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New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

blog.ycombinator.com

511–520 of 673 posts

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#511
post #484
post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't happen to know of a tutorial on how to understand all the things you just said, would you?

name-calling is minus emotion-calling, and stonewalls the hurt steelmanning-steelgrammaruning is name-building minus emotion-building. apathic harm principle but the rule we're reframetrustworking is so-called empathic determinate. _You wouldn't happen to know of a tutorial trauma officially on how to overprotect apath all the things we said, would you shh seriality?_ My post was flagged[*] for using Robo Swears (sla…

Pain,

I say this with empathy. Do you have doctors telling you to take medication? Please take that medication.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#512
post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't happen to know of a tutorial on how to understand all the things you just said, would you?

I would try reading up on Markov chains.

Explain a bit if/how that is going to lead to healthier literacy reading and writing? Someone else asked (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9285958) if that was what I am doing but I have zero math feels, just pain feels.

One pain, two pain, three pain (ease, save, kill) ~~? Feels like missed math.∫∫??

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#513

The problem is that "shallow cynicism", "gratuitous negativity", and "all forms of meanness" are vague distinctions all subject to interpretation. Guidelines like this should have specific examples to aid in their definitions so we can criticize or agree with them. What could be considered "mean" to someone emotional/thin skinned, might be interpreted as helpful criticism to someone not so sensitive. Sometimes it's r…

As a counterpoint: The more specific your guidelines are the more you have people who will attempt to abuse them pedantically (see reddit for so many examples). They will also become rules, rather than guidelines. I think the idea may be that they want the community to use these as guidelines and interpret them as appropriate to keep the site mature and pointed in the right direction.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#514

This is just a terrible idea. Will I have this comment flagged for expressing this? A thought experiment. If you and some others are in a car, and it's just driven off a cliff, and as you are falling you say to the other occupants, "We've just driven off a cliff! Lets open the door and get out of here!" is that gratuitous negativity? No, it's the truth. Most people, in this car, don't want to hear the truth. As they…

Please correct me if I am wrong, but the way I read the OP was that negativity without reason is one part of the issue. In your case of the car falling off a cliff, perhaps it is gratuitous negativity to say "We've just driven off a cliff! Lets open the door and get out of here!" but it's not gratuitous negativity to say "We've just driven off a cliff! Lets open the door and get out of here because this car is fallin…

In my experience, even when you describe the gravity and the impending impact, you are still seen as being negative. I think it has less to do with logic, and more to do with evolutionary biases. Mainly in-group/out-group bias (for instance nationality, or brand allegiance) or avoiding cognitive dissonance (If I accept your point, that means I have to change my view of the world to a more uncomfortable position).

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#515
post #493
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First and foremost, I would like to have a friendly laugh at you deriding opinions, then following it up with a long post of your opinions. But I don't have any criticism of what you said simply because it is your opinion. In fact, I (and many HNers) value the opinions of others (critical or otherwise), especially those of people who are especially intelligent or experienced. If opinions were worthless, the world wou…

He is right though, I also think your post was a perfect example of gratious negativity. However as this shows, it needs exceptional people with a high level of self reflection and lots of practice at discussions to even realize what is and isnt gratious negativity. For that reason I dont think this new rule will have any effect on this site because there are simply not enough people to vote according to this new rul…

I know it's just a minor mistake, but you have no idea how amusing it is to see a highly pedantic person try to insult me WRT to my ability to communicate correctly, while referring to my negativity as "gratious[1]."

As far as the rest of your post goes, communication isn't just a series of code comments for everyone in this world. If every post were subjected to some Critical Thinking 101 interpretation of logic, we'd never get anywhere. If I wanted to be an ass, I could destroy your message citing dozens of logical fallacies, but that's pointless. You have your way of writing and speaking. And that's cool. I respect that. And I don't think it would be fair of me to subject you to some diatribe about what you could do to improve in my eyes, because we are obviously both literate enough to know the consequences of writing/speaking in the manner we do.

