6 ms·

What's up with so many Hacker News commenters coming out of the woodwork when headlines blame climate change to challenge it? Just a glimpse of the article sho

by piva00 2y ago

What's up with so many Hacker News commenters coming out of the woodwork when headlines blame climate change to challenge it? Just a glimpse of the article shows there's some research behind making the point of the headline, still people feel the need to comment on their feelings to deny it possibly could be due to climate change. Per the article: > The World Weather Attribution (WWA) group said one recent four-day period was the rainiest ever recorded in central Europe - an intensity made twice as likely by climate change. > The kind of rainfall unleashed by Boris is thankfully still rare – expected to occur about once every 100-300 years in today’s climate, which has warmed by about 1.3C due to greenhouse gas emissions. > But if warming reaches 2C, similar episodes will become an extra 5% more intense and 50% more frequent, the WWA warned. > Without more ambitious climate action, global warming is expected to reach around 3C by the end of the century. > “This is definitely what we will see much more of in the future,” said Friederike Otto, senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London and co-author of the WWA study. There's a study, BBC is reporting on it and some people feel the need to challenge it even though probably know nothing of climate science? Is science denialism reaching even folks here? What do you get out of this behaviour?

pjc50 2y ago
HN audience is both reflexively contrarian (will argue with any article on any subject), and also surprisingly rightwing (exposed to climate change denialists).
- alephnerd 2y ago
  There is a surprisingly vocal and toxic community that are fringe members on both sides of the aisle on HN. Hypothetically a good thing, but in action it tends to derail most conversations. The whole COVID Pandemic, the 2020 election, (edit: and the shutdown of SlateStarCodex) definetly brought a lot of nuts out of the woodwork, and they never left. Edit: Here's an example below. It's one account that I've had significant arguments with before. In addition, it's also a "new" (post-2021) account, ime all of whom don't tend to provide the level of discourse comparable to earlier HN users (yes, I recognize the irony as a combative newish throwaway) There was a large increase in HN usewebase around that time when the SlateStarCodex forum shut down.
  - typeofhuman 2y ago
    Who were "the nuts" during the COVID pandemic? The ones wishing unemployment, imprisonment, and death upon the people who didn't want to get the vaccine? The ones who insisted on forcing kids to were masks? Or the ones who silenced scientists who held differing view points from the mainstream narrative or challenged the efficacy of masks? Or the ones who were saying Ivermectin was for horses? Or the ones who said if you get the vaccine you won't catch or spread COVID?
    - ben_w 2y ago
      > Ivermectin was for horses It's for worms. If you have a persistent infection of parasitic horses, it's probably not going to do much good.
      - _djo_ 2y ago
        What they're getting confused with is that as the craze hit and Ivermectin supplies ran low, some people were buying it from veterinary supply stores in formulations meant for horses. People were, quite rightly, saying that taking medicine formulations meant for horses was a bad idea, given the potentially non-human-friendly additional ingredients and the difficulty in keeping within safe dosages.
  - Tainnor 2y ago
    > The whole COVID Pandemic and the 2020 election definetly brought a lot of nuts out of the woodwork, and they never left. HN was downright insufferable during the pandemic, it really made me think about leaving. Thankfully, nowadays the "bad" topics (mostly politically very polarised ones) tend to be fewer and can more easily be avoided.
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      > it really made me think about leaving Same here, except it just made me combative on HN. I'm waiting for the day dang blocks my account for a violation AND deletes all my posts, because YC won't honor a CCPA request without proof of identity, and I'm a bit too close for comfort with the YC community so I do not want to furnish that to him or YC. If there was a way to filter accounts created after 2021, or with a polarity score, I'd be happy staying on here, but at this point it's a form of social media addiction due to the dopamine rush of the occasionally level headed conversation and debate.
- Tainnor 2y ago
