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Hacker News is a social echo chamber
- andrewcooke 13y agoPope remains Catholic 12 points by BCM43 56 minutes ago | flag | discuss Bear shits in wood 32 points by BCM43 21 minutes ago | flag | discuss
- 001sky 13y agoBut what is important is that the ongoing debates between these opinions be driven by facts
- Karunamon 13y agoIf there's no further facts, what's the point? If discussions 1 through 99 with a given set of facts have produced nothing of any value, why would #100? This is why I think the "techies are sexist" articles are joining the "NSA is evil" articles on the flag pile. There's more often than not no new information, and predictable, boring (and in some cases, flame-filled) conversation follows. By all means, kill this crap and let something more deserving and interesting take its place. The only reason I'm not flagging this article is because it's shown itself to be popular and I'd probably lose the ability as a result. This article is straight up meta noise.
- jiggy2011 13y agoIs there any online discussion place that isn't to some degree an echo chamber?
- afreak 13y agoThat is exactly it. We're all here to discuss the same thing and as a result you begin to see traits of an echo chamber within the comments. It's unavoidable really. What I think HN's biggest problem is story repetition, which can lead to the echo chamber being enlarged. It's not a problem today, but when Snowden's news began to hit HN for days on end, it would have been nice to combine the discussion for all the news stories in order to avoid having other stories drowned out. I am certain that other important news stories were drowned out when the front page was effectively 100% Snowden. This isn't to say that Snowden's story wasn't important (it was and still is), but similar stories from other sources should be able to keep it at the top instead of having multiple discussions on the same topic coming about.
- lmm 13y ago4chan. Anonymous (well, you can use a trip, but you'll be mocked for it). No downvotes. Very limited moderation, and what there is has a lot of transparency. There's, inevitably, a lot of low-level trolling, but you also get some amazingly original insights.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago4chan [...] amazingly original insights. On /b/? Where?
- VLM 13y agoI believe the signal to noise ratio hovering around -20 dB has some inherent linkage with what we're discussing. Different behavior results, sure, but look at the cost. Whats the SNR on HN, -3 dB, -6 dB maybe? Would HN readers tolerate HN turning into mostly garbage with a handful of precious gems?
- kybernetyk 13y ago/b/ is not 4chan. I for one find the /int/ board pretty interesting (less the racist bullshit that's posted from time to time to troll people).
- angersock 13y ago/diy/ has some really great maker resources, /g/ has good consumer information (mixed in with a lot of flamebait; daily programming threads are useless), the cooking board and the comics board have some good stuff. Basically, the reason it can do these things is that nobody takes themselves too seriously--the whole affair is rather tongue in cheek.
- nether 13y ago/trv/ has a remarkable ongoing discussion on living and working in Antarctica: https://boards.4chan.org/trv/res/751390 https://boards.4chan.org/trv/res/751390. There was also one about working on freight ships.
- simias 13y ago
- kmfrk 13y agoCommunities with good moderation, yes. Something Awful and certain subreddits for example.
- the_watcher 13y agoFlamewars != disagreements. Discouraging flamewars (namecalling, counterproductive arguing that devolves into ad hominem and unrelated attacks) doesn't mean it kills stories that generate disagreement and discussion. I've had many a disagreement in HN threads, been convinced that my original stance was wrong, and (I believe) convinced others that their original stance was wrong (or incomplete, or to change something about it). I've also learned a lot from simply posting what my understanding of an issue is and letting those more familiar add to it. The fact that HN does not want to go the way of Usenet/Reddit/4chan/name a forum doesn't make it an echo chamber. I hope people disagree with me in this thread and prove my point.
- mjg59 13y agoReasoned disagreement is obviously easier to deal with than emotional attacks, but topics that incite emotional responses are arguably the most important ones to keep visible - they expose the most contentious points of disagreement in a community. It's certainly true that these angry discussions contain little of value in themselves, but the fact that they exist is valuable. A better compromise would be to limit further comments once a discussion has become overly vitriolic, not to disappear the story that sparked the anger.
- danielweber 13y agoYou can debate about emotional topics, but you need a really active group of moderators. HN's moderators, for good or for ill, seem completely invisible, except when someone is quietly struck by lightning and is hellbanned.
