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Weird what counts as "negative" on HN. Question something politely? You're being negative. Criticize something? Negative. Describe it in a way someone might int
by ryandrake 1y ago
Weird what counts as "negative" on HN. Question something politely? You're being negative. Criticize something? Negative. Describe it in a way someone might interpret badly? Negative. Sometimes it seems like anything that's not breathless, unconditional praise is considered being negative and curmudgeonly. It's turning into a "positive thoughts only" zone.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 1y agoIt's ok to be negative sometimes. Not just ok, but a necessary mechanism for course-correction. So even if sometimes comments might be negative, that is fine. Now of course I'm not including aggressive or rude posts, because they are a different category.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- phyzix5761 1y agoThis is such a good comment. I have nothing but positive things to say about it. It's amazing!
- zenoprax 1y agoYou're absolutely right! /s
- perching_aix 1y agoAre you saying this based on the dataset shared? Like you inspected some randomized subset of the sentiment analysis and this is what you found?
- camillomiller 1y agoThere is a relevant number of power users that also flag everything that is critical of big tech and won’t fit their frame as well, sending it into oblivion, regardless of the community rules and clear support from other voting members. But also calling that out is seen as negative and not constructive, and there goes any attempt at a discussion.
- jaredklewis 1y agoHow do you know who flags submissions?
- camillomiller 1y agoi don’t, but I know certain users have a strong flagging penchant. check my recent submission, the vitriol it received, and read this https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/27/youll-never-guess-which-recent-df-article-was-flagged-at-hacker-news https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/27/youll-never-gue...
- intended 1y agoYour submission was earnest, but it’s also impossible to answer fairly, because your framing is not neutral. Many people will argue that they do good at Meta, and that they strive to do good. Their results probably are good too - meta is vast so statistically you will find good work and good outcomes. Those people are already painted as evil, so why would they engage with the question ? Even if you are genuine and earnest?
- do_not_redeem 1y agoThe actual data does not support Gruber's perception. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43494735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43494735
- jakeydus 1y agoCalling the comments on the meta post ‘vitriol’ is a bit on the hyperbolic side don’t you think?
- camillomiller 1y agoLuckily they are not the top comments, but there were some of the nastiest I’ve seen allowed on here. Some users went as far as creating throwaway accounts to post nasty comments. It never ever happened to me on HN, and it’s a Reddit-level toxicity that I’ve never seen displayed here. Clearly my post struck a nerve.
- mrexroad 1y ago“If you enjoyed the {service}, please rate me 5-Stars, anything less is considered negative poor service” Not sure if part of a broader trend, or a simply reflection of it, but when mentoring/coaching middle and high school aged kids, I’m finding they struggle to accept feedback in anyway other than “I failed.” A few years back, the same age group was more likely to accept and view feedback as an opportunity so long as you led with praising strengths. Now it’s like threading a needle every time.
- kzs0 1y agoI’m relatively young and I noticed this trend in myself and my peers. I wonder if it has to do with the increasingly true fact that if you’re not one of the “best” you’ll be lucky to have some amount of financial stability. The stakes for kids have never been higher, and the pressure for perfection from their parents has similarly never been higher.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Dylan16807 1y agoI would generally file questioning and criticism under "negative". Are you interpreting "negative" as a synonym for bad or something?
- nrabulinski 1y agoI would generally file questioning and criticism under “neutral”, in some very specific cases “positive” or “negative”. Are you interpreting “negative” as “anything not strictly positive”?
- Dylan16807 1y agoQuestions can be neutral but questioning is probably negative, and criticism is solidly negative in my book. So no I am not doing that. In what world does "criticism" not default to "negative"?
- OnlineGladiator 1y agoHave you never heard of constructive criticism? https://i.redd.it/s4pxz4eabxh71.jpg https://i.redd.it/s4pxz4eabxh71.jpg
- Dylan16807 1y agoTo perform constructive criticism you need to be able to say that something has flaws. Which is saying something negative.
- dijksterhuis 1y agoHmmmm, only if you assume it's a common possibility for X to be perfect from the outset. Most things are imperfect. Assuming X is imperfect and has flaws isn't being negative, it's just being realistic. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough pal.
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- everdrive 1y agoHN is a great site, but (at least currently) the comments section is primarily populated by people. I agree with what you've said, and it applies far wider than HN.
- throw10920 1y agoPart of this is driven by people who have realized that they can undermine others' thinking skills by using the right emotional language. For instance, in a lot of threads on some new technology or idea, one of the top comments is "I'm amazed by the negativity here on HN. This is a cool <thing> and even though it's not perfect we should appreciate the effort the author has put in" - where the other toplevel comments are legitimate technical criticism (usually in a polite manner, no less). I've seen this same comment, in various flavors, at the top of dozens of HN thread in the past couple of years. Some of these people are being genuine, but others are literally just engaging in amigdala-hijacking because they want to shut down criticism of something they like, and that contributes to the "everything that isn't gushing positivity is negative" effect that you're seeing.
- sameerds 1y agoI am amazed by your negativity at comments written to support all the gushing praise. It's really cool to support cool things and even though those comments are not perfect we should appreciate the effort that people put into making HN a more positive space.
