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Part 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 lo

Part 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 ago
I 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 ago
  I'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.
scyzoryk_xyz 1y ago
Part of this is driven by people engaged in repetitive feedback loops. The links offer a kind of rhythm and the responses usually follow a recognizable pattern. The funny thing about this here audience is that it is made up of the kinds of folks you would see in all those cringey OpenAI videos. I.e. the sort of person who can do this whole technical criticism all day long but wouldn't be able to identify the correct emotional response if it hit them over the head. And that's what we're all here for - to talk shop. Thing is - we don't actually influence others' thinking with the right emotional language just by leaving an entry behind on HN. We're not engaging in "amigdala-hijacking" to "shut down criticism" when we respond to a comment. There is a bunch of repetitive online cliché's in play here, but it would be a stretch to say that there are these amigdala-hijackers. Intentionally steering the thread and redefining what negativity is.
fumeux_fume 1y ago
Sometimes there little to zero negativity or criticism and yet, the top post is "I'm surprised by the negativity..." It's disheartening to see Reddit-level manipulation of the comment section on HN, but I accept that shift is happening to some degree here.
- throw10920 1y ago
  Heh, half the time I see that one comment, first five or so top-level comments are just straight-up praise of $THING. People aren't being aggressive enough about their downvotes and flags, methinks.
jodrellblank 1y ago
Probably that's good? Look at this Nim thread I just close-tabbed[1] including: - "you should reevaluate your experience level and seniority." - "Sounds more like "Expert Hobbyist" than "Expert Programmer"." - "Go is hardly a replacement with its weaker type system." - "Wouldn’t want to have to pay attention ;-)" - "I'm surprised how devs are afraid to look behind the curtain of a library" - "I know the author is making shit up" - "popular with the wannabes" Hacker News comments are absolutely riddled with this kind of empty put-down that isn't worth the diskspace it's saved on let alone the combined hours of reader-lifetime wasted reading it; is it so bad to have a reminder that there's more to a discussion than shitting on things and people? > "legitimate technical criticism" So what? One can make correct criticism of anything. Just because you can think of a criticism doesn't make it useful, relevant, meaningful, interesting, or valuable. Some criticism might be, but not because it is criticism and accurate. > "they can undermine others' thinking skills" Are you seriously arguing that not posting a flood of every legitimate criticism means the reader's thinking skills must have been undermined? That the only time it's reasonable to be positive, optimistic, enthusiastic, or supportive, is for something which is literally perfect? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44931415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44931415
- throw10920 1y ago
  > Probably that's good? Amigdala-hijacking, emotional manipulation, and categorical dismissiveness of others' criticisms are clearly not good. > Look at this Nim thread Yes, I'm looking at it, and I'm seeing a lot of good criticism (including the second-to-top comment[1], some of which is out of love for the language. You cherry-picked a tiny subset of comments that are negative, over half of which aren't even about the topic of the post - which means that they're completely unrelated to my comment, and you either put them there because you didn't read my comment carefully before replying to it, or you intentionally put them there to try to dishonestly bolster your argument. As an example of the effect I'm referring to, this recent thread on STG[2], the top comment of which starts with "Lots of bad takes in this thread" as a way of dismissing every single valid criticism in the rest of the submission. > is it so bad to have a reminder that there's more to a discussion than shitting on things and people? This is a dishonest portrayal of what's going on, which is that, instead of downvoting and flagging those empty put-downs, or responding to specific bad comments, malicious users post a sneering, value-less, emotionally manipulative comment at the toplevel of a submission that vaguely gestures to "negative" comments in the rest of the thread, that dismisses every legitimate criticism along with all of the bad ones. This is "sneering", and it's against the HN guidelines, as well as dishonest and value-less. > So what? One can make correct criticism of anything. Just because you can think of a criticism doesn't make it useful, relevant, meaningful, interesting, or valuable. Some criticism might be, but not because it is criticism and accurate. I never claimed that all criticism is "useful, relevant, meaningful, interesting, or valuable". Don't put words in my mouth. > Are you seriously arguing that not posting a flood of every legitimate criticism means the reader's thinking skills must have been undermined? That the only time it's reasonable to be positive, optimistic, enthusiastic, or supportive, is for something which is literally perfect? I never claimed this either. It appears that, given the repeated misinterpretations of my points, and the malicious technique of trying to pretend that I made claims that I didn't, you're one of those dishonest people that resorts to emotional manipulation to try to get their way, because they know they can't actually make a coherent argument for it. Ironic (or, perhaps not?) that someone defending emotional manipulation and dishonesty resorts to it themselves. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44931674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44931674 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44447202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44447202
paulmooreparks 1y ago
Which is a shame, because I like to share my personal projects here because I know it'll get torn to shreds by an army of super hackers (as opposed to an LLM, which will tell me, "Great idea!" no matter what I propose).
- throw10920 1y ago
  Yes, there are a lot of really smart people on HN that will relatively politely give you constructive criticism that would be hard to get elsewhere. And I'm not defending people being genuinely mean-spirited or just dunking on people's projects, either - I downvote and flag that stuff because it doesn't belong either.