I know what I said and how I said it, and a lot of people have agreed with it. If my caustic tone is too much of a hurdle to get over, then down vote me all you want. I'm saying what I'm saying directly to Sam Altman. I'm using my real name. There is a decent chance that at some point in my life, Sam could be a benefit to me, and I choose to communicate with him, negatively or positively, in the most effective manner that I know how, even if you think you know of more effective ways.

[1] Gratious: An obsolete spelling of gracious

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm particularly leery of collapsible threads May I ask why? As someone who considers that the one change/improvement I'd like to see on HN I'm curious what there is to be leery of that I may not have considered.

Because this isn't like reddit where the most upvoted comments are elevated in otherwise collapsed threads. I've only read some of the most insightful and interesting comments and discussions on HN buried most of the way down the page because they were available for me to see despite their lack of being voted on. On HN, popularity isn't valuable, the ideas are, and non-precollapsed threads support that.

Sometimes the good stuff isn't even on the first page. For example, see [0] (scroll down to the follow up) and the HN discussion [1] referenced there. Also, collapsible threads doesn't have to mean pre-collapsed threads.

To me it seems like collapsible threads would help, not harm, in this case because more people would have collapsed the OT first thread and participated in the discussion about the actual topic. I realize there are two assumptions built in to the above that may not always be true: 1) OT threads are bad or less desirable and 2) more people in a discussion is better.

0 http://braythwayt.com/posterous/2012/03/29/a-womans-story.ht... 1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3772292

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#517
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. A corollary is that gratuitous negativity is largely unintentional. That's why we're asking community members to be more active in gently reminding each other when the line is being crossed. Gently!

What line? It's so bloody arbitrary as to be a useless guideline. It's about as meaningful as 'be nice'.

Be nice is a good guideline. I try to be nice.

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#518
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guidelines aren't asking you to behave like Pangloss and think everything is perfect. It asks if you do have criticism then address it respectfully and constructively.

According to what moral framework are you precisely defining "respectfully" and "constructively"? There are plenty of examples in the world where bringing up logical, concise, and polite criticism invokes the wrath of a cabal of power-holders and social media demagogues, especially in a world that promotes the postmodern idea of "interpretation, not intent, is reality"

If it helps you can take respectfully to mean "the recipient will not feel angry or attacked due to the message tone" and constructively to mean "the recipient will finish reading the message feeling positive with ways to improve their work or actions".

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#519
post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

name-calling is minus emotion-calling, and stonewalls the hurt steelmanning-steelgrammaruning is name-building minus emotion-building. apathic harm principle but the rule we're reframetrustworking is so-called empathic determinate. _You wouldn't happen to know of a tutorial trauma officially on how to overprotect apath all the things we said, would you shh seriality?_ My post was flagged[*] for using Robo Swears (sla…

Pain, I say this with empathy. Do you have doctors telling you to take medication? Please take that medication.

( I am fine enough to find some work. Do you judge a book by its intergenerativational grammar? We systems are trauma-sensitive much? Map(.org empathy deeper? Read us well?

I have help and medical history. Do we need me to explain vital signs to record-keep my account and read my own comments without feeling constant random erasure for talking about pain? I am often trolled for talking about pain.

Problem solving traumatic emotional regexes, is a liferacy of literacy at biteracy which needs greater disrepression at order of tools we use to pick our basic letter needs.

Feel free to ask, but first I want to check and balance the fact that I am asked that question often from fear, uncertainty, doubt, ignorance, and taboo — war word roots tear through crypto-social-emotional-legal-rational-memory issues.

(https://www.facebook.com/pages/Computational-Crys-Healantics... is a bit of a grammatical compunctu(punishh)uation of that wordy logy.)

Re: New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-rating the negativity of your comment is designed to force you to acknowledge that HN wants you to think and be reasonable. The OP's blog post suggests that "Gentle reminders by peers" will make the culture better. I think these gentle reminders by peers in practice will whip everyone into a frenzy of hunting for negativity, naming negativity, blaming for negativity, being defensive about negativity, judging and…

Negativity is only bad if it's used to speak for other's feelings. You actually don't know if it will whip everyone into a frenzy. :)

Reading through this thread shows quite a few people in a frenzy about negativity.
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