Evidence of inconsistencies in evaluation process and selection of winners

We appreciate your contributions here, but can you dial back this kind of sentiment in your comments?

> Go build and never speak to a human again, if that's what you want. Reject the humanity you despise

It's a really unfair stereotype to apply to those you're disagreeing with, and I see you do it repeatedly here; characterizing those you disagree with, or the HN community in general, with terms like anti-humanity and anti-human.

Yes I know there's a transhumanist element and an elitist element in Silicon Valley and among AI zealots. But it's not true of everyone or even many people who have big hopes for AI, and it's not a dominant sentiment on HN, or within YC. Most people I see being hopeful about AI are hopeful that it can make things better for humans – better jobs (more pleasant and better paying in real terms), better health/medicine and education that's more accessible to all, etc.

Sure, it's not a given that this will eventuate, and there are plenty of unknowns and plenty of ways in which things could get worse if the wrong decisions are made. Which is exactly why we need to have ongoing, vigorous discussion, which is what we're always trying to cultivate here on HN.

It's fine to express concerns about the real challenges and negative aspects of AI (and tech in general) and the potential for things to get worse. It's good to have that perspective represented.

But, continuing to name or characterize your debating opponents, or the HN/YC/tech community in general as "anti-human" is unfair often-inaccurate. It's a low-substance slur that serves to poison discussions. Enough, please.

>It's a really unfair stereotype to apply to those you're disagreeing with, and I see you do it repeatedly here; characterizing those you disagree with, or the HN community in general, with terms like anti-humanity and anti-human.

I searched my comments, because that doesn't seem like something I would do. It seems I've only used the term "anti-human" twice since I've been here, two years ago in reference to utopianism (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41561281) and three years ago in reference to LLMs and copyright (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36195596) and I've never used the term "anti-humanity" at all.

>Yes I know there's a transhumanist element and an elitist element in Silicon Valley and among AI zealots. But it's not true of everyone or even many people who have big hopes for AI, and it's not a dominant sentiment on HN, or within YC.

I was answering a specific person about their specific attitude and their specific comments.

Fair game if you want to mod me over that comment, I'll admit I might have gone overboard but It doesn't seem as if you bothered to understand the context of what's actually being said at all here. I'm going to be charitable and assume there wasn't an AI moderator involved, I know you're working on that, if so it might need a bit more debugging.

>Most people I see being hopeful about AI are hopeful that it can make things better for humans – better jobs (more pleasant and better paying in real terms), better health/medicine that's more accessible to all, etc.

Again, I wasn't talking to or about most people.

>But, continuing to name or characterize your debating opponents, or the HN/YC/tech community in general as "anti-human" is unfair, inaccurate and only serves to poison discussions here.

I have. Literally. Never. Used. That. Term. About. A. Person. If you're going to criticize me, do it for things I've actually done. I show my ass all the time here, you don't need to make shit up.

But comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48946901 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48928607 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48924340 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48337858 are no better. Reducing music to nothing more than a means to stimulate endorphines (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48722569) and declaring AI better than 99% of human effort (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48302356) and wishing all critics could be branded with a scarlet letter and eliminated from the timeline (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48340190), the sheer glee with which they describe the future in which AI puts everyone out of work and the contempt towards anyone who values human effort does read as at least a bit "anti-human" to me.

There. I actually said the thing. Now you can be honest.

But fine. I shouldn't have added fuel to the fire. I'm clearly experiencing the same frustration echelon is, just from a different direction. HN has been incredibly frustrating of late.

@echelon - that comment of mine that you posted was absolutely tame and reasoned compared to some of the stuff you've been posting lately. And it was correct. And I didn't call anyone names. And you clearly agree with my sentiment where AI is concerned. And HN is never going to be what you (or I) want it to be. And I will apologize for my tone and I will dial it back but I think you need do do the same. You need to recognize that people can and do have legitimate criticisms about AI and that the reason you get flagged isn't because of "witchhunts" but because you go on a tilt reading the slightest bit of anti-AI sentiment. If I deserve to be flagged then you do too.

I clearly need to take a break from this place, touch some grass, something.

FWIW I think the more salient learned behavior is 40 years of using calculators / desktops / laptops / smartphones which were basically 99.9999% reliable at retrieving text and doing computations. It is very hard to undo the learning of "the computer is a machine designed to be accurate."

Quite often the only way to know if you're wrong or right is to start building it.