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I LOVE this paragraph. God-damn nails the problems of HN (and other tech-heavy web communities) like nothing else... > The site’s now characteristic tone o

I LOVE this paragraph. God-damn nails the problems of HN (and other tech-heavy web communities) like nothing else... > The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition— > hyperrational, dispassionate, contrarian, authoritative— > often masks a deeper recklessness. Ill-advised citations proliferate; > thought experiments abound; humane arguments are dismissed as > emotional or irrational. Logic, applied narrowly, is used to justify > broad moral positions. The most admired arguments are made with data, > but the origins, veracity, and malleability of those data tend to be > ancillary concerns. The message-board intellectualism that might > once have impressed V.C. observers like Graham has developed into an > intellectual style all its own. Hacker News readers who visit the > site to learn how engineers and entrepreneurs talk, and what they > talk about, can find themselves immersed in conversations that > resemble the output of duelling Markov bots trained on libertarian > economics blogs, “The Tim Ferriss Show,” and the work of > Yuval Noah Harari.

curtis 7y ago
There's a lot of the author's opinion embedded in that paragraph, and I'm disinclined to agree with it, but ... no wait -- was that paragraph generated by a Markov bot trained to make substanceless attacks on opinions that the author doesn't like?
cloakandswagger 7y ago
That paragraph is a smug, flowery dismissal of the kind of evidence-based discussion that happens on HN. It's passive aggressively accusing HN commenters of wrongthink and of abusing unreliable tools like "data" and "logic" to counter "humane arguments" (read: emotional arguments). It basically dismisses the role of data in debate by suggesting that it is malleable or selective--we've all probably encountered this type of weaselly thinking, one that demands proof for an argument and, when provided, attacks the source as biased or the data as flawed. You can argue for pretty much any position when you embrace a brand of anti-intellectualism which believes that all data is fake/flawed and reality is subjective. If you strip it down, the author is basically saying "I wish these annoying nerds would stop thinking so much and get onboard my bandwagon."
- dhshahsndeisjwn 7y ago
  No, specifically they say: > The most admired arguments are made with data, > but the origins, veracity, and malleability of those data > tend to be ancillary concerns. That's a concern I often share: "the data" can so often be a "winner's history".
  - cloakandswagger 7y ago
    Data is the best tool we have. It can be cherry-picked and tainted for sure, but I'd much prefer debates be governed by that instead of whose argument is the most "humane"/morally superior
    - crispyambulance 7y ago
      > prefer debates be governed by [cherry-picked data] instead of whose argument is the most "humane" To be overly generous, that's a false dichotomy. There's a time and place for humane arguments and, in the absence of complete "data" (whatever THAT means), that may be all you have. At the end of the day, we're all emotional creatures and this often justifiably dominates considerations of human affairs. Not everything can be boiled down to problems in first order logic.
      - CompanionCuuube 7y ago
        > There's a time and place for humane arguments and, in the absence of complete "data" (whatever THAT means), that may be all you have. I'm trying to be charitable here, but it's difficult not to conclude that you're setting up the data as never being sufficient e.g. "whatever THAT means" in order to support humane arguments over data based arguments.
      - crumpets 7y ago
        >"data" (whatever THAT means) Holy shit. Observable evidence.
    - ckris 7y ago
Alex3917 7y ago
It's great, except for that I don't think the last sentence really captures the gestalt. The people into libertarianism have mostly left to go hang out elsewhere, and Tim Ferriss has never been particularly well received.
brightball 7y ago
From years on this site, I can't imagine why anyone would love that paragraph. It reads entirely to me in a single direction that roughly translates to: "I find it disagreeable that well thought out, logical and data driven conversations on topics with which I disagree are supported."
- abledon 7y ago
  If anything, most non-tech people will find it 'juicy'. Someone will read it and say something akin to "good lord!" and then email the article to their friend about the "inhumane" forum they read about. Friend will click, ad revenue will be generated.
hollerith 7y ago
The person that wrote that paragraph would really hate the comp.* and sci.* newsgroups in the early 1990s!
hollerith 7y ago
The person that wrote that paragraph would really hate the comp.* and sci.* newsgroups of the early 1990s, compared to which HN is a bunch of young women at a tea party spending most of their time advocating fashionable social causes and worrying whether they've hurt each others feelings.

curtis 7y ago

There's a lot of the author's opinion embedded in that paragraph, and I'm disinclined to agree with it, but ... no wait -- was that paragraph generated by a Markov bot trained to make substanceless attacks on opinions that the author doesn't like?

cloakandswagger 7y ago

That paragraph is a smug, flowery dismissal of the kind of evidence-based discussion that happens on HN. It's passive aggressively accusing HN commenters of wrongthink and of abusing unreliable tools like "data" and "logic" to counter "humane arguments" (read: emotional arguments). It basically dismisses the role of data in debate by suggesting that it is malleable or selective--we've all probably encountered this type of weaselly thinking, one that demands proof for an argument and, when provided, attacks the source as biased or the data as flawed. You can argue for pretty much any position when you embrace a brand of anti-intellectualism which believes that all data is fake/flawed and reality is subjective. If you strip it down, the author is basically saying "I wish these annoying nerds would stop thinking so much and get onboard my bandwagon."

dhshahsndeisjwn 7y ago
No, specifically they say: > The most admired arguments are made with data, > but the origins, veracity, and malleability of those data > tend to be ancillary concerns. That's a concern I often share: "the data" can so often be a "winner's history".
- cloakandswagger 7y ago
  Data is the best tool we have. It can be cherry-picked and tainted for sure, but I'd much prefer debates be governed by that instead of whose argument is the most "humane"/morally superior
  - crispyambulance 7y ago
    > prefer debates be governed by [cherry-picked data] instead of whose argument is the most "humane" To be overly generous, that's a false dichotomy. There's a time and place for humane arguments and, in the absence of complete "data" (whatever THAT means), that may be all you have. At the end of the day, we're all emotional creatures and this often justifiably dominates considerations of human affairs. Not everything can be boiled down to problems in first order logic.
    - CompanionCuuube 7y ago
      > There's a time and place for humane arguments and, in the absence of complete "data" (whatever THAT means), that may be all you have. I'm trying to be charitable here, but it's difficult not to conclude that you're setting up the data as never being sufficient e.g. "whatever THAT means" in order to support humane arguments over data based arguments.
    - crumpets 7y ago
      >"data" (whatever THAT means) Holy shit. Observable evidence.
  - ckris 7y ago

Alex3917 7y ago

It's great, except for that I don't think the last sentence really captures the gestalt. The people into libertarianism have mostly left to go hang out elsewhere, and Tim Ferriss has never been particularly well received.

brightball 7y ago

From years on this site, I can't imagine why anyone would love that paragraph. It reads entirely to me in a single direction that roughly translates to: "I find it disagreeable that well thought out, logical and data driven conversations on topics with which I disagree are supported."

abledon 7y ago
If anything, most non-tech people will find it 'juicy'. Someone will read it and say something akin to "good lord!" and then email the article to their friend about the "inhumane" forum they read about. Friend will click, ad revenue will be generated.

hollerith 7y ago

The person that wrote that paragraph would really hate the comp.* and sci.* newsgroups in the early 1990s!

hollerith 7y ago

The person that wrote that paragraph would really hate the comp.* and sci.* newsgroups of the early 1990s, compared to which HN is a bunch of young women at a tea party spending most of their time advocating fashionable social causes and worrying whether they've hurt each others feelings.