The island where people forget to die • Hacker News Board

Re: The island where people forget to die

#131

Post by SoftwareMaven » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 4:52 AM UTC

derleth wrote: post #125

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be far more interested in a discussion about how we could identify the factors that lead to a community that doesn't appear to be following the aging and health norms of other communities rather than just saying "the article is stupid and isn't worth reading".

> I would be far more interested in a discussion about how we could identify the factors that lead to a community that doesn't appear to be following the aging and health norms of other communities rather than just saying "the article is stupid and isn't worth reading". OK, I don't think we're using 'empirical' in the same way, then. 'Empirical', the way I've always seen it used, just means 'evidence-based' or, more…

No, we aren't using the word empirically differently. I'm just saying that the interesting conversations revolve around where to look, not whether to look or not.

"Empirically" there is something interesting on that island. I'd love to hear ideas of what it could be, along with ways to test those ideas. The former without the latter is how snake-oil gets sold, but shutting down all conversation because snake-oil could be sold doesn't move us forward.

Re: The island where people forget to die

#132

Post by SoftwareMaven » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 4:53 AM UTC

ozataman wrote: post #127

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many articles that should be dismissed, but when every time I click on the comments, I know somebody will be saying something negative about the article (and usually something fairly obvious and uninteresting), then I can't help but agree with PG that there is intellectual snobbery rather than real, interesting discussion happening. You don't get many points for interesting. You get points for cynicism and…

What I find interesting is that I often learn/gain or notice something from these middlebrow dismissal comments. I am not saying they are all good - but many here make legitimate, logical and scientific points. With the rise of blogging and other open/free channels of self publishing, these comments are often necessary rebuttals to the overhyped tones present in many articles.

Every dismissive comments not a "middlebrow" comment. There are some people here with some really great knowledge. I love the "highbrow" dismissals because that's when I learn something new.

Re: The island where people forget to die

#133

Post by nazgulnarsil » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 4:56 AM UTC

reasonattlm wrote: post #6

Arguing anything other than differences in levels of exercise/activity and calorie intake has a large mountain of evidence to overcome. The effects of those two are very large, the effects of everything else comparatively small per decades of animal and longitudinal human studies. Nonsense about antioxidants in the diet is exactly that: nonsense. The weight of evidence suggests that, if anything, ingested antioxidant…

the studies linked to there specifically address antioxidant supplements which you then change into dietary antioxidants as if they are the same thing. They are not. Supplements doing nothing is the norm. It says relatively little about the presence of the same things in a diet. Example: fiber.

Re: The island where people forget to die

#134

Post by pav3l » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 5:22 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #130

gjm11 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not commenting on this article specifically (not least because I haven't read it), but there are plenty of articles that deserve little more than "middlebrow dismissal". Very likely one could find plenty of more interesting things to say about those articles. One can find interesting things to say about anything. But if an article is about an attention-grabbing subject, is superficially plausible, but is just pla…

I'd been thinking about this. It's true that sometimes an article is so obviously mistaken that the most valuable comment would be one that pointed out how. But such articles are fairly rare here. Ideally comment threads in which the top comment was a dismissive one would be proportionately rare. Whereas now they're almost like background radiation.

It would be interesting to do some sentiment analysis on comments and look at the statistics of dissmissive/approving top comments and all comments in general in HN threads.

Re: The island where people forget to die

#135

Post by wisty » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 5:33 AM UTC

pourush wrote: post #91

wisty wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other problem with blue zones is, they could just be a statistical blip. It's especially bad when you try to identify things like centurions, or spontaneous remission of cancer - things which are rare are the most prone to statistical blips.

Could you explain what you mean by "statistical blip"? It seems odd to say that, I mean, wouldn't it imply that there's interference from improper measuring, or interference from variables gone unnoticed, or interference from variables that are irrelevant? I'm probably reading it wrong, but it seems such a bizarre thing to say.

What I mean is, Poisson distributions don't look like normal distributions if lambda is low - there's a long tail.

There's about 500,000 centenarians (thanks bitwize for the spelling) in the world. That's about 0.01%. In a town of 10,000, that's an average (lambda) of 1. About 36% of such towns will have no centenarians, 36% will have one, 18% will have 2, 6% will have 3, 1.5% will have 4, and there's a long tail with 5 (0.3%), 6 (0.05%) or more.

It doesn't seem logical that most towns will have 0 or 1 centenarians, and some will have 5 or more, but it's just the way the numbers work.

If you pick a higher lambda (for example, the number of 50 year olds) it looks like a normal distribution. If some place has 2X the number of 50 year olds, there will be a good reason. If you pick a higher lambda (the number of people who survive incurable cancer) it looks even wackier, and it's very hard to draw conclusions.

What I'm saying is, it's hard to draw conclusions when you are looking at rare events, because there can be so much variation.

Re: The island where people forget to die

#136

Post by skrebbel » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 6:24 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #60

reasonattlm wrote: post #6

Arguing anything other than differences in levels of exercise/activity and calorie intake has a large mountain of evidence to overcome. The effects of those two are very large, the effects of everything else comparatively small per decades of animal and longitudinal human studies. Nonsense about antioxidants in the diet is exactly that: nonsense. The weight of evidence suggests that, if anything, ingested antioxidant…

If there's one thing I wish I could do to improve HN, it would be to detect this sort of middlebrow dismissal algorithmically. Unsophisticated people read an article like this and think: Gosh, I better eat honey for breakfast! People a little more sophisticated think: Hey, this is anecdotal evidence! Yeah, we know that. But is that the most interesting thing one can say about this article? Is it not at least a source…

In all honesty, if this is what bugs you the most about HN comments, then that mostly means that HN is doing remarkably well, given its population increase.

