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Thanks for noting the detachment. I also saw your reply acknowledging the summary of the possible reasons. Not to argue or draw you out necessarily, but just w
by natch 6y ago
Thanks for noting the detachment. I also saw your reply acknowledging the summary of the possible reasons.
Not to argue or draw you out necessarily, but just want to share some thoughts.
We (society, human civilization) have incurred a lot of damage over the decades from anti-science motivations. If we can't call this out on HN, I don't know where we can call it out. Also it feels right to me that names should be named. Names of political parties, names of religions, etc.
I do understand the need to keep things, especially when flame wars are likely, from drifting off into divisive and toxic discussions, in order to keep this a healthy discussion. Maybe leaving out the naming of names is the cost to do this.
Somehow, these forces need to be called out.
Maybe this is not the place. That answer seems too facile, though.
Or maybe there are better ways. Instead of mentioning, focusing on, and calling out the negative, I have noticed some people simply highlight the positive alternative view, never acknowledging the (imho) toxic one. This is an interesting approach but I question how far it has gotten us, given… look around at the world today, to get my point.
Again my intent is not to argue with you about this, but just to share thoughts. I am questioning myself, whether I should become one of those people who always just ignores the bad, and only talks about the positive other options. I also realize there are better and worse ways to inject opinions into a discussion.
I think I'm not alone in struggling with this. Feedback welcome but not expected. Thanks.
- dang 6y agoThe comment was generic religious/political flamebait and unsubstantive. I'm not criticizing you or your good intentions, just explaining how it externally appears from an HN moderation point of view. Any place the phrase "calling out" appears, it's likely that the desired spirit of this site (i.e. intellectual curiosity) has been left behind. That phrase is the flagship of internet indignation, which is not compatible with curious conversation. There may be a bit of a misunderstanding though. The intended style of discussion here is not about ignoring what's bad or focusing only on what's good. It's not a question of what you're focusing on, but how you're focusing on it, and what state a comment shifts the conversation into (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22expected%20value%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). There are certain predictable things about internet forum dynamics; one is that calling-out-style comments that don't add much information tend to take threads into simplistic, overheated states. One essential quality of what we're looking for on HN is unpredictability (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=can%27t%20predict%20from%20sequence%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html