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These claims on HN, about every OP, really lack credibility for me. Either HN commenters are the only smart people in the world or we are misleading each other.

These claims on HN, about every OP, really lack credibility for me. Either HN commenters are the only smart people in the world or we are misleading each other. At the same time, we are dissuading each other from engaging in a world of intellect, knowledge and innovation. HN is a forum of intellectual curiosity. The near-universal critiques are the opposite of that.

COGlory 3y ago
I don't know what to tell you. New antibiotics are discovered pretty often. They aren't brought to market, but they certainly are discovered. This headline is just wrong.
Jensson 3y ago
> These claims on HN, about every OP, really lack credibility for me. Do you trust journalists that much? Have you ever read an article about something you are an expert on? You shouldn't trust articles that much. I trust HN discussions much more since there are plenty of people who will weigh in when things are wrong or misrepresented, unlike these articles. Edit: Gell-Mann Amnesia effect, that was what this is called. Don't trust the media just because you aren't an expert.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  You've lept to a conclusion about what I trust and then how that putative trust drives my reasoning. I'm not the imaginary person you are addressing. > I trust HN discussions much more since there are plenty of people who will weigh in when things are wrong or misrepresented, unlike these articles. Why are those people, with no responsibility, little expertise, etc., more trustworthy than other people? It seems like the common bias of social media - for some reason, people trust strangers with no credibility, which exposes them to the enormous amount of misinformation and just BS that now floods our world. If the article author or a professor wrote the same thing in a HN comment, it seems like you'd believe it.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    > Why are those people, with no responsibility, little expertise, etc., more trustworthy than other people? I don't trust them, I trust the discussion in aggregate. The discussion includes people on all sides in a healthy forum. If you are on a subreddit you are in an echo chamber so many voices will be missing, but HN has good representation of experts and people from all sorts of fields so I trust these discussions to unearth better truths than what a typical journalist can. > If the article author or a professor wrote the same thing in a HN comment, it seems like you'd believe it. No, if they wrote the article in a comment with that headline it would get comments saying why it is wrong, just like here. The ability for people like you to object is why I trust it more.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      Do you see what social media has wrought? How can you trust the herd mentality? Is there a greater source of misinformation, disinformation, and ignorance in the history of humanity? (No.) Regarding things I already know - or even OPs I've read but which most commenters have not - HN is mostly misinformation. I participate in HN, obviously - only because I've found nothing better (a complement to it, in a way, and maybe there's no known way to improve).
      - Jensson 3y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean? There are commenters here who are wrong, yes. But the discussion in aggregate usually have some people who are correct. Those people are missing in these articles, these articles are mostly just a person who is wrong about a lot of things. There are some nuggets of truths in them but you can't trust any sensational headlines to be representative of what actually happened. If you are saying that most discussions here on HN have zero people who are right, then I strongly disagree. It is very rare for there to be no truths in HN discussions. On reddit however it is very common for me to see not a single reasonable post to be found.
        wolverine876 3y ago
timr 3y ago
Worked in the space of AI QSAR/QSPR. Parent comment is correct in all respects. Science journalism is abysmal and hyperbolic, and that's why you see people tearing into headlines like this. I don't know "euronews.next", but...let's just say that it doesn't inspire a great sense of journalistic integrity? For greater context, in the drug discovery world, "explainability" of QSAR/QSPR has been a longstanding goal. It's (rightly) not considered sufficient to have "black box" models that make predictions -- it's too expensive and risky to carry drug candidates into the lab based on the output of an algorithm, so subject-matter experts want to know why the algorithms are making the predictions that they make.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > Science journalism is abysmal and hyperbolic Do you see the irony? What better describes social media? Personally, I see plenty of good, valuable, useful science journalism; it's got plenty of flaws, like any human endeavor - including social media comments. But attacking journalism is normalized, and thus people know they can do it without being questioned and get some social media likes from it. It would be interesting to see the same responses turned on individual social media comments - what flaws could we find? :) > For greater context, in the drug discovery world, "explainability" of QSAR/QSPR has been a longstanding goal. It's (rightly) not considered sufficient to have "black box" models that make predictions -- it's too expensive and risky to carry drug candidates into the lab based on the output of an algorithm, so subject-matter experts want to know why the algorithms are making the predictions that they make. Ironically, that's what the OP is about; that was the point of their research.
  - timr 3y ago
    > Do you see the irony? What better describes social media? Social media is not one thing. You've got multiple people in this thread who know the subject, in detail, telling you that the headline is wrong. These aren't youtube video comments. > Ironically, that's what the OP is about; that was the point of their research. Yes, I know. That's why I wrote that. The research is about a relatively obscure technical problem. The headline made it sound like a revolutionary breakthrough in antibiotic development.

