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Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

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Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#51

Post by godelski »

veidr wrote: post #38

I'm sad I can't find my favorite comment, and have actually searched for it on multiple occasions. It wasn't a good comment, it was a bad comment — I am only sharing it on the off chance that somebody else will remember and post the link. The discussion had veered to bicycle helmets: should they be required, is there innovation to be realized in their design, something like that. Somebody posted some comment about de…

Was this on the article that was about the complicated nature of do helmets make people safe? For hints to people searching I remember it was something about drivers acting differently around people with helmets and non-helmeted cyclists (I don't think the article made hard assertions of what was safer, but boy did the comments. It definitely suggested you should wear one). What I do remember is that the comment section was a complete and utter shit show with people saying cyclists deserve to get hit by cars (but isn't that always true for comment sections including cyclists?)

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#52

Post by jtwaleson »

rolfvandekrol wrote: post #43
veidr wrote: post #38

I'm sad I can't find my favorite comment, and have actually searched for it on multiple occasions. It wasn't a good comment, it was a bad comment — I am only sharing it on the off chance that somebody else will remember and post the link. The discussion had veered to bicycle helmets: should they be required, is there innovation to be realized in their design, something like that. Somebody posted some comment about de…

Probably Dutch. We usually get very agitated when someone tells us we should wear bike helmets.

Dutch feelings about bike helmets are close to American feelings about the second amendment.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#53

Post by veidr »

johnchristopher wrote: post #48
veidr wrote: post #38

I'm sad I can't find my favorite comment, and have actually searched for it on multiple occasions. It wasn't a good comment, it was a bad comment — I am only sharing it on the off chance that somebody else will remember and post the link. The discussion had veered to bicycle helmets: should they be required, is there innovation to be realized in their design, something like that. Somebody posted some comment about de…

Wait, could that be me ? I had that exact conversation on HN. I was the one asking for studies (and my previous comment was sthg like "helmets should be mandatory" then I was told "do you realize it increases injuries ?" then I ask for proof) and the reasoning in the studies was that making helmets mandatory decreased car drivers' attention to cyclists making them less cautious around them, resulting in more serious…

Hmm I am not sure! To be honest, I have spent the time since posting my comment above googling for the post... but no luck yet.

The problem is, I think I myself might not have even commented in the thread, so it is hard to search for... anyway, I think it is unlikely to be you, because I wouldn't have laughed at a demand for evidence if it was about legislating a helmet mandate (sure better have real evidence in that case!) but it was more like "I crashed and hit my head on the curb, thank god I was wearing a helmet!").

(I myself mainly get around Tokyo on my VanMoof X2 ebike and almost never wear a helmet...)

You've motivated me to keep searching for the comment now, though... ;-)

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#54

Post by godelski »

johnchristopher wrote: post #48
veidr wrote: post #38

I'm sad I can't find my favorite comment, and have actually searched for it on multiple occasions. It wasn't a good comment, it was a bad comment — I am only sharing it on the off chance that somebody else will remember and post the link. The discussion had veered to bicycle helmets: should they be required, is there innovation to be realized in their design, something like that. Somebody posted some comment about de…

Wait, could that be me ? I had that exact conversation on HN. I was the one asking for studies (and my previous comment was sthg like "helmets should be mandatory" then I was told "do you realize it increases injuries ?" then I ask for proof) and the reasoning in the studies was that making helmets mandatory decreased car drivers' attention to cyclists making them less cautious around them, resulting in more serious…

This might be you because I replied to the OP here with what sounds like a very similar article. Does this sound correct? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24532534

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#55

Post by thih9 »

veidr wrote: post #38

I'm sad I can't find my favorite comment, and have actually searched for it on multiple occasions. It wasn't a good comment, it was a bad comment — I am only sharing it on the off chance that somebody else will remember and post the link. The discussion had veered to bicycle helmets: should they be required, is there innovation to be realized in their design, something like that. Somebody posted some comment about de…

Is your favorite comment here really about something that makes you dislike HN? If yes, could you elaborate?

Do you have other places that you prefer?

What would you say HN should change to become a better place?

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#57

Post by nojs »

veidr wrote: post #38

I'm sad I can't find my favorite comment, and have actually searched for it on multiple occasions. It wasn't a good comment, it was a bad comment — I am only sharing it on the off chance that somebody else will remember and post the link. The discussion had veered to bicycle helmets: should they be required, is there innovation to be realized in their design, something like that. Somebody posted some comment about de…

Ha, your comment reminded me of this gem [1]

> Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials

> Results: We were unable to identify any randomised controlled trials of parachute intervention.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#58

Post by veidr »

thih9 wrote: post #55
veidr wrote: post #38

I'm sad I can't find my favorite comment, and have actually searched for it on multiple occasions. It wasn't a good comment, it was a bad comment — I am only sharing it on the off chance that somebody else will remember and post the link. The discussion had veered to bicycle helmets: should they be required, is there innovation to be realized in their design, something like that. Somebody posted some comment about de…

Is your favorite comment here really about something that makes you dislike HN? If yes, could you elaborate? Do you have other places that you prefer? What would you say HN should change to become a better place?

No, no, I like HN, and have derived a great deal of value from it over the past 15 years or so (even made meatspace friends from it; the HN Tokyo meetup basically became my entire social life after I had kids).

That comment is one of my favorites because it was funny... it was "soooooo Hacker News". It might only have been so funny because I've spent so much time on HN over the years.

I don't really use any other websites like this (reddit or whatever). HN is a kind of unique thing for me.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#60

Post by dgellow »

"The contrarian dynamic" by dang, from around a month ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24215601

> The "contrarian dynamic" is that HN threads (and internet comments generally) are largely propelled by people making objections. Cunningham's Law touches on this [1]. The objections come in waves. In the earliest stage of a thread, they tend to be rapid negative reactions to the article. It's not that these are a community consensus, it's that they're the fastest reactions to feel, and the fastest comments to write—especially when the topic is provocative, when most of us are reacting from cache [2].

> Then a second wave of objections is generated by the first wave. Readers come to the thread, see the comment section dominated by those initial 'triggered' responses, and feel some version of surprised-shocked-dismayed at how the commenters all seem to be reacting in that way. This propels them to write defenses of the article, often carefully expressing more moderate or balanced views than the first wave—but they probably wouldn't have been motivated to post anything if there hadn't been the first wave of comments to object to!

> These second-wave comments tend to get more upvotes, perhaps because more people tend to share the more moderate view, but also because those comments tend to be more reflective [2] and therefore better written.

> This explains why the top comment in a thread so often begins (ironically) with "Wow, I can't believe the comments here"—or from the current thread: "All of these comments make me think HN has never interacted with a 5 year old" [3]—followed by a defense of whatever those objections were objecting to. Eventually you get objections to the objections to the objections—which reminds me of the line "My complication had a little complication" from Brazil [4], and also epicycles.

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