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HN comments are underrated

danluu.com

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Re: HN comments are underrated

#281

Post by VodkaHaze »

kuschku wrote: post #265
VodkaHaze wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is a swamp of filth wrt economics comments. Basically all the subreddits except /r/academiceconomics, /r/badeconomics, /r/econpapers are awful. I'm friends with the mods of /r/economics and they have a really hard time reigning in the masses of ideologues (on all sides) ruining what should remain pure economics discussions.

> /r/badeconomics The subreddit arguing that it’s reasonable to give companies power over democratically legitimated governments? No thanks. This is a non-negotiable requirement, no non-democratic entity should have power over the highest democratic entity. That’s the fundamental issue that makes traditional ISDS problematic, and why ICS and the new ISDS alternative in CETA were created in the first place. But /r/bad…

This:

> The subreddit arguing that it’s reasonable to give companies power over democratically legitimated governments

Is a massive strawman if you're referring to ISDS (which is what it seems). If you want a trade agreement, the terms need enforcement to be unilateral. But political actors in each respective countries will be incentivized not to respect that by internal pressures.

So there needs to be a way to settle those disputes, or else you might as well not have any trade agreement. You can dispute the merits of the current court system; I won't, I'm not an expert in that.

But saying that this means "companies have power over democratic countries" is absurd. Go look at supreme court cases in any country. How many are "[person] vs [state]" or "entity vs country"?

Democratically elected governments can act in ways just as abhorrent as any other entity; that's why the president doesn't have control over, say, what is constitutional or get to control monetary policy.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#282

Post by atmosx »

pavlov wrote: post #255

I second Dan's advice of blogging more. I'm a very average HN commenter. I do put in effort in writing here, trying to be civil above all and sharing my experience where it could be of interest. But I'm not Alan Kay, I've never rewritten a distributed deep learning system in Haskell using a genetically optimized Paxos consensus protocol, and my entrepreneurial experience is a loose string of "don't do this" case stud…

> I'm a very average HN commenter.

An 11k karma is not average IMHO. You're way above average HN commentator.

I think that you just used the best tool for the job. That doesn't really mean anything about comments. You read what I consider low level comments and high level comments on technical and social subjects from the SAME nickname all the time at HN.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#283

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

SmokyBorbon wrote: post #43
shubhamjain wrote: post #10

I prefer cynicism over unthoughtful, inconsequential comments that floods several discussion forums that I have come across. "Nice article", "Great write-up" and the next thing you know, you have created a place where people are only interested in submitting their articles and getting it upvoted rather than make meaningful contributions. People want to make good contributions here and that's something that differenti…

I could not agree more. I'm so sick of the fake-nice, passive-agessive millenial crap on the internet. Telling someone what they want to hear isn't nice. It's demeaning. Promoting groupthink isn't nice. It's alienating. Spouting platitudes isn't nice. It's insulting. To hell with comfort. If something is wrong, say so.

...Which is why us millenials hang out on sites like HN and other forums (or 4chan, for the truly insane), where this kind of crap shows up less.

Some people accuse HN of being a circlejerk, or a groupthink. It's not. I can tell, because if you want to see real groupthink, look at sites like Tumblr, where "speshul snowflakes" are in abundance. Look at Twitter, which is so filled with skub at this point that it's just a rage machine. Look at Facebook, where saying anything offensive is rare.

It astonishes me that people on these sites can have the audacity to call themselves "liberals" and yet don't believe in something as basic as the idea of freedom of speech. And I'm using that correctly, yes: it's not that they say "that shouldn't be allowed on our site," it's that they say "that shouldn't be allowed anywhere."

Re: HN comments are underrated

#284

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

wfeui3 wrote: post #71

I lost faith in HN crowd when hyperloop started. California can not even replicate 40 years old TGV, but somehow it will build space-like technology for fraction of price. And than there are politics. Entire world should accept millions of refugees. But SF is different, and should not even host 400 homeless who arrive every year.

Honestly, just stick to the tech threads. The SV nonsense is where the worst of this shows up.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#285

Post by berntb »

50CNT wrote: post #157
berntb wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't argue that Wikipedia always was correct (no source is that, I'd guess), just that it smelled really bad to dismiss it with just hand waving . It do have sources and have been whetted (for reasonably popular subjects.)

