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>But no, Gruber is not wrong. It's just that some people think he's wrong and are compelled to argue with him personally rather than either (a) identify which f

>But no, Gruber is not wrong. It's just that some people think he's wrong and are compelled to argue with him personally rather than either (a) identify which facts he is wrongly reporting, or (b) give their own alternate interpretation of the same facts. The problem is there are lots of other people who take his fawning writing as the gospel truth and mindlessly upvote any posts in favor while downvoting any that are against. >are compelled to argue with him personally rather than either (a) identify which facts he is wrongly reporting, or (b) give their own alternate interpretation of the same facts You forgot (c) Get mercilessly downvoted and/or watch nonsense rebuttal replies get upvoted. This is the real reason that the discussions around Apple on tech sites are so polarizing, the disconnect with reality and objectivity. There are even a bunch of people who have left HN in disgust over this prevalent practice of Apple worship over proper discussion on here.

raganwald 16y ago
mindlessly upvote any posts in favor while downvoting any that are against. How exactly do you judge which upvotes are mindless and which are the result of someone who disagrees with a post but thinks it's insightful or valuable or otherwise a positive contribution to Hacker News? What parameters do you use to judge which upvotes are mindless and which are the result of people who weigh the issues and then come to a conclusion that differs from yours? Some time ago, I decided that I liked using Macintoshes and disliked using PCs. I also noticed that there were 19 PCs for every Macintosh. What would you have said if I'd suggested that all the people buying PCs were "mindless drones" instead of deciding that they were people who, given the information in front of them, came to a different conclusion for themselves than the one I had come to for myself? proper discussion Here's my definition of a proper discussion: No ad hominem arguments and no ad hominem abuse. What's yours?
- recoiledsnake 16y ago
  Well, see point #3 here. http://mattmaroon.com/2010/11/23/i-quit-hacker-news/ http://mattmaroon.com/2010/11/23/i-quit-hacker-news/ And here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800253 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800253 The comments and the moderation are extremely predictable in most cases regardless of technical merits of the discussion. A casual or statistical observation would easily reveal the prevalent biases, even amongst the crowd that prides itself on being objective.
  - raganwald 16y ago
    Does HN pride itself on being objective? This seems like wishful thinking. HN is supposed to favour hacking software, hardware, and the ultimate in social and business hacking, disruptive startups. I would call that being biased. If we were "objective" about everything, we wouldn't actually have any culture. It's our lack of objectivity that makes us cohesive. To put it another way, "biased" can often mean the same thing as "opinionated." Sometimes that is annoying if you have a different opinion. Sometimes it is refreshing. So what I will say in response is that without agreeing or disagreeing about whether HN is biased in favour of or against Apple and/or Gruber's writing, we should be careful to distinguish "bias" from "mindlessness." I do know what you mean, humans have a tendency towards groupthink and conformity. Voting a certain way solely because you observe other people voting that way is mindless in the sense you are using, and that dynamic has been seen on HN. But the other thing that takes place on HN is bias that is not based on conformity, the bias that comes from a set of people with similar values tending to interpret objective facts in similar subjective ways. If what you want is to reduce the conformity and deaden the echo-chamber effect, you have my support. I'm only cautioning against assuming that all bias--especially bias towards disagreeing with you--comes from the same place. p.s. Please don't think I'm arguing with you. It would be ironic indeed if I were to argue that bias is acceptable and healthy yet tell you that you are wrong to have a different interpretation of HN's behaviour that I have :-)
    - recoiledsnake 16y ago
      > HN is supposed to favour hacking software, hardware, and the ultimate in social and business hacking, disruptive startups. I would call that being biased. Except when it's Apple and then people lose all sense of objectivity and perspective and support the locking down of platforms so that things are not hackable anymore. Example: http://blog.robrhyne.com/post/1015614125/google-voice-says-hi http://blog.robrhyne.com/post/1015614125/google-voice-says-h... And people envisage in grand terms about a Post-PC world with devices such as these which is very alarming given the potential for abuse(which is already happening). There is barely a protest but there is certainly a lot of fawning over the choice of chair in the latest Apple conference. :) Anyone pointing out any fact that can be construed as critical to Apple is usually downvoted to obscurity. The downvotes are even more reflective of the community because of the high karma threshold needed to downvote. Regardless of the origin, the end result is still the same, the bias is harmful because it drowns out alternate views, and most of the people affected either leave or are forced to conform.(see the HN comment link in my comment in a parent post in this thread).