  > surprisingly rightwing If I try to put it into (very reductive) descriptive terms, I might say that the "left" puts more emphasis on the fact that people are victims of circumstances, while the "right" puts more emphasis on the idea that everyone's the architect of their own destiny. Both of these perspectives are correct to some extent - you could argue about it endlessly, from a philosophical point of view. But it's maybe also not that surprising that people who are (to some extent) aligned with a hacker ethos and have had success in life by working on hard problems would find that second point of view much more enticing - after all, it's much more satisfying to think that your success is due to your own virtue than due to your luck (when it the end, it may very well be both). There are of course also sometimes elements of hypocrisy in it, in situations where HN users feel they have less agency. While there is a strong (though definitely not unchallenged) sentiment among a segment of the userbase that companies should do whatever they want when it comes to their products and business practices, you very rarely see that same sentiment applied when it comes to things that affect developers in their daily work, such as home office, meetings, Scrum, etc.
- yongjik 2y ago
  Also a surprisingly large number of them are libertarians, whose view is that government can never do anything right and if anybody claims a government intervention (or a concerted society-level effort) is necessary then they are lying. Climate change is, almost by definition, something that cannot be solved at individual level. It must be tackled at the society level. Which makes it a lie in their worldview. Don't ask me, I could never understand the libertarian position.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    I've put some effort into doing so. Much of the mainstream right-libertarian rhetoric seems to trace most directly to Murray Rothbard and to a lesser degree Robert Nozick (though he distanced himself from that somewhat later in life), with strong supporting roles from Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, von Mises, and others. The institutional support is strongly tied to the Kochs, the Cato Institute, and a large group of aligned propaganda mills through the Atlas Network, comprised of 500+ partners in 100+ countries, to quote the network itself. The greatest number are in the US (181) and Europe (157), with a disproportionate number in the English-language speaking Canada (11) and Australia (10): <https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Atlas_Network https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Atlas_Network> <https://www.atlasnetwork.org/partners https://www.atlasnetwork.org/partners> Somewhat interestingly, few of the RLs I've encountered seem even aware of this legacy, with many appearing to think that they'd reached an identical set of conclusions (and rhetoric) through their own self-directed free thinking... The Atlas Network itself is strongly tied to the Mont Pelerin Society. Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe edited an excellent history of that movement, The Raod from Mont Pelerin (2015): <https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674088344 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674088344>
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  I've had both views, and still think that the first is fairly accurate. I'm no longer so certain that HN is strongly right-wing. There are definitely right-wing members, and so long as they act within HN's guidelines that's possibly a Good Thing in the spirit of airing a range of views across the spectrum (not in its more recent psychiatric sense), which would include debunking fallacious and calling out of actively dangerous views. From what I've been able to directly observe,[1] both left- and right-wing political harrangues and advocacy seem to fare poorly. Right-wing think tanks, Reason being the notable exception, are rarely linked to HN. Most news stories come from largely centrist sources, with the NY Times and WSJ both being amongst the most frequently hitting the front page. (Both have seen a sharp drop in front-page appearances as their respective paywalls have tightened, NYT falling to < 25% of its prior frequency, a point I'd like to see explored in detail as journalism's fight for survival continues.) Ideological talking points / memes tend to be low-effort, regurgitations, and easy to post to threads, especially early. And I suspect, with some basis in media theory, that this tends to favour the populist right.[2] This post itself has seen a sharp reshuffling (which is continuing as I make some later comments to it, on that specific topic) as votes and flags take effect. The previously top-ranked comment is now (quite rightfully IMO) flagged: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41646319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41646319>), along with numerous others. Unfortunately overall substantive discussion and story placement on the front page have both suffered as a consequence (points I've made in email to dang). ________________________________ Notes: 1. <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/tagged/HackerNewsAnalytics https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/tagged/HackerNewsAnalytics> and <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adredmorbius%20%22front%20page%22%20activity&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...> will point to much of this. 2. See generally the Frankfurt School's work. Dwight MacDonald's "A THeory of Mass Culture" (1953) develops the idea <https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDonald_-_A_Theory_of_Mass_Culture.pdf https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDon...>, as does Umberto Eco's "Ur Fascism" (1995) <https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/https://www.nybo...>.
