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Getting Back to Work

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Re: Getting Back to Work

#251

Post by dang »

koheripbal wrote: post #179
ydb wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for being a diamond in the rough, Dan. Your tireless work keeping Hacker News a safe haven for free thinkers and polite politic is essential during times like these.

I think we need to do more in this space. As HackerNews had become more popular, it has begun the inevitable transformation from a place of analysis to a place of advocacy. ...which inevitably results in a drop in quality and substance and a rise in partisanship. HackerNews thrived for a long time by keeping under the radar, but what we really need now is a new mechanic that rewards dispationate analytic content and…

Concerns like this are perennial: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926604. A couple years ago I gathered a bunch of links about the history of "HN getting more political": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.

That's not to say there isn't a decline, just that it's hard to discuss objectively. The dominant factor in such perceptions is randomness; more precisely, the streaks that occur in randomness that feel like they can't possibly be random. That explains why people have been saying the same things in identical language for so long. You could even make one of those guessing-game sites out of such comments. For example: 2010 or 2020?

The community is full of ideologues to the point where the comments are most often just predictable talking points being regurgitated ad nauseum. Everyone talks about the intelligent conversation, and it does happen, but far more times it’s just the same clichés repeated over and over.

(2010, of course, or the question wouldn't have made sense, but you see the point.) A decade is a lifetime in internet dog years, so HN already has survived these concerns long-term. If there is a downward trend, it's a slow one. Some of the things we've done to stave it off (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...) must have done something.

Other old threads:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144390

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926604

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1550898

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1934367

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4396747

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6157485

Re: Getting Back to Work

#252

Post by okaram »

BobbyJo wrote: post #217
marcinzm wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The estimated fatality rate with everything taken into account is around 0.5%. That's covering asymptomatic people, etc, etc. Assuming 200 million Americans get infected the result is 1 million additional deaths. That's a lot.

Yes, but the goal of social distancing and everything has not been to drastically change the number of people that are ultimately infected, just to slow down the rate of spread. The disease is out there now. If you haven't gotten it already, you very likely will eventually.

That depends on how much we slow it down; after a vaccine (in a year), we DO drastically change the number infected. Other countries (South Korea, NZ, Taiwan) have changed the number infected, and will probably end up with much fewer infected.

For now, we want to drastically change the outcomes; for example, a month ago, you would have been given chloroquine, which doesn’t help but has side effects; maybe in a month we would know about therapies that reduce mortality and long term effects by a significant percent (or maybe not :)

Tons of testing and contact tracing would probably let the US end up with fewer people infected.

Re: Getting Back to Work

#253

Post by gnicholas »

treis wrote: post #177
ydb wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for being a diamond in the rough, Dan. Your tireless work keeping Hacker News a safe haven for free thinkers and polite politic is essential during times like these.

>diamond in the rough I don't think that means what you think: >a person who is generally of good character but lacks manners, education, or style.

There is another meaning, akin to "needle in the haystack". This is the only meaning I was aware of until I used the phrase to describe my then-girlfriend. She was only aware of the meaning you reference. It was awkward, but we're now married.

Over the years I have asked many other people about this phrase when it came up in conversation. Most of my acquaintances only knew of the "needle in a haystack" meaning. These people went to Berkeley, Stanford, etc. and worked at FAANG or are doctors/lawyers.

I have wondered if it's a geographic thing — most of these people have spent most of their lives in California. Perhaps the east coast is different?

Re: Getting Back to Work

#254

Post by BobbyJo »

tsimionescu wrote: post #140
vekker wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy to live in a country with such a strong social safety net as well, compared to the US (even though I don't profit from it at all being young, self-employed and unmarried...), but on the other hand I'm really concerned about our future. Someone has to pay for this and it's not like the government is encouraging people to roll up their sleeves and to learn some personal responsibility, with all the benefits t…

The thing is, people everywhere want to work, with extraordinarily few exceptions. A government doesn't really need to incentivize work in general, only some specific kinds of work which are underperformed.

Citation? I find it funny that no matter how many times history, and even contemporary events, have taught us otherwise, people still believe "People don't need strong incentives to work!"

Re: Getting Back to Work

#255

Post by pm90 »

mdorazio wrote: post #209
marcinzm wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but I do know that continuing to pursue current policies until some indefinite point in the future is untenable. Go strawman, go! California and NY both have plans for slowly reopening in the comings weeks or months with various metrics guiding the timelines.

