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Reflexive contrarianism is far healthier than blind credulity. Skepticism should be the default state, especially for claims of amazing scientific breakthroughs
by root_axis 4y ago
Reflexive contrarianism is far healthier than blind credulity. Skepticism should be the default state, especially for claims of amazing scientific breakthroughs.
- rogerkirkness 4y agoThe older I get the more I think it's just counter signaling that one is smarter than whoever did this work, which is almost certainly not the case.
- spoils19 4y ago
- govg 4y agoThe average HN reader who is probably a generic software engineer in their 20s/30s will know more about nuclear fusion than scientists at LLNL?
- Moissanite 4y agoListen man, remembering the names of all these JavaScript frameworks is hard!
- JimtheCoder 4y agoThey think they do, but don't...I think that's the point that's trying to be made here
- kelnos 4y agoThat's a pretty arrogant take based on zero actual evidence. When "in my experience" is "randoms on the internet who I've never met and occasionally argue with online", I don't think we can draw many conclusions.
- teawrecks 4y agoThe average HN reader strikes me as someone who can talk big, spout buzzwords, and play skeptic, but make them actually solve something and they crumble instantly. Maybe the average HN reader is smarter than the average reddit reader (very slightly if at all), but they're not more useful than someone who actually did work and shared it publicly.
- bumby 4y ago>The average HN reader strikes me as someone who can talk big, spout buzzwords, and play skeptic, but make them actually solve something and they crumble instantly. I'm sure many have experienced the phenomenon where they read some HN comments that sound authoritative and give them that level of credulity. And then they get into a discussion on a topic they may literally be an expert in and it's made glaring obvious the person they are in a discussion with only has a superficial understanding, yet takes the same authoritative tone.
- TigeriusKirk 4y agoIn my experience the average HN reader is slightly above the general population average.
- yummypaint 4y agoI know for a fact that many people who worked on this are also on HN. You should know that scientists see posters on this site mostly as representatives of the software engineering world. Seeing this kind of sneering attitude so frequently on display here is pretty embarrassing and casts the whole profession in a poor light.
- mardifoufs 4y agoSurely this is sarcasm?
- serverholic 4y agoYeah I can't help but imagine these same folks would be more than happy to produce a list of common logical fallacies.
- elihu 4y agoI think it's more often just counter signaling that one is better informed or more realistic than whoever wrote the press release or media article, which may very be the case.
- SllX 4y agoNeither is particularly healthy. Either staying level-headed and analytical or simply admitting ignorance would be healthier. Skeptical/Gullible are two ends of the same crutch for when we are unable or unwilling to do either.
- root_axis 4y agoI think skepticism is healthy, rational, and intellectually economical, especially when we're talking about popular media stories. The skeptic isn't harmed by dismissing grandiose headlines about scientific breakthroughs which are selling a false narrative 99.9% of the time (yes, real science is happening, but the media's narrative about the impact of research is pretty much always false), and in the cases where someone is a little too dismissive, they might end up looking like an idiot one day, but layperson skepticism has no bearing on the validity of the claim, no amount of skepticism can overcome the reality on the ground, if it's real it doesn't matter what anyone believes.
- kelnos 4y agoI agree, but what I'm seeing here down in the comments isn't merely skepticism, but outright dismissal.