llamaimperative 2y ago
It’s the Silicon Valley wannabe intellectualism that has somehow allied itself with contrarianism. They just reflexively think the consensus view is wrong because daddy Thiel said you can make big money that way. “The Contrarians”, of course, is its own silly tribe of lemmings that produces its opinions from its identity first and foremost.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > Silicon Valley wannabe intellectualism I've noticed the fringe hot takes tends to occur around this time of day on HN, which is 5am in SV (some of us wake up very early to run/bike without getting run over, as well as answer EMEA emails). Most users at this time of day are European (who tend to be German, Eastern European, and British ime) and some East Coasters. Mainstream HN doesn't kick in until 4-5 hours from now.
  - ajfhag 2y ago
    I would say that Europeans are entitled to describe the actual weather in Europe as opposed to the SV narrative of it.
    - Tainnor 2y ago
      I have no idea what GP was trying to say with his "it's mostly European users" comment, but as a European who does worry about climate change, I don't think that climate change denialism is somehow less extreme in the US than in Europe.
      - alephnerd 2y ago
        > "it's mostly European users" comment I meant it isn't West Coast users on HN at this time of day. It's mostly European users before transitioning to East Coast users It's an international forum, and depending on the time of day, HN's tone changes significantly
        2y ago
graemep 2y ago
> Just a glimpse of the article shows there's some research behind making the point of the headline, still people feel the need to comment on their feelings to deny it possibly could be due to climate change. because "due to" is simplistic when we are dealing with multiple factors. heavier rain might be more common due to climate change, but it causes a lot more flooding than it otherwise would because of the blocking of drainage etc. > today’s climate, which has warmed by about 1.3C Warmed by 1.3°C against what benchmark?
- timeon 2y ago
  I guess retreating from denial to nit-picking is at least some progress.
  - graemep 2y ago
    Any disagreement with what you want to think is "denialism", any undeniable facts you do not like are "nitpicking" The "deniers" are clearly right about one thing - rational argument is not welcome.
ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
I've noticed that myself and attributed it to the site having a large percentage of U.S. readers. It's annoying when there's scientific studies and then a lot of the comments take a particular political stance about the topic. The submission itself usually disappears from the front page very quickly too which might be because of the low quality comments.
- Tainnor 2y ago
  > a lot of the comments take a particular political stance about the topic. And oftentimes, these political stances are US-centric and don't make sense to anyone else, e.g. you might have an article about the efficacy of masks and then you'll read a dozen comments saying that "Fauci lied to us", which is completely irrelevant to anyone not living in the US (if you really wanted to generalise it, you'd have to claim that politicians in most countries lied to their people which IMHO is a much harder sell, but whatever).
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    Whilst much of Europe is well past climate denialism, with the exception of the petro-fascist state of Russia, there's still an active English-speaking denialist community in the UK, less so in politics than in the largely right-wing / conservative press, with such people as Matt Ridley leading that brigade. I spend a great deal of time reading and listening to news from across Europe, and the degree to which climate, degrowth, and energy transition are treated as mainstream topics is far ahead of the US, another petro-state. (Notably, Norway doesn't seem to have followed the lead of other petro-states in climate denial that I'm aware, though its own oil-wealth legacy is distinctive on several grounds.)
- dang 2y ago
  FWIW, all those posts are coming from IP addresses that map to the EU. I think many (most?) are by the same person. About 50% of HN users were in the US, last time I looked at this, but it was years ago.
  - 2y ago
dredmorbius 2y ago