- the_watcher 13y agoThat's not why Hacker News exists. It's to share and discuss things hackers find interesting. It got as popular and important as it is for a reason, and a piece of that reason are the rules that people now are complaining about. There are other places on the internet to vent your outrage.
- mjg59 13y ago
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoStories that discuss the difficulties faced by minorities in our field are summarily disappeared. Really? I've tended to notice the opposite: new ones are constantly appearing, they get lots of comments, inspire heated debates and most sentiments are sympathetic, sometimes to an almost unhealthy and postmodern degree.
- myhf 13y agoThose kinds of stories get attention if they're about a YC company and disappeared otherwise.
- tehwalrus 13y agoI've gotten into several interesting discussions on these topics, only to have them rapidly drop from the front page and/or be killed. In general, I think this should be seen as a much bigger issue than it is on HN. I generally take the view that if everyone is complaining, then the middle ground is being struck. The classic example is the BBC - the BNP (British National Party, nasty fascists) often claim the BBC has a "left wing bias", which makes activists on the centre left laugh out loud, given how much right-wing bias we detect in programmes like the flagship "today" on R4 in the mornings. So, unless both sides are complaining (me and you, the OP and the flaggers, PG, tokenadult and stiff,) something is wrong. :)
- humanrebar 13y agoIn the spirit of interesting discussion and congenial disagreements, I believe you're committing the argument to moderation fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation The existence of two parties arguing does not imply that: 1. All views are more-or-less represented 2. All views fit on a one-dimensional spectrum 3. A middle view is more desirable than either "extreme" view (or even desirable at all).
- tehwalrus 13y agoInteresting, I'll take a look. I also proudly call myself a political centrist, mostly out of the idea that I'm an Empiricist, and all politicians make some extraordinary claims that can't be substantiated and some more moderate ones that overlap and are more likely to be correct - (breathe) which I think may fall under the same fallacy. Food for thought (and re-thought,) thank you. (especially interesting since, as a Lib Dem, I get quite cross about people saying politics fits onto a 1D axis, so I clearly don't even believe the premises of the fallacy in full!) EDIT: from just a few minutes of reading, this concept (which I've held in my mind for a while) makes me think less well of compromise for compromise's sake: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window I probably still think the BBC isn't biased though - especially given the difference between different programmes, even just on R4 the comedy is very left-biased.
- theorique 13y agoIn other words, a place focused on particular subjects (technology, programming, science) collects people with similar life experiences, interests, worldviews, etc.
- kmfrk 13y agoThat kind of thinking betrays the idea of diversity existing within those fields.
- beat 13y agoWhy don't we just admit that this whole post is just a response to offense at a single post getting bopped off the front page because of a flamewar, when some people really want it on the front page? It's a lot easier when we aren't tippy-toeing around the actual issue. Sure, the problems of that post were symptomatic of the broader social algorithms of HN, but I don't think they mean HN's rules and the underlying enforcement patterns are inherently wrong. They just didn't work well in this particular case.
- untog 13y agoWhy don't we just admit that this whole post is just a response to offense at a single post But it isn't, though - the post you replied to was specifically discussing that. The OP said: a place focused on particular subjects [...] collects people with similar life experiences, interests, worldviews, etc. which makes it sound very much like people from different backgrounds are going to face social rejection. If we're fine with that then so be it, but some of us would like to imagine we are more inclusive, and that as a community we could do more. The fact that tech keeps trying to portray itself as a pure meritocracy doesn't help.
- beat 13y agoThe "similar life experiences, interests, worldviews" really refers to being in the IT industry, especially on the startup side of things. I don't think gender or race issues are nearly as much a cause for exclusion here as, say, being a restauranteur rather than a programmer would be. Tech may not be a pure meritocracy, but it's far closer to one than most fields, and most of the discrimination I've seen has come from management, not programmers. Female and non-white engineers are regarded for their capabilities first and foremost. I was just discussing this yesterday with my daughter. She's studying to be a teacher, and is deeply involved with social justice issues (I credit her with improving my sensitivity on gender, which was already pretty good). I was talking about how I go back and forth a bit on what I can or should do to encourage African-American teens to go into IT. One of the advantages that I perceive is that it's the source of a good, secure middle class living with very little racial discrimination relative to other fields. But the disadvantage is that there's very little African-American participation in the industry. I come down on the side of encouragement because we need pioneers, and because good middle-class security is becoming harder to come by in America. But to get back to the original point - the cultural divide around here isn't really about gender or race, which is the point of the OP's essay.
