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A blatantly false flamebait comment that started this whole thing is still standing so no, he is not doing just that, and the community supports misinformation

by pb7 4y ago

A blatantly false flamebait comment that started this whole thing is still standing so no, he is not doing just that, and the community supports misinformation as long as it makes them feel good.

dang 4y ago
I don't know what "misinformation" means; people use that as a fraught pejorative these days. If you mean another comment was wrong, that's unsurprising; nearly everyone is wrong about nearly everything. As I said to drstewart, the thing to do in that case is to respectfully explain how another comment is wrong. Then we all learn something, and the person who is (by hypothesis) right doesn't make the mistake of discrediting the truth with extraneous attacks or insults (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=truth%20discredit%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). We can't have a rule against being wrong. That would combine several impossible things before breakfast, such as (1) making discussion impossible and (2) requiring us to have a truth meter (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20truth%20meter&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), which we don't. Your sentence "the community supports" doesn't work here because there is no singular community in this respect; there's just a statistical cloud of different users (including you!) who support a plethora of conflicting things.
- pb7 4y ago
  >I don't know what "misinformation" means Misinformation means false or inaccurate information. >Your sentence "the community supports" doesn't work here because there is no singular community in this respect If a comment is downvoted or flagged, it is not supported. If a comment is not downvoted or flagged, it is either supported or neutral (if it hasn’t been seen). If counterarguments to the comment are downvoted or flagged, that’s a solid signal that the original comment is supported (since it was seen) and the response was not supported. There’s not enough time in the world to explain why every trivially posted comment is wrong. If I constantly posted comments to the effect of “there are no hospitals in Southeast Asia because it’s such a poor region”, how is that valuable? How does that help the community? Why should anyone bother to constantly correct me? And most importantly, if I’m a casual reader, I might take that as truth and that’s how misinformation spreads. I don’t mean “misinformation” in any political sense which is the trendy way to use it, but rather in a clickbait/flamebait sense that makes a populace dumber. Something that sounds plausible and since someone states it so authoritatively on a site that one might think has some credibility, so it must be true. It’s exhausting to constantly have to verify whether something is true because there’s no community punishment for intentionally saying something not true. >We can't have a rule against being wrong. You don’t need a rule against being wrong but you don’t need to shut down people that point it out. Nothing here except the original comment was flamebait. I know this because it was the only comment that triggered a cascade of negative comments. Did you flag drstewart's comment explaining his point? I presume, because there's no vouch link. If so, why? If you didn't, why is that comment worthy of being flagged but not the original comment? Clearly the community has opinions on comments and misinformation is low on the totem pole of concerns. Hence "the community supports misinformation as long as it makes them feel good" -- it feels good to shit on countries you don't like and it feels good to shut down people that tried to go against the flow, all while the original comment that was wrong and incited this unsavory discussion is still standing.
  - dang 4y ago
    I flagged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34315771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34315771 because it broke the site guidelines*. The GP comment may have been wrong, but it didn't break the site guidelines. As we've just agreed, there isn't a rule against being wrong, nor can there be. > there’s no community punishment for intentionally saying something not true I've learned that this isn't a good way to think about internet comments, because it's virtually impossible to accurately read someone's intent. Not only that, but people are much too quick to assume ill intent, intentional deceit, or (favorite internet word) disingenuousness. * It was dipping a toe into nationalistic flamebait, though, so maybe it would be more accurate to say it was straddling the edge.
    - pb7 4y ago
      I meant this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34321408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34321408
      - pvg 4y ago
        That one is flaggable under your own version of HN's rules because it's completely wrong about HN's guidelines. It's also flaggable under the actual guidelines because it's mostly non-responsive fulmination.

by pb7 4y ago

A blatantly false flamebait comment that started this whole thing is still standing so no, he is not doing just that, and the community supports misinformation as long as it makes them feel good.

dang 4y ago

I don't know what "misinformation" means; people use that as a fraught pejorative these days. If you mean another comment was wrong, that's unsurprising; nearly everyone is wrong about nearly everything. As I said to drstewart, the thing to do in that case is to respectfully explain how another comment is wrong. Then we all learn something, and the person who is (by hypothesis) right doesn't make the mistake of discrediting the truth with extraneous attacks or insults (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=truth%20discredit%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). We can't have a rule against being wrong. That would combine several impossible things before breakfast, such as (1) making discussion impossible and (2) requiring us to have a truth meter (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20truth%20meter&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), which we don't. Your sentence "the community supports" doesn't work here because there is no singular community in this respect; there's just a statistical cloud of different users (including you!) who support a plethora of conflicting things.

pb7 4y ago
>I don't know what "misinformation" means Misinformation means false or inaccurate information. >Your sentence "the community supports" doesn't work here because there is no singular community in this respect If a comment is downvoted or flagged, it is not supported. If a comment is not downvoted or flagged, it is either supported or neutral (if it hasn’t been seen). If counterarguments to the comment are downvoted or flagged, that’s a solid signal that the original comment is supported (since it was seen) and the response was not supported. There’s not enough time in the world to explain why every trivially posted comment is wrong. If I constantly posted comments to the effect of “there are no hospitals in Southeast Asia because it’s such a poor region”, how is that valuable? How does that help the community? Why should anyone bother to constantly correct me? And most importantly, if I’m a casual reader, I might take that as truth and that’s how misinformation spreads. I don’t mean “misinformation” in any political sense which is the trendy way to use it, but rather in a clickbait/flamebait sense that makes a populace dumber. Something that sounds plausible and since someone states it so authoritatively on a site that one might think has some credibility, so it must be true. It’s exhausting to constantly have to verify whether something is true because there’s no community punishment for intentionally saying something not true. >We can't have a rule against being wrong. You don’t need a rule against being wrong but you don’t need to shut down people that point it out. Nothing here except the original comment was flamebait. I know this because it was the only comment that triggered a cascade of negative comments. Did you flag drstewart's comment explaining his point? I presume, because there's no vouch link. If so, why? If you didn't, why is that comment worthy of being flagged but not the original comment? Clearly the community has opinions on comments and misinformation is low on the totem pole of concerns. Hence "the community supports misinformation as long as it makes them feel good" -- it feels good to shit on countries you don't like and it feels good to shut down people that tried to go against the flow, all while the original comment that was wrong and incited this unsavory discussion is still standing.
- dang 4y ago
  I flagged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34315771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34315771 because it broke the site guidelines*. The GP comment may have been wrong, but it didn't break the site guidelines. As we've just agreed, there isn't a rule against being wrong, nor can there be. > there’s no community punishment for intentionally saying something not true I've learned that this isn't a good way to think about internet comments, because it's virtually impossible to accurately read someone's intent. Not only that, but people are much too quick to assume ill intent, intentional deceit, or (favorite internet word) disingenuousness. * It was dipping a toe into nationalistic flamebait, though, so maybe it would be more accurate to say it was straddling the edge.
  - pb7 4y ago
    I meant this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34321408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34321408
    - pvg 4y ago
      That one is flaggable under your own version of HN's rules because it's completely wrong about HN's guidelines. It's also flaggable under the actual guidelines because it's mostly non-responsive fulmination.