There are topics HN has extreme difficulty in discussing rationally, one of my prime disappointments with the site.[1] There are also clues in HN's moderation, in guidelines, by members, by mods, and by automated processes, which may give some hints as to how to best address this. HN guidelines include a number of elements which might be used against disinformation / denialist comments, specifically: - Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. - Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. - Please don't post shallow dismissals. But most particularly these two: - Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Virtually all denialist points are in fact generic tangents and Internet tropes. That they're also by all appearances based on shallow (if any) reading of the specific article in question is all the more damning. - Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity. I've discussed both these two points in emails with dang, and suspect that applying them has significant traction. The out-of-the-woodwork aspect of this suggests that accounts are engaged in ideological battle. I'd watched this post as, early in the US/SV day, multiple shallow takes and tropes (most though not all now strongly downvoted or flagged) appeared on this topic. Long before any substative and science-backed discussion appeared. The one apparently substantive denialist take was from a twenty-year-old study which, for some reason, omits much of the past twenty-years alarming increase in flood frequency and severity (now flagged comment: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41646319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41646319>). I'm seeing both "green" (recently-created) and some rather familiar accounts expressing denialist views. And yes, I've been tracking some of the less-substantive / useful contributors to HN for a while now. It's a small set but they can effectively steer discussion, especially if posting early to a thread. Member flags and voting contribute somewhat to post and discussion quality, and here again on contentious topics what often seems to be occurring is a great deal of strongly motivated voting and flagging activity. I may partake of that myself, though I believe, with some basis in underlying science and facts, that my own actions are strongly justified. (I am not in the denialist camp, should that not have been sufficiently clear already.) That's something of a given, though mods can take actions on flags to some extent. Mods will wade in sometimes, though for the most part their time and attention are quite limited. They may be summoned by email to hn@ycombinator.com. Responses generally occur, though I'm noting these are often many hours delayed of late. Automated moderation applies to specific sites (most general news sites are modestly penalised by HN, they remain among its most frequent and highly-voted sites), and more specifically for this discussion, the "flamewar detector". This is a heuristic that posts with > ~40 votes with a comments:votes ration > 1 (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36926236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36926236>). I've suggested "spiciness" as an alternate name for this. Whilst it does work pretty well in many cases, it seems to unfairly penalise precisely the highly-contentious threads which HN already has difficulty in discussing. I'd argue that that characteristic cuts against HN's prime directive, of stimulating intellectual curiosity (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308>) and [T]o make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: civil and substantial" (<https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html>). If anyone could suggest ways of distinguishing truly flamey threads from those which are substantive-but-spicey, I'd love to hear them, and I suspect mods might as well. What's most frustrating is that the trolls, flames, disinfo warriors, etc., all manage to frustrate substantive discussion. I find it's best not to engage significantly with them, other than to provide a single succinct rebuttal, e.g., pointing out that an article claiming no increase in high-water events dates back two decades. I also suspect that dang gets frustrated with the disinfo aspect as well.[2] One of the best ways to counter thread-derailment, which submitters can undertake, is to post a thoughtful, considered, comment which highlights a key aspect of an article. HN is reactive, and such comments tend to get upvoted and, though drawing critical "no, but" responses, also typically draw "yes, and" responses which further emphasize key points, facts, arguments, and related materials. Posting such a comment even if apparently after a thread has derailed can also perform surprisingly well. I've adopted this practice to some success. Both are far more effective than complaining about behaviour. Oh, and email the mods. I'll be doing so after posting this comment, linking it as my broader complaint. I do believe there's some opportunity for improvement here. ________________________________ Notes: 1. A couple of earlier mentions in a recent comment (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41569514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41569514>) and eight-year-old post (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19694881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19694881>). 2. As evidence, Algolia search of "by:dang frustrating", which turns up quite a mix of comments, though some touch on this element: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20frustrating&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>.
blueflow 2y ago
> Is science denialism reaching even folks here? Reaching from where? You are responding to the source of it - emotionally charged language in journalistic reporting.

