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Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#161

Post by CamperBob2 »

ggdG wrote: post #89

> In fact, I don't see a single story that I personally feel should not have been removed. I don't understand why this story was removed: "It turns out the six-feet social-distancing rule had no scientific basis", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39200511 On a forum with an overwhelmingly science-minded audience, it bothers me that an important topic like that is deemed untouchable.

(Shrug) I don't require scientific proof of the inverse-square law. It's self-evident to the point of being axiomatic. Standing 6 feet away from a virus source will expose you to about 44% fewer virus particles than standing 5 feet away from one, while not imposing any real hardships in most public interaction scenarios. What's controversial about that?

If you demand precise scientific rigor in all aspects of everyday life, public health is probably not the career field for you.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#162

Post by brucethemoose2 »

lars_francke wrote: post #10

> While I have no reason to doubt Daniel's good faith, it's hard to believe that HN users would be tired of LLM-related news. I am, so you can believe it. But: I don't flag things that I'm tired of.

LLMs are like crypto, where scams and scam-adjacents are everywhere.

I am the biggest local ML advocate you will find. My 3090 is either running Yi 34B queries or other experiments all day, my job is with local LLMS... But I am totally OK with heavy handed AI-related moderation. I dont want the sea of AI grifters to have a single second on the HN front page.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#164

Post by sfink »

smaudet wrote: post #127
IshKebab wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference is that AI is definitely useful and here to stay. Crypto was mostly scams or pie in the sky ideas that will never work. It will stick around for money laundering & buying drugs but that's about it.

Eh? I'm not pretending digital coins or dubious "tokens" were all particularly useful, but crypto (in the sense of cryptography) has been around for decades and is definitely here to stay... The people who made coins and tokens bad for society are doing the same thing with GenAI... Both are useful and both come with huge problems. Neither one is some panacea or a sustainable get-rich-quick scheme (obviously, both peo…

> but crypto (in the sense of cryptography) has been around for decades and is definitely here to stay...

But that's not the sense under discussion. "Crypto"=cryptography lost the language war and was completely supplanted by "crypto"=cryptocurrency. I really wish the word could regain its original and useful meaning, but it's too late now.

Ironically, "I work in crypto" went from meaning something useful to society to meaning being a parasite on society, and you'd best not accidentally use the phrase expecting people to understand it to mean the original thing (cryptography).

(Yes, not all uses of cryptocurrency are a parasitic detriment. But if you happen to be working on actually useful stuff and we meet socially, then please be very quick about saying that you work at doing something with cryptocurrency or blockchain that is intended to provide actual benefit. If you just say "I work in crypto", I will excuse myself at the first opportunity.)

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#166

Post by g42gregory »

Interesting service. I think it would benefit from further improvement. Many stories are actually dupes, self-promotion, etc… It would be nice to see a much smaller list of stories that were actually censored by the moderators or self-censored by the community.

How to do this? One idea is to write an appropriate prompt for GPT-4. Something along the lines of “if you were HN moderator or HN community, would you censor this story? Please give numerical score.” Then post a much smaller list with top scores. That would be useful I think.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#167

Post by ggdG »

tptacek wrote: post #131
ggdG wrote: post #89

> In fact, I don't see a single story that I personally feel should not have been removed. I don't understand why this story was removed: "It turns out the six-feet social-distancing rule had no scientific basis", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39200511 On a forum with an overwhelmingly science-minded audience, it bothers me that an important topic like that is deemed untouchable.

Stories about COVID controversies are almost certainly getting flagged off the front page by users, not touched by mods. People look at the titles of these stories and think that's all flaggers are going by, but lots of people flag stories based on their experience of what the threads are like, and the threads on COVID controversies are fucking dreadful. I didn't flag (or see) that story, but I would have.

> lots of people flag stories based on their experience of what the threads are like

IMHO story submissions should be judged based upon their own merits. Toxic commenters can be downvoted/banned but the story submitter shouldn't be punished for the misbehavior of others.

> I didn't flag (or see) that story, but I would have.

You mean purely based on the expected awfulness of imagined future comments, instead of the actual comments? If so, with a precrime mindset like that, you're fanning the flames of controversy.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#168

Post by BobaFloutist »

ggdG wrote: post #89

> In fact, I don't see a single story that I personally feel should not have been removed. I don't understand why this story was removed: "It turns out the six-feet social-distancing rule had no scientific basis", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39200511 On a forum with an overwhelmingly science-minded audience, it bothers me that an important topic like that is deemed untouchable.

Personally, I thought it was already pretty well established that the six-foot rule was based on poor science. I remember hearing about that years ago.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#169

Post by jjtheblunt »

dang wrote: post #158
TheCoreh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a quick glance, I found several that don't match that criteria you mention, here are a few: Open Source Doesn't Require Providing Builds https://codeengineered.com/blog/2024/open-source-not-builds/ Sam Altman Says AI Using Too Much Energy Will Require Breakthrough Energy Source https://futurism.com/sam-altman-energy-breakthrough Avoid Async Rust at All Cost https://blog.hugpoint.tech/avoid_async_rust.html (Perhaps…

The first two you listed were downranked by the flamewar detector. The last one was downranked by users. Admins didn't touch any of them. Note for everybody: can you guys please include the HN /item link if you're mentioning specific threads? That would be much more efficient and that way I can answer many more of people's questions.

HN ID? I don't see that in the FAQ, maybe it's defined elsewhere?

edit: oh duh. thanks all, answer was 'right under my nose'!

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#170

Post by noqc »

This is a good thing to be able to see, but I'm much more interested in identifying the soft censorship in comment sections.

This is obviously harder, because vote totals aren't publicly available for comment sections, but it is much more important as a tool. What topics are on the front page is much more clearly the legitimate domain of moderation than what commentary is made about them, especially when moderation of those comments contradicts the vote mechanism.

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