Comment by ggdG
1 year ago
> In fact, I don't see a single story that I personally feel should not have been removed.
I don't understand why this story was removed: "It turns out the six-feet social-distancing rule had no scientific basis", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39200511
On a forum with an overwhelmingly science-minded audience, it bothers me that an important topic like that is deemed untouchable.
(I detached this from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39230689 for reasons explained below.)
The subthread your comment generated here already answers your question. (<-- not a criticism! just an observation.) People are flaming each other about the inverse square law, droplets vs. aerosols, who is refusing to face reality, and sundry other nastinesses in the comments below. It demonstrates what a shitshow a frontpage thread would have been.
It's not that the topic itself is "untouchable". HN had quite a few threads about the lab leak hypothesis for example. But these things are sensitive to initial conditions, and something about the way that headline frames the story feels doomed to me, from an HN point of view. The sweet spot for HN is substantive, thoughtful conversation driven by intellectual curiosity. That's what the site is for. We don't always get there by any means, but I only want to turn off user flags when the odds give us a fighting chance. I remember seeing that story get flagged and thinking: it'll never work.
Another aspect of this: like it or not, curiosity and repetition have an inverse relationship. After the mind has been hammered with the same hammer enough times, curiosity gets sick of it and goes "ugh, not that again". That means that on a topic like all-things-covid, which we all got hammered with, the majority of the audience, who don't care that much, check out at first mention of the topic. Who does that leave? The ones whose motive is more intense than mere curiosity.
From an HN point of view, that's a ticket to hell. Curiosity can only operate within a certain range of nervous system activation. If the needle sinks too low, the topic is 'bleh' and nobody cares; but if the needle goes into the red, people will care—my god will they care—but they'll no longer be functioning out of curiosity. That's a failure mode for HN.
When it comes to divisive, heavily-covered topics like that one, the thing to watch for is some kind of interesting new information that isn't entirely reducible to existing battle lines. The same forces driving the thread into flamewar will still be present—but at least you'll have some current running the other way.
Stories about COVID controversies are almost certainly getting flagged off the front page by users, not touched by mods. People look at the titles of these stories and think that's all flaggers are going by, but lots of people flag stories based on their experience of what the threads are like, and the threads on COVID controversies are fucking dreadful. I didn't flag (or see) that story, but I would have.
But why must they be dreadful? Genuine question, I am not being obtuse. We should be able as a community to discuss conterversial subjects somehow.
I also think this sort of thing invites flag brigades. Or better yet, a small batch of bad actor can easily start brigading and forcefully associate such flamewar expectations with any subject they don't like to drive it off HN.
Maybe worth reconsidering how you flag? You might be getting played. Or not, I really don't know. No obvious answers.
Whether or not we’re able to discuss controversial subjects, a topic’s controversy doesn’t imply importance or relevance.
It seems to me that the quality of any public discussion tends to increase when it’s relevant to the expertise in the room, and decrease when it involves people’s casual reads of complicated stuff about which they have vague but emotionally-charged impressions. HN folks have great, nuanced discussions about a wide range of technical questions, but we’re much less likely to collectively know what we’re talking about in questions of the latest hot-button political mudslinging.
There are communities that are good for that kind of discussion, but that’s not what we come here to do. And for this place to stay good at what it does do, it can’t afford to drown out the signal with the noise of emotive bickering.
The site guidelines do, I think, an incredible job of articulating what sustains the tenor here.
But at the end of the day, how best to capture “the vibes” about whether we collectively think a topic is tired or doesn’t fit here? It seems like HN does it just like a good dinner party host would: Change the subject when your guests—that is, the people with a strong track record of positive contributions—indicate that they’re weary of it. After all, we’ve got plenty of things to talk about that we do agree would be fruitful.
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They're dreadful because people are coming from opposite places and are unwilling to be convinced otherwise, so the conversations are repetitive and dull, with little new information. We really don't need to hear for the 100th time how Covid was or was not a lab leak when there's no new real evidence one way or the other, but every time Covid comes up, there's gonna be some unresolvable argument in the comments that's just dreadful and not worthy of this site's time. Hence the flag. With a infinitely more heavy handed moderation team (or LLM) to judge comments before they got posted, we might be able to have good discussions on such topics, but until then, you can turn on show dead in your profile to see what kind of low-quality comments certain topics attract.
COVID stories are dreadful because there is a very low average level of applicable domain knowledge for COVID discussions.
In plain English, not enough people actually know what they are talking about to create an informative and educational discussion. So they all just end up as a pointless exercise in all the worst aspects of forum flame wars.
HN is at its best when people with lots of relevant experience and knowledge come into the discussion. Then the rest of us can learn new facts, tools, perspectives, etc.