by piva00 2y ago

pjc50 2y ago

HN audience is both reflexively contrarian (will argue with any article on any subject), and also surprisingly rightwing (exposed to climate change denialists).

alephnerd 2y ago
There is a surprisingly vocal and toxic community that are fringe members on both sides of the aisle on HN. Hypothetically a good thing, but in action it tends to derail most conversations. The whole COVID Pandemic, the 2020 election, (edit: and the shutdown of SlateStarCodex) definetly brought a lot of nuts out of the woodwork, and they never left. Edit: Here's an example below. It's one account that I've had significant arguments with before. In addition, it's also a "new" (post-2021) account, ime all of whom don't tend to provide the level of discourse comparable to earlier HN users (yes, I recognize the irony as a combative newish throwaway) There was a large increase in HN usewebase around that time when the SlateStarCodex forum shut down.
- typeofhuman 2y ago
  Who were "the nuts" during the COVID pandemic? The ones wishing unemployment, imprisonment, and death upon the people who didn't want to get the vaccine? The ones who insisted on forcing kids to were masks? Or the ones who silenced scientists who held differing view points from the mainstream narrative or challenged the efficacy of masks? Or the ones who were saying Ivermectin was for horses? Or the ones who said if you get the vaccine you won't catch or spread COVID?
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > Ivermectin was for horses It's for worms. If you have a persistent infection of parasitic horses, it's probably not going to do much good.
    - _djo_ 2y ago
      What they're getting confused with is that as the craze hit and Ivermectin supplies ran low, some people were buying it from veterinary supply stores in formulations meant for horses. People were, quite rightly, saying that taking medicine formulations meant for horses was a bad idea, given the potentially non-human-friendly additional ingredients and the difficulty in keeping within safe dosages.
- Tainnor 2y ago
  > The whole COVID Pandemic and the 2020 election definetly brought a lot of nuts out of the woodwork, and they never left. HN was downright insufferable during the pandemic, it really made me think about leaving. Thankfully, nowadays the "bad" topics (mostly politically very polarised ones) tend to be fewer and can more easily be avoided.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    > it really made me think about leaving Same here, except it just made me combative on HN. I'm waiting for the day dang blocks my account for a violation AND deletes all my posts, because YC won't honor a CCPA request without proof of identity, and I'm a bit too close for comfort with the YC community so I do not want to furnish that to him or YC. If there was a way to filter accounts created after 2021, or with a polarity score, I'd be happy staying on here, but at this point it's a form of social media addiction due to the dopamine rush of the occasionally level headed conversation and debate.
Tainnor 2y ago
> surprisingly rightwing If I try to put it into (very reductive) descriptive terms, I might say that the "left" puts more emphasis on the fact that people are victims of circumstances, while the "right" puts more emphasis on the idea that everyone's the architect of their own destiny. Both of these perspectives are correct to some extent - you could argue about it endlessly, from a philosophical point of view. But it's maybe also not that surprising that people who are (to some extent) aligned with a hacker ethos and have had success in life by working on hard problems would find that second point of view much more enticing - after all, it's much more satisfying to think that your success is due to your own virtue than due to your luck (when it the end, it may very well be both). There are of course also sometimes elements of hypocrisy in it, in situations where HN users feel they have less agency. While there is a strong (though definitely not unchallenged) sentiment among a segment of the userbase that companies should do whatever they want when it comes to their products and business practices, you very rarely see that same sentiment applied when it comes to things that affect developers in their daily work, such as home office, meetings, Scrum, etc.
yongjik 2y ago
Also a surprisingly large number of them are libertarians, whose view is that government can never do anything right and if anybody claims a government intervention (or a concerted society-level effort) is necessary then they are lying. Climate change is, almost by definition, something that cannot be solved at individual level. It must be tackled at the society level. Which makes it a lie in their worldview. Don't ask me, I could never understand the libertarian position.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  I've put some effort into doing so. Much of the mainstream right-libertarian rhetoric seems to trace most directly to Murray Rothbard and to a lesser degree Robert Nozick (though he distanced himself from that somewhat later in life), with strong supporting roles from Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, von Mises, and others. The institutional support is strongly tied to the Kochs, the Cato Institute, and a large group of aligned propaganda mills through the Atlas Network, comprised of 500+ partners in 100+ countries, to quote the network itself. The greatest number are in the US (181) and Europe (157), with a disproportionate number in the English-language speaking Canada (11) and Australia (10): <https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Atlas_Network https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Atlas_Network> <https://www.atlasnetwork.org/partners https://www.atlasnetwork.org/partners> Somewhat interestingly, few of the RLs I've encountered seem even aware of this legacy, with many appearing to think that they'd reached an identical set of conclusions (and rhetoric) through their own self-directed free thinking... The Atlas Network itself is strongly tied to the Mont Pelerin Society. Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe edited an excellent history of that movement, The Raod from Mont Pelerin (2015): <https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674088344 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674088344>
dredmorbius 2y ago
I've had both views, and still think that the first is fairly accurate. I'm no longer so certain that HN is strongly right-wing. There are definitely right-wing members, and so long as they act within HN's guidelines that's possibly a Good Thing in the spirit of airing a range of views across the spectrum (not in its more recent psychiatric sense), which would include debunking fallacious and calling out of actively dangerous views. From what I've been able to directly observe,[1] both left- and right-wing political harrangues and advocacy seem to fare poorly. Right-wing think tanks, Reason being the notable exception, are rarely linked to HN. Most news stories come from largely centrist sources, with the NY Times and WSJ both being amongst the most frequently hitting the front page. (Both have seen a sharp drop in front-page appearances as their respective paywalls have tightened, NYT falling to < 25% of its prior frequency, a point I'd like to see explored in detail as journalism's fight for survival continues.) Ideological talking points / memes tend to be low-effort, regurgitations, and easy to post to threads, especially early. And I suspect, with some basis in media theory, that this tends to favour the populist right.[2] This post itself has seen a sharp reshuffling (which is continuing as I make some later comments to it, on that specific topic) as votes and flags take effect. The previously top-ranked comment is now (quite rightfully IMO) flagged: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41646319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41646319>), along with numerous others. Unfortunately overall substantive discussion and story placement on the front page have both suffered as a consequence (points I've made in email to dang). ________________________________ Notes: 1. <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/tagged/HackerNewsAnalytics https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/tagged/HackerNewsAnalytics> and <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adredmorbius%20%22front%20page%22%20activity&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...> will point to much of this. 2. See generally the Frankfurt School's work. Dwight MacDonald's "A THeory of Mass Culture" (1953) develops the idea <https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDonald_-_A_Theory_of_Mass_Culture.pdf https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDon...>, as does Umberto Eco's "Ur Fascism" (1995) <https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/https://www.nybo...>.

