4 ms·

So you think I'm speaking to you as an authority figure?

oldmanjay 12y ago
I'm not a part of this conversation but I was assuming you were playing the role of the condescending nerd who tells other people how to think. was I wrong?
- diminoten 12y ago
  If ever I was, you just took over.
wallyhs 12y ago
No, but you seemed to imply that one can only learn from certain people in certain contexts. I find that I gain surprising insight from unexpected people at unexpected times. HN is not an exception.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- diminoten 12y ago
  I wasn't implying anything, I was directly stating that the folks who are most beneficial to learn from aren't making elaborate posts on HN, and you shouldn't demand that they do. You're just being lazy by demanding someone to do your research or write an article for you. Think of it from their perspective: why would they? Any reason someone might post on HN with a comment containing original or well-thought content can be better accomplished by putting that effort elsewhere, in a blog post or website article, and then posting that article as a submission to HN. Only a small fraction of HN users even visit the comments page, not to mention the additional exposure one might achieve by getting their message out to folks who don't go to HN. So yes, there are things to be learned from HN comments. Just not the way you're suggesting. In other words, stop asking folks for citations on HN (or any other comments section, for that matter). You're wasting everyone's time.
  - escape_goat 12y ago
    I believe you should reread the previous parts of the thread, including your own, because it seems like your understanding of the positions in this argument have shifted. melling isn't demanding that arbitrary experts make elaborate posts on HN for his or her education and betterment. Rather, melling seems to believe that people who present information as knowledge in the comments section should be able and willing to explain the source of their certainty. You're positing that people with expert knowledge have an inherent interest in exposing that knowledge to as large an audience as possible, and that this interest is so significant that they would always preferentially invest the extra effort and resources required to write a blog post or website article that properly contextualized and presented the information. You're positing that the prospect of writing an article or blog post would preclude the possibility of responding to the comment on HN. You're positing that the nature of this interest implies that these experts would wish to submit their own writings to HN. To me, it seems that these terms must imply that this interest is not so much in the distribution of information, but in publicity and the tacit validation of expertise brought by the ownership of the information as an original source. In my experience, this does not reflect the general behaviour of domain experts, who routinely correspond on mailing lists, usenet, and comment forums, including HN. There are in fact extensive comments made by at least one electrical engineer in response to this HN submission. There is a subset of experts who already blog, for whatever reason, and stand to gain in some way by presenting themselves as an authortative source of knowledge and thought to the HN audience. However, many such persons (patio11 comes to mind) routinely write extensive responses to comments on HN. Personally, the specific reason I began to routinely read the comments on HN was precisely because I could read fascinating domain-expert knowledge, presented in dense paragraphs, regarding topics that interested me. I usually read the comments about a submission before reading it. Personally, I do wish to know whether someone's thoughts on a topic reflect domain expertise, or hobby interest; I do wish to know whether an assertion is established fact within a domain, controversial, sourced from an article or a blog post, et cetera, especially if that assertion seems dubious to me; the alternative is to simply continue believing what I believe, and to disregard such statements. In my experience, however, it is sometimes I who is wrong, and the dubious assertion which is correct. In closing, I'd like to mention that melling, as the new OP of this now detached comment thread, was censured for describing someone's assertions as 'chest beating', which I think was appropriate. However, in the course of your comment here, you have accidentally or deliberately asserted that he was both "lazy" and "wasting everyone's time." I don't think that this sort of argumentation is useful, and I doubt that it is acceptable in your team debates. dang[a moderator]'s comment in reply to melling about "jabs" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378899) is relevant, well-written, and interesting, and I think that you could benefit from reading it.

I'm not a part of this conversation but I was assuming you were playing the role of the condescending nerd who tells other people how to think. was I wrong?

diminoten 12y ago
If ever I was, you just took over.

wallyhs 12y ago

No, but you seemed to imply that one can only learn from certain people in certain contexts. I find that I gain surprising insight from unexpected people at unexpected times. HN is not an exception.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
diminoten 12y ago
I wasn't implying anything, I was directly stating that the folks who are most beneficial to learn from aren't making elaborate posts on HN, and you shouldn't demand that they do. You're just being lazy by demanding someone to do your research or write an article for you. Think of it from their perspective: why would they? Any reason someone might post on HN with a comment containing original or well-thought content can be better accomplished by putting that effort elsewhere, in a blog post or website article, and then posting that article as a submission to HN. Only a small fraction of HN users even visit the comments page, not to mention the additional exposure one might achieve by getting their message out to folks who don't go to HN. So yes, there are things to be learned from HN comments. Just not the way you're suggesting. In other words, stop asking folks for citations on HN (or any other comments section, for that matter). You're wasting everyone's time.
- escape_goat 12y ago
  I believe you should reread the previous parts of the thread, including your own, because it seems like your understanding of the positions in this argument have shifted. melling isn't demanding that arbitrary experts make elaborate posts on HN for his or her education and betterment. Rather, melling seems to believe that people who present information as knowledge in the comments section should be able and willing to explain the source of their certainty. You're positing that people with expert knowledge have an inherent interest in exposing that knowledge to as large an audience as possible, and that this interest is so significant that they would always preferentially invest the extra effort and resources required to write a blog post or website article that properly contextualized and presented the information. You're positing that the prospect of writing an article or blog post would preclude the possibility of responding to the comment on HN. You're positing that the nature of this interest implies that these experts would wish to submit their own writings to HN. To me, it seems that these terms must imply that this interest is not so much in the distribution of information, but in publicity and the tacit validation of expertise brought by the ownership of the information as an original source. In my experience, this does not reflect the general behaviour of domain experts, who routinely correspond on mailing lists, usenet, and comment forums, including HN. There are in fact extensive comments made by at least one electrical engineer in response to this HN submission. There is a subset of experts who already blog, for whatever reason, and stand to gain in some way by presenting themselves as an authortative source of knowledge and thought to the HN audience. However, many such persons (patio11 comes to mind) routinely write extensive responses to comments on HN. Personally, the specific reason I began to routinely read the comments on HN was precisely because I could read fascinating domain-expert knowledge, presented in dense paragraphs, regarding topics that interested me. I usually read the comments about a submission before reading it. Personally, I do wish to know whether someone's thoughts on a topic reflect domain expertise, or hobby interest; I do wish to know whether an assertion is established fact within a domain, controversial, sourced from an article or a blog post, et cetera, especially if that assertion seems dubious to me; the alternative is to simply continue believing what I believe, and to disregard such statements. In my experience, however, it is sometimes I who is wrong, and the dubious assertion which is correct. In closing, I'd like to mention that melling, as the new OP of this now detached comment thread, was censured for describing someone's assertions as 'chest beating', which I think was appropriate. However, in the course of your comment here, you have accidentally or deliberately asserted that he was both "lazy" and "wasting everyone's time." I don't think that this sort of argumentation is useful, and I doubt that it is acceptable in your team debates. dang[a moderator]'s comment in reply to melling about "jabs" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378899) is relevant, well-written, and interesting, and I think that you could benefit from reading it.