COGlory 3y ago

I don't know what to tell you. New antibiotics are discovered pretty often. They aren't brought to market, but they certainly are discovered. This headline is just wrong.

Jensson 3y ago

> These claims on HN, about every OP, really lack credibility for me. Do you trust journalists that much? Have you ever read an article about something you are an expert on? You shouldn't trust articles that much. I trust HN discussions much more since there are plenty of people who will weigh in when things are wrong or misrepresented, unlike these articles. Edit: Gell-Mann Amnesia effect, that was what this is called. Don't trust the media just because you aren't an expert.

wolverine876 3y ago
You've lept to a conclusion about what I trust and then how that putative trust drives my reasoning. I'm not the imaginary person you are addressing. > I trust HN discussions much more since there are plenty of people who will weigh in when things are wrong or misrepresented, unlike these articles. Why are those people, with no responsibility, little expertise, etc., more trustworthy than other people? It seems like the common bias of social media - for some reason, people trust strangers with no credibility, which exposes them to the enormous amount of misinformation and just BS that now floods our world. If the article author or a professor wrote the same thing in a HN comment, it seems like you'd believe it.
- Jensson 3y ago
  > Why are those people, with no responsibility, little expertise, etc., more trustworthy than other people? I don't trust them, I trust the discussion in aggregate. The discussion includes people on all sides in a healthy forum. If you are on a subreddit you are in an echo chamber so many voices will be missing, but HN has good representation of experts and people from all sorts of fields so I trust these discussions to unearth better truths than what a typical journalist can. > If the article author or a professor wrote the same thing in a HN comment, it seems like you'd believe it. No, if they wrote the article in a comment with that headline it would get comments saying why it is wrong, just like here. The ability for people like you to object is why I trust it more.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    Do you see what social media has wrought? How can you trust the herd mentality? Is there a greater source of misinformation, disinformation, and ignorance in the history of humanity? (No.) Regarding things I already know - or even OPs I've read but which most commenters have not - HN is mostly misinformation. I participate in HN, obviously - only because I've found nothing better (a complement to it, in a way, and maybe there's no known way to improve).
    - Jensson 3y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean? There are commenters here who are wrong, yes. But the discussion in aggregate usually have some people who are correct. Those people are missing in these articles, these articles are mostly just a person who is wrong about a lot of things. There are some nuggets of truths in them but you can't trust any sensational headlines to be representative of what actually happened. If you are saying that most discussions here on HN have zero people who are right, then I strongly disagree. It is very rare for there to be no truths in HN discussions. On reddit however it is very common for me to see not a single reasonable post to be found.
      - wolverine876 3y ago

timr 3y ago

Worked in the space of AI QSAR/QSPR. Parent comment is correct in all respects. Science journalism is abysmal and hyperbolic, and that's why you see people tearing into headlines like this. I don't know "euronews.next", but...let's just say that it doesn't inspire a great sense of journalistic integrity? For greater context, in the drug discovery world, "explainability" of QSAR/QSPR has been a longstanding goal. It's (rightly) not considered sufficient to have "black box" models that make predictions -- it's too expensive and risky to carry drug candidates into the lab based on the output of an algorithm, so subject-matter experts want to know why the algorithms are making the predictions that they make.

wolverine876 3y ago
> Science journalism is abysmal and hyperbolic Do you see the irony? What better describes social media? Personally, I see plenty of good, valuable, useful science journalism; it's got plenty of flaws, like any human endeavor - including social media comments. But attacking journalism is normalized, and thus people know they can do it without being questioned and get some social media likes from it. It would be interesting to see the same responses turned on individual social media comments - what flaws could we find? :) > For greater context, in the drug discovery world, "explainability" of QSAR/QSPR has been a longstanding goal. It's (rightly) not considered sufficient to have "black box" models that make predictions -- it's too expensive and risky to carry drug candidates into the lab based on the output of an algorithm, so subject-matter experts want to know why the algorithms are making the predictions that they make. Ironically, that's what the OP is about; that was the point of their research.
- timr 3y ago
  > Do you see the irony? What better describes social media? Social media is not one thing. You've got multiple people in this thread who know the subject, in detail, telling you that the headline is wrong. These aren't youtube video comments. > Ironically, that's what the OP is about; that was the point of their research. Yes, I know. That's why I wrote that. The research is about a relatively obscure technical problem. The headline made it sound like a revolutionary breakthrough in antibiotic development.