llamaimperative 2y ago

It’s the Silicon Valley wannabe intellectualism that has somehow allied itself with contrarianism. They just reflexively think the consensus view is wrong because daddy Thiel said you can make big money that way. “The Contrarians”, of course, is its own silly tribe of lemmings that produces its opinions from its identity first and foremost.

alephnerd 2y ago
> Silicon Valley wannabe intellectualism I've noticed the fringe hot takes tends to occur around this time of day on HN, which is 5am in SV (some of us wake up very early to run/bike without getting run over, as well as answer EMEA emails). Most users at this time of day are European (who tend to be German, Eastern European, and British ime) and some East Coasters. Mainstream HN doesn't kick in until 4-5 hours from now.
- ajfhag 2y ago
  I would say that Europeans are entitled to describe the actual weather in Europe as opposed to the SV narrative of it.
  - Tainnor 2y ago
    I have no idea what GP was trying to say with his "it's mostly European users" comment, but as a European who does worry about climate change, I don't think that climate change denialism is somehow less extreme in the US than in Europe.
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      > "it's mostly European users" comment I meant it isn't West Coast users on HN at this time of day. It's mostly European users before transitioning to East Coast users It's an international forum, and depending on the time of day, HN's tone changes significantly
      - 2y ago

graemep 2y ago

> Just a glimpse of the article shows there's some research behind making the point of the headline, still people feel the need to comment on their feelings to deny it possibly could be due to climate change. because "due to" is simplistic when we are dealing with multiple factors. heavier rain might be more common due to climate change, but it causes a lot more flooding than it otherwise would because of the blocking of drainage etc. > today’s climate, which has warmed by about 1.3C Warmed by 1.3°C against what benchmark?

timeon 2y ago
I guess retreating from denial to nit-picking is at least some progress.
- graemep 2y ago
  Any disagreement with what you want to think is "denialism", any undeniable facts you do not like are "nitpicking" The "deniers" are clearly right about one thing - rational argument is not welcome.

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago

I've noticed that myself and attributed it to the site having a large percentage of U.S. readers. It's annoying when there's scientific studies and then a lot of the comments take a particular political stance about the topic. The submission itself usually disappears from the front page very quickly too which might be because of the low quality comments.

Tainnor 2y ago
> a lot of the comments take a particular political stance about the topic. And oftentimes, these political stances are US-centric and don't make sense to anyone else, e.g. you might have an article about the efficacy of masks and then you'll read a dozen comments saying that "Fauci lied to us", which is completely irrelevant to anyone not living in the US (if you really wanted to generalise it, you'd have to claim that politicians in most countries lied to their people which IMHO is a much harder sell, but whatever).
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  Whilst much of Europe is well past climate denialism, with the exception of the petro-fascist state of Russia, there's still an active English-speaking denialist community in the UK, less so in politics than in the largely right-wing / conservative press, with such people as Matt Ridley leading that brigade. I spend a great deal of time reading and listening to news from across Europe, and the degree to which climate, degrowth, and energy transition are treated as mainstream topics is far ahead of the US, another petro-state. (Notably, Norway doesn't seem to have followed the lead of other petro-states in climate denial that I'm aware, though its own oil-wealth legacy is distinctive on several grounds.)
dang 2y ago
FWIW, all those posts are coming from IP addresses that map to the EU. I think many (most?) are by the same person. About 50% of HN users were in the US, last time I looked at this, but it was years ago.
- 2y ago

