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> Negativity isn't the problem--gratuitous negativity is. Is it just regular negative of me to say statements like that one are horrible, or it is gratuitously

• serve_yay 12y ago
  This is exactly my concern, fortunately stated better than I could have myself.
• chc 12y ago
  > But I do not know of any place on the internet where I find better discussions on daily news; so my opinion: when it's this great already, why do some vague micro-morality-management thing like this to try to change it? Well, I know of a place on the Internet where I used to find better discussions: Hacker News. I think Sam is attempting to push HN back toward what it used to be.
• dang 12y ago
  In my view, yes, that's shallow cynicism, because it denies good faith in the other. You may be right that not many places on the internet are better, but HN can and should be much better than it is. Rather than measuring it against rampant internet negativity of today, we should measure it against a future online community where people have learned to refrain from taking their negative feelings out on others. It no doubt took a long time for people to (mostly) learn how not to do that in person, so it's not surprising if takes us a while to learn not to do it online.
  • Cookingboy 12y ago
    It is cynicism, maybe, but I wouldn't call it shallow or even unwarranted.
• svachalek 12y ago
  > Is it just regular negative of me to say statements like that one are horrible, or it is gratuitously negative? That is gratuitously negative because you are not contributing anything to the conversation except your opinion. While everyone tends to think their own opinion is an incredibly valuable gift to the world, the world rarely receives it as such. > Am I being a critical thinker when I say that, whenever I hear people make statement like that one, they are usually weaseling into some businessey doublespeak that roughly translates into "people like me can be negative, people like you cannot, but I refuse to say that outright." You've taken a simple sentence of a few words, expanded it into a nebulous category of "statement[s] like that one", inferred motivation, and taken it as an assault on "people like you". That's "critical thinking" if you use the definition of critical meaning "negative" but not the more valuable sort of criticism based on empirical evidence and carefully considered logic. Now, if you'd presented examples of how previous arguments have been called "gratuitous" but in fact contained substantial contributions in terms of facts and logic, or vice versa, because of the status of the individuals involved, then you would have a real argument rather than just a vague expression of cynicism, and I for one would not call that "gratuitous negativity".
  • Jimmy 12y ago
    >That is gratuitously negative because you are not contributing anything to the conversation except your opinion. That doesn't explain at all why something would be "gratuitously negative". I can contribute my opinion that the sky is blue and provide no evidence or arguments. But if I only say "The sky is blue," and nothing else, then it doesn't look like I'm being "gratuitously negative".
    • svachalek 12y ago
      My apologies. The question was asking if this statement was "gratuitously negative" or just "regular negative", so I thought we could take its negativity for granted. I would tend to agree with the original commenter that "horrible" is a negative word, and with you that "blue" is not. I hope that clears it up.
      • 12y ago
• dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Is it just regular negative of me to say statements like that one are horrible, or it is gratuitously negative? If you'd just said that, I'd say "regular negative", but also non-constructive and useless and the kind of thing I'd downvote for being non-constructive. But when you go one with this: > Am I being a critical thinker when I say that, whenever I hear people make statement like that one, they are usually weaseling into some businessey doublespeak that roughly translates into "people like me can be negative, people like you cannot, but I refuse to say that outright." ...you aren't engaging with the idea that you are responding to, but making an unsubstantiated generalization that is worse than even just directly inventing a motivation to ascribe to the author of the idea you are responding to, because you are instead doing so for other people and using it a base for a guilt by association attack on the author of the idea you are responding to rather than engaging with the merits of the idea itself. > Or is that shallow cynicism? At best.