Wasn't trying to imply you meant that. It's more that I could see where someone like that could come from, dismissing the Wikipedia article out of habit, especially if they've been involved with the project. Not backing it up with additional sources is of course bad form, but finding and linking extra sources is additional work. Minor nitpick, vetting is someone checking something and approving it, whereas whetting i…

It seems I was trolled, but in a funny way.

I discuss how you can see bad behaviour from even old accounts at HN, dismissing serious references with just hand waving.

This got a well written answer about how non serious my example reference was, arguing with a family anecdote.

When I ask for better sources (I don't know the writer or his/her family from Adam/Eve) -- then I get no answer. :-)

Re: HN comments are underrated

#286

Post by rhizome »

me34llama wrote: post #240
hiou wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Seen both many times. The positive enforcement causes no one to share any negative thoughts after a while and the company smiles it's way out of business. Unfortunately people who will not speak up out of fear are toxic to company culture. The creative process is immediately destroyed when people need to second guess everything they say or do since it is impossible to know if you are about to say the wrong thin…

You are conflating respect with a lack of conflict. This mistake allows you to pretend that "respect" consists solely of being nice, never putting anything down, and generally being ineffective. > If someone can not tolerate cynical and sarcastic comments they need to be removed quickly. This is very different from mean spirited put downs and intentionally hurtful comments. If somebody belives that cynical comments a…

Isn't this essentially a tone argument?

Re: HN comments are underrated

#287

Post by rhizome »

parasubvert wrote: post #218
zzzcpan wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you need positive, supportive environments Google's research doesn't conclude that at all. Safe place to speak up is not necessarily a positive, supportive environment.

I'm having a severe case of cognitive dissonance here. A positive, supportive environment is one that allows people to speak up, supports people to be critical and allows both success and failures but doesn't perpetuate failures - meaning the initiative or product is separate from the person. A negative, unsupportive environment generally makes people feel like shit until they quit or are fired, perpetuates failed in…

An underlying question is whether the organization treats differing and possibly contrarian views as a positive or a negative. All of your points follow from that.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#288

Post by grzm »

tptacek wrote: post #103
dancek wrote: post #29

I think HN needs a way to easily find the top comments. There are absolute gems deep in discussion threads, but you'll need to spend a lot of time reading to find them. Hence, it's very nice of Dan Luu to list some of his favorites. The top root-level comment for each comment page is obviously easy to see, but good comments deeper in the comment tree are easily lost. Would be great if e.g. the top 5% voted comments o…

Dan and Scott recently added a "favorites" feature that you can see if you click the timestamp for a comment. Saving a comment to your favorites publishes it in a list of favorites on your profile. I think they're not especially happy with how this feature is working out. But I also think they're very close to a version of the feature that would work quite well: * The "lists" page on the site should include a list of…

> maybe replacing the useless "comments" link

I've found the comments link useful for finding the newest comment activity. That said, it's been useful only because I've been spending an inordinate amount of time on HN as I get started. There's likely a better way of accomplishing the same thing.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#289

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

dorfsmay wrote: post #38
Jimmy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'll find out rapidly, and bluntly with citations, when I'm wrong (and, yes I'm often wrong on the Internet!), usually learn something new on the topic If you stay off the default subreddits and only go on the intellectual/debate subreddits, then I honestly think reddit is better for this. The amount of expertise on reddit is astounding. It's very easy to find someone to rigorously challenge any view I have. I'd go…

Reddit is the new Usenet with all the good, the bad and the silly. The advantage of small subreddits over HN is that links don't get buried.

Reddit a crossroads of the usenet and 4chan cultures: it's where they meet. However, Reddit actually doesn't totally adopt the common-carrier approach, and aren't decentralized: they try to take responsibility for their users to a greater degree than either of the previous sites ever did, resulting in things like hateful subreddits getting taken down, and the voat split.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#290

Post by j2kun »

pavlov wrote: post #255

I second Dan's advice of blogging more. I'm a very average HN commenter. I do put in effort in writing here, trying to be civil above all and sharing my experience where it could be of interest. But I'm not Alan Kay, I've never rewritten a distributed deep learning system in Haskell using a genetically optimized Paxos consensus protocol, and my entrepreneurial experience is a loose string of "don't do this" case stud…

As someone who has done this a few times, LongForm sounds like a great idea.
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