dredmorbius 2y ago

There are topics HN has extreme difficulty in discussing rationally, one of my prime disappointments with the site.[1] There are also clues in HN's moderation, in guidelines, by members, by mods, and by automated processes, which may give some hints as to how to best address this. HN guidelines include a number of elements which might be used against disinformation / denialist comments, specifically: - Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. - Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. - Please don't post shallow dismissals. But most particularly these two: - Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Virtually all denialist points are in fact generic tangents and Internet tropes. That they're also by all appearances based on shallow (if any) reading of the specific article in question is all the more damning. - Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity. I've discussed both these two points in emails with dang, and suspect that applying them has significant traction. The out-of-the-woodwork aspect of this suggests that accounts are engaged in ideological battle. I'd watched this post as, early in the US/SV day, multiple shallow takes and tropes (most though not all now strongly downvoted or flagged) appeared on this topic. Long before any substative and science-backed discussion appeared. The one apparently substantive denialist take was from a twenty-year-old study which, for some reason, omits much of the past twenty-years alarming increase in flood frequency and severity (now flagged comment: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41646319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41646319>). I'm seeing both "green" (recently-created) and some rather familiar accounts expressing denialist views. And yes, I've been tracking some of the less-substantive / useful contributors to HN for a while now. It's a small set but they can effectively steer discussion, especially if posting early to a thread. Member flags and voting contribute somewhat to post and discussion quality, and here again on contentious topics what often seems to be occurring is a great deal of strongly motivated voting and flagging activity. I may partake of that myself, though I believe, with some basis in underlying science and facts, that my own actions are strongly justified. (I am not in the denialist camp, should that not have been sufficiently clear already.) That's something of a given, though mods can take actions on flags to some extent. Mods will wade in sometimes, though for the most part their time and attention are quite limited. They may be summoned by email to hn@ycombinator.com. Responses generally occur, though I'm noting these are often many hours delayed of late. Automated moderation applies to specific sites (most general news sites are modestly penalised by HN, they remain among its most frequent and highly-voted sites), and more specifically for this discussion, the "flamewar detector". This is a heuristic that posts with > ~40 votes with a comments:votes ration > 1 (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36926236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36926236>). I've suggested "spiciness" as an alternate name for this. Whilst it does work pretty well in many cases, it seems to unfairly penalise precisely the highly-contentious threads which HN already has difficulty in discussing. I'd argue that that characteristic cuts against HN's prime directive, of stimulating intellectual curiosity (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308>) and [T]o make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: civil and substantial" (<https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html>). If anyone could suggest ways of distinguishing truly flamey threads from those which are substantive-but-spicey, I'd love to hear them, and I suspect mods might as well. What's most frustrating is that the trolls, flames, disinfo warriors, etc., all manage to frustrate substantive discussion. I find it's best not to engage significantly with them, other than to provide a single succinct rebuttal, e.g., pointing out that an article claiming no increase in high-water events dates back two decades. I also suspect that dang gets frustrated with the disinfo aspect as well.[2] One of the best ways to counter thread-derailment, which submitters can undertake, is to post a thoughtful, considered, comment which highlights a key aspect of an article. HN is reactive, and such comments tend to get upvoted and, though drawing critical "no, but" responses, also typically draw "yes, and" responses which further emphasize key points, facts, arguments, and related materials. Posting such a comment even if apparently after a thread has derailed can also perform surprisingly well. I've adopted this practice to some success. Both are far more effective than complaining about behaviour. Oh, and email the mods. I'll be doing so after posting this comment, linking it as my broader complaint. I do believe there's some opportunity for improvement here. ________________________________ Notes: 1. A couple of earlier mentions in a recent comment (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41569514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41569514>) and eight-year-old post (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19694881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19694881>). 2. As evidence, Algolia search of "by:dang frustrating", which turns up quite a mix of comments, though some touch on this element: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20frustrating&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>.

blueflow 2y ago

> Is science denialism reaching even folks here? Reaching from where? You are responding to the source of it - emotionally charged language in journalistic reporting.