- steven2012 13y agoHN is privately run by pg. He's allowed to set the rules whichever way he wants. Just because the author wants it to be run a certain way doesn't mean that it should. If he doesn't like how it's done and thinks that issues that he believes are important should be discussed, he should make his own news aggregator site, instead of trying to hijack an already-established site for his own agenda. If the majority start disagreeing with the curation of HN articles, then they will leave to other places, like reddit. And frankly, I'm not sure that pg even cares if this happens, he didn't start HN to increase his popularity or his influence.
- gfodor 13y agoUh no. You can criticize HN while also claiming pg has the right to do what he wants. Oh look, the article does just that: "Hacker News is a privately run site and nobody's under any obligation to change how they choose to run it. But the focus on avoiding conflict to such an extent that controversial stories receive less exposure than ones that fit people's existing beliefs doesn't enhance our community. "
- steven2012 13y agoOh look, I never once said the author wasn't allowed to criticize the way HN was run. I said that if he wants something different, then do it himself instead of trying to hijack HN for his purposes.
- the_watcher 13y agoI think I agree with what you mean, but I only agree in practice if this thread was started and is being contributed to by the OP. He can't control if an HNer submits this.
- VLM 13y agoThat's nonsense as management advice. The best way to implement a superior solution is to convince someone to implement it not do it yourself. Delegate! If you have a better way to shovel stuff in bags, the most efficient and profitable way to implement "shovel stuff in bags 2.0" is to convince the guy in charge of 1.0 to upgrade, not go to the immense effort of creating a competitor, or start shoveling yourself. At least not as the very first step. If you want to make a competitor, just do it, you don't need "cover" of some minor 1.0 vs 2.0 issue. Either way its not workin.
- makerops 13y agoI tend to agree with the premise of the article, but found this line from a self described "big government" type, funny: We have always been at war with Eastasia.
- ywyrd 13y agoSo he went to the SJW echo chamber of LJ/DW.
- tehwalrus 13y agobig government != mind control. EDIT: to add, I thought that Orwell actually wrote an essay called "I am on the left" although I can't now find it. He was definitely not right wing - he was just very critical of communism as a supposedly left wing system.
- pjc50 13y agoOrwell participated in the Spanish Civil War, which had two "left" sides (anarchist-syndicalist versus communist) versus the "right" (monarchist-fascist). Within the Communist side, there were further factions (NKVD:Stalinist, POUM:other Marxist). Orwell joined POUM. As a result, he was condemned by Stalinists and had to flee back to England. He spent much of his career warning against Stalinism, from a position on what might be called the social democrat left.
- tehwalrus 13y agoI knew that the British communists (funded by Moscow) refused to give him a journalist visa for Spain, because he wouldn't promise to write whatever they told him to. His writing on Barcelona 1936 is very good, and I visited "Orwell Street"[1] there recently. [1] It's obviously not called that, and it may be a square not a street, but I remember the street sign. :)
- mynewwork 13y agoReading Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" was eye-opening for me, I'd highly recommend it to everyone. In short, while I think communism is roughly the worst idea ever, that book gave me an understanding of the world he lived in and why he was quite rational to view radically left-wing ideas as the best option for that time and place. A functioning, reasonably fair capitalist society like we have in the US today would have been unimaginable or unbelievable based on his life experiences.
- drcode 13y agoWhat HN should do is add a feature where readers can upvote stories so they can have their say about what is on the front page. This would address OP's concerns. </sarcasm>
- mjg59 13y agoStories receive upvotes and reach the front page. Certain topics then tend to be aggressively flagged and vanish off the front page no matter how many upvotes they have.
- jasonlotito 13y agoI don't see an issue with that. There are other venues for discussing certain things. This isn't to say that these topics are bad, just that at the time, they really don't belong here.