raganwald 16y ago

mindlessly upvote any posts in favor while downvoting any that are against. How exactly do you judge which upvotes are mindless and which are the result of someone who disagrees with a post but thinks it's insightful or valuable or otherwise a positive contribution to Hacker News? What parameters do you use to judge which upvotes are mindless and which are the result of people who weigh the issues and then come to a conclusion that differs from yours? Some time ago, I decided that I liked using Macintoshes and disliked using PCs. I also noticed that there were 19 PCs for every Macintosh. What would you have said if I'd suggested that all the people buying PCs were "mindless drones" instead of deciding that they were people who, given the information in front of them, came to a different conclusion for themselves than the one I had come to for myself? proper discussion Here's my definition of a proper discussion: No ad hominem arguments and no ad hominem abuse. What's yours?

recoiledsnake 16y ago
Well, see point #3 here. http://mattmaroon.com/2010/11/23/i-quit-hacker-news/ http://mattmaroon.com/2010/11/23/i-quit-hacker-news/ And here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800253 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800253 The comments and the moderation are extremely predictable in most cases regardless of technical merits of the discussion. A casual or statistical observation would easily reveal the prevalent biases, even amongst the crowd that prides itself on being objective.
- raganwald 16y ago
  Does HN pride itself on being objective? This seems like wishful thinking. HN is supposed to favour hacking software, hardware, and the ultimate in social and business hacking, disruptive startups. I would call that being biased. If we were "objective" about everything, we wouldn't actually have any culture. It's our lack of objectivity that makes us cohesive. To put it another way, "biased" can often mean the same thing as "opinionated." Sometimes that is annoying if you have a different opinion. Sometimes it is refreshing. So what I will say in response is that without agreeing or disagreeing about whether HN is biased in favour of or against Apple and/or Gruber's writing, we should be careful to distinguish "bias" from "mindlessness." I do know what you mean, humans have a tendency towards groupthink and conformity. Voting a certain way solely because you observe other people voting that way is mindless in the sense you are using, and that dynamic has been seen on HN. But the other thing that takes place on HN is bias that is not based on conformity, the bias that comes from a set of people with similar values tending to interpret objective facts in similar subjective ways. If what you want is to reduce the conformity and deaden the echo-chamber effect, you have my support. I'm only cautioning against assuming that all bias--especially bias towards disagreeing with you--comes from the same place. p.s. Please don't think I'm arguing with you. It would be ironic indeed if I were to argue that bias is acceptable and healthy yet tell you that you are wrong to have a different interpretation of HN's behaviour that I have :-)
  - recoiledsnake 16y ago
    > HN is supposed to favour hacking software, hardware, and the ultimate in social and business hacking, disruptive startups. I would call that being biased. Except when it's Apple and then people lose all sense of objectivity and perspective and support the locking down of platforms so that things are not hackable anymore. Example: http://blog.robrhyne.com/post/1015614125/google-voice-says-hi http://blog.robrhyne.com/post/1015614125/google-voice-says-h... And people envisage in grand terms about a Post-PC world with devices such as these which is very alarming given the potential for abuse(which is already happening). There is barely a protest but there is certainly a lot of fawning over the choice of chair in the latest Apple conference. :) Anyone pointing out any fact that can be construed as critical to Apple is usually downvoted to obscurity. The downvotes are even more reflective of the community because of the high karma threshold needed to downvote. Regardless of the origin, the end result is still the same, the bias is harmful because it drowns out alternate views, and most of the people affected either leave or are forced to conform.(see the HN comment link in my comment in a parent post in this thread).