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

201–210 of 282 posts

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

#201

Post by severine »

awinter-py wrote: post #89
moultano wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguments are for the spectators.

online arguments are for spectators now because we don't have effective moderation and because our formats don't promote this kind of exchange philip tetlock claims that constructive arguments happen in relatively small high-trust communities where people are incentivized to get the truth, accountable for being wrong, and don't know the alignment of their audience.

Thanks for the mention of Philip Tetlock, I found and just read this recent interview with Tyler Cowen and it's very interesting: https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/philip-e-tetlock... (audio & transcription)

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

#202

Post by vkou »

hn_check wrote: post #167
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. I've seen that here on HN, too. Person 1 claims X. Person 2 asks for evidence. Person 1 posts a URL, as if it's evidence for X. But when you read the contents carefully, you realize that it doesn't actually provide any evidence for X. It provides evidence for something that's somewhere in the same general topic as X, but that's not what P…

Just as often person 1 says something, providing no citations (but living in a world where we know that anyone can support/debunk with their own searches). Person 2 comes along and posts a retort with a number of citations, properly linked in the footer of their post. HN upvotes person 2. Downvotes person 1 to the nether. Clearly they were debunked. Only person 2's citations were noise [1]. They were just marginally…

Is it really so prevalent? I've followed up HN citations on topics I disagree with, and I've rarely found them to be rubbish.

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

#205

Post by agustif »

dane-pgp wrote: post #203
agustif wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899838

Thank you. ;) That was the response I was hoping for.

Hahaha no problem, I almost restrain myself from it so dang or other mods wouldn't think it's pointless. But couldn't help myself and is something I see in HN sometimes, like it's own internal meme... hahaha

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

#207

Post by melvinroest »

marcinzm wrote: post #135
tW4r wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”

Don't Gödel's incompleteness theorems show that this approach is impossible even for a domain as simple as arithmetic?

Science doesn’t need to be complete. It needs to be useful (that’s what I value in it).

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

#208

Post by [deleted] »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #149
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've seen that here on HN, too. Person 1 claims X. Person 2 asks for evidence. Person 1 posts a URL, as if it's evidence for X. But when you read the contents carefully, you realize that it doesn't actually provide any evidence for X. It provides evidence for something that's somewhere in the same general topic as X, but that's not what P…

[deleted]

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

#209

Post by hn_check »

vkou wrote: post #202
hn_check wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as often person 1 says something, providing no citations (but living in a world where we know that anyone can support/debunk with their own searches). Person 2 comes along and posts a retort with a number of citations, properly linked in the footer of their post. HN upvotes person 2. Downvotes person 1 to the nether. Clearly they were debunked. Only person 2's citations were noise [1]. They were just marginally…

Is it really so prevalent? I've followed up HN citations on topics I disagree with, and I've rarely found them to be rubbish.

I've seen it enough to chuckle when I see it now. In any scientific or medical discussion it is rampant. People will cite things to support claims they are making, but the things they cite don't concur at all. They might be related, but the obligation is on the reader to go through and parse whether that giant research paper supports what they're claiming which is a task that extremely few will undertake.

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

#210

Post by vkou »

im3w1l wrote: post #82
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.

A big gripe I have about youtube links: I can't learn anything about the video from the link. Once in a blue moon a youtube source is actually good. But the odds are so low that I often wont even bother clicking.

I completely ignore YouTube links, if they are secondary, or tertiary sources. (They can be pretty good as primary sources. If someone claims that an event happened, and then links to a YouTube video of that event, that citation is often quite conclusive as to the validity of that claim.)

They are unsearchable, unskimmable, and require way too long to get through. And if someone links them with a particular timestamp in mind, because some fifty-second segment is the salient part of the link, then, at best, they are an appeal to authority.

Post reply on HN