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Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

shkspr.mobi

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Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#101

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

Zhyl wrote: post #6
njsubedi wrote: post #2

>The whole investigation took me 5 minutes. A Web search, a few clicks, and some ctrl+f’ing. Am I the only one who thinks the last phrase sounds weird? I might be used to reading lots of articles that sensor words, but couldn't help reading it as "control-fucking". (Edit: uncensored)

I think Ctrl+F seems to be more popular than 'grepping' these days, although I would very much be in favour of bringing 'grepping' back.

Control + F will resonate with a far wider audience than the term 'grepping', which I assure you on many other social media spheres, would be met with blank stares. Most people I know in the real world have never interacted with a terminal.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#102

Post by tegiddrone »

I begin to think about how to build a linter/scorecard for this sort of stuff.

Example linter rules:

  This article does not have a source.
  This article has no sources from a known resource [this community] find reputable.  
  This article has a source from a source known to this community to be non-reputable.
  This article has a "shallow" source such as a blog (tumblr, medium, blogspot, youtube)
Probably would need a mechanism to build/aggregate/crowdsource reputable source lists.

edit: formatting

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#103

Post by monoclechris »

btrettel wrote: post #47

As many of those who have read academic papers know, even claims with citations are often suspicious. Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. Sometimes, citations are not specific enough (e.g., citing a huge book rather than the specific page with the evidence). So, better than giving a URL would be to give a URL with a "fragment" if possible, i.e., #id. https://en.wikipedia.org/…

Often I see assertions that state the exact opposite of what the reference contains.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#104

Post by duxup »

moultano wrote: post #76
duxup wrote: post #59

I hate URL fights. I give little extra value to people providing links with their clams. I largely given up providing links to information when called out as well. It's not worth the time. Discussion on the internet is broken in most places (HN is less broken than most). I find little value providing URLs. Much of the time I provide them, few folks seem to read it, fewer actually want to read it in an intellectually…

Arguments are for the spectators.

Yeah that's the truth.

More and more often as a sort of puritanism takes over replies have near 0 to do with me.

I'll put forth an idea X, and someone will maybe think (sometimes reasonably, sometimes less so...) it also supports another idea Y.

I'll be all "oh man no not Y".

And I'll get a diatribe about how I support Y ... despite explicitly saying that we both agree that Y is bad...

It sometimes feels like in most places nobody believes anyone is honest and just is looking to riff off some tangential thing and yell at people.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#105

Post by pinopinopino »

tonmoy wrote: post #91
scoutt wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> providing links ... when called out People got so used to seeing links up to the point a fight might end in a "URL request": you have to sustain your claims by bringing a link to the discussion, and if you fail to do so, you are wrong. Like if every research and every paper, study or whatever is publicly accessible and indexed. If am I wrong, please provide a link to a study which demonstrates it.

I claim there is a tea pot in orbit around the sun. I can’t sustain my claims by bringing a link, you need to provide reference to prove that I am wrong.

But there are many tea pots orbiting the sun, the path they follow is a bit weird though ^_^

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#106

Post by scoutt »

tonmoy wrote: post #91
scoutt wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> providing links ... when called out People got so used to seeing links up to the point a fight might end in a "URL request": you have to sustain your claims by bringing a link to the discussion, and if you fail to do so, you are wrong. Like if every research and every paper, study or whatever is publicly accessible and indexed. If am I wrong, please provide a link to a study which demonstrates it.

I claim there is a tea pot in orbit around the sun. I can’t sustain my claims by bringing a link, you need to provide reference to prove that I am wrong.

If you made the claim then the burden of proof is on you. The thing I was talking about is that I can automatically win the fight by asking you to provide a link.

Edit to add: a link that I know for sure you won't be able (or will be very difficult for you) to provide.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#107

Post by tomrod »

AnHonestComment wrote: post #87
SkyBelow wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I largely given up providing links to information when called out as well. It's not worth the time. Demanding citations you don't plan to read, to either waste a person's time or to make them look unreliable, is a tactic I've seen used so often I normally don't care to provide links. Instead, I'll just point out some 'so you agree with my argument but doubt data backs it up?' at which point, if they respond, it'll b…

As someone who gets censored for wrongthink routinely, I’ve taken up having GitHub repos of links so it’s easy to support my point. Case in point: I’m “banned” on HN because @dang thinks my genuine view, calmly stated is inherently a flame war and I shouldn’t be allowed to join the conversation.

Flame wars aren't always launched or avoided due to the level-headedness of rhetorical delivery

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#108

Post by snowwrestler »

I think the key lesson in this story is the author's willingness to do the work. IMO it's not enough to be skeptical; you also should have a set of criteria by which you'll be satisfied, and be willing to go try to satisfy those criteria yourself. I don't think that merely pointing out a lack of citation is sufficient as a counterargument.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#109

Post by vharuck »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #96
Legogris wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s very worthwhile; it allows readers to judge the legitimacy and relevance of sources for claims made.

>it allows readers to judge the legitimacy and relevance of sources for claims made. And that leads to a world where HN commenters trip over each other in a rush proclaim that Ghandi is morally equivalent to Atilla the Hun because he once said something that they can twist as not being totally in support of whatever the fashionable morals of the minute are. Point is that if people don't like what they read they'll do…

I think that happens much less often than you think. It just so happens that stubbornly opinionated people are more likely to respond, so that's what we see.

The emptier cans rattle loudest.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#110

Post by raxxorrax »

pohl wrote: post #54
raxxorrax wrote: post #10

Judge me all you want, but I would have clicked on "dirty hippy vibes"... Honestly, I don't really believe in ubiquitous misinformation being as a large problem as it is made out to be. Everyone arguing for more content regulation had their own motivations or was in some kind of panic. There will always be people misinformed on the net. Doesn't mean I want a babysitter cleaning everything up, even if I thought they w…

That would make sense for anyone who doesn’t think democracy is worth preserving, or doesn’t know the dependency it has on the degree to which citizens are informed. Brandolini’s Law implies that there is a latency between disinformation and its disinfection via sunlight that can be exploited to tip elections. Some of us aren’t so eager to see the whole world turn into a collection of authoritarian mafia states.

That conclusion is reaching and in my opinion can become anti-democratic as well.

You don't get informed citizens through content control, you get them through education and being critical. It isn't a huge leap to suggest information should be distrusted by default.

The problem with authority on truth is almost obvious. So there is just the alternative to educate your fellow citizens in the hope that they don't fall for populism.

Otherwise you don't just have people trying to manipulate the public against you and instead those that like freedom of opinion and information. Both are hard requirements for democracy.

Also anti-democratic can be to conjure at threat that can only be defeated through x, in this case stricter content control.

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