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Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

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Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#161

Post by [deleted] »

simonsarris wrote: post #156
jader201 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the guidelines [1]: > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. (With that last sentence linking to 9 examples in [1].) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You don't think it's changed? You've been here about as long as we have. At some point you can't rely on it being a noob illusion if a place actually does change. The guideline is not a magic incantation that prevents it from never becoming false. Snarky replies used to be routinely downvoted swiftly, now they are not.

[deleted]

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#163

Post by gwervc »

gentle wrote: post #85

I'm always fascinated by the posters here who insist on second-guessing the writers and the scientists who spend their whole lives studying a topic like this. No one needs to read your post fessing up to your profound ignorance and the fact that you didn't really read the link.

> the fact that you didn't really read the link

I think this is due to a big flaw in the link aggregator website model. In the forums of yore, we had a post creating a discussion that was a must read, and everything was contained in the same place. Links were part of the post but as side dishes sprinkled over the OP.

In the aggregator model, which is arguably a dumbed-down model of forum, there is no OP. Or more accurately, what can be interpreted as the post is the title of linked content, not the linked content itself. Clicking and reading to an external link is a burden and a disconnection to the discussion on the aggregator. In the end, a lot of discussion occurs based only on the content visible in the aggregator, that is the title. One might regret it, but it's the format pushing this behavior.

Also since there is an endless stream of content instead of threads being dumped, I feel comments are more fire and forget.

PS: did not read the linked post.

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#164

Post by ForTheKidz »

dvt wrote: post #88
gentle wrote: post #85

I'm always fascinated by the posters here who insist on second-guessing the writers and the scientists who spend their whole lives studying a topic like this. No one needs to read your post fessing up to your profound ignorance and the fact that you didn't really read the link.

I second this, and it tends to be a sitewide issue. HN has really changed over the past 5+ years: went from healthy or interesting skepticism to reddit-style snarkiness and shitposting.

That's hardly isolated to this site. COVID did a number on us.

Fwiw, people have been saying this since the site started. Don't worry. There will always be a safe space for rich assholes to divorce themselves from reality and romanticize their exploitation.

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#165

Post by ForTheKidz »

simonsarris wrote: post #156
jader201 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the guidelines [1]: > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. (With that last sentence linking to 9 examples in [1].) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You don't think it's changed? You've been here about as long as we have. At some point you can't rely on it being a noob illusion if a place actually does change. The guideline is not a magic incantation that prevents it from never becoming false. Snarky replies used to be routinely downvoted swiftly, now they are not.

The downvoting here (as well as comment scoring) is probably my least liked thing about the site. It exacerbates the already prominent issue of hivemind and seems to actively lower the quality of discussion. People seem to mostly vote based on emotional reaction. On paper, a downvote just doubles the value of a vote. Meanwhile the graying of comments that never deserved to be downvoted to begin with is infuriating and seems to mostly stifle interesting conversation.

Personally, I advocate for abolishing the downvote and the scoring and switching to randomized comment order.

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#166

Post by setopt »

piker wrote: post #84
interludead wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skepticism is fair, but the confidence comes from how well we understand atomic spectra

Is that about as well as we understand the formation of the universe? /s

Spectroscopy is a very straight-forward and mature technique. Saying that “we see these spectral lines in this picture so there must be oxygen” is not considered any more controversial than “we see a bright dot in this picture so there must be a star”.

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#167

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

nimish wrote: post #137
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone I've met with a PhD was intelligent. Maybe not genius, but yeah, pretty damn intelligent. If you want to spend your life in the pursuit of knowledge rather than mere money or status, it's kind of a prerequisite to demonstrate you can perform original research. I honestly don't get the analogy with priests. They still seem utterly different to me.

Organized religion ordains priests to read the sacred texts (papers, theses, books) and then anoints them to be the only ones allowed to do ministry and theology. Then they fight among themselves to be allowed to get resources and rise up the ranks of the church. The analog is with forcing promising researchers to go through 5-10 years of thankless "training" to be granted a doctorate, so that they can be taken "seri…

Hmmm. You are describing pretty much any human organisation where people have to compete for limited resources.

I disagree strongly with describing learning what we currently know (or think we know) as reading sacred texts and being annointed as the only ones allowed to perform scientific research.

Scientific texts are very much not sacred. Yes, there are orthodoxies which most people believe, and if you are going to go against them, you better have damn good evidence. But you absolutely can challenge them, which is how science progresses and is the key difference between religion and science.

Since I just had a paper published in a computer science academic journal last year, (and I'm very much not an academic), I also challenge the idea that only people within the "priesthood" are allowed to practice the discipline. Obviously this will be rarer than people whose day job is doing this, but there is no license to practice science required from an anointed priesthood.

So forgive me if I really push back on that analogy, as it obscures the absolutely critical differences between them.

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#168

Post by ramblerman »

simonsarris wrote: post #156
jader201 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the guidelines [1]: > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. (With that last sentence linking to 9 examples in [1].) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You don't think it's changed? You've been here about as long as we have. At some point you can't rely on it being a noob illusion if a place actually does change. The guideline is not a magic incantation that prevents it from never becoming false. Snarky replies used to be routinely downvoted swiftly, now they are not.

I don't, Meta discussions like this have happened since forever on HN. And attempting to curb them is a good thing.

OPs "comment" on what should be correct behavior on HN is now the top comment and surpasses by far the few people that he is critiquing. And hence our discussion now is all about this meta thing, which means we are not talking about the article.

that is not new

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#169

Post by TeMPOraL »

simonsarris wrote: post #156
jader201 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the guidelines [1]: > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. (With that last sentence linking to 9 examples in [1].) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You don't think it's changed? You've been here about as long as we have. At some point you can't rely on it being a noob illusion if a place actually does change. The guideline is not a magic incantation that prevents it from never becoming false. Snarky replies used to be routinely downvoted swiftly, now they are not.

Might be weird-colored glasses, but I've been here slightly longer and no, I don't think it changed much either.

(Or it could be that I changed along with it, so I don't notice.)

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#170

Post by fao_ »

ramblerman wrote: post #168
simonsarris wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think it's changed? You've been here about as long as we have. At some point you can't rely on it being a noob illusion if a place actually does change. The guideline is not a magic incantation that prevents it from never becoming false. Snarky replies used to be routinely downvoted swiftly, now they are not.

I don't, Meta discussions like this have happened since forever on HN. And attempting to curb them is a good thing. OPs "comment" on what should be correct behavior on HN is now the top comment and surpasses by far the few people that he is critiquing. And hence our discussion now is all about this meta thing, which means we are not talking about the article. that is not new

I mean, I can scroll through the hacker news history to 2016 when I started reading, and the comment quality and submission quality is much higher IMO.

As I've said before, there's a reason why my entire social group of programmers (and a lot of programmers I've met from outside it) refers to this pejoratively as The Orange Site.

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