- untog 13y agoBut the principle feels odd to me. Flags appear to be more powerful than upvotes. So a minority of users can remove stories the majority wants to see.
- VLM 13y agoMinor correction, most users don't upvote so a small minority of users can remove stories an even smaller minority of users wants to see. Sounds like spam filtering. Too many users are unable to make the distinction between agreeing with a story or feeling its interesting, and correctly evaluating its worth further examination and discussion. On the other hand the flaggers are pretty good at detecting stuff where the discussion will be useless. Example: "Obama is the best president". Well that's going to get upvotes from people who like 'bama and want to tell everyone even though no one wants to hear it, who hate 'bama and want to tell everyone even though no one wants to hear it, people who think they should be more politically active so they don't personally care but in a misguided way think they're doing a public service by upvoting something thats widely agreed as a public good even though it isn't, and people who just like to watch the world burn... But lets face it, the comments are going to be garbage sloganeering at absolute best from both sides, so it get flagged as it should be. Here's a live example from HN new which I don't think is going to make it under the above criteria: "Ask HN: How are social media user habits changing?" Is there anything actually useful to comment about this that hasn't been hashed to death already or is just an anecdote or bragging about how I deleted my facebook in 2009 so I'm more 'leet than the guys who deleted in 2010? I theorize a meta poll of "is there anything interesting to talk about in social media that hasn't been talked about?" would probably come up 95% against. Maybe the poll comments would actually contain something interesting, maybe even from the 5% who think there might exist something interesting but may or may not be able to enumerate it, but I don't expect that to happen.
- mortice 13y agoThis is just a natural consequence of Hacker News not being a free market. The state controls of the karma system practically guarantee inefficiency in the free exchange of ideas. We need to stop subsidizing mediocrity.
- ThomPete 13y agoWell culture is an echo chamber. It does not mean it's bad. I see it as there is a certain culture here, one which i happen to be in agreement with most of the time, while there is still room for dissent.
- SmokyBorbon 13y agoHacker News is a social echo chamber
- DougWebb 13y agoI'm curious how many people who have the ability to upvote or flag stories actually do so. For my part, I'm very conservative: - I never flag stories; I may not find a story interesting, but I don't feel it's appropriate to impose my interests on others or 'police' their discussions. - I rarely upvote stories, mostly because I'm usually browsing stories that are already on the front-page. Occasionally I skim through the new stories and if I see something interesting there I might upvote it. - For comments, I upvote comments I find particularly helpful or insightful. I don't downvote comments very often unless they're particularly rude. However, I never downvote comments that are part of a discussion I'm having; I don't trust my impartiality in that case. If my behavior is typical, then stories are being controlled by a 'vocal minority' who take the time to upvote or flag them. As in any group, the vocal minority tends to have the more fundamentalist / extremist points of view on a subject, which could lead to the outcomes TFA discusses.
- danielweber 13y agoI heard about a guy getting hellbanned for flagging all but one of the "Steve Jobs is dead" stories on the day Steve Jobs died. Each time my finger hovers over the "flag" button I wonder ". . . is this really worth the hassle?" Then I close the tab and go off somewhere else. (I've flagged probably 10 things total.) EDIT: jlgreco corrects me. The guy I was thinking of was flag-banned, not hell-banned.
- jlgreco 13y agoI know some people lost their ability to flag while doing exactly that (the 'flag' link is removed entirely when that happens, the removal of the ability isn't invisible to the user it happens to), but I am unaware of anybody being hellbanned for it.
- damoncali 13y agoI can no longer flag because I flagged every inappropriate political post on the front page for a couple days. (It was a pretty bad stretch). I knew it wouldn't help much but it made me feel better. As a result I was flag-banned.
- elp1stolero 13y agoA wise man once said, "Seeking clarity is more valuable than agreement." That changed the way I think about writing, and sharing my opinions or discussing other people's ideas. If you go into a disagreement looking to better understand what led the other party to their beliefs, you typically have a more mature and interesting discussion. Plus, why someone believes something I completely disagree with is more interesting than the what, anyway. It is likely in the end that you both may agree to disagree, (a lost art in this age), but at least you can converse respectfully about complex ideas like adults.
