4 ms·

I'm sure you would have taken a free market, non-FDA approved vaccine as well.

ineedasername 6y ago
If you died of the unregulated vaccine then the market would correct the situation by incentivizing grieving families to choose a more reliable vaccine from a competitor.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  I really wonder if I'm getting downvoted by free-market enthusiasts, the poor attempt at humor, or because it wasn't completely clear it was meant in sarcasm. Or maybe all three? I don't really care about internet points, but I'm always curious about such things.
  - lemonspat 6y ago
    You could add a /sarcasm to it for clarity, instead of posting a follow up comment
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      I think /sarcasm takes something away from it. If I put that there, people don't have to actually think about the comment and what I meant, or their own reaction to it. Using /s tells them automatically, and allows a reflexive response for/against the comment that short-circuits actually thinking about it. I'll risk the downvotes, they don't bother me. But I am curious about why people downvote, hence my follow up. Clearly some people will downvote a thing they disagree with, or is flame bait. But will they downvote a thing they might agree with, but it also worded as flame bait? That sort of thing. I really am curious about the various behavioral patterns involved in awarding internet points.
      - nl 6y ago
        /sarcasm is needed on the internet. Not everyone is a native English speaker, and even those who are have very different ideas around humor and written verbal queues.
        ineedasername 6y ago
        Good points! I'll keep that in mind in what I hope is already a relatively cautious approach to that sort of comment. On the other hand, ditching all/most idiomatic English and subtleties is probably not the right approach either, or avoiding all cultural references because others might not understand-- I don't think you're suggesting that, it's just my observation that this issue exists on a spectrum and not a binary. Edit: You're in AI-- what's the landscape look like for improving automated translation to detect sarcasm? As a problem domain, it seems like it would be a subset/cross-section of sentiment analysis & word-sense-disambiguation.
        nl 6y ago
        These days the biggest issue is getting a decent labelled dataset. Once you have that you just fine-tune a BERT-dervived transformer neural network. See https://paperswithcode.com/task/sarcasm-detection/codeless https://paperswithcode.com/task/sarcasm-detection/codeless for some examples and datasets.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    I wasn’t sure it was sarcasm to be honest! I’ve seen more insane comments on HN posted with 100% seriousness and conviction.
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      I tried to keep it right on the edge... I find that provokes more critical thought than letting people "off the hook" with a more obvious comment they can automatically agree/disagree with. It's easy to dismiss examples as "absurd" when a concept is taken to its logical conclusion. It's the ones that walk right up to the edge, to the gray area boundaries of someone's conceptual framework, that make them consider what those boundaries are or should be.
      - xref 6y ago
        Your comment is the same superficial “hey I’m just asking questions!” deflection that a lot of lazy intellectualism resorts to. “Maybe eugenics is a good idea because we can create a biologically superior human, we should at least discuss it!”
        loopz 6y ago
        No, his post require thought, which is not immediately obvious. Thus it gets ignored or dv. It's just a reaction to the free market magical chimp thinking out there.
        ineedasername 6y ago
        Considering it's a form of economics that a sizeable portion of HN think is best, it is not at all equivalent to randomly bringing up a topic that has long been held by most of society to be a bad idea and saying "just asking the question!". It is broaching the topic in a way that doesn't automatically get upvoted by people who agree with it, or automatically downvoted by those who disagree. I also wasn't asking a question. I was giving an actual example of the consequences of the economic system many HN'ers believe in.
    - ineedasername 6y ago
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    The way that hackernews aggressively filters out all attempts at humour and the presence of americans really numbs the average commenters ability to detect sarcasm. I regularly write but don't post comments because I know they'll be at -4 at least once or twice because people won't see I'm either solely joking or trying to play devil's advocate.
    - dang 6y ago
      Whoa—it's one thing to make claims about humour but quite another to drop nationalistic flamebait in the middle. Please definitely don't do anything like that—it leads to hell. Re humour, the issue is not jokes, it's lame jokes. Most people overestimate how funny theirs are, and there's a power-law decline in funniness as others jump in and pile on. scott_s described this best years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%227609289%22&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%227609289%22&dateRange=all&pa...
  - 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
    People post comments like yours and mean it, so sarcasm like that does not work in many places on the internet. So yeah I'd guess that the reason is mainly 1 and 3.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      Do people post comments worded that way and mean it? "incentivizing grieving families"
      - ineedasername 6y ago
        It's usually dehumanized into something like "the market will adjust its behavior to reward manufacturers of higher quality products"
      - 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
        I did not try to say that it's impossible to identify the sarcastic nature of the comment, of course :)

