Earlier quoted context omitted.
if you were explicitly asked to, why not?
People are explicitly asked to wear masks too ...
If I could reduce the spread of a disease by starting my professional emails with "Heyyyyyyyy" I totally would.
Please read the paper before you comment
271–280 of 341 posts
Re: Please read the paper before you comment
#272Recently there was a brouhaha on the Twitters about 2+2=5 that went viral and, unfortunately, political. The argument is that post-modernists are trying to tear down mathematics as a "white supremacist social construct" and trying to say that "2+2=5" is as valid an answer as "2+2=4". Which sounds pretty bad, so I looked into it. The original Tweet thread was a math nerd who jokingly, and not incorrectly, illustrated…
So, 2+2=5 is true in the ring Z/Z (arithmetic modulo 1) which is just the trivial ring consisting of a single element. It's not true in any of the other modular arithmetic rings. So, it's not particularly interesting. If you move away from modular arithmetic and the numbers 2 and 5 being in any way related to their standard meanings, you can of course redefine them to mean whatever you want (e.g. rotations of a cube…
IIRC the moral of the original 2+2=5 guy's comment was "if someone reaches a different conclusion than you, ask them under which axioms they reached that conclusion." I think that's valuable advice. Note that he didn't say you have to accept their axioms. Clearly working in arithmetic modulo 1 is meaningless in most circumstances, and you can criticize that. But if you're not reasoning under the same axioms, you cannot have a productive discussion.
Re: Please read the paper before you comment
#273Some years ago, Ars Technica ran a story on guns. https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/04/guns-in-the-home-lot... About halfway through a one-page article was this quote. "If you have read this far, please mention Bananas in your comment below. We're pretty sure 90% of the respondants to this story won't even read it first." Sure enough, there were about 3 pages of comments before someone mentioned bananas. Read the…
Hence the way journalists love to misinform people: a headline and first paragraph that pushes their bias and narrative, while the facts that completely mitigate if not contradict the start of the article are buried somewhere in the middle. How to lie without lying, better than a legal footnote.
no, the journalists do not love misinform. If that was the case they wouldnt be journalists by definition. It may be 1:1 as 'no true scotsman' but this is what it is
Re: Please read the paper before you comment
#274It's amazing how much the author lacks self-reflection.
If there was no misunderstanding, would he have even bothered to read or even know about the paper at all? The bad use of the paper was probably his primary driver of engagement. Otherwise at best you would see the source or original tweet, think "Oh that's nice" unless you have a serious interest in linguistics, and move on.
The darkly cynical thing is that as the flood of information grows, the value of that information lessens as opposed to its ability to create a happening and drive engagement. You can say the sky is blue all you want, and it's true, but people will mill about the person who says the sky is green because they can interact with it, if just to disprove or mock the person and use it as a "gathering place" like the author himself did.
I mean, this is how flat earthers exist. The idea is rubbish but it creates a space that people inhabit.
Re: Please read the paper before you comment
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
No
It would be funny if it still let you comment, but it showed your test results besides your comment.
Or how about shadow banning the user on that specific article? Make it appear their comment was posted, only on their logged in account (and maybe IP address). Rest of the world wouldn't see it.
Re: Please read the paper before you comment
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see HN in the same way. It happens so often that HN discussion is much better that article itself that I go there first, and RTFA only if the discussion makes me want to read it. For this article, I tried to read it after reading a few comments, but got bored.
The readability of lot of web articles tend to be quite poor as they are written from viewpoint of SEO rather than readability. I rarely can read complete web article unless it was published in a paper magazine or newspaper. HN used to be good. Recently, I have seen groupthink taking hold, hostility toward dissension, and opinions are not that knowledgable and educated on controversial topics. The HN quality of discu…
I would have given Reddit a chance if they were not constantly screwing around with the UI. The new UI is sluggish and really affects the reading experience negatively.
I love that HN has not made any changes to its UI for a long time and a fast and convenient reading experience remains top priority on HN. If there are more HN-like forums, that would be something I would be interested in.
Re: Please read the paper before you comment
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hence the way journalists love to misinform people: a headline and first paragraph that pushes their bias and narrative, while the facts that completely mitigate if not contradict the start of the article are buried somewhere in the middle. How to lie without lying, better than a legal footnote.
This is exactly what I’ve noticed lately. Is it a known/named phenomenon? Do you have a reference?
"Burying the lede" - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bury_the_lede#:~:text=(idioma....
Re: Please read the paper before you comment
#278I feel sorry for the postdoc here. You have a seemingly decent paper, but the press release really doesn’t do it justice. For reference, the Tweet about the press release https://twitter.com/princeton/status/1296779082663964673?s=2... vs the paper https://sci-hub.tw/downloads/2020-08-10/f1/10.1038@s41562-02...
The press release DOES have a very “machine learning ‘discovers’ trivial thing people already knew” vibe. The actual paper doesn’t - it’s not trying to “rediscover” anything, it’s just building on existing work, there’s none of the arrogance in the press release that’s triggering everyone on Twitter. The press release taints the actual research, which is a sadly common pattern, and I think a fair bit of that lies with the writers of press releases, not just the readers.
Re: Please read the paper before you comment
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have done several experiments in Reddit. I post a link with a plausible title and credible looking 404 to credible domain with made up url. In a big subreddit you easily get 30 top level comments before first comment says that link does not work or is fake. Discussion goes on and on without pause. People treat the title as a writing prompt. One of the best writing prompts is pseudo-philosophical techno-bro life or…
The true GPT-3 was us all along.
Your comment is underrated
Re: Please read the paper before you comment
#280Some years ago, Ars Technica ran a story on guns. https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/04/guns-in-the-home-lot... About halfway through a one-page article was this quote. "If you have read this far, please mention Bananas in your comment below. We're pretty sure 90% of the respondants to this story won't even read it first." Sure enough, there were about 3 pages of comments before someone mentioned bananas. Read the…
I did something similar once with an essay I wrote in high school to see if the teacher actually read the whole thing. It turns out that he did read it and I got docked a mark for that.