2 years ago, many HNers were predicting that HN's growth would inevitably turn it into yet another Reddit or 4chan. Instead, the consistent top comment is what you call the "middlebrow dismissal". Really, that's not so bad, compared to the top comment on $ANY_OTHER_SITE,_REALLY. Just scroll down to the next!

(that said, I found your complaint insightful: in fact, I realise now that I've been guilty of the odd middlebrow dismissal myself)

Re: The island where people forget to die

#137

Post by saraid216 » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 7:23 AM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #136

pg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's one thing I wish I could do to improve HN, it would be to detect this sort of middlebrow dismissal algorithmically. Unsophisticated people read an article like this and think: Gosh, I better eat honey for breakfast! People a little more sophisticated think: Hey, this is anecdotal evidence! Yeah, we know that. But is that the most interesting thing one can say about this article? Is it not at least a source…

In all honesty, if this is what bugs you the most about HN comments, then that mostly means that HN is doing remarkably well, given its population increase. 2 years ago, many HNers were predicting that HN's growth would inevitably turn it into yet another Reddit or 4chan. Instead, the consistent top comment is what you call the "middlebrow dismissal". Really, that's not so bad, compared to the top comment on $ANY_OTH…

> in fact, I realise now that I've been guilty of the odd middlebrow dismissal myself

This isn't as bad as you think it is. This kind of dismissal is a bit like adolescence; you engage in it as a part of mental growth. Every strong thinker has gone through it at some point, and probably regresses to it with some frequency. You hopefully grow past it, but you do go through it.

Re: The island where people forget to die

#138

Post by ruby_on_rails » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 8:02 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #60

reasonattlm wrote: post #6

Arguing anything other than differences in levels of exercise/activity and calorie intake has a large mountain of evidence to overcome. The effects of those two are very large, the effects of everything else comparatively small per decades of animal and longitudinal human studies. Nonsense about antioxidants in the diet is exactly that: nonsense. The weight of evidence suggests that, if anything, ingested antioxidant…

If there's one thing I wish I could do to improve HN, it would be to detect this sort of middlebrow dismissal algorithmically. Unsophisticated people read an article like this and think: Gosh, I better eat honey for breakfast! People a little more sophisticated think: Hey, this is anecdotal evidence! Yeah, we know that. But is that the most interesting thing one can say about this article? Is it not at least a source…

"If there's one thing I wish I could do to improve HN, it would be to detect this sort of middlebrow dismissal algorithmically."

3 years ago, HN was great. Amazing in fact. What's changed in 3 years? Certainly not the system. The user base has changed, grown, degenerated into stereotypes and punch lines. There is an old saying that I believe succinctly explains what has happened: Garbage in, garbage out.

I keep seeing people writing about wanting to "improve HN." Every time I see this I think, are these people mad? It's dead Jim. He's been dead. We can all sit here and prod his body and make recommendations for how best to make his arm into a grappling hook or some such nonsense, but at the end of the day, the patient is STILL dead.

If there is one thing I would do to improve HN, it would be to write the death certificate and move on to finding or creating the next HN.

Also, I thought the article was excellent, albeit long.

Re: The island where people forget to die

#139

Post by Jd » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 8:09 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #130

gjm11 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not commenting on this article specifically (not least because I haven't read it), but there are plenty of articles that deserve little more than "middlebrow dismissal". Very likely one could find plenty of more interesting things to say about those articles. One can find interesting things to say about anything. But if an article is about an attention-grabbing subject, is superficially plausible, but is just pla…

I'd been thinking about this. It's true that sometimes an article is so obviously mistaken that the most valuable comment would be one that pointed out how. But such articles are fairly rare here. Ideally comment threads in which the top comment was a dismissive one would be proportionately rare. Whereas now they're almost like background radiation.

I agree, but I'm not sure that there is any other way to establish positive discourse -- for most posts there are the enthusiasts and the middlebrow detractors, and virtue may often only appear after both of these positions are raised and discarded in favor of an hopefully Aristotelean mean. This is also to say that appropriate discourse depends largely on the context (i.e. what has already been said on the topic), and not simply on a single right answer (as in the sciences).

Re: The island where people forget to die

#140

Post by hop » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 9:07 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #130

gjm11 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not commenting on this article specifically (not least because I haven't read it), but there are plenty of articles that deserve little more than "middlebrow dismissal". Very likely one could find plenty of more interesting things to say about those articles. One can find interesting things to say about anything. But if an article is about an attention-grabbing subject, is superficially plausible, but is just pla…

I'd been thinking about this. It's true that sometimes an article is so obviously mistaken that the most valuable comment would be one that pointed out how. But such articles are fairly rare here. Ideally comment threads in which the top comment was a dismissive one would be proportionately rare. Whereas now they're almost like background radiation.

I think the way to solve this is by better education and reinforcement. Wouldn't hurt to place a prominent link in the top nav like"better commenting" that went to a page with explanations and examples of good and bad. Perhaps have it up there one week per month.