- Jensson 1y ago> we should appreciate the effort that people put into making HN a more positive space. Why should we? I don't want people to be more positive here, I want people to find more holes and argue more, why should I appreciate effort to change the site to something I don't want it to be?
- throw10920 1y agoI'm amazed by how harmful your comment is. (see how adding "I'm amazed" doesn't really do anything for the substance of your comment, and is just manipulative?) The HN guidelines are pretty clear that "gushing praise" and "making HN a more positive space" is not what HN is for. Have you read them? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. "Gushing praise" is the opposite of intellectual curiosity - it's anti-intellectual. That kind of thing is categorically inappropriate for HN. It doesn't belong here, and comments that try to advance it also don't belong here. It's also pretty clear that treating everything with gushing praise is an incredibly bad idea. If someone expressed a repulsive opinion like "maybe we should segregate people based on race", then you wouldn't try to "make HN a more positive space" by accepting that sentiment, would you? Along another axis, if someone is trying to learn a skill or create something new, and they're doing a very bad job of it, then unconditional positivity hurts them by making them think that what's bad is good, and actively inhibiting them from improving. But that's pretty close to what you're advocating for, given what I wrote in the comment that you are responding to. Notice also that I'm not advocating for people to be mean-spirited or thoughtlessly critical on HN, either. You should read my comment more carefully to try to determine what I'm actually saying before you respond.
- popalchemist 1y agoMost people do not realize it, but the tech industry is largely predicated on a cult which many people belong to without ever realizing it, which is the cult of "scientism", or in the case of pro-AI types, a subset of that, which is accelerationism. Nietzsche and Jung jointly had the insight that in the wake of the enlightenment, God had been dethroned, yet humans remained in need of a God. For many, that God is simply material power - namely money. But for tech bros, it is power in the form of technology, and AI is the avatar of that. So the emotional process which results in the knee-jerk reactions to even the slightest and most valid critiques of AI (and the value structure underpinning Silicon Valley's pursuit of AGI) comes from the same place that religous nuts come from when they perceive an infringement upon their own agenda (Christianity, Islam, pick your flavor -- the reactivity is the same).
- DyslexicAtheist 1y agoyour Nietzsche reference made me wonder about one of his other sayings that if you stare into the abyss for too long the abyss will stare into you. And that seems fitting with how AI responses are always phrased in a way that make you feel like you're the genius for even asking a specific question. And if we spend more time engaging with AI (which tricks us emotionally) will we also change our behavior and expect everyone else treating us like a genius in every interaction? What NLP does AI perform on humans that we haven't become aware of yet?
- viridian 1y agoIt absolutely will change us. Just like how the internet has changed how people read and search for information, or cell phones have changed the acceptable level of communication between parents and teenage children. As a tiny micro example, I think Reddit's /r/myBoyfriendisAI is an early glimpse into something that's going to become far, far more common with time. One person talking to ChatGPT and reaching a state where they receive and accept a marriage proposal is a novelty. 100,000 people doing the same is something quite different.
- dns_snek 1y ago> will we also change our behavior Yes, absolutely, we're shaped by everything we do, every interaction we have and every behavioral pattern we repeat over time. I don't think that's a controversial idea in the slightest. The extent of this is going to vary from person to person and probably depend on what proportion of time you spend interacting with bots vs well-adjusted humans and the younger people are, the stronger the effect will be, generally speaking.
- duxup 1y agoI find asking questions on the internet are increasingly seen as a negative, right out of the gate, no other questions asked. I get it to some extent, a lot of people looking to inject doubt and their own ideas show up with some sort of Socratic method that really is meant to drive the conversation to a specific point, not honest. But it also means actually honest questions are often voted or shouted down. It seems like the methodology of discussion on the internet now only allows for everyone to show up with very concrete opinions and your opinion will then be judged. No opinion or honest questions... citizens of the internet assume the worst if you're anything but in lock step with them.
- formerphotoj 1y agoHence, the "dark forest" theory of the Internet is no longer theory.
- bfg_9k 1y agoI don't get it. Asking questions is never a hostile thing, regardless of the context. Honest or not, questions are simply.. that. Questions. If someone is able to find a way to take offence from a question being asked, that's pathetic.
- duxup 1y ago>Asking questions is never a hostile thing I think many people are looking for context before diving into a conversation, I think that's a human thing. It can be a waste of time / disappointing to engage in a conversation and find the other person is really not participating and is there to drive the conversation to their point.
- TylerE 1y agoWhen did you stop beating your kids?
- zahlman 1y agoWhenever there's a submission about something unpleasant or undesirable happening in the real world, the comment section fills with people trying to connect those things to their preferred political hobby-horses, so that their outgroups can take the blame as the ultimate cause of all that's wrong with the world. Contrarily, stories about human achievement won't simply draw a crowd of admirers in my experience, but instead there's quite a bit of complaint about outgroup members supposedly seeking to interfere with future successes (by following their own values, as understood from outside rather than inside). And most people here seem to think that's fine; but it's not in line with what I understood when I read the guidelines, and it absolutely strikes me as negativity.
- EGreg 1y agoHey, why so negative man?
- TylerE 1y agoAlways has been. It's a VC chumbox.