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> for some topics, the readers don't have enough background knowledge to know that it's a mundane story Why does it matter? The press does context-free puff-pi

> for some topics, the readers don't have enough background knowledge to know that it's a mundane story Why does it matter? The press does context-free puff-pieces all the time, even for professionals allegedly at the very top of their game (off the top of my head: Steve Jobs, Elizabeth Holmes[1], Elon Musk, Jeff Dean, and Sanjay Ghemawat to a lesser extent). Typically the template is "Genius expert invents X all by himself" without providing additional context for people outside of tech. Food for thought: do you suppose journalists are exclusively wrong in tech reporting only? Or is this an area you have enough context to understand the nuances? 1. Sometimes the "revolutionary tech" is not just plain evolutionary, but fake. But a layperson reading the hagiography can't tell the difference

jasode 4y ago
>Why does it matter? The press does context-free puff-pieces all the time, Yes, I'm very aware of the meta-game around "puff pieces" which I've explained before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30881420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30881420 It seems your "Why does it matter?" was just a rhetorical question as prelude to your comment about puff pieces already existing in abundance ... But I'll answer it as if you had asked that question earnestly: It matters because readers would like to know how to gauge the significance of unfamiliar tech mentioned in the article. So we have 2 interpretations of this thread's article: (a) this poacher detection tool is a true breakthrough -- and the inventor also happens to be a teenager; the tech itself is not hype. The idea is truly a game changer and while the inventor's age is very young, that's a footnote to the tech invention. ... or ... (b) the tool's tech (machine learning) is not significant and may not even work in the real world -- but the teenager's attempt at problem solving is showing promise of future things to come; let us celebrate this young person's effort. A previous example of the first (a) type of story is this one a teen discovering a new classical algorithm comparable to a quantum algorithm: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17654220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17654220 That wasn't some pure human-interest puff piece about teenager Ewin Tang. Instead, a respected computer scientist (Scott Aaronson) said it was legitimate new work that advanced our understanding of the field. >1. Sometimes the "revolutionary tech" is not just plain evolutionary, but fake. But a layperson reading the hagiography can't tell the difference Right ... and readers don't want to mistakenly interpret the story as type (a) when it was actually type (b). The gp (Avalaxy) of the subthread tried to give us some extra perspective about this story that the journalist did not.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > It matters because readers would like to know how to gauge the significance of unfamiliar tech mentioned in the article. I agree with you on principle: and it should happen across the board and not just reserved for science fair submissions, but the press seems incapable of that, for reasons good and bad. For one,evaluating new tech is subjective (and difficult), and for another, sone news puff pieces are mostly written by PR firms.

jasode 4y ago

>Why does it matter? The press does context-free puff-pieces all the time, Yes, I'm very aware of the meta-game around "puff pieces" which I've explained before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30881420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30881420 It seems your "Why does it matter?" was just a rhetorical question as prelude to your comment about puff pieces already existing in abundance ... But I'll answer it as if you had asked that question earnestly: It matters because readers would like to know how to gauge the significance of unfamiliar tech mentioned in the article. So we have 2 interpretations of this thread's article: (a) this poacher detection tool is a true breakthrough -- and the inventor also happens to be a teenager; the tech itself is not hype. The idea is truly a game changer and while the inventor's age is very young, that's a footnote to the tech invention. ... or ... (b) the tool's tech (machine learning) is not significant and may not even work in the real world -- but the teenager's attempt at problem solving is showing promise of future things to come; let us celebrate this young person's effort. A previous example of the first (a) type of story is this one a teen discovering a new classical algorithm comparable to a quantum algorithm: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17654220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17654220 That wasn't some pure human-interest puff piece about teenager Ewin Tang. Instead, a respected computer scientist (Scott Aaronson) said it was legitimate new work that advanced our understanding of the field. >1. Sometimes the "revolutionary tech" is not just plain evolutionary, but fake. But a layperson reading the hagiography can't tell the difference Right ... and readers don't want to mistakenly interpret the story as type (a) when it was actually type (b). The gp (Avalaxy) of the subthread tried to give us some extra perspective about this story that the journalist did not.

sangnoir 4y ago
> It matters because readers would like to know how to gauge the significance of unfamiliar tech mentioned in the article. I agree with you on principle: and it should happen across the board and not just reserved for science fair submissions, but the press seems incapable of that, for reasons good and bad. For one,evaluating new tech is subjective (and difficult), and for another, sone news puff pieces are mostly written by PR firms.