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Consuming Hacker News

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Re: Consuming Hacker News

#31

Post by oriolgg »

I am on HN mainly for the comments.

The way I usually learn about interesting threads (which I mostly like to read after a while so they have enough comments) is the HackerNewsletter[0].

Also (shameless plug), I built AskHN Digest[1], a weekly recap of the top threads of AskHN with their top comments, to make sure I don't miss any good content from the section. Many times the comments there have been insightful and made it worth visiting the thread after a while, when most people had the chance to comment on it.

[0] https://hackernewsletter.com

[1] https://askhndigest.com

Edit: formatting

Re: Consuming Hacker News

#32

Post by EForEndeavour »

la_barba wrote: post #29
whenchamenia wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a recipe for a powerful bubble. HN, while being above average, collectively gets many, many things wrong.

Well a bubble is an imagined abstraction. Like most abstractions, it doesn't actually exist. Its just a way to simplify things. Also, there isn't a clear definition of it either, making things even more muddy. >HN, while being above average, collectively gets many, many things wrong. That is to be expected. I mean we have programmers opining on quantum physics, bio-chemistry, economics, sociology, and whatever else h…

> Well a bubble is an imagined abstraction. Like most abstractions, it doesn't actually exist. Its just a way to simplify things. Also, there isn't a clear definition of it either, making things even more muddy.

The fact that humans came up with a fuzzy concept to mentally model real-life effects doesn't diminish the existence of those effects. Events occur independently of what names and categories we give them.

For example, hordes of Twitter users have self-selected who they follow until they're exposed to opinions that agree with their own. This is and has been happening out there, in the real world, to real people. Humans, being pattern recognizers, naturally think of this effect in terms of "bubbles" or "echo chambers." These are not defined in a strict mathematical sense, and they don't actually exist, but the phenomenon certainly does.

Re: Consuming Hacker News

#34

Post by panarky »

whenchamenia wrote: post #27
barbecue_sauce wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My process with HN articles is 1. Find a topic that looks interesting or important based on the title 2. Read the top two comments. 3a. If they are incredibly polarized, read the article. 3b. If they are in agreement, just read the comments.

That is a recipe for a powerful bubble. HN, while being above average, collectively gets many, many things wrong.

Conventional wisdom says filter bubbles are bad because they hide alternative viewpoints.

But after I've understood and incorporated alternate views and I'm ready to build, then I want to discuss with like-minded people to refine the ideas and take action.

When I'm done with discovery and I'm ready to act, I don't want to keep fighting trolls and pedants, re-litigating stale arguments, weak signal lost in the noise.

More bubble, please.

Re: Consuming Hacker News

#35

Post by la_barba »

EForEndeavour wrote: post #32
la_barba wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well a bubble is an imagined abstraction. Like most abstractions, it doesn't actually exist. Its just a way to simplify things. Also, there isn't a clear definition of it either, making things even more muddy. >HN, while being above average, collectively gets many, many things wrong. That is to be expected. I mean we have programmers opining on quantum physics, bio-chemistry, economics, sociology, and whatever else h…

> Well a bubble is an imagined abstraction. Like most abstractions, it doesn't actually exist. Its just a way to simplify things. Also, there isn't a clear definition of it either, making things even more muddy. The fact that humans came up with a fuzzy concept to mentally model real-life effects doesn't diminish the existence of those effects. Events occur independently of what names and categories we give them. For…

>These are not defined in a strict mathematical sense, and they don't actually exist, but the phenomenon certainly does.

That's my point, I'm disputing the central assertion that these phenomenon actually model reality.

>For example, hordes of Twitter users have self-selected who they follow until they're exposed to opinions that agree with their own. This is and has been happening out there, in the real world, to real people.

You can always point to people who unfollow others when exposed to world-view-contradicting opinions. But it hasn't been shown that they always do it, or do it for the same reason in every case. people can and do exhibit contradictory behavior, or have the wrong information, or are simply enjoying the drama, or are trolling, etc. The existence of these and other factors, which are just observations (not models) of human behavior, go against the nice and easy explanations of someone being in a bubble.

