Negative comments

Needing to present a cogent argument for whatever point you've chosen to make, sure. Being told to rip apart someone else's argument just for the purpose of disagreeing? Never.

Film critics almost never do what online pseudonymous posters do; invariably, in every thread on HN, the top comment shits on the article. Film critics love film- they try to get others to go watch the films they love (or at least read their articles). The HN top comment just functions to show how smart the poster is.

Of course comments are going to be mostly negative. Including this one.

HN doesn't really have a problem with vacuous comments like "this is great" or "this is shit" which are equally as bad as each other since they add nothing of value. Those get downvoted. Commenters shouldn't be putting people down without saying anything constructive, but it's not our job to bolster anyone's ego with boundless support and positivity either.

The main purpose of comments is to provide criticism, or point out things that are similar that others might be interested in as a follow-up on a good article.

As a result that's going to come across as either negative (picking holes, focusing on what's wrong - since that's what criticism mainly consists of), or derisory (this isn't new, here's a bunch of similar stuff). In both cases there may not be any intention of malice or even a negative tone to the comment, but unless the author sugar-coats everything by adding weasel phrases like "this is awesome but...", it's going to come across as negative by default.

Comments can also contain questions, which can often read as criticism/negativity. E.g. "why does this exist when there is already Foo?". How one chooses to interpret comments like these is up to the reader. I find it's best to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to poor communication.

It's always nice to see or be able to comment along the lines of "this is awesome and here's why it's awesome" in a way that the explanation adds some value. But usually it's just redundant fluff and more ego stroking.

The reason these comments are less common isn't because western culture is broken, the education system is broken, or because the illuminati wants to oppress us by keeping us all demotivated. It's just because the opportunity for insightful, positive comments is much rarer than the opportunity for insightful, negative comments.

Positivity is nice and all, but I'd rather have zero comments than waste my time reading dozens of "this is great" me-too comments. Insightfulness is a million times more important than positivity.

It's not about people showing off how clever they are, it's about commenters doing what commenters are supposed to do: provide commentary and criticism that adds value. If you want to immerse yourself in positive comments, there are plenty of Reddit circlejerks that do just that. HN is not that. If you think HN is negative, try reading Slashdot for a month instead. You'll appreciate just how good HN comments really are when you come back.

The system works. Mostly.

For individuals, negative comments might be ego-boosting to write and heart-breaking to read. We cannot deny that many people write negative comments for less than healthy reasons, and that many others suffer psychologically as a result of such comments.

As a society, on the other hand, negative comments are indispensible for maintaining a balanced conversation, protecting human rights, and generally improving the state of our civilization.

> Western culture trains us to disagree as part of learning to be critical thinkers.

And that's one of the most important reasons why liberal democracy has such a hard time taking root in other cultures.

In (idealized) Western courtrooms, it's the job of each attorney to try to tear apart every single thing that the other attorney says. It's unpleasant, of course. It often wastes time and resources. But it's the only way we've found so far to make sure that the process as a whole reaches a balanced conclusion. It's our worst solution except all the others.

Like the market economy, the power of this process comes from the fact that it harnesses the power of human selfishness for the greater good. Really, it's genius. The system is not only fault-tolerant (where "fault" means moral fault), it actually thrives on the faults of its participants.

A society that treats negative comments as a taboo will stagnate and go corrupt. Because you can't eliminate selfishness, cynicism, and blind spots from human nature. To pretend that such traits don't exist, or even worse, to try to suppress them, is bound to fail. (Yeah, we tried that with human sexuality.) The only solution is to acknowledge that we are often selfish, cynical, and partially blind, and to channel that energy into productive use.

> writing negative comments feels good: It exercises our critical thinking skills without challenging anything we hold dear ... pointing out all the places other people are wrong rarely teaches us anything.

Exactly. And when I do that, it's YOUR job to challenge what I hold dear by exercising your critical thinking skills. At the end of the day, we can both learn! The more we do this to one another, the better it will be for all of us. Learning by criticism is not an individual task, it's a social project.

Of course, some people can't handle this. Ever been to DeviantArt? Everybody there praises everyone else's work all the time, no matter how shitty it is. Given the delicate sensibilities of a certain demographic that frequents DeviantArt, this policy probably saves lives. But should we all act like emo teenagers just because some of us behave like emo teenagers?

As a writer of critical comments of "hacker" school, I think this is typical of the times. If you call out somebody you are dismissed as a debbie-downer, cynical asshat, or other things like that. This comes from a culture now dominated by PR/marketing/sales, getting crazier by the growing viral marketing and astroturfing craze.

I strongly recommend you to watch Smile or Die, a talk by Barbara Ehrenreich.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo

The parallel with that is a delusion SOLD to the community. In the case of "hacker" school I criticize it as I did with the "MBA" program by Seth Godin. And I consider that I might be _completely_ wrong in both cases, but what is telling is how aggressive people got with me for speaking up my opinion.