If you died of the unregulated vaccine then the market would correct the situation by incentivizing grieving families to choose a more reliable vaccine from a competitor.

ineedasername 6y ago
I really wonder if I'm getting downvoted by free-market enthusiasts, the poor attempt at humor, or because it wasn't completely clear it was meant in sarcasm. Or maybe all three? I don't really care about internet points, but I'm always curious about such things.
- lemonspat 6y ago
  You could add a /sarcasm to it for clarity, instead of posting a follow up comment
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    I think /sarcasm takes something away from it. If I put that there, people don't have to actually think about the comment and what I meant, or their own reaction to it. Using /s tells them automatically, and allows a reflexive response for/against the comment that short-circuits actually thinking about it. I'll risk the downvotes, they don't bother me. But I am curious about why people downvote, hence my follow up. Clearly some people will downvote a thing they disagree with, or is flame bait. But will they downvote a thing they might agree with, but it also worded as flame bait? That sort of thing. I really am curious about the various behavioral patterns involved in awarding internet points.
    - nl 6y ago
      /sarcasm is needed on the internet. Not everyone is a native English speaker, and even those who are have very different ideas around humor and written verbal queues.
      - ineedasername 6y ago
        Good points! I'll keep that in mind in what I hope is already a relatively cautious approach to that sort of comment. On the other hand, ditching all/most idiomatic English and subtleties is probably not the right approach either, or avoiding all cultural references because others might not understand-- I don't think you're suggesting that, it's just my observation that this issue exists on a spectrum and not a binary. Edit: You're in AI-- what's the landscape look like for improving automated translation to detect sarcasm? As a problem domain, it seems like it would be a subset/cross-section of sentiment analysis & word-sense-disambiguation.
        nl 6y ago
        These days the biggest issue is getting a decent labelled dataset. Once you have that you just fine-tune a BERT-dervived transformer neural network. See https://paperswithcode.com/task/sarcasm-detection/codeless https://paperswithcode.com/task/sarcasm-detection/codeless for some examples and datasets.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  I wasn’t sure it was sarcasm to be honest! I’ve seen more insane comments on HN posted with 100% seriousness and conviction.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    I tried to keep it right on the edge... I find that provokes more critical thought than letting people "off the hook" with a more obvious comment they can automatically agree/disagree with. It's easy to dismiss examples as "absurd" when a concept is taken to its logical conclusion. It's the ones that walk right up to the edge, to the gray area boundaries of someone's conceptual framework, that make them consider what those boundaries are or should be.
    - xref 6y ago
      Your comment is the same superficial “hey I’m just asking questions!” deflection that a lot of lazy intellectualism resorts to. “Maybe eugenics is a good idea because we can create a biologically superior human, we should at least discuss it!”
      - loopz 6y ago
        No, his post require thought, which is not immediately obvious. Thus it gets ignored or dv. It's just a reaction to the free market magical chimp thinking out there.
      - ineedasername 6y ago
        Considering it's a form of economics that a sizeable portion of HN think is best, it is not at all equivalent to randomly bringing up a topic that has long been held by most of society to be a bad idea and saying "just asking the question!". It is broaching the topic in a way that doesn't automatically get upvoted by people who agree with it, or automatically downvoted by those who disagree. I also wasn't asking a question. I was giving an actual example of the consequences of the economic system many HN'ers believe in.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
- mhh__ 6y ago
  The way that hackernews aggressively filters out all attempts at humour and the presence of americans really numbs the average commenters ability to detect sarcasm. I regularly write but don't post comments because I know they'll be at -4 at least once or twice because people won't see I'm either solely joking or trying to play devil's advocate.
  - dang 6y ago
    Whoa—it's one thing to make claims about humour but quite another to drop nationalistic flamebait in the middle. Please definitely don't do anything like that—it leads to hell. Re humour, the issue is not jokes, it's lame jokes. Most people overestimate how funny theirs are, and there's a power-law decline in funniness as others jump in and pile on. scott_s described this best years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%227609289%22&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%227609289%22&dateRange=all&pa...
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
  People post comments like yours and mean it, so sarcasm like that does not work in many places on the internet. So yeah I'd guess that the reason is mainly 1 and 3.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    Do people post comments worded that way and mean it? "incentivizing grieving families"
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      It's usually dehumanized into something like "the market will adjust its behavior to reward manufacturers of higher quality products"
    - 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
      I did not try to say that it's impossible to identify the sarcastic nature of the comment, of course :)