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Monoculture and groupthink can act as defacto censorship. We are finally seeing some stories about COVID-19 break through to the front page and get some interes

Monoculture and groupthink can act as defacto censorship. We are finally seeing some stories about COVID-19 break through to the front page and get some interesting discussion - it's taken over a month. If anything, the HN response to this event has demonstrated to me that uninformed, smug, back-of-the-napkin takes from computer programmers on domains totally outside of their experience will be richly rewarded on this site.

luckylion 7y ago
> We are finally seeing some stories about COVID-19 break through to the front page and get some interesting discussion - it's taken over a month. They aren't really that interesting, though. HN is for interesting stuff, not for "I'm too lazy to go to CNN to get my daily dose of news".
- JRKrause 7y ago
  Is the global propagation of a contagious pathogen actually considered not that interesting? I ask because some coworkers have the same attitude and I just assumed it was them reacting to the pop-medias (assumed) obsession with it.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    > Is the global propagation of a contagious pathogen actually considered not that interesting? In general it is. With daily updates on the latest speculation and "if this is true, everyone will die" predictions? Not to me, no. It has little value and is mostly just providing a place where people can indulge in their fears of mortality (boring!), their new found hatred of China (boring!), some ideas of pandemics spreading they gathered from Plague, Inc. (fun, but not really that interesting) and their general feeling of uneasiness and tribalism ("it's really Trump's fault, you know?" - "no, it's the progressive's fault!" - "Shut up, you two, it's obviously capitalism, err Russia"). A general recap might be interesting at some point, and so would more details be. Articles that trigger "should I buy face masks and lock down my house now" comments aren't, imho.
kelnos 7y ago
> Monoculture and groupthink can act as defacto censorship. So-called "censorship" on the level of a forum like HN is of laughable unimportance. That pales in comparison to the kind of censorship the Chinese government practices. (And no, it's not a "slippery slope", or any other hand-wavy argument you can make about similarities.) > We are finally seeing some stories about COVID-19 break through to the front page and get some interesting discussion - it's taken over a month. Perhaps for the most part hackers don't find it interesting, at least not in this forum. I've been reading about it elsewhere, and have been happy with the coverage I've been getting. I'm certainly not going to downvote/flag an article about it on HN, but frankly I don't come here for that. (Heh, and yet, here I am, reading comments and even posting.) > If anything, the HN response to this event has demonstrated to me that uninformed, smug, back-of-the-napkin takes from computer programmers on domains totally outside of their experience will be richly rewarded on this site. That's hardly unique to this type of article, or any article, really. People often have uninformed opinions about things outside their area of expertise, and aren't shy about expressing them. I see no more (or less) of that here than I do in most other HN comment threads. And regardless, who are you to say? Are you a doctor, or, better, an epidemiologist? Are you an expert political scientist? Have you deeply studied this history of authoritarian regimes vs. democracies? Your opinion that all this is just "back-of-the-napkin takes" is no more (or less!) valid than the takes you criticize. And you're the one throwing around accusations of smugness!
- deleted 7y ago
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luckylion 7y ago

> We are finally seeing some stories about COVID-19 break through to the front page and get some interesting discussion - it's taken over a month. They aren't really that interesting, though. HN is for interesting stuff, not for "I'm too lazy to go to CNN to get my daily dose of news".

JRKrause 7y ago
Is the global propagation of a contagious pathogen actually considered not that interesting? I ask because some coworkers have the same attitude and I just assumed it was them reacting to the pop-medias (assumed) obsession with it.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > Is the global propagation of a contagious pathogen actually considered not that interesting? In general it is. With daily updates on the latest speculation and "if this is true, everyone will die" predictions? Not to me, no. It has little value and is mostly just providing a place where people can indulge in their fears of mortality (boring!), their new found hatred of China (boring!), some ideas of pandemics spreading they gathered from Plague, Inc. (fun, but not really that interesting) and their general feeling of uneasiness and tribalism ("it's really Trump's fault, you know?" - "no, it's the progressive's fault!" - "Shut up, you two, it's obviously capitalism, err Russia"). A general recap might be interesting at some point, and so would more details be. Articles that trigger "should I buy face masks and lock down my house now" comments aren't, imho.

kelnos 7y ago

> Monoculture and groupthink can act as defacto censorship. So-called "censorship" on the level of a forum like HN is of laughable unimportance. That pales in comparison to the kind of censorship the Chinese government practices. (And no, it's not a "slippery slope", or any other hand-wavy argument you can make about similarities.) > We are finally seeing some stories about COVID-19 break through to the front page and get some interesting discussion - it's taken over a month. Perhaps for the most part hackers don't find it interesting, at least not in this forum. I've been reading about it elsewhere, and have been happy with the coverage I've been getting. I'm certainly not going to downvote/flag an article about it on HN, but frankly I don't come here for that. (Heh, and yet, here I am, reading comments and even posting.) > If anything, the HN response to this event has demonstrated to me that uninformed, smug, back-of-the-napkin takes from computer programmers on domains totally outside of their experience will be richly rewarded on this site. That's hardly unique to this type of article, or any article, really. People often have uninformed opinions about things outside their area of expertise, and aren't shy about expressing them. I see no more (or less) of that here than I do in most other HN comment threads. And regardless, who are you to say? Are you a doctor, or, better, an epidemiologist? Are you an expert political scientist? Have you deeply studied this history of authoritarian regimes vs. democracies? Your opinion that all this is just "back-of-the-napkin takes" is no more (or less!) valid than the takes you criticize. And you're the one throwing around accusations of smugness!

deleted 7y ago
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