6 ms·

I've never heard of "commonsense.news" before, but it is by Bari Weiss[0] who is trying to create an "anti-cancel culture," "anti-woke" University called the Un

I've never heard of "commonsense.news" before, but it is by Bari Weiss[0] who is trying to create an "anti-cancel culture," "anti-woke" University called the University of Austin[1]. Her Wikipedia on her history kind of speaks for itself, in particular the "2017–2020" section[0]. Why does this matter? Because most of the articles claims are based on "spoke to us" quotes from anonymous staffers which cannot be independently verified. So it falls to the reputation of those publishing and their journalistic integrity/process, and at that point I leave it to you to make up your own mind. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bari_Weiss#2017%E2%80%932020:_The_New_York_Times https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bari_Weiss#2017%E2%80%932020:_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Austin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Austin

dang 4y ago
On HN we try to go by article quality, not site quality: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22article%20quality%22%20%22site%20quality%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... The author names here are probably more important than whoever owns the site. Their credentials are on the line if the sources they claim to be quoting are made up. That doesn't prove anything, of course, but one's always guessing with these things, and readers need to make up their own minds. I understand the argument you're making, and it's not an obvious call, but I think it comes with more downside than upside, at least for HN. It's a trope of tribal internet argument (I mean in general—not talking about you here) to follow a "DAG of shame" in which you hop from any node to the most shameful associated thing, with the intention of discrediting the node from which you started. The problem is that each of those hops loses a lot of information, and one ends up in places that aren't particularly relevant, like whatever that university project is. What's bad about this for HN is that it makes threads more generic, predictable, and repetitive. It also polarizes discussion along the most intense axis. All of this makes discussion less interesting and more inflammatory. So while it's not an obvious call (more like 60-40 than 80-20) I think we're better off as a community to resist the habit of replacing topic X with the biggest or most shameful other-topic-Y that the dots connect to. It's not that there's no value in it, but it's the wrong move, given what we're trying to optimize for (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  I understand this argument, and for technical matters, that's fine, but I don't think this is sensible as a general guide for medical or political sites like this one. These are very common snake-oil pits, and it's difficult for people without the necessary specialization of knowledge to discover the pitfalls. The source is sometimes the issue!
  - dang 4y ago
    For better or worse, the principle here has always been to trust readers to be smart enough to make up their own minds (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20make%20up%20own%20minds&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). I'm not saying we all are (nor that I am), but I think it's the right principle, especially for this place, where trying to tell users what/how to think is guaranteed to provoke a backlash (quite separately from political position). The consequences of dropping that principle seem pretty negative to me. Following standard ideological grooves to discredit the other tribe's sources is not acting from specialist knowledge in any case. The only specialty at work in such discussion is the specialty of internet battle. That's ultimately just a way to turn every thread into a boring, if intense, flamewar. One of the things that follows from HN's core principle of intellectual curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) is the principle of diffs (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=diffs%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). Diffs are what's interesting. This is the positive formulation of the principle that repetition is bad for curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). For topics that burn hot, like political/ideological ones, this "diff" principle implies that discussion is most interesting (and therefore best for HN) when people don't take the obvious path from their own initial position—that is, when they don't repeat the reaction that they've had most often before. That is a hard thing to ask on the hottest topics, which tend to melt into a few (well, two) monolithic piles of tar. But I think it follows from the principle. Here's another thing that I think follows, and is even harder to swallow. To the extent that someone has strong political/ideological views, if they're not seeing articles on HN that they strongly disagree with, at least semi-regularly, then there's probably something wrong with HN*. That isn't always great for community spirit because it only takes a few disagreeable data points before the mind starts to defend itself with a "this place sucks" reaction (and there are people on all ideological sides who develop such reactions). I wrote about this here, if anyone wants to read more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. * To ward off one common misunderstanding: that is not a Goldilocks argument for split-the-difference centrism! It's an argument for unpredictability. Since centrism is just as predictable as other ideologies, it should encounter just as much to be put off by.
