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I had to vote this up because of the meta-nature of the article. If anybody makes a comment disagreeing with it while sharing an anecdote they only play into's

I had to vote this up because of the meta-nature of the article. If anybody makes a comment disagreeing with it while sharing an anecdote they only play into's the author's theme! It's like accusing somebody of being in denial: there's nothing they can say in return that doesn't somehow support the idea that they are in denial. Love it. Having said that, this is another really bad article in what seems like an endless series of bad articles on HN. Here are a few of the more obvious flaws: - There is no universal truth as the author seems to imply. Simply because some publication or source you may like has performed some sort of statistical study doesn't have a lot of meaning on it's own. Yes, 100% of the people who eat bananas are dead within 120 years of their consumption. No, that does not mean bananas are bad. The study or scientific reporting is simply the beginning of a much longer conversation society has over many decades that leads us to higher-fidelity models. - The purpose of a social site is to behave socially. While places like HN have (or used to have) a lot of different guidelines for the types of behaviors that are encouraged or not, being social means sharing stories, anecdotes. We are not robots. - The idea that people are unable to sort out personal anecdotes from other forms of information. The follow-up idea that since they are not able to do this, we should prevent ourselves from sharing such stories. This is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad .... bad(n). We are humans. We share stories. Anybody who says "people are so stupid" can justify just about damn near anything as long as they keep emphasizing the stupidity and danger some people's actions represent. Every now and then, gasp(!), published research is either wrong or doesn't show anything near what the reporter claims. Anecdotes don't help with this, of course, but they serve to remind us that even well-known scientists working at the highest quality standards available are still just sharing with us a very specialized form on anecdote. We did these things in this way and this is what we observed. Here is how you also can observe this. The really "good" part of the story they are sharing is talking about hidden assumptions, population variance, reproducibility, and so forth. Anecdotes don't do this, but they help us brainstorm ways in which we can improve the discussion, take the next experiment to an even better place. I'm very uncomfortable with the line of reasoning that goes somewhat like this: people are broken in some way, therefore we must somehow control what they read, say, or think for their own good. To me the beauty of western civilization is that really broken people can do these amazing and awesome things. The fact that we're deeply flawed is the magic. Science and human advancement work because of our flaws, not in spite of them. This is a very important thing to understand! Setting up some ideal of perfection, no matter how well-intended, and then mucking around with the way societal interaction works in some effort to improve on things is heading down a very dark path that has a very unhappy ending. This attitude seems rife in the technology community, however, perhaps because we are such analytical people. I don't want my fellow man to be irrational and distrustful of science and knowledge. But I'll take that any day over silencing contrarian articles and dissent. We've done the math on this: wrong people who share emotional stories and persuade crowds about all sorts of illogical things are a price that a dynamic community pays for progress.

bmelton 14y ago
Thank you. I was writing a large diatribe of my own, but refreshed in another window and saw yours echoing what I wanted to say, plus a lot that I wouldn't have thought of. The one other thing that strikes me is that, for the sake of argument, I will often convert more dependable facts into anecdotal form to ease understanding. I've found, through trial and error, that just stating the hard facts tends to lead into a circle of explanation, but stating that same information in more relatable terms is, simply put, more relatable.
hythloday 14y ago
I generally disagree with the OP and agree with your dissent, but do you not think that the OP could be more charitable read, not as "suppress certain kinds of replies", but as "don't exploit known cognitive biases, and punish people who seek to exploit them"? I'm quite comfortable downvoting naked appeals to emotion ("please won't someone think of the children?"), because I don't think they add anything, and are harmful to, the conversation. I think the OP is making a similar proposal for anecdotal contradiction. Both his examples are chosen well in this light: non-medical replies to a study that found a weak correlation. To me, the contradictions look more like a strawman: the argument they attack seems to be that coffee consumption will, in 100% of cases, cure Alzheimer's, a claim the study never made. I'm not sure we should privilege (or penalize) anecdotal contradiction on anything other than the merits of its argumentation, but in many cases I find that to be extremely weak.
- kijin 14y ago
  But how do you distinguish between people who simply share their stories because they think it's moderately relevant to the thread, on the one hand, and people who "exploit known cognitive biases", on the other? Exploitation seems to imply deliberate manipulation, which most people who share medical anecdotes don't intend at all. Yet, humans have so many cognitive biases that even the most mundane thing can trigger one or another bias.
  - hythloday 14y ago
    "Trigger" is a better word than "exploit", in some ways, but it makes it sound like it's an accident: "sorry, I just fell over your cognitive bias, I had no idea it was there!". In fact I think people have a weak responsibility in good discourse to be aware of known cognitive biases and not to appeal to them. I'm comfortable downvoting people who appeal to emotion even if they're not setting out with the intent of doing it, simply because I think it leads to a worse discussion. You distinguish between people who are sharing anecdotes and people who are making strawmen arguments in the usual way that you'd distinguish them - by tone, follow-ups, etc. But if your sole contribution to a thread is "me too" (or "actually, not me too"), maybe that contribution isn't particularly valuable in itself.

bmelton 14y ago

Thank you. I was writing a large diatribe of my own, but refreshed in another window and saw yours echoing what I wanted to say, plus a lot that I wouldn't have thought of. The one other thing that strikes me is that, for the sake of argument, I will often convert more dependable facts into anecdotal form to ease understanding. I've found, through trial and error, that just stating the hard facts tends to lead into a circle of explanation, but stating that same information in more relatable terms is, simply put, more relatable.

hythloday 14y ago

I generally disagree with the OP and agree with your dissent, but do you not think that the OP could be more charitable read, not as "suppress certain kinds of replies", but as "don't exploit known cognitive biases, and punish people who seek to exploit them"? I'm quite comfortable downvoting naked appeals to emotion ("please won't someone think of the children?"), because I don't think they add anything, and are harmful to, the conversation. I think the OP is making a similar proposal for anecdotal contradiction. Both his examples are chosen well in this light: non-medical replies to a study that found a weak correlation. To me, the contradictions look more like a strawman: the argument they attack seems to be that coffee consumption will, in 100% of cases, cure Alzheimer's, a claim the study never made. I'm not sure we should privilege (or penalize) anecdotal contradiction on anything other than the merits of its argumentation, but in many cases I find that to be extremely weak.

kijin 14y ago
But how do you distinguish between people who simply share their stories because they think it's moderately relevant to the thread, on the one hand, and people who "exploit known cognitive biases", on the other? Exploitation seems to imply deliberate manipulation, which most people who share medical anecdotes don't intend at all. Yet, humans have so many cognitive biases that even the most mundane thing can trigger one or another bias.
- hythloday 14y ago
  "Trigger" is a better word than "exploit", in some ways, but it makes it sound like it's an accident: "sorry, I just fell over your cognitive bias, I had no idea it was there!". In fact I think people have a weak responsibility in good discourse to be aware of known cognitive biases and not to appeal to them. I'm comfortable downvoting people who appeal to emotion even if they're not setting out with the intent of doing it, simply because I think it leads to a worse discussion. You distinguish between people who are sharing anecdotes and people who are making strawmen arguments in the usual way that you'd distinguish them - by tone, follow-ups, etc. But if your sole contribution to a thread is "me too" (or "actually, not me too"), maybe that contribution isn't particularly valuable in itself.