The article is completely wrong. There's hardly any negativity on the Internet at all, and none of it comes from our training.
Yes and I think a sarcasm closing tag would be suitable here.
Negative comments
21–30 of 93 posts
Re: Negative comments
#22Critical thinking is overrated, constructive thinking is underrated. Too many turn into critics rather than creators because saying to the world "this is what I stand for, this is what I created" is so much harder than to simply tear someone elses down. The US is actually much better than Europe but unfortunately academic disciplines and craftmanship are mostly separated in the education system when they should never…
Creation is overrated: Sturgeon's law applies to almost everything (and perhaps undercounts). The most important part of creation is criticism: until you learn how to edit and kill your babies, you won't write anything more than a sentence worth shit. Similar applies to programming. Of course, learning these skills requires writing and programming a lot (for most people: there may be some prodigies).
The most important point of creation is to makie decisions.
That is what you train for. To be able to do as a creator without too many barriers between your intuition and your ability to transform that into something.
A jazz musician who apply critical thinking to her improvisation is not playing.
A writer who think is not writing.
She might not like what she ended up deciding but there is nothing to throw away, no babys to kill if nothing have been created.
Re: Negative comments
#23i think that when we type, we use a different part of the brain than when we speak. I have no evidence to back this up but sure as hell know that people won't say half the crap they spew on youtube etc.
I actually find the "negative" comments refreshing on YC. Youtube comments are the bane of existence...
Re: Negative comments
#24http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
tl;dr Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement [image] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Gra...
I wish you kids would use "summary:" instead of "tl;dr"
though kudos for putting it at the beginning rather than the end.
I mean this in a friendly constructive way, and realize you may not be a kid. But while there's lots of positive innovation happening in culture and esp related to the Internet, I feel strongly that "tl;dr" is not one of them, its a step backward. It's typically placed in the worst possible location (the very end rather than the very top/beginning) and it's far less likely to be understandable than "summary". It's also reinventing the wheel. Again, not a criticism of your comment, meant more for other readers, esp younger or less educated ones, who don't know about the word summary and how it is traditionally used to solve the need well already. :-)
Re: Negative comments
#25The negativity of the internet bothers me as well. Somewhat amusingly, I find it is often difficult to express agreement with someone without confusing them, there seems to be an assumption that if you are replying to someone you are probably disagreeing with them. Despite feeling this way, any time I go back and read my own recent comment history, I am shocked to find that most of my comments are still corrections/d…
Why not start your comment, "Hello. I agree with your points. I'd also like to add ..."?
Hello. I agree with your points. I'd also like to add that it would quickly become meangingless if everyone started to do this.
Re: Negative comments
#26>Some errors are injustices and should be corrected, but most are not. How do you decide which are which?
We need a standard to measure up to when correcting what is just vs what isn't. The standard should preferably apply to all involved.
Re: Negative comments
#27This is pretty subjective, but I honestly enjoy a certain amount of negative comments.
When I click a link on hacker news and end up on a project page, it’s generally all positive. You go to some new kickstarter and you don’t see “This product I want to build is alright.” You see “This new thing I’ve got is AMAZING!”. Every startup landing page tells you, at length, why it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Most github project list off all the things they’re good for.
When I click on an HN project link, I generally get a page telling me how awesome that project is.
So when I go back to the comments afterwards, I want a counterpoint. I’d like a list of things wrong with the glowing self-review I just read. I handful of “Gee, that’s nifty!” comments might be nice, but they don’t really help me evaluate the thing I just read about, and they’re not terribly useful for fostering interesting discussion.
This isn’t as critical for some software products where I can reasonably evaluate their merit on my own, but there are a lot of areas where I’m not an expert. If some post comes along with a tool that it claims will revolutionize farming, I’d love to have someone with a strong agriculture background come by and explain why it’s not nearly as good as advertised.
Of course, there’s a long ways between “this is shit!” and “This is neat, but here are some flaws.” I’m all for criticism being constructive, rather than destructive, but let’s not throw out useful negativity. When people put up sites telling me how awesome something is, it’s quite valuable to have reasonably well informed people arguing the other side.
Re: Negative comments
#28Jim Morgan [1] had this (relevant) mantra:
"Bad news is good news. Good news is no news. No news is bad news."
Essentially, it means:
Bad news (criticism) done right will show you where you need to focus to improve. That's why we upvote those comments.
Good news will give you little or no actionable items to improve.
No news means you are not getting any feedback, which means your progress will stall.
[1] I worked (far) under Jim Moran when he was the long-time CEO of a huge hardware tech company: http://www.appliedmaterials.com/en-in/profiles/james-c-morga...
Re: Negative comments
#29Critical thinking is overrated, constructive thinking is underrated. Too many turn into critics rather than creators because saying to the world "this is what I stand for, this is what I created" is so much harder than to simply tear someone elses down. The US is actually much better than Europe but unfortunately academic disciplines and craftmanship are mostly separated in the education system when they should never…
> Critical thinking is overrated constructive thinking is underrated.
Non-critical constructive thinking is useless. "Critical thinking" is not opposed to "constructive thinking".
Re: Negative comments
#30The Internet is a medium full of ads and self-promotion. A sizable number of articles on blogs, including this one, are of the form "why X is great", by someone selling X. We have plenty of boosterism on line already. Some negativity is useful.
This is a big problem on Wikipedia. In the old days, five years ago, most of the self-promotion on Wikipedia was by bands and DJs. Now it's companies and rich people. There are at least three rich convicted felons, famous for their crimes, with their own paid Wikipedia editors trying to launder their history.
It helps if the negativity is not anonymous. That's why I edit under my own real name.