Serious question: can you show me the metrics for california with concrete targets that will trigger reopening? The last plan I saw wasn't a plan at all, it was just guidelines.

For California, see SF Chronicles' COVID Tracker page: https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2020/coronavirus-map/.

It even has a checklist with the targets that must be met before a county can lift quarantine.

Re: Getting Back to Work

#256

Post by cheez »

rohanshah wrote: post #244
cheez wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unions helped kill the car companies

this is at best an incomplete assessment and at worst ahistorical others [1] would argue that it was american auto manufacturers' anti-union zealotry (and the decisions they made in the production process to combat the unions) that lead them to shoot themselves in their own foot. [1] Schwartz, Michael, and Joshua Murray. Wrecked: How the American Automobile Industry Destroyed Its Capacity to Compete. Russell Sage Fou…

I love HN

Re: Getting Back to Work

#257

Post by pgsbathhouse3 »

dang wrote: post #44

Three threads on this already: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23126517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23127552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23129216 Not sure this one is going any better. Celebrity frenzy multiplied by pandemic rage is producing as wild a burn as we've seen on HN. If you're about to comment here, could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html first and ma…

>Celebrity frenzy multiplied by pandemic rage is producing as wild a burn as we've seen on HN.

I think the problem is the audience that's been cultivated on here. Not the topics.

You have a topic that's has real world effects. Reality demands us to act contrary to a particular narrative, and this forum can't handle it.

Apathetic, intellectual sophistry only works when you don't have any actual problems to worry about. The celebrity and this forum have the same personality. And people don't want to admit they're wrong.

If all you have to say about what you're saying is that the government can't arrest you for it, maybe you should rethink what you're saying.

Re: Getting Back to Work

#258

Post by wwweston »

babesh wrote: post #218

This is the very best article I have read on the lockdown: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/seattles-leade... The positive is that Washington state acted early and the Bay Area followed quickly which resulted in lower hospitalization and deaths. Tech’s quick move to WFH probably helped slow the spread. This was driven by the Washington state health officials who worked with Microsoft. Bay Area tech compa…

The problem of getting a lay audience to understand policy based off of specialized knowledge is non-trivial (as any engineer knows very well). "What can we say today so that people will be ready to hear what we need to say tomorrow?" sounds less like manipulation and more like acknowledging that getting buy-in isn't merely a process of dumping factual knowledge, something that seems pretty well borne out by the public conversation that's played out over the last 2-3 months.

Some people do seem to feel like accepting social authority of any kind is too parental, whether it's expertise or civil order. That may be more behaving like children than being treated like them, though.

Re: Getting Back to Work

#259

Post by BobbyJo »

okaram wrote: post #252
BobbyJo wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the goal of social distancing and everything has not been to drastically change the number of people that are ultimately infected, just to slow down the rate of spread. The disease is out there now. If you haven't gotten it already, you very likely will eventually.

That depends on how much we slow it down; after a vaccine (in a year), we DO drastically change the number infected. Other countries (South Korea, NZ, Taiwan) have changed the number infected, and will probably end up with much fewer infected. For now, we want to drastically change the outcomes; for example, a month ago, you would have been given chloroquine, which doesn’t help but has side effects; maybe in a month…

They've drastically changed the number of infected for now, during a continuing lockdown. Once planes start flying again, and people start travelling again, infections will continue.

I agree we want to change outcomes, and flattening the curve is part of that. Delaying infections until better treatments is part of that. But we can't commit to waiting for a vaccine, and we can't commit to waiting for a good treatment. We may never get either.

Re: Getting Back to Work

#260

Post by nitrogen »

litmus wrote: post #241
firasd wrote: post #17

I’d like to know what Tesla factory workers think. It’s seeming clear to me from various polls that at most 20% of Americans think ‘oh everything is fine let’s go back to work and school tomorrow.’ So opinions on social distancing are not as polarized as you would think from the media.

Yes, I’m curious about this as well even though its an imperfect world where there probably isn’t an ideal, free environment for expressing their opinions. But if the alternative is staying furloughed then their opinions are of interest regardless. After all, they’re witnesses to how the place operates. What Elon is pushing for seems...no different than what Germany has been doing for at least two weeks? If I’m to un…

Has there been any data on the effects of humidity? I wonder if warm and dry vs warm and humid makes a difference.
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