- MichaelAza 13y ago"There are no social problems in the technology industry. We have always been at war with Eastasia." Boy oh boy, I sure love me some Orwell references. Referencing 1984 should be on par with referencing Hitler. It's just a lazy debate tactic. If you have a good point you can make it without resorting to these much-too-often used references. Orwell himself went against it his essay "Politics and the English Language". Read it. It'll do you good.
- jlgreco 13y agoI don't see any particular reason to eschew common or obvious references to history or literature because they are easy or common. If that is honestly something that bothered us, we would be complaining at the shear number of western authors who have been falling back on biblical allusion, or greek mythology for centuries (both in fiction and otherwise). It is easy to reference The Tower of Babel, or the story of Icarus, but we don't complain when people do. (I know, I know, being an easy comparison isn't the real reason we complain about references to Hitler. I don't find the real reasons to be compelling either.)
- mattmaroon 13y agoHacker News was a social echo chamber long before there was flagging or flamewar detection. I think it's just an inherent law in any small, passionate community.
- yummyfajitas 13y agoThe author's sole example is incorrect. Paul Graham did not dismiss any peer reviewed research. The original article provided no argument (peer reviewed or otherwise) asserting that natural born programmers were a myth - the cited research merely argued that the belief in natural born programmers was harmful. Paul Graham gave an anecdote explaining why he believed in natural born programmers.
- spindritf 13y agoExactly. I hate when people do that -- cite an argument that got torn to shreds as if it was widely accepted.
- elchief 13y agoMy stuff has been on the front page twice, and I'm a left wing, big government Canadian. Some people can be a little cranky, we're computer guys ffs, but I think the discourse here is pretty civil and open minded.
- MartinCron 13y agoThe discourse here is the worst, except for the discourse everywhere else.
- protomyth 13y ago"The original story linked to a review of peer-reviewed scientific research." I believe the credit we assign to peer reviewed scientific, mathematical, or engineering papers shouldn't be anywhere near the same weight we assign to peer reviewed social science papers. I dealt with quite a lot of these papers early in my career and they do a wonderful job of backing up grant proposals but a poor job of being correct. My takeaway was that they tried to present some idea as universal when it really required the culture of the researcher in the geographical area the researcher was studying[1]. The second problem is that they didn't understand what they were studying. They didn't think that way. Now, don't get me wrong, there are some amazing researchers whose results were really useful, but the lack of true rigor in many of these studies is just poor. Don't get me started about the damn math errors or "correlation does not imply causation" arguments. 1) Community risk factor studies have to be the worst. The number of them that only studied urban settings, but believed their results applied to rural areas is astounding.
- spartango 13y agoWhile my inclination is to agree with your critical view of social science research, I think picking at this example misses the point of the article. The idea that 'hivemind' discussions are drowning out 'other' viewpoints has merit with respect to this forum. There are copious examples, from role-of-government discussions to technical preferences. Indeed, there are cases where the community massively promotes dubious science that it finds agreeable. We would be foolish to throw out this author's commentary because one of his examples is not bulletproof.
- bcoates 13y agoThat assumes that the purpose of HN is to be a debate site, or a 20th century "fairness doctrine" media outlet, or a town-hall style public forum. I do not think any HN is any of those things or well-suited to become one. Most of the useful and interesting things that come out of HN are in threads that assume the answer to the big question and make some interesting point about the details.
- protomyth 13y ago
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y agoWhen you write to hacker news to say hacker news is an echo chamber I go into an infinite loop and run out of stack space, thanks a lot.
- squozzer 13y agoSo are CSPAN, NPR, and most media outlets. Duh.
- mwfunk 13y agoNot every forum is obligated to be as democratic and decentralized as 4chan or Reddit. I like HN because it's more focused, and in some cases more aggressively moderated, even if the mechanisms for doing so are more opaque/blunt/arbitrary/etc. than in other forums. If HN was the only place on the web to discuss anything, I would be much more concerned about the points raised by this article. Fortunately it's not.
- trendspotter 13y agoThe comment section of this article is a social echo chamber of a critique of a social echo chamber.