sameerds 1y ago

I 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 ago
I'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.

scyzoryk_xyz 1y ago

Part of this is driven by people engaged in repetitive feedback loops. The links offer a kind of rhythm and the responses usually follow a recognizable pattern. The funny thing about this here audience is that it is made up of the kinds of folks you would see in all those cringey OpenAI videos. I.e. the sort of person who can do this whole technical criticism all day long but wouldn't be able to identify the correct emotional response if it hit them over the head. And that's what we're all here for - to talk shop. Thing is - we don't actually influence others' thinking with the right emotional language just by leaving an entry behind on HN. We're not engaging in "amigdala-hijacking" to "shut down criticism" when we respond to a comment. There is a bunch of repetitive online cliché's in play here, but it would be a stretch to say that there are these amigdala-hijackers. Intentionally steering the thread and redefining what negativity is.

fumeux_fume 1y ago

Sometimes there little to zero negativity or criticism and yet, the top post is "I'm surprised by the negativity..." It's disheartening to see Reddit-level manipulation of the comment section on HN, but I accept that shift is happening to some degree here.

throw10920 1y ago
Heh, half the time I see that one comment, first five or so top-level comments are just straight-up praise of $THING. People aren't being aggressive enough about their downvotes and flags, methinks.

jodrellblank 1y ago

Probably that's good? Look at this Nim thread I just close-tabbed[1] including: - "you should reevaluate your experience level and seniority." - "Sounds more like "Expert Hobbyist" than "Expert Programmer"." - "Go is hardly a replacement with its weaker type system." - "Wouldn’t want to have to pay attention ;-)" - "I'm surprised how devs are afraid to look behind the curtain of a library" - "I know the author is making shit up" - "popular with the wannabes" Hacker News comments are absolutely riddled with this kind of empty put-down that isn't worth the diskspace it's saved on let alone the combined hours of reader-lifetime wasted reading it; is it so bad to have a reminder that there's more to a discussion than shitting on things and people? > "legitimate technical criticism" So what? One can make correct criticism of anything. Just because you can think of a criticism doesn't make it useful, relevant, meaningful, interesting, or valuable. Some criticism might be, but not because it is criticism and accurate. > "they can undermine others' thinking skills" Are you seriously arguing that not posting a flood of every legitimate criticism means the reader's thinking skills must have been undermined? That the only time it's reasonable to be positive, optimistic, enthusiastic, or supportive, is for something which is literally perfect? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44931415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44931415

throw10920 1y ago
> Probably that's good? Amigdala-hijacking, emotional manipulation, and categorical dismissiveness of others' criticisms are clearly not good. > Look at this Nim thread Yes, I'm looking at it, and I'm seeing a lot of good criticism (including the second-to-top comment[1], some of which is out of love for the language. You cherry-picked a tiny subset of comments that are negative, over half of which aren't even about the topic of the post - which means that they're completely unrelated to my comment, and you either put them there because you didn't read my comment carefully before replying to it, or you intentionally put them there to try to dishonestly bolster your argument. As an example of the effect I'm referring to, this recent thread on STG[2], the top comment of which starts with "Lots of bad takes in this thread" as a way of dismissing every single valid criticism in the rest of the submission. > is it so bad to have a reminder that there's more to a discussion than shitting on things and people? This is a dishonest portrayal of what's going on, which is that, instead of downvoting and flagging those empty put-downs, or responding to specific bad comments, malicious users post a sneering, value-less, emotionally manipulative comment at the toplevel of a submission that vaguely gestures to "negative" comments in the rest of the thread, that dismisses every legitimate criticism along with all of the bad ones. This is "sneering", and it's against the HN guidelines, as well as dishonest and value-less. > So what? One can make correct criticism of anything. Just because you can think of a criticism doesn't make it useful, relevant, meaningful, interesting, or valuable. Some criticism might be, but not because it is criticism and accurate. I never claimed that all criticism is "useful, relevant, meaningful, interesting, or valuable". Don't put words in my mouth. > Are you seriously arguing that not posting a flood of every legitimate criticism means the reader's thinking skills must have been undermined? That the only time it's reasonable to be positive, optimistic, enthusiastic, or supportive, is for something which is literally perfect? I never claimed this either. It appears that, given the repeated misinterpretations of my points, and the malicious technique of trying to pretend that I made claims that I didn't, you're one of those dishonest people that resorts to emotional manipulation to try to get their way, because they know they can't actually make a coherent argument for it. Ironic (or, perhaps not?) that someone defending emotional manipulation and dishonesty resorts to it themselves. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44931674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44931674 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44447202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44447202

paulmooreparks 1y ago

Which is a shame, because I like to share my personal projects here because I know it'll get torn to shreds by an army of super hackers (as opposed to an LLM, which will tell me, "Great idea!" no matter what I propose).

throw10920 1y ago
Yes, there are a lot of really smart people on HN that will relatively politely give you constructive criticism that would be hard to get elsewhere. And I'm not defending people being genuinely mean-spirited or just dunking on people's projects, either - I downvote and flag that stuff because it doesn't belong either.