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Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

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Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#111

Post by dash2 »

netcan wrote: post #79
kstenerud wrote: post #33

All forums ossify after enough time has passed and the initial population has been crowded out. People come to these places for various reasons: - To debate - To learn - To engage intellectually with other people - To be heard/validated - To gain social standing The problem is (like all human forums) that as the included population rises, you need to make a bigger and bigger splash to be heard, and that means that af…

>> As a species, we're not fully evolved for big crowds I think we may be starting to overstate the "Dunbar argument." In some sense, including the position in "Sapiens," operating in large groups is the key trait of Homo Sapiens... That which eventually made us unique and allowed us to become what we are. It is in YNH's view what These aren't really opposing views. Large groups are suboptimal. We obviously struggle…

Think there's a missing chunk from this comment :-)

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#112

Post by bregma »

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #70
elorant wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, it's the diversity of the users that make HN so much interesting. I've happened upon comments made from neurosurgeons, experts in carpeting, electrical engineers, naval architects, aerospace engineers etc. Where else on the Internet can you find such a diversified group of knowledgeable individuals where you can talk in a civilized manner? For me HN is the most significant place on the web and we m…

Absolutely, diversity is incredibly important when we're talking about different kinds of "intellectually curious" people. When diversity means letting in the trolls, the marketers and those less inclined to input constructively, that's when conversations start to degrade and loose value. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to encourage first type of diversity without becoming vulnerable to the second.

What we really need is some kind of consistent and homogenous diversity.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#113

Post by netcan »

I've been thinking a lot lately about blindspots. They're easy to see in other people, and downright glaring when it comes to politics or other collective opinions. By definition, hard to spot in yourself. Objectively, they're likely to exist.

In any case, I think most of us have felt what the writer here feels, about HN or some other forum. It's hard to know how much of it is internal to us & how much of it is the forum. I mean, as we hang out someplace, it becomes old to us. Cliches become trite. Insights become banal. Patterns become annoyance triggers. All stuff that tends to show up in these "sick of this" endpoints.

What made me think of it here is the first "bad argument:"

"Arguments that reduce to a disagreement about semantics"

While I agree that this is a bad argument, it's a pretty common one anytime anything abstract is discussed. Even professional philosophers exchanging letters, debating on podcasts or publishing in journals succumb to semantics disturbingly often.

To me, I might get drawn into some topic/debate and eventually conclude that it's just boring semantics. At that point, the whole thing annoys me whenever it comes up. This was how I "got sick of philosophy" at Uni.

I don't know if it matters to the individual, but to forum designers it might have opposite implications. If it's the forum that changes for the worse, a cultural defence is the right approach. If it's the person who changes, then the solution is an evolving forum. It's also hard to get feedback on this. I can't imagine many forums ever avoid this sort of sentiment from arising.

..no conclusion.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#114

Post by Chris2048 »

HN is a great place to study bad logic - people are smart enough to avoid the common fallacies, so you get some interesting bad forms.

That said, where can you have an conversation, without requiring qualification to entry, about complex topics without bad arguments getting in the way of progress?

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#115

Post by Ma8ee »

foldr wrote: post #103
Ma8ee wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the author's point was that arguments shouldn't be dismissed as merely semantics, but that semantic questions are important and has to be resolved for it to be meaningful discussion. Yes, the different sides have a genuine disagreement about the point at which life begins, but that is because they mean different things when they say that something is alive. So this discussion is becomming a bit too meta, but now…

The article says the following. "Trained logicians should know that semantic meaning is arbitrary...Abortion is the canonical example of [a semantic] argument: once you have decided what 'life' is, there’s really not much else to discuss. It’s not a political argument, not even in theory. It’s purely a semantic one." So the author does seem to be saying that the whole abortion debate is purely a debate over arbitrary…

> "Trained logicians should know that semantic meaning is arbitrary...Abortion is the canonical example of [a semantic] argument: once you have decided what 'life' is, there’s really not much else to discuss. It’s not a political argument, not even in theory. It’s purely a semantic one."

Which is quite much exactly what I said.

That a definition is arbitrary doesn't mean that it is unimportant. If I use one arbitrary definition, and you another one, we won't have any meaningful discussion. Sometimes this can be resolved, when the definitions themselves aren't the central issue and we can agree about at least some provisional defintions. Sometimes the definition itself is the central issue, and can't be resolved. Like when we disagree about the meaning of the term life. In this case, any provisional definitions won't help.

> then they aren't really disagreeing over the meaning of the word 'life', they're disagreeing over the nature or essence of life itself

Those two things are the the same. What is the meaning of a word other than the "nature or essense" of the thing it references?

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#116

Post by leahshule56 »

RubenvanE wrote: post #32

These sentiments are quite familiar to me. That's why I've been building my own HN copy ( https://hackerdaily.io ). It shows all posts per day, which has a few benefits: 1. It doesn't become an addictive slot machine that updates every minute. 2. The conversations have already happened, which makes it easier to see which threads are interesting and informative and which are not. It also uses an outline.com like style…

Needs dark theme.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#117

Post by onion2k »

harryf wrote: post #43
kstenerud wrote: post #33

All forums ossify after enough time has passed and the initial population has been crowded out. People come to these places for various reasons: - To debate - To learn - To engage intellectually with other people - To be heard/validated - To gain social standing The problem is (like all human forums) that as the included population rises, you need to make a bigger and bigger splash to be heard, and that means that af…

> the initial population has been crowded out I'm going to dare say it but Hackernews is no longer really populated by hackers, or at least it's not bleeding edge when it comes to programming. One example... the number of posts like "Show HN: Here's a thing I made" ... where the first comments is "Here's a link to a product that has been out for 10+ years that does what you just built and 100 times more" My gut feeli…

Building your own version of something that already exists can be a really cool hack.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#118

Post by usr1106 »

The bigger and the more successful a forum/group/channel gets the more it attracts traffic. With more traffic comes more low-value traffic. Whether that is less than or more than or quite exactly proportional I don't want to speculate about.

If a forum gets too big, those who value lower volume higher quality traffic will leave. It often doesn't raise the level of the community remaining.

Most clearly we have seen that with Stack Overflow. Where Stack Overflow is still useful as a "static" resource for questions/answers who have not changed for some time.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#119

Post by self_awareness »

LeCow wrote: post #5
dwrodri wrote: post #3

I uninstalled my 3rd party reddit app the other day for very similar reasons. I love reddit as a way for getting my tech news, but there's just so much about the platform that I don't like which is becoming harder and harder to avoid. The communities I really enjoy (r/cpp, r/MachineLearning, r/DataScience) are still for the most part wonderful communities and they provide killer feeds that let me stay up to date with…

Ditto. On Reddit even a percieved differing opinion results in hate mail, insulting and shouting. It's one of the reasons I never signed up to Twitter.

TBH on Hacker News it's also a problem. If you have a point of view that is consistent with the majority of users (or with the users who write lots of comments), then everything is fine. But if your point of view differs, then you're often downvoted into oblivion. This is often not a good place for discussing things.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#120

Post by Rochus »

So someone stopped visiting HN ten years ago. Is this really worth a post on HN and more than a hundred comments? Personally, I can't understand the statements of the person concerned; what bothers me more are those posts that don't contribute anything relevant to technological development. Basically, I find HN very helpful and both a good source of information and inspiration. The discussions are also generally quite good. And we should be able to trust adults to have a little bit of a culture of debate.
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