- thetabyte 13y agoEspecially after pg's response to the blog post about sexual assault at CodeMash, I wonder—why can't the flamewar detector just disable comments? I tend to have a lot of respect for pg, and found his apology for what happened in that thread to be admirable. Whether or not preventing discussion of the issue on HN is positive or negative...I have very complex feelings on the issue, and see valid arguments on both sides. What I do not have mixed feelings about, however, is that these issues need to be put front and center, so that people in our industry a) know they exist b) know how common they are c) are inspired to make personal effort to fix it. I would hope that pg agrees. If he does, why not make such stories, when they set off the flamewar detector, maintain their ranking, but disable comments? That way, the issue is still raised, and people are still alerted to it, but it prevents the (some believe) "unproductive" discussion.
- indefatigable 13y agoThe day any comment thread can be closed because it satisfies some criteria for a "flame war" is the last day I'll even think about posting here again.
- pg 13y agoThe output of the flamewar detector isn't binary.
- thetabyte 13y agoAhh, that makes sense. Can there be a sliding scale of delay for the ability to comment, or depth of thread allowed (before commenting is disabled for that thread), based on the output of the flamewar detector? This may also have the side effect of allowing for some opinions to be shared, without being mired in flame-y back and forth. (And, importantly, still allows the story to stay more visible)
- Zak 13y agoIf the flamewar detector takes content in to account, could it consider the overall tone of the discussion and the content of each new comment and selectively kill new comments that seem flame-like? I wrote a moderation bot to use on a political subreddit that used a text classifier to determine whether comments should be deleted. A goal was to delete flame comments rapidly. It worked, but reddit's reply notifications limited its effectiveness. Of note: the phrase "you are a" ranked higher for the flame category than any particular insult.
- gnarbarian 13y agoAnyone who believes in big government has never contracted for one at length.
- crusso 13y agoThe whole argument of the article is a non-starter: Building a social echo chamber risks marginalising us from the rest of society, gradually becoming ignored and irrelevant as our self-reinforcing opinions drift ever further away from the mainstream I don't consume movies, books, music, food, web sites, or much of anything else because they're "mainstream". I do so because they have a high degree of quality that holds my interests. Mainstream is often the opposite of quality. The more mainstream HN becomes, the less desirable it becomes. If I wanted mainstream I'd spend more time looking at Slashdot and Reddit.
- 011011100 13y agoYou don't have to think very hard to find other reasons why 'circlejerks are bad'.
- mseebach 13y agoYes, I agree. "Echo-chamber" and "bubble" are features. Having a informative and effective discussion at a high level, and having opinions moved, predicates a high degree of common ground. Effectively challenging somebody's worldview doesn't begin with "everything you consider true is false, now listen to me" as is sometimes the preferred method of radicals. Being bombarded with information and viewpoints you consider wrongheaded doesn't expand your horizon, it galvanises you. But when a person I have a lot in common with and agree with on many issues says something that I don't instinctively agree with, I listen and at the very least make sure I understand the full argument before I decide whether I think it's wrong.
- crusso 13y agoSome people just aren't comfortable dealing with reality since reality is an echo chamber that reinforces successful survival behaviors.
- 011011100 13y agoAn echo chamber fosters confidence in a single perspective, or a small subset of many perspectives. And not everything we speak about is mathematical and can be formalized so that we can have confidence in a single perspective (social, political issues). Can you, in particular, handle being confident in one perspective and being able to acknowledge, understand, and evaluate another? Maybe. Can most people? I don't think so. "Having a informative and effective discussion at a high level, and having opinions moved, predicates a high degree of common ground." We can agree on definitions, but that's not necessarily an echo chamber. An echo chamber, or the negative kind of echo chamber, is when a (nonmathematical, nonformal) perspective or conclusion is reinforced by the entire community. Example: "everybody has the same opportunities and therefore everybody is equally capable of achieving success". You get people on hacker news asserting this all the time. This is not a definition. This is dogma. "Being bombarded with information and viewpoints you consider wrongheaded doesn't expand your horizon, it galvanises you." Key phrase: "[ideas] you consider wrongheaded". Nobody has all the right ideas from the start. A priori, there is no reason to think that you will never encounter any ideas which appear wrongheaded to you at first.
