It should be easier for me to give mice brain tumors. • Hacker News Board

Re: It should be easier for me to give mice brain tumors.

#21

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 1:42 AM UTC

spoondan wrote: post #18

Udo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is not relevant to most hackers, except if they happen to be bio researchers. Worse yet, while being mostly irrelevant, it's also a barely disguised flamebait piece designed to incite a fruitless ethics debate. This should be posted somewhere else. And I don't care how many downvotes I get either; the guys who where complaining about the increasing lack of focus on HN earlier today were right.

The standard for an article's appropriateness is whether it's something "that good hackers would find interesting", not whether it's "relevant to most hackers."

[deleted]

Re: It should be easier for me to give mice brain tumors.

#22

Post by YuriNiyazov » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 4:50 AM UTC

Udo wrote: post #17

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this article made me think "wow, not everything is lost, this is exactly the kind of stuff that HN used to have on it before the decline", so I definitely disagree with Udo

I feel bad hijacking the discussion like this. But I'd really like to know how a blog post on how the government should abolish ethics oversight in research is hacker news? Obviously, you have been here way longer, so what is that I'm not getting?

Very well. From the HN guidelines, what to submit can be summed up in one line: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

First of all, you view the article in a very narrow view. You just see someone complaining about ethics committees. I see an article that is well-written (on par with PG's essays), and is talking about stuff that I wouldn't usually notice on my regular path on the Internet. Mice brain tumors? Academic research?

Second of all, an average "CS hacker" out there, back in high school/college, could take multiple paths - physics, math, bio, acting (yes, acting), painting, music, etc. - in fact, many of them during really bad coding moments (such as when you need to refactor a 1000-line java method) wish many times over that they stuck to biology, or music, or acting, or anything else back in college.

This article appeals to both wanting to read something well-written, and also to gratifying someone's intellectual curiosity about something that they could've ended up doing, but didn't; and, it explains in great detail what problems they would've encountered if they had actually gone down that route.

HN needs more of exactly this kind of content.

Re: It should be easier for me to give mice brain tumors.

#23

Post by YuriNiyazov » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 4:50 AM UTC

Udo wrote: post #17

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this article made me think "wow, not everything is lost, this is exactly the kind of stuff that HN used to have on it before the decline", so I definitely disagree with Udo

I feel bad hijacking the discussion like this. But I'd really like to know how a blog post on how the government should abolish ethics oversight in research is hacker news? Obviously, you have been here way longer, so what is that I'm not getting?

Very well. From the HN guidelines, what to submit can be summed up in one line: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

First of all, you view the article in a very narrow view. You just see someone complaining about ethics committees. I see an article that is well-written (on par with PG's essays), and talks about stuff that I wouldn't usually notice on my regular path on the Internet. Mice brain tumors? Academic research?

Second of all, an average "CS hacker" out there, back in high school/college, could take multiple paths - physics, math, bio, acting (yes, acting), painting, music, etc. - in fact, many of them during really bad coding moments (such as when you need to refactor a 1000-line java method) wish many times over that they stuck to biology, or music, or acting, or anything else back in college.

This article appeals to both wanting to read something well-written, and also to gratifying someone's intellectual curiosity about something that they could've ended up doing, but didn't; and, it explains in great detail what problems they would've encountered if they had actually gone down that route.

HN needs more of exactly this kind of content.