stevenwoo 4y ago
She compared herself to Galileo being threatened with burning at the stake, talk about being a professional victim. Not only is the anonymous sourcing suspect, but she herself thinks vaccines are not as effective as previous infections of Covid-19 and a negative test is better than a vaccine(!) and we know from studies that both are patently untrue, she has ulterior motives in anything to discredit vaccines. I don't know why she claims to be a left leaning centrist, that doesn't survive the slightest scrutiny of her published writing/twitter.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  > and a negative test is better than a vaccine That doesn't sound like something she would say, and I've never encountered her making that claim. I'm pretty sure she got vaccinated and has encouraged other people to do so as well. She does seem skeptical of the ability of the vaccines to prevent infection by newer variants. To some degree, that's probably true right?
  - stevenwoo 4y ago
    I can't address your speculation or prove a negative, I can prove she endorsed or said those things. It's in the wikipedia article linked by the GP. To help you out - In September 2021, concerning COVID-19, she tweeted an article by Glenn Greenwald which argued that proof of a negative test is far more meaningful than proof of a vaccine, contradicting experts who argue that testing is insufficient and should be considered temporary to allow more time for vaccine hesitancy issues to be addressed. Assuming she hasn't deleted her tweet: https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1440687368957095940 https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1440687368957095940 She said she was like Galileo here: https://www.ft.com/content/5d840a5c-fa0c-4d08-9574-59f0d3e8c703 https://www.ft.com/content/5d840a5c-fa0c-4d08-9574-59f0d3e8c...
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      This was in the context of vaccine passports for entry into public places, not in general. The original comment removes that very important context. I have literally heard her advocate getting vaccinated, she’s on the record recommending it.
ch4s3 4y ago
One could uncharitably rephrase your argument as "this woman is a witch and any article on this witch's site is heretical". There are a lot of valid scientific reasons to criticize the CDC's approach to the COVID pandemic, including their own publications[1]. One could also point to the different paths taken by other OECD nations with respect to children and see that the CDC diverged sharply, but presented no data to justify those policies. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/eis/field-epi-manual/chapters/Communicating-Investigation.html https://www.cdc.gov/eis/field-epi-manual/chapters/Communicat...
- ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
  that would indeed be uncharitable because witches don't exist if you replace witch with "unreliable source", a thing that does exist, it would be a more intellectually honest rephrasing
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    I'm using it as a stand in for disfavored woman in society. I don't always or even generally agree with her, but there are some valid critiques of the CDC in the article, and that has nothing to do with anything she has or has not said in other places.
    - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
      > I'm using it as a stand in for disfavored woman in society. if you used it as a stand-in for "unreliable source", it would be a more intellectually honest rephrasing, as that is the actual objection here, and your attempt to reframe an unreliable source as "oh people just disfavor them" obviously disregards their unreliability, as well as ignores why the source is disfavored (because it is not reliable)
      - ch4s3 4y ago
        Most of the objection flowed from a snippet on Wikipedia about a tweet where she reposted an article by Glen Greenwald, that’s mostly stripped of context. She was arguing against vaccines, and to make that claim is unserious. So what’s really left? You don’t like her opinions on foreign policy? Me either, but that isn’t relevant.
pessimizer 4y ago
> most of the articles claims are based on "spoke to us" quotes from anonymous staffers She certainly learned a lot at the NYT.
remflight 4y ago
- Bahamut 4y ago
  Where do you get that she is a staunch liberal? I see in Wikipedia this mention > Writing in The Guardian, Moira Donegan called Weiss a "professional rightwing attention seeker" and disputed her claim that social media's influence had led to a hostile media environment for conservatives. In addition, her employment history outlined in Wikipedia seem to be filled with fairly conservative outlets or stints (WSJ, Die Welt, NY Times stint cited as an effort to bring in more diverse ideological views). Nothing wrong with that necessarily, just pointing it out as contradictory to the claim that she's a staunch liberal.
  - smiddereens 4y ago

