Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

shkspr.mobi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 282 posts

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

#111

Post by arp242 »

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/…

> Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed.

I have similar experiences with Wikipedia; if I want to know about something I generally go to Wikipedia first and just loads a bunch of the references. They usually pan out, but not infrequently the reference simply doesn't contain whatever the Wikipedia article claimed.

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

#113

Post by neutronicus »

zentiggr wrote: post #80
082349872349872 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Page 58 of "The Art of Conversing With Men" (an 1805 translation of a 1788 work by Knigge) shows that trolls were a thing in the eighteenth century: > "There are people who pretend to know every thing better than others, contradict every one, frequently against their own conviction, merely for the sake of disputing. There are others who are fond of speaking in parodoxes , and accustomed to maintain assertions which n…

It is a bit of an art to separate those who are discussing a point for sake of clarity or persuasion, from these bastards whose only goal is to get a rise out of you or consume your time with their own amusement. Disengaging from those conversations is easier though. Don't answer, walk away, just stop playing their game. Although there is a part of me that wants to shout them down and ridicule them, that plays right…

My filter is politeness.

If someone is polite to me while "tricking" me into wasting my time providing sources, I do have to wonder who, if anyone, was actually tricked.

On the other hand, life is too short to waste talking to people who start sentences with "you do realize...," no matter how earnest.

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

#114

Post by AnHonestComment »

tomrod wrote: post #107
AnHonestComment wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Okay.

Censoring some views because people can’t control themselves in response to those views calmly stated is a classic example of ideology censorship.

I just wish @dang would be honest that HN engages in discrimination based on ideology.

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

#115

Post by johngalt »

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…

The challenge with the link fights is often about the difference between data and conclusions.

For example, if I claim that "marriage has a positive impact on men" then cite a bunch of data showing that married men live longer and make more money on average etc... Have I truly proven my conclusion that marriage benefits men? Or does the same data show that healthy men with jobs are more likely to get married? Yet, I will stubbornly say that citation makes the conclusion unequivocal.

9/10 times the disagreement isn't data/citations but conclusions or criteria.

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

#116

Post by smt88 »

tW4r wrote: post #100
melvinroest wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I submitted [1] to HN, coincidentally a few hours ago. IMO, assertions should be computable (if possible) and backed by data. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23896279

I think this could be a great application for a DAG blockchain, with the axioms of a given scientific field as initial seed blocks. Then any proofs can be derived using the previous blocks, and, should any proof be disproved the whole sub chain depending on it would collapse and need to be rewritten “remined”

As always, this solution doesn't benefit from a blockchain structure. You could do the same thing with an immutable, publicly readable database.

The currently unsolvable problem is that there is often disagreement about axioms and proofs bring disproved. Even mathematical proofs can be very controversial.

This is one of many problems that humans can't solve yet, which means it's hard/impossible to teach computers to do it.

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

#117

Post by CM30 »

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/…

I still remember one fake news site that took this to the extreme, in that it linked to a story that flat out didn't exist on the site it linked to. You clicked on the link, and you just ended up with a 404 error page.

The fact that fooled anyone should probably give you a worrying insight into how many people are willing to trust/distrust links without even clicking on them.

But yeah, either way, make sure the link actually goes somewhere, that it goes to a relevant page/article/video/whatever, and that said source does indeed say what the linking said says it does.

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

#119

Post by duxup »

johngalt wrote: post #115
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…

The challenge with the link fights is often about the difference between data and conclusions . For example, if I claim that "marriage has a positive impact on men" then cite a bunch of data showing that married men live longer and make more money on average etc... Have I truly proven my conclusion that marriage benefits men? Or does the same data show that healthy men with jobs are more likely to get married? Yet, I…

Agreed.

What the article actually means / we should think about it is a big part of it.

For a while there were some accounts on reddit (and even HN) posting the same collection of links with regards to a particular topic. The links even came in the same order each time ;) It always came up with regard to a particular nation and a specific topic. (for the record they're long since gone, at least with those links)

Anyway one of the articles was a US university professor who said something about some other countries actions and so forth.

To the astroturfers that was supposed to mean something, X.

What it really meant was a university professor said that if the data supplied by that country is true that it means that they maybe did Y.

The article was was miles and miles away from X.

Granted those were astroturfers, but I see the same issues with folks who honestly believe a rando quote means something significant.

I often find myself asking people about their links "What do you feel that article means?"

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

#120

Post by adrianN »

tW4r wrote: post #100
melvinroest wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I submitted [1] to HN, coincidentally a few hours ago. IMO, assertions should be computable (if possible) and backed by data. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23896279

I think this could be a great application for a DAG blockchain, with the axioms of a given scientific field as initial seed blocks. Then any proofs can be derived using the previous blocks, and, should any proof be disproved the whole sub chain depending on it would collapse and need to be rewritten “remined”

Now you only need to convince the scientists to write proofs in their papers in Coq or Isabelle so that you can check them.
Post reply on HN