The flagged comments given as examples are exactly the type I don't want to see here. Not because they are wrong (they are not), but because they are boring, low-calorie declarations of obvious that add very little value to the topic at hand. It's like every mention of an iPhone got a comment about poor conditions of Chinese assembly workers. These, and the Musk rants, absolutely belong on threads about those topics, but let's not turn every thread into a holy war - you're just pushing people that already agree with you away.
For the record, I vouched for this thread to keep it from being flagged, but that didn't seem enough. I think it's an interesting discussion.
One thing I've noticed is that people will engage in thread arson to kill submissions they don't agree with. When I see some of these low value comments, I check their comment history and often they have reasonable comments on other things.
So what they're doing is leaving low value comments and then they're probably the same people flagging it as "controversial" or "flamebait" when there wouldn't be any of those things if they didn't leave those comments. It's incredibly bad faith behavior (by some of them, not you to be clear).
We're at the precipice of AI unravelling the fabric of society. Many tech issues now are so consequential that the politics simply cannot be ignored.
I agree about boring comments but that goes well beyond political. Every time I see a comment about how this year's iPhone is "evolutionary not revolutionary" or some variation. It's boring, lazy and pointless.
> people will engage in thread arson to kill submissions they don't agree with. When I see some of these low value comments, I check their comment history and often they have reasonable comments on other things
I think that's probably overinterpreting. No doubt there's a long tail of weird behavior, but the fat part of the distribution is covered by a simpler fact: humans change when emotions get activated. People who have interesting things to say when their curiosity circuits light up have entirely different things to say when their amygdalas are inflamed.
Edit: their right amygdalas, that is! it isn't clear to me what the left one does but it's a puzzle why everyone says "the amygdala" when we all have two.
I mostly avoid this place these days, but there are certain topics where people hyperrationalize, i.e. they (silently) accuse others of being reactionary because an argument looks like reaction to them on the surface.
I started self-censoring on HN because I knew some very normal and on-topic things to say would be voted to oblivion because they had the shape of a controversial topic that the average HN commenter can not relate to except through some mainstreamed right-leaning cultural narrative. The mere mention that I was an affected party in some culture war adjacent thing was treated as if I had invoked a thought-terminating cliche. It was very... anti-curious.
So I principally agree on the conclusion, when emotions get activated this site gets worse. I just see the impact differently - anything that deviates from the libertarian-right leaning default is pushed away. I'm still relieved I had my pseudonymous account with a lot more HN internet points wiped and don't have to care about this site on an emotional level anymore.
romanhn · · focus · HN ↗
For the record, I vouched for this thread to keep it from being flagged, but that didn't seem enough. I think it's an interesting discussion.
jmyeet · · focus · HN ↗
So what they're doing is leaving low value comments and then they're probably the same people flagging it as "controversial" or "flamebait" when there wouldn't be any of those things if they didn't leave those comments. It's incredibly bad faith behavior (by some of them, not you to be clear).
We're at the precipice of AI unravelling the fabric of society. Many tech issues now are so consequential that the politics simply cannot be ignored.
I agree about boring comments but that goes well beyond political. Every time I see a comment about how this year's iPhone is "evolutionary not revolutionary" or some variation. It's boring, lazy and pointless.
dang · · focus · HN ↗
I think that's probably overinterpreting. No doubt there's a long tail of weird behavior, but the fat part of the distribution is covered by a simpler fact: humans change when emotions get activated. People who have interesting things to say when their curiosity circuits light up have entirely different things to say when their amygdalas are inflamed.
Edit: their right amygdalas, that is! it isn't clear to me what the left one does but it's a puzzle why everyone says "the amygdala" when we all have two.
acuteaura · · focus · HN ↗
I started self-censoring on HN because I knew some very normal and on-topic things to say would be voted to oblivion because they had the shape of a controversial topic that the average HN commenter can not relate to except through some mainstreamed right-leaning cultural narrative. The mere mention that I was an affected party in some culture war adjacent thing was treated as if I had invoked a thought-terminating cliche. It was very... anti-curious.
So I principally agree on the conclusion, when emotions get activated this site gets worse. I just see the impact differently - anything that deviates from the libertarian-right leaning default is pushed away. I'm still relieved I had my pseudonymous account with a lot more HN internet points wiped and don't have to care about this site on an emotional level anymore.