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.
People aren't being aggressive enough about their downvotes and flags, methinks.
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.
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.
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?
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
> 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.
- "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?
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.
The sub-clause "you're one of those dishonest people that resorts to emotional manipulation to try to get their way" alone laden with emotionally manipulative affect that this reads like a self-referential example.
"You're one of those" is a phrase often, and certainly in this case, used for the purposes of othering.
"dishonest people" speaks for itself.
"resorts to emotional manipulation to try to get their way" assumes bad faith on behalf of somebody you barely know.
There's a lot I agree with on in your post, but the irony doesn't exactly stop with jodrellblank.
You stating that again doesn't make it more supported, or more clear. There's nothing automatically unbiased and unmanipulative about criticism, and there's nothing automatically justified and useful about criticism. Opening a thread where there's all criticism is (or can be) just as manipulative as a thread where there's a lot of enthusiasm. The typical geek internet response is to claim that being critical is somehow meritocratic, unbiased, real, but it isn't inherently that.
> "over half of which aren't even about the topic of the post ... you intentionally put them there to try to dishonestly bolster your argument"
I know, right?! I have to skim read and filter out piles of irrelevant miserable put-down dismissive low-thought low-effort dross and it often isn't even about the topic of the post! I intentionally put them there to try and honestly bolster my argument that opening a thread full of cynicism has a manipulative effect on the reader's emotional state and to counter your implied claim that enthusiasm is manipulative and criticism isn't.
> "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."
But they explicitly dismiss the bad takes and not every single take? For someone who is complaining that I am putting words in your mouth and you hate it, you are putting words in their mouth which go directly against what they said. e.g. there are some takes complaining that the article is 'compelling people to work for no money' and that comment says the regulation would be met by a clear expiry date for the game on the store. The company is willing to fund it for some time before they cut their losses, and this asks them to tell the customer what that time is. That critical comment starts "I think a legal remedy here won't work." because the only legal remedy they bothered to think about is compelling people to work for free. It doesn't comment on the proposals put to governments in the article, or the movement, or even expand on much detail why they think a legal remedy can't work. But it still contributes to the miasma of "don't try things, everything's shit, don't even bother, nothing can work, nothing is worth doing, don't you know there was a flaw once, somewhere, something was tried and didn't work" which absolutely is emotionally manipulative when read in bulk.
> "I never claimed that all criticism is "useful, relevant, meaningful, interesting, or valuable". Don't put words in my mouth."
You argued that point. You said "they want to shut down criticism of something they like" as if that's a bad thing which should not be happening. If you argue that, then you think criticism has some inherent value. I say it doesn't have inherent value; there area vastly more options to criticise a thing than to praise a thing, so people who choose criticism are more likely pulling from a big pool of low effort cached thoughts, than a small pool of high effort (positive or critical) thoughts, so a critical comment is more likely a bad comment than a good comment. Dismissing a whole lot of critical comments in one go is therefore a reasonable response.
> "I never claimed this either."
OK let's go with, you said: "undermines people's critical thinking skills" and I say "what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence". Reading a comment which says "lots of bad takes here" does not undermine people's critical thinking skills.
My claim is more that reading a dozen comments "this library had a bug!" "this maintainer was rude to me!" "The documentation is way out of date" "I know someone who tried this in 1982 and found it was impossible" really does kill a reader's interest in looking deeper into a thing, and such criticisms are both factually correct and low effort, low value, and quite reasonable to be dismissed in bulk without "responding to specific bad comments" particularly because the ratio of possible criticisms to possible praise is something approaching infinity-to-one. (even if a thing is absolutely perfect, people can criticise it for being the wrong thing, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, by the wrong person, etc.).
> "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."
I've made a pretty coherent argument:
- most critical comments on a HN thread are not worth reading.
- They have a detrimental effect on the topic and reader.
- Therefore there are far too many of them.
- It's justified to dismiss them in bulk, because the space of possible critical/engaging comments means the work to respond to every bad take is far too much, and the people who make low effort bad takes do not respond well to replying individually.
- You have not offered any support for your claim that reading a dismissive/positive comment "undermines critical thinking skills".
