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>Celebrity frenzy multiplied by pandemic rage is producing as wild a burn as we've seen on HN. I think the problem is the audience that's been cultivated on he

>Celebrity frenzy multiplied by pandemic rage is producing as wild a burn as we've seen on HN. I think the problem is the audience that's been cultivated on here. Not the topics. You have a topic that's has real world effects. Reality demands us to act contrary to a particular narrative, and this forum can't handle it. Apathetic, intellectual sophistry only works when you don't have any actual problems to worry about. The celebrity and this forum have the same personality. And people don't want to admit they're wrong. If all you have to say about what you're saying is that the government can't arrest you for it, maybe you should rethink what you're saying.

dang 6y ago
I'm not sure I follow all of this? Also, it's a bit strange to have this discussion in the context of the Nth outrage of the Musk Sequence, where the dominant factor is obviously internet drama. But I'll give replying a try. This is one of those cases where it's super helpful to have one thing you're optimizing for, i.e. to know what kind of site this is and what it is not. In HN's case that's clear: we're trying to optimize for intellectual curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20optimiz&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). It's not the only kind of website, nor the best kind, certainly not the most important kind, maybe not even a good kind—that depends on what you like. But it's this kind. You can call it "apathetic sophistry" if you want, but that just means you don't like it. No problem—there are other places to like. Since HN is a specific kind of website and that's what the community comes here for, we need to preserve it for its focus. There are always strong winds and flames blowing about, and it takes work and care to withstand those and keep this place itself. What good would it do to let it burn? p.s. Would you please stop making accounts with trollish usernames? We ban those, because such accounts end up trolling every thread that they post to (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20trollish%20usernames&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). Doubly so when there's a prior history of abusing the site and getting banned here.
- clouddrover 6y ago
  > In HN's case that's clear: we're trying to optimize for intellectual curiosity That's not what's happening on this particular topic. Submissions of higher quality articles which present both sides of the issue are getting marked as duplicates of low quality, one sided tweets from Musk.
- throwlaplace 6y ago
  >trying to optimize for intellectual curiosity Can you please define for us intellectual curiosity so that we can recognize it and its distinction from apathetic sophistry? Note that the oft-quoted rules aren't descriptive but prescriptive/normative. Also telling people that disagree with the ethos of the website to go away isn't very productive don't you think? For better or worse we dissenters are part of the tech community and we're entitled to advocate for what we feel a commons like hn should be like.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    This site is hosted at yc.com not commons.tech. While the pursuit of intellectual curiosity demands dang and crew work to be inclusive to a point, the final trump card remains “this isn’t actually a tech commons and they do properly ask some people to leave if the pain of their dissent is consistently and significantly greater than their contributions.” In that limited sense, telling people to leave who unproductively disagree with their position is quite productive.
    - throwlaplace 6y ago
      it's a commons because they don't contribute any of the content, not because they own the space.

dang 6y ago

I'm not sure I follow all of this? Also, it's a bit strange to have this discussion in the context of the Nth outrage of the Musk Sequence, where the dominant factor is obviously internet drama. But I'll give replying a try. This is one of those cases where it's super helpful to have one thing you're optimizing for, i.e. to know what kind of site this is and what it is not. In HN's case that's clear: we're trying to optimize for intellectual curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20optimiz&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). It's not the only kind of website, nor the best kind, certainly not the most important kind, maybe not even a good kind—that depends on what you like. But it's this kind. You can call it "apathetic sophistry" if you want, but that just means you don't like it. No problem—there are other places to like. Since HN is a specific kind of website and that's what the community comes here for, we need to preserve it for its focus. There are always strong winds and flames blowing about, and it takes work and care to withstand those and keep this place itself. What good would it do to let it burn? p.s. Would you please stop making accounts with trollish usernames? We ban those, because such accounts end up trolling every thread that they post to (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20trollish%20usernames&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). Doubly so when there's a prior history of abusing the site and getting banned here.

clouddrover 6y ago
> In HN's case that's clear: we're trying to optimize for intellectual curiosity That's not what's happening on this particular topic. Submissions of higher quality articles which present both sides of the issue are getting marked as duplicates of low quality, one sided tweets from Musk.
throwlaplace 6y ago
>trying to optimize for intellectual curiosity Can you please define for us intellectual curiosity so that we can recognize it and its distinction from apathetic sophistry? Note that the oft-quoted rules aren't descriptive but prescriptive/normative. Also telling people that disagree with the ethos of the website to go away isn't very productive don't you think? For better or worse we dissenters are part of the tech community and we're entitled to advocate for what we feel a commons like hn should be like.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  This site is hosted at yc.com not commons.tech. While the pursuit of intellectual curiosity demands dang and crew work to be inclusive to a point, the final trump card remains “this isn’t actually a tech commons and they do properly ask some people to leave if the pain of their dissent is consistently and significantly greater than their contributions.” In that limited sense, telling people to leave who unproductively disagree with their position is quite productive.
  - throwlaplace 6y ago
    it's a commons because they don't contribute any of the content, not because they own the space.