We like to put people inside neat little boxes with labels on them. Like you said - " Events occur independently of what names and categories we give them.".

Re: Consuming Hacker News

#36

Post by hnjim »

Jun8 wrote: post #12

I think aggregators like SkimFeed miss an important point, often made on HN: for a lot of people, including me, a lot of the value of HN is in the comments. In fact, going to the extreme, some posts have little learnable content other than TIL. First example that comes to mind is a post I recently upvoted: Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19946989 ) which had a small number of…

I also find the comments more valuable and often reference a better version of the article so my path is: title-->comments-->article (often a better link or summary than the original).

Re: Consuming Hacker News

#37

Post by craftyguy »

Jun8 wrote: post #12

I think aggregators like SkimFeed miss an important point, often made on HN: for a lot of people, including me, a lot of the value of HN is in the comments. In fact, going to the extreme, some posts have little learnable content other than TIL. First example that comes to mind is a post I recently upvoted: Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19946989 ) which had a small number of…

> a lot of the value of HN is in the comments

I'd say this is rarely the case, the exception being technical posts where alternatives, etc are discussed. Most of the content on 'hacker' 'news' are product announcement spam and tesla/bitcoin/737/facebook drama posts that continue beating the respective dead horses. The comments sections for these are filled folks having 'discussions' inspired by the article title by throwing anecdotes at each other, and armchair investigators throwing anecdotes at each other in vain attempts to argue for/against whatever they interpret the article title to mean.

Very often I find myself just visiting 'hacker' 'news' while signed out to find interesting articles to read in all the drama noise and obvious spam.

n-gate.com, while meant to be a very sarcastic take on HN, is surprisingly accurate in their descriptions.

Re: Consuming Hacker News

#38

Post by Shorn »

pandatigox wrote: post #3

Another website is hckrnews.com, which is an aggregate of all HN posts by time. It’s really useful if you want to capture all items, as it has a feature that shows you where left off

I browse HN via RSS aggregator; so I catch all the articles, the thing is designed for keeping track of what you've read, integrates with daily reading flow along with all the other RSS feeds. Bonus points, my RSS aggregator of choice has a nice mobile reading experience too so my browsing experience tracks seamlessly across my various platforms.

Re: Consuming Hacker News

#39

Post by m463 »

StreakyCobra wrote: post #14
Jun8 wrote: post #12

I think aggregators like SkimFeed miss an important point, often made on HN: for a lot of people, including me, a lot of the value of HN is in the comments. In fact, going to the extreme, some posts have little learnable content other than TIL. First example that comes to mind is a post I recently upvoted: Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19946989 ) which had a small number of…

Sometimes I do not even read the article at all. Either I read a few comments, and if it seems interesting I go to read the article. And sometime I just read all the comments without even putting an eye on the article. So yes, I strongly agree. HN value is in the comments. PS: I just notice I did it again here... replying to a comment without having seen the article. I know in general it is better to have read the ar…

Sometimes I don't read the article because I have to take the time to ublock my filters (wsj for instance, nature or medium identity redirects, etc)

Re: Consuming Hacker News

#40

Post by EForEndeavour »

la_barba wrote: post #35
EForEndeavour wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well a bubble is an imagined abstraction. Like most abstractions, it doesn't actually exist. Its just a way to simplify things. Also, there isn't a clear definition of it either, making things even more muddy. The fact that humans came up with a fuzzy concept to mentally model real-life effects doesn't diminish the existence of those effects. Events occur independently of what names and categories we give them. For…

>These are not defined in a strict mathematical sense, and they don't actually exist, but the phenomenon certainly does. That's my point, I'm disputing the central assertion that these phenomenon actually model reality. >For example, hordes of Twitter users have self-selected who they follow until they're exposed to opinions that agree with their own. This is and has been happening out there, in the real world, to re…

> But it hasn't been shown that they always do it, or do it for the same reason in every case.

We don't need them to always do it, or for any reason. The fact is that it does happen, as evidenced by, e.g., https://www.cnet.com/news/twitter-echo-chambers-are-very-rea...

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