not a sentiment. The author cites a paper that makes no such claim. That counts as a lie.

The citation by Gwern mentions a number of traits which could plausibly be improved 5 SD, like height (which would be +20 inches -- ie, a 7'5" man).

Height has nothing to do with intelligence, which is what the discussion thread is about.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#146

Post by codesushi42 »

dang wrote: post #144
codesushi42 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this reasoning where, if X is not ok, X must be the only thing moderators care about. That is your reasoning, not mine. It's not against the rules to be wrong, though. How could this be otherwise? Do you think we have a truth detector? This smacks of the same kind of arrogant obliviousness that is insidious at Facebook and Twitter. Do you really think misinformation is not a problem there either? Y…

> That is your reasoning, not mine It's what you seemed to be saying with " And yet the mods only jump in when ". While I have you: you have a long history of breaking the HN guidelines by arguing in the flamewar style, directing acerbic swipes and personal insults at people, and so on. We've asked you many times to stop: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21105692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20709082 http…

This whole post repeats everything I've been saying while also threatening me with the ban hammer. I am saying that you are missing the big picture. There are much bigger problems here than school yard insults that go unaddressed here, as mentioned multiple times.

I would take impoliteness over toxic ideology backed by fake news any time. Listen to George Carlin much?

This whole line of thinking exemplifies why tech bros at places like Facebook and Twitter are so tone deaf to this whole problem.

You draw the line at "LMAO" but allow pro eugenics posts through?

Here's one in 2018:

Eugenics has a bad name, but it is scientifically valid. We now know that genetics play a huge role in life outcomes (e.g. adult IQ appears to be 70-80% heritable) and, for better or for worse, the eugenicists were right, even if their methods were morally wrong. We don't focus enough on positive eugenics: getting smart, non-violent and conscientious people to have large families. Right now we do the opposite: smart folks feel all sorts of pressures to have a small or no family due to careers, the expense of elite schooling, the environment, etc. The opening scene of Idiocracy nailed it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17237184

That post is one big fucking lie. Was it flagged? Nope.

I am beginning to really loathe the hypocrisy of techies of your ilk.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#147

Post by dang »

codesushi42 wrote: post #146
dang wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is your reasoning, not mine It's what you seemed to be saying with " And yet the mods only jump in when ". While I have you: you have a long history of breaking the HN guidelines by arguing in the flamewar style, directing acerbic swipes and personal insults at people, and so on. We've asked you many times to stop: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21105692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20709082 http…

This whole post repeats everything I've been saying while also threatening me with the ban hammer. I am saying that you are missing the big picture. There are much bigger problems here than school yard insults that go unaddressed here, as mentioned multiple times. I would take impoliteness over toxic ideology backed by fake news any time. Listen to George Carlin much? This whole line of thinking exemplifies why tech…

You're assuming that we read everything that gets posted here. That's far from the case—there's far too much—so it's a non sequitur to conclude that if a bad comment shows up unmoderated, moderators are somehow allowing it. The likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. Software can do some things, but I don't know how to write software that determines whether comments are right or wrong and kills the wrong ones. Do you?

On a large, open internet forum like HN, any banned user can create a new account and walk back in through the front door in 30 seconds—and many do. There will always be plenty of bad stuff getting posted. We do as much as we can, but we rely on users to flag comments and/or email us in egregious cases. As far as I can tell, you've never done either of those things, so I'm not really feeling your good faith here.

If the game is to find one shitty unflagged comment and pass it around as proof of moderator malfeasance, that's not a very interesting game. What's more interesting is that you had to go back over a year to find it. If anything, that rather suggests that your example is evidence of how little of that there is on HN, relative to other large open forums.

Meanwhile there are numerous cases of you treating others aggressively and being, frankly, an asshole on this site. You euphemize that as "impoliteness", but it's worse than mere impoliteness. It is community-poisoning. "I would take impoliteness over toxic ideology" is a non-argument—there is no good reason to have either. Using one to justify the other is bogus, and using it to justify your own mistreatment of others is cheap.

If you sincerely want to participate in the community here and do what you can to make it better—by following the guidelines, treating fellow community members respectfully, flagging egregious comments, and so on—that's great. You are welcome. But if you really don't want to do that, please don't post here. In particular, please don't take wrong comments by others—or comments that you feel are wrong—as an excuse to vent aggression.

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#148

Post by [deleted] »

codesushi42 wrote: post #145
tlb wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The citation by Gwern mentions a number of traits which could plausibly be improved 5 SD, like height (which would be +20 inches -- ie, a 7'5" man).

Height has nothing to do with intelligence, which is what the discussion thread is about.

[deleted]

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#149

Post by mattigames »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #92
olefoo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP banning is not effective in an era of disposable VPNs and Tor. I mean you could try to keep up with Tor exit nodes and VPN gateways but pretty soon you'd be banning all of Azerbaijan or something.

IP banning has lost a lot of its effectiveness when ISPs started putting people behind NATs and recycling their IPs (which was a long time ago), and further lost effectiveness with the advent of smartphones and mobile Internet connections.

Yeah, I stand corrected

Re: Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

#150

Post by chr1 »

codesushi42 wrote: post #131
tlb wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find this to be the case. Usually, when someone is wrong, they are quickly corrected. So when reading a thread, I rarely come away with an incorrect belief. Maybe some example would help me understand what you mean. Could you link to some clear misinformation on HN that wasn't convincingly refuted elsewhere in the thread?

Plenty examples here, even with people coming out of the woodwork to support eugenics under false pretenses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20542738 Look up some accounts (jlawson) and you will find they consistently post right wing BS here. Or just search HN for eugenics and see all the crazy claims made... Plenty other examples, but due to ignorance, like someone giving a long convincing explanation of the th…

You seem to have some kind of misconception about eugenics, the thing that everyone agrees to be unacceptable is "improving" mankind by forcing some people to not marry or to not have children. The thing talked about in that thread is voluntary modification of ones own dna. Deleting comments simply supporting this would be crazy.

HN is not a crowdsourced knowledge base like stackexchange or wikipedia, to expect high percentage of accuracy on all posts, it is place of conversations and having people with different viewpoints makes it more interesting. For the thermodynamics example did you post the correct version after researching? Or maybe you found it too late when conversation have already moved on? Unfortunately that's the way all conversations work in real world too, best arguments come after it.

I am not saying that hn voting is the perfect system, but it is way better than the system where moderators check if comments are true or "right wing BS" because then instead of discussions you'd get echo chamber of everyone agreeing with moderator, and it's not guaranteed that it will be left wing echo chamber you wish for.

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