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What is going on with all the air pollution articles hitting HN this week? This is the 4th(?) I’ve seen in about 3 days. Any tech topic and I might not think ab

by hattar 7y ago

What is going on with all the air pollution articles hitting HN this week? This is the 4th(?) I’ve seen in about 3 days. Any tech topic and I might not think about it, but air purification doesn’t really seem to be the kind of topic I’d expect to see so much here.

darepublic 7y ago
A lot of HN news has to do with improving/preserving cognition, that's the connection that I see.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  Also science in general, and the betterment of society.
- shrimp_emoji 7y ago
  That and even relatively smart people aren't above health neuroticism. "$BAD_THING might happen to you watch out!" Omg. Might need one of these[0]; they say this one's a good model. 0: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FYWU2IS/?pldnSite=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FYWU2IS/?pldnSite=1
DoingIsLearning 7y ago
With the risk of coming across as an everything-is-an-ad kind of person, some of the previous posts I read have the following pattern: 1. Someone asks how can they measure air in their home/workplace 2. Followed by casual name dropping of CO2 sensors or air particle/quality sensors. No data to back this up just possibly too much aluminium wrapped around my head.
- DoingIsLearning 7y ago
  Same goes for HEPA filter purifiers name dropping
- graeme 7y ago
  I left a bunch of comments in that vein yesterday. The thing is, you can’t answer the question of “how to measure air quality” withiut some sort of product. By contrast, if someone asks “how do I manage my time?” the answer can be free. So if you use a naive filter you’ll be more suspicious of the one case but not the other. But the baseline probability of product mentions is way higher for domains that require products! You can see from my karma and general comment history though that I didn’t make an account to do this. I’ve had an account 8 years and am interested in air quality, to the puzzlement of my peers. If there were new accounts repeatedly dropping the same products, that would be suspicious. Did that happen?
mensetmanusman 7y ago
I wonder what the population of HN lurkers is that views the website <3 times per week. For them, this is all new.
Tactic 7y ago
I have noticed this phenomena a number of times. My theory is that the first article sparks people digging into the matter and related subjects further. This leads to them posting related articles. A bit of herd like mentality.
alexandercrohde 7y ago
Can't speak for anyone else, but I cared about pollution as theory for decades. Even as a child when I had to wait near the idling busses I could sense an innate revulsion at whatever I was inhaling. Maybe what's happening is that after an unfortunately long delay, society is finally coming around to a long overdue conclusion. Some phenomena seem to flip from "absurd" to "obvious" very quickly (gay-marriage, marijuana) once they get a certain critical mass.

by hattar 7y ago

darepublic 7y ago

A lot of HN news has to do with improving/preserving cognition, that's the connection that I see.

_bxg1 7y ago
Also science in general, and the betterment of society.
shrimp_emoji 7y ago
That and even relatively smart people aren't above health neuroticism. "$BAD_THING might happen to you watch out!" Omg. Might need one of these[0]; they say this one's a good model. 0: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FYWU2IS/?pldnSite=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FYWU2IS/?pldnSite=1

DoingIsLearning 7y ago

With the risk of coming across as an everything-is-an-ad kind of person, some of the previous posts I read have the following pattern: 1. Someone asks how can they measure air in their home/workplace 2. Followed by casual name dropping of CO2 sensors or air particle/quality sensors. No data to back this up just possibly too much aluminium wrapped around my head.

DoingIsLearning 7y ago
Same goes for HEPA filter purifiers name dropping
graeme 7y ago
I left a bunch of comments in that vein yesterday. The thing is, you can’t answer the question of “how to measure air quality” withiut some sort of product. By contrast, if someone asks “how do I manage my time?” the answer can be free. So if you use a naive filter you’ll be more suspicious of the one case but not the other. But the baseline probability of product mentions is way higher for domains that require products! You can see from my karma and general comment history though that I didn’t make an account to do this. I’ve had an account 8 years and am interested in air quality, to the puzzlement of my peers. If there were new accounts repeatedly dropping the same products, that would be suspicious. Did that happen?

mensetmanusman 7y ago

I wonder what the population of HN lurkers is that views the website <3 times per week. For them, this is all new.

Tactic 7y ago

I have noticed this phenomena a number of times. My theory is that the first article sparks people digging into the matter and related subjects further. This leads to them posting related articles. A bit of herd like mentality.

alexandercrohde 7y ago

Can't speak for anyone else, but I cared about pollution as theory for decades. Even as a child when I had to wait near the idling busses I could sense an innate revulsion at whatever I was inhaling. Maybe what's happening is that after an unfortunately long delay, society is finally coming around to a long overdue conclusion. Some phenomena seem to flip from "absurd" to "obvious" very quickly (gay-marriage, marijuana) once they get a certain critical mass.