3 ms·

I wonder if the fact that we now can't trust anything we read is good or bad. Maybe it'll lead to critically thinking about everything.

comboy 6y ago
Could you ever?
- StavrosK 6y ago
  I meant in the specific sense of trusting the basic humanity of HN, not the general veracity of the internet at large.
  - comboy 6y ago
    I would want to say that comments should be judged solely on their content, but yes, "redis works for us" is a different message from an account that you know is CTO at some big corp instead of some random one. Web of trust is inevitable either way. I just hope it won't be owned by any huge company. Most likely it will be practically shared by a few of them, like the Internet or web standards. After playing some with GPT-3 though I noticed I work a lot of like it though. Unrelated comments about web of trust are a great example. Also, dude, I see you in almost every comment thread, how do you consume HN? Some clever scripts or lots of tabs and lots of refreshing?
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Haha, I think I'm just more likely to comment than anyone else. I just read HN a few times during the day, nothing extravagant. It might be confirmation bias (or maybe we just like the same things), if you look at my history I only leave a few comments a day.
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
I suspect it's bad. Any cognitive dissonance and disagreement can be hand waved away as bots, rather than approached critically. Ever since the 2016 foreign-meddling-in-the-election news, I've see people commenting that there must be tons of russian bots/shills/astroturfers/etc in comments where I see genuine disagreement. I'm sure there are both, but I suspect the dismissal of "'people/opinions' that disagree with me aren't real people/opinions" is more common than the actual act of fake commenting.

3 ms·

I wonder if the fact that we now can't trust anything we read is good or bad. Maybe it'll lead to critically thinking about everything.

by StavrosK 6y ago

comboy 6y ago
Could you ever?
- StavrosK 6y ago
  I meant in the specific sense of trusting the basic humanity of HN, not the general veracity of the internet at large.
  - comboy 6y ago
    I would want to say that comments should be judged solely on their content, but yes, "redis works for us" is a different message from an account that you know is CTO at some big corp instead of some random one. Web of trust is inevitable either way. I just hope it won't be owned by any huge company. Most likely it will be practically shared by a few of them, like the Internet or web standards. After playing some with GPT-3 though I noticed I work a lot of like it though. Unrelated comments about web of trust are a great example. Also, dude, I see you in almost every comment thread, how do you consume HN? Some clever scripts or lots of tabs and lots of refreshing?
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Haha, I think I'm just more likely to comment than anyone else. I just read HN a few times during the day, nothing extravagant. It might be confirmation bias (or maybe we just like the same things), if you look at my history I only leave a few comments a day.
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
I suspect it's bad. Any cognitive dissonance and disagreement can be hand waved away as bots, rather than approached critically. Ever since the 2016 foreign-meddling-in-the-election news, I've see people commenting that there must be tons of russian bots/shills/astroturfers/etc in comments where I see genuine disagreement. I'm sure there are both, but I suspect the dismissal of "'people/opinions' that disagree with me aren't real people/opinions" is more common than the actual act of fake commenting.