Posts & discussions like this make me cringe a lot worse than actual praise of pg.
Ask News.YC: Proposed experiment to test "The PG bias"
71–80 of 80 posts
Re: Ask News.YC: Proposed experiment to test "The PG bias"
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is easy to protect against. Just obscure pg's real name from a portion of the YC userbase. This is really an extremely easy test to get right if we think for a minute.
That's a great idea. I think it would probably work, but I can think of one potential case where it would introduce some complications. If user1 sees 'pg' as the submitter and user2 sees 'blah' user1 might comment something which gives away that it is actually pg to user2. Now user2 might realize this and act on their pg bias. Can you think of a way to prevent this?
Way:
group1 that contains user1 should be isolated from group2 that contains user2. They can't see each other's replies.
But I wouldn't want such things to happen here except on Apr 1.
Re: Ask News.YC: Proposed experiment to test "The PG bias"
#73Here are the users with the top median comment scores: ("pg" 4) ("theoneill" 3) ("mechanical_fish" 3) ("garbowza" 3) ("kkim" 3) ("paul" 3) ("cperciva" 3) If there is a difference, it's not huge.
The other side of the coin would be interesting to see too. Is it difficult to determine the number of +/- votes, and could this be displayed on the leaderboard?
It would be interesting to see who is controversial, who makes very passive comments that are always agreed with, etc.
Re: Ask News.YC: Proposed experiment to test "The PG bias"
#74It could be made so that a nickname is automatically selected per-page. This way threads he comments in could be followed. A small pool of 5 or so names could be reused so that he couldn't be exposed by finding the user that has just been created. Example implementation: unames=['bob1','bob2','pg'] lu=len(unames) secret_seed=309580435 from binascii import crc32 def hash_eq(number): return crc32(str(number),secret_see…
Why stop there? Why not have a week where everyone's user id is displayed as a randomly generated syllables based on the hash of their current user id and the current topic id?
Re: Ask News.YC: Proposed experiment to test "The PG bias"
#75It would be a good idea to quickly delete this and email pg directly about it, so few people are aware of the experiment.
Ah, I thought security by obscurity was out of fashion by now. I'm admittedly out of touch with the "real" world.
I thought good experimental design involved not telling people what you're testing if they have any means of altering the test.
Re: Ask News.YC: Proposed experiment to test "The PG bias"
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an argument from authority, plain and simple. Whether or not you know anything about lisp, your comments about it should be judged on their merits alone. If you truly don't know what you're talking about, it should be apparent to those who do know what they're talking about. A master and a novice might sometimes come to the same conclusions, but seldom because they followed the same thought process. And I sure…
That's an argument from authority, plain and simple. Have you ever wondered why, thousands of years after the ancient Greek experts on rhetoric noted the existence of the "argument from authority" fallacy, we're still awash in authorities? Are we all hopelessly stupid, that we cannot learn to avoid this mistake? Perhaps. But another problem is that argument from authority is almost never "plain and simple". There's n…
Are we all hopelessly stupid, that we cannot learn to avoid this mistake?
Many of us are, though I wouldn't say it is necessarily only stupid people who do it.
I consider it a good principle that the words in a reply in forums like this stand by themselves. If you or pg or anyone else wants to say something about lisp, you got to back it up. If you have already backed it up in "several hundred blog posts and news.YC comments, posted over several years", it should be easy for you to reference some of this material in support of your views.
You saying that the exact same argument, presented word-for-word the same, is not worth as much as the same thing when it comes out of an authority's keyboard, is an appeal to authority. However, if this other person has already defended this view, all he has to do is reference it to make the post worth more. But then the posts aren't word-for-word identical. Then one contains a reference to a justification and one doesn't.
Your example involves a question of how much to trust a person. This is one of the cases where it matters who's making the comment. It's a straightforward question of whether you want to trust that the person who says "Most of the smart programmers that I've met would rather work in Lisp than in Java" is speaking the truth or not, and it's clear that a habitual liar isn't as trustworthy as someone known for their honesty. It's not even an argument, it's just a truth claim.
However, the moment it becomes an argument (e.g., "lisp is better than java"), trusting it on authority becomes a fallacy. If Paul Graham wrote, "Lisp rocks", his comment is not worth any more than your comment if you wrote the same. But if he wrote, "Lisp rocks, for reasons I have detailed in this essay here: ", it would be worth more. But then it would no longer be "exactly the same words".
Re: Ask News.YC: Proposed experiment to test "The PG bias"
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
You fail at statistical analysis.
If you think average would be a better measure than median, say why. You might possibly be right, but given PG's track record re. Bayesian filtering, "You fail at statistical analysis" just doesn't seem like the right response. It also sounds like attacking the person rather than the statement.
[deleted]
Re: Ask News.YC: Proposed experiment to test "The PG bias"
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is easy to protect against. Just obscure pg's real name from a portion of the YC userbase. This is really an extremely easy test to get right if we think for a minute.
That's a great idea. I think it would probably work, but I can think of one potential case where it would introduce some complications. If user1 sees 'pg' as the submitter and user2 sees 'blah' user1 might comment something which gives away that it is actually pg to user2. Now user2 might realize this and act on their pg bias. Can you think of a way to prevent this?
Do it per page:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=165938
There are a number of simple vulnerabilities but I've yet to see one that cannot be trivially protected against.
Re: Ask News.YC: Proposed experiment to test "The PG bias"
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
You fail at statistical analysis.
If you think average would be a better measure than median, say why. You might possibly be right, but given PG's track record re. Bayesian filtering, "You fail at statistical analysis" just doesn't seem like the right response. It also sounds like attacking the person rather than the statement.
You are trolling. Clearly you are just trying to get a rise. Regardless, my response:
you think average would be a better measure
I never said that and no I don't.
given PG's track record
Blind acceptance of whatever you idle says. Pathetic, really.
attacking the person rather than the statement
It is you supporting the person instead of what he is saying. I was only attacking the statement that having the highest median score disproves that there is any bias.
Re: Ask News.YC: Proposed experiment to test "The PG bias"
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
You fail at statistical analysis.
If you think average would be a better measure than median, say why. You might possibly be right, but given PG's track record re. Bayesian filtering, "You fail at statistical analysis" just doesn't seem like the right response. It also sounds like attacking the person rather than the statement.
[deleted]