- znowi 13y agoAbundance of throw-away accounts to express a potentially unpopular opinion is a good evidence of a groupthink environment. People either afraid to lose karma or be scrutinized or otherwise upset the mods. I can often see people opening their comments with a hefty preamble, which goal is to justify the following controversial opinion, in hopes that it will not bring or at least lessen the wrath of the mob. And of course people like their idols, too. When PG makes a comment - it's a godsend and instantly attracts the fervent following. In a similar manner, there's no lack of ardent supporters of Google that will rationalize any move by the company in a way that is good for the world.
- crusso 13y agoYeah, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes people support PG, Google, Apple, etc. because those people or organizations have a proven track record and despite stock market legal disclaimers, past history is indicative of future results. The funny thing is that HN is the ultimate in technical austerity. The only thing it really has going for it is the influence of PG and the moderators... yet there are those who call out those things as being a problem.
- jlgreco 13y ago> Abundance of throw-away accounts to express a potentially unpopular opinion is a good evidence of a groupthink environment. It is evidence of nothing more than somebody wanting to make a poorly considered comment without the negative ramifications associated with typing before you think. HN loves people who are willing to be contrarian. The 'leaders' list is absolutely littered with people who spend most of their time disagreeing with the bulk of the site. They get upvoted, not downvoted, because they express their disagreement well. Throwaway commenters typically get downvoted not because they are going against the grain but because they make very low quality comments.
- ctdonath 13y agoSeems his prime complaint is that resonating consternation is aggressively removed, giving an undue illusion of peace and harmony - and somehow that's a bad thing. Some issues are social hot buttons, with a roughly even split (if not in actual numbers, then in energy exerted in pushback against the opposing view), roughly equal validity to each perspective, and pretty much no chance of one side reversing their view en masse in short order. Repeated prolonged verbose heated arguments over these subjects will not lead to any meaningful consensus. Their presence tends to erupt as a tangent or non-sequitur to another discussion, destroying the overall thread in a wave of verbose hysteria. Nothing is served by their recurrence; we all know there's a dramatic split on views regarding the subject, we are each settled in our own views thereon, and frequent re-hashing the subject just sours the environment and encourages participants to seek more sensible discussions elsewhere. Ergo, there's no point in letting these recur. PG is right in weighting the algorithm so such destructive & pointless discussions tend to disappear. Yes, we know such disagreements exist. A policy of "not here, guys" is a good thing. Yes, the issues being suppressed are of great sociopolitical importance; please recognize that decent people can disagree over them, please agree to disagree, and resolving that disagreement will not happen here - but continued rehashing thereof will create a toxic environment.
- BigChiefSmokem 13y agoWe are all pretty like-minded and I see nothing wrong with that. This isn't Congress, it's the Hacker News Social Club. You can leave when you like.
- scarybootstrap 13y agoAs somebody with nearly 8,000 in karma who recently got hellbanned for either A) writing a supportive comment that was misinterpreted by somebody other than the person I was replying to, and given benefit of the doubt or opportunity to respond or B) replying to "Where are the bootstrappers on HN?" with "Many of us have given up on HN" and linking to videos from my bootstrapping conference… I agree.
- scott_s 13y agoHacker News is a meta-experiment on confirmation bias. In every meta-discussion I see on the "bias" in HN, there is always someone saying "HN is biased against X" and "HN is biased against not X". It's in the comments linked in this story, and I see it all over HN itself. My best explanation for that is an individual's confirmation bias.
- libicu48 13y agoI'm reading the comments on his site and he's apparently deleting any comment that goes against his radical feminist ideology. Hilarious. He's also fat.
- Steko 13y agoHilariously, this article appears to be flagged far below it would naturally score atm.
- NovemberWest 13y agoFunny, my concerns about the social climate here are rather different. But I suspect writing this type of article is probably not the way to fix things. When people feel attacked, they get defensive and tend to become more entrenched, not less, due to trying to justify their behavior.
- EliRivers 13y agoStories that appear to challenge the narrative that good programmers are just naturally talented tend to vanish. Wait, is that the common narrative? Surely the only people who believe that are the elderly, who just can't shake the "child genius" idea of programmers they were fed in the seventies and eighties?