dang 4y ago

On HN we try to go by article quality, not site quality: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22article%20quality%22%20%22site%20quality%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... The author names here are probably more important than whoever owns the site. Their credentials are on the line if the sources they claim to be quoting are made up. That doesn't prove anything, of course, but one's always guessing with these things, and readers need to make up their own minds. I understand the argument you're making, and it's not an obvious call, but I think it comes with more downside than upside, at least for HN. It's a trope of tribal internet argument (I mean in general—not talking about you here) to follow a "DAG of shame" in which you hop from any node to the most shameful associated thing, with the intention of discrediting the node from which you started. The problem is that each of those hops loses a lot of information, and one ends up in places that aren't particularly relevant, like whatever that university project is. What's bad about this for HN is that it makes threads more generic, predictable, and repetitive. It also polarizes discussion along the most intense axis. All of this makes discussion less interesting and more inflammatory. So while it's not an obvious call (more like 60-40 than 80-20) I think we're better off as a community to resist the habit of replacing topic X with the biggest or most shameful other-topic-Y that the dots connect to. It's not that there's no value in it, but it's the wrong move, given what we're trying to optimize for (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).

KerrAvon 4y ago
I understand this argument, and for technical matters, that's fine, but I don't think this is sensible as a general guide for medical or political sites like this one. These are very common snake-oil pits, and it's difficult for people without the necessary specialization of knowledge to discover the pitfalls. The source is sometimes the issue!
- dang 4y ago
  For better or worse, the principle here has always been to trust readers to be smart enough to make up their own minds (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20make%20up%20own%20minds&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). I'm not saying we all are (nor that I am), but I think it's the right principle, especially for this place, where trying to tell users what/how to think is guaranteed to provoke a backlash (quite separately from political position). The consequences of dropping that principle seem pretty negative to me. Following standard ideological grooves to discredit the other tribe's sources is not acting from specialist knowledge in any case. The only specialty at work in such discussion is the specialty of internet battle. That's ultimately just a way to turn every thread into a boring, if intense, flamewar. One of the things that follows from HN's core principle of intellectual curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) is the principle of diffs (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=diffs%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). Diffs are what's interesting. This is the positive formulation of the principle that repetition is bad for curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). For topics that burn hot, like political/ideological ones, this "diff" principle implies that discussion is most interesting (and therefore best for HN) when people don't take the obvious path from their own initial position—that is, when they don't repeat the reaction that they've had most often before. That is a hard thing to ask on the hottest topics, which tend to melt into a few (well, two) monolithic piles of tar. But I think it follows from the principle. Here's another thing that I think follows, and is even harder to swallow. To the extent that someone has strong political/ideological views, if they're not seeing articles on HN that they strongly disagree with, at least semi-regularly, then there's probably something wrong with HN*. That isn't always great for community spirit because it only takes a few disagreeable data points before the mind starts to defend itself with a "this place sucks" reaction (and there are people on all ideological sides who develop such reactions). I wrote about this here, if anyone wants to read more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. * To ward off one common misunderstanding: that is not a Goldilocks argument for split-the-difference centrism! It's an argument for unpredictability. Since centrism is just as predictable as other ideologies, it should encounter just as much to be put off by.

stevenwoo 4y ago

She compared herself to Galileo being threatened with burning at the stake, talk about being a professional victim. Not only is the anonymous sourcing suspect, but she herself thinks vaccines are not as effective as previous infections of Covid-19 and a negative test is better than a vaccine(!) and we know from studies that both are patently untrue, she has ulterior motives in anything to discredit vaccines. I don't know why she claims to be a left leaning centrist, that doesn't survive the slightest scrutiny of her published writing/twitter.

ch4s3 4y ago
> and a negative test is better than a vaccine That doesn't sound like something she would say, and I've never encountered her making that claim. I'm pretty sure she got vaccinated and has encouraged other people to do so as well. She does seem skeptical of the ability of the vaccines to prevent infection by newer variants. To some degree, that's probably true right?
- stevenwoo 4y ago
  I can't address your speculation or prove a negative, I can prove she endorsed or said those things. It's in the wikipedia article linked by the GP. To help you out - In September 2021, concerning COVID-19, she tweeted an article by Glenn Greenwald which argued that proof of a negative test is far more meaningful than proof of a vaccine, contradicting experts who argue that testing is insufficient and should be considered temporary to allow more time for vaccine hesitancy issues to be addressed. Assuming she hasn't deleted her tweet: https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1440687368957095940 https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1440687368957095940 She said she was like Galileo here: https://www.ft.com/content/5d840a5c-fa0c-4d08-9574-59f0d3e8c703 https://www.ft.com/content/5d840a5c-fa0c-4d08-9574-59f0d3e8c...
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    This was in the context of vaccine passports for entry into public places, not in general. The original comment removes that very important context. I have literally heard her advocate getting vaccinated, she’s on the record recommending it.

ch4s3 4y ago

One could uncharitably rephrase your argument as "this woman is a witch and any article on this witch's site is heretical". There are a lot of valid scientific reasons to criticize the CDC's approach to the COVID pandemic, including their own publications[1]. One could also point to the different paths taken by other OECD nations with respect to children and see that the CDC diverged sharply, but presented no data to justify those policies. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/eis/field-epi-manual/chapters/Communicating-Investigation.html https://www.cdc.gov/eis/field-epi-manual/chapters/Communicat...

ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
that would indeed be uncharitable because witches don't exist if you replace witch with "unreliable source", a thing that does exist, it would be a more intellectually honest rephrasing
- ch4s3 4y ago
  I'm using it as a stand in for disfavored woman in society. I don't always or even generally agree with her, but there are some valid critiques of the CDC in the article, and that has nothing to do with anything she has or has not said in other places.
  - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
    > I'm using it as a stand in for disfavored woman in society. if you used it as a stand-in for "unreliable source", it would be a more intellectually honest rephrasing, as that is the actual objection here, and your attempt to reframe an unreliable source as "oh people just disfavor them" obviously disregards their unreliability, as well as ignores why the source is disfavored (because it is not reliable)
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      Most of the objection flowed from a snippet on Wikipedia about a tweet where she reposted an article by Glen Greenwald, that’s mostly stripped of context. She was arguing against vaccines, and to make that claim is unserious. So what’s really left? You don’t like her opinions on foreign policy? Me either, but that isn’t relevant.

pessimizer 4y ago

> most of the articles claims are based on "spoke to us" quotes from anonymous staffers She certainly learned a lot at the NYT.

remflight 4y ago

Bahamut 4y ago
Where do you get that she is a staunch liberal? I see in Wikipedia this mention > Writing in The Guardian, Moira Donegan called Weiss a "professional rightwing attention seeker" and disputed her claim that social media's influence had led to a hostile media environment for conservatives. In addition, her employment history outlined in Wikipedia seem to be filled with fairly conservative outlets or stints (WSJ, Die Welt, NY Times stint cited as an effort to bring in more diverse ideological views). Nothing wrong with that necessarily, just pointing it out as contradictory to the claim that she's a staunch liberal.
- smiddereens 4y ago