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Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

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Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#51

Post by RivieraKid »

sker wrote: post #23
k__ wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there already a law for this? I would love this to be called "Moomin's Law"

I personally call it Pwnage Culture. Karma-based sites love it when a user debunks an article or another user's comment. You get extra points if you start your reply with a cold remark such as "No." "Wrong." "False." And then you put some random citations to Pubmed or Wikipedia at the bottom of your comment.

"You get extra points if you start your reply with a cold remark such as "No." "Wrong." "False."

Exactly, I automatically downvote comments like that.

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#52

Post by InclinedPlane »

regularfry wrote: post #48

The HN comment that really bores me is the one that totally denigrates the project described in the link because it's "been done before", "won't work because X" where X is a woolly hypothetical, "doesn't solve Y" where it's blindingly obvious that Y is either incredibly hard or tangential to the point, or "could simply be done with just A, B and C" where A, B and C are some permutation of a raspberry pi, arduino, a k…

To put an even finer point on it, one of the worst and most pervasive comments is of this type:

"This is a cat, but I like dogs, why isn't this a dog?"

Once you understand the type you start noticing it everywhere all the time. Any time there is a creative work there will always be someone complaining that it's not the thing they wanted created instead.

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#53

Post by Tichy »

citricsquid wrote: post #13

The biggest problem with Hacker News comments -- actually, make that all comments -- is fundamental: the sort of people that leave comments are (more often than not) people that want something, ANYTHING, to say, not people that have something to say.

If that were the case, the solution would be simple: just skip reading comments.

On the contrary I often learn useful things from HN comments. Sometimes I even submit stuff to HN because I am curious about the opinion of HN commentators.

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#54

Post by basicallydan »

What comments am I tired of seeing, you ask?

This one:

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

If you want to argue against surveillance, please do it with your words instead of just going "Well Benjamin Franklin said..."

I'm not saying don't quote him or use his arguments in yours, but simply quoting a man who has been dead for hundreds is not an argument.

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#55

Post by jessedhillon »

anigbrowl wrote: post #18

[citation needed] - This isn't Wikipedia, so skip the passive-aggressive comments. If you think something's wrong, explain why. The reason to post this is not so much thinking the comment is necessarily wrong as that it makes an extraordinary or absolutist claim absent any evidence, which if accepted as fact is going to change the shape of the whole discussion...perhaps appropriately, but the onus is on the person ma…

Yes, but on the other hand, fallacious reasoning is rarely the source of disagreement or controversy in a debate. At least in my experience. All you're doing by saying "ad hominem" is shifting the focus to technical delivery of the argument rather than focusing on the real matter of the discussion.

And most people forget that calling something an ad hominem attack does not mean that it's wrong. Most things which get called ad hominem are usually not, in fact -- saying "you are dumb and your arguments is wrong because of X, Y, Z" is different than saying "your argument is wrong because you are dumb" (the latter would be ad hominem, the former is merely an irrelevant statement)

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#56

Post by RivieraKid »

regularfry wrote: post #48

The HN comment that really bores me is the one that totally denigrates the project described in the link because it's "been done before", "won't work because X" where X is a woolly hypothetical, "doesn't solve Y" where it's blindingly obvious that Y is either incredibly hard or tangential to the point, or "could simply be done with just A, B and C" where A, B and C are some permutation of a raspberry pi, arduino, a k…

This annoys me too, it's just people who want to feel superior.

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#57

Post by lutusp »

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #12
lutusp wrote: post #2

Unfortunately there are too many useful rhetorical devices in the list, devices that serve a purpose. Ironically, the list starts off with "correlation is not causation," an expression that in most cases is raised for very good reasons -- for example, any popular science story that includes the word "linked" but without adequate qualifiers. If more people were science-literate, these platitudes wouldn't be necessary.…

I agree. The author says "If there's some specific reason you think a a study is wrong, describe it". Unfortunately, this is very often precisely the problem: many times not in the study itself but in the way it's reported. "Correlation is not causation" mistakes are not always obvious. Especially when there's ideological bias. E.g: the claim that owning a gun increases the chances that you will be violently killed b…

> The author says "If there's some specific reason you think a a study is wrong, describe it". Unfortunately, this is very often precisely the problem: many times not in the study itself but in the way it's reported.

Too true. My recent favorite was a popular account of a marijuana study. The popular article was titled "Marijuana causes psychosis" or words to that effect. The popular account went on about how teenagers went crazy after smoking killer weed. The study itself said, "We don't know whether marijuana use sometimes causes psychosis, or psychosis sometimes causes marijuana use. More study is needed."

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#58

Post by regularfry »

sker wrote: post #27

I used to dislike the "this is why I love Hacker News" comment. It's not so prevalent anymore, but it was very common 3 or 4 years ago. And while we're on the subject, I dislike the use of the word sure on nerd sites. I say nerd sites because I haven't seen it (ab)used so much on other sites or movies. Basically, people say "I'm sure" to mean "I think" and "I'm pretty sure" to mean "I kind of think." I just went to r…

You don't see either as often here as certain other sites, but two more that are invariably abused: "Most people..." and "You've obviously never..." The former is almost always code for "Most right-thinking people who fit into my personal worldview, which I am terrified of breaking...", while the latter is "I've got some domain knowledge here which on face value contradicts the precise words you've just written. It therefore follows that it's impossible for me to be wrong about..." and is more often than not followed by a demonstration of exactly how wrong it is possible to be.

Any time I see either of these, it's end-of-thread-time.

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#60

Post by regularfry »

Toshio wrote: post #34

> "What comments bother you the most?" Mindless evangelism of proprietary technologies, disguised as an attempt at an insightful comment (microsoft's mvps and evangelists are particularly guilty of this).

Emphasis on the "mindless". I'm horribly spoilt in that I'm always hideously disappointed when cool tech comes along that's not open source, but there's some very interesting work going on behind closed doors that is worth evangelising.
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