There’s a long list of topics where that is just not available in the existing audience. So there are a lot of topics that, while interesting, are just not a good investment of everyone’s time here.
I asked this exact question in an Ask HN post a couple of years ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29532676
That thread actually changed my mind on the issue. You say "We should be able as a community to discuss conterversial subjects somehow." Well, guess what, we're not, or at least we're not without a great amount of care. Stories like the submitted one, which may be factually accurate but clearly have a political axe to grind are absolutely not going to lead to anything but a shitstorm of useless discussion.
I don't know why they're dreadful, but they empirically are, and that's the end of the matter for me.
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HN's guidelines have this relevant bit:
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
An editorial that clearly does not embody that spirit is a poor starting point if you want the discussion to trend towards sanity.
Especially when the title itself violates—and ensures further violations of—this rule:
> Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.
We should, but we don’t.
Some things just don't scale well conversationally.
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
> lots of people flag stories based on their experience of what the threads are like
IMHO story submissions should be judged based upon their own merits. Toxic commenters can be downvoted/banned but the story submitter shouldn't be punished for the misbehavior of others.
> I didn't flag (or see) that story, but I would have.
You mean purely based on the expected awfulness of imagined future comments, instead of the actual comments? If so, with a precrime mindset like that, you're fanning the flames of controversy.
It's good to want things! We can just disagree.
There's not enough space on the front page for all the good things we want to read. I'm not interested in expending extra effort to rescue marginal stories with a low likelihood of generating a good conversation. The people most invested in these kinds of stories seem to be almost the least invested in HN's rubric of curious conversation.
I don't call any of the shots around here, but I think I speak for a bunch of different users who flag this way.
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I flagged that article, so I'll clearly explain why:
1. I think for anyone that has been on HN throughout pandemic knows it is extremely unlikely for topics like this to produce any sort of valuable discussion. I almost never see any sort of humility on the topic (to be clear, from many/all sides) that admits that people (individuals, experts, literally everyone) were doing what they thought best with the information they had available at the time. It always devolves into portraying the other side as evil. I'm tired of it, I don't want to see it on HN, there are literally pages and pages and pages of place on the Internet where you can have that debate if you're so inclined.
2. Are you honestly purporting that specific article is well tailored to "an overwhelmingly science-minded audience", as opposed to just having a particular political axe to grind, given the title is "Anthony Fauci Fesses Up"? Honestly, if the article was written with an intent to encourage an actual understanding about where the 6-foot rule came from, and about whether the evidence for it was lacking, I probably wouldn't have flagged it.
> it bothers me that an important topic like that is deemed untouchable.
I think the mistake you are making there is thinking because a particular article is flagged by a lot of users that "an important topic like that is deemed untouchable." I can't speak for others, but for me that is absolutely not what I think, and it's not why I flagged this particular submission.
That isn't clear at all. You seem to be saying that if you anticipate that people might question other people's competence or motives, or in your view a discussion won't lead people to think the right thoughts ("encourage actual understanding") then you flag it to try to ensure nobody can discuss it.
But you also say that making it undiscussable is also not about making the topic untouchable. That's just playing with words, isn't it? It's exactly what you're trying to do and exactly why you're flagging it.
This particular case is really egregious. Fauci has said this draconian policy "just sort of appeared", yet you damn anyone questioning his competence or motives as lacking humility? What would it take for you to allow criticism of this guy?
Your response highlights the exact thing I'm talking about, as it ascribes motives to me that are totally foreign to me, and takes the tone that flagging an article means that I think I want to "ensure nobody can discuss it."
I could respond to some of your other sentences, but you've exactly proven my point, so thank you.
(Shrug) I don't require scientific proof of the inverse-square law. It's self-evident to the point of being axiomatic. Standing 6 feet away from a virus source will expose you to about 44% fewer virus particles than standing 5 feet away from one, while not imposing any real hardships in most public interaction scenarios. What's controversial about that?
If you demand precise scientific rigor in all aspects of everyday life, public health is probably not the career field for you.
The same with masks:
Put a water hose on mist and spray someone with it. Then put a cloth over the nozzle and try to spray them. It's self evident yet people just could not grasp it.
It's "self evident" yet a large Cochrane meta-analysis finds no benificial effect of masks whatsoever:
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...
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Are you saying that face masks are not effective?
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[flagged]
Generally, after asserting that someone is drastically wrong, the next few paragraphs should be about backing that claim up with convincing evidence and explanations. Instead you digressed into talking about droplets vs aerosols and forgot to even make a connection between that and the "drastically wrong" take you were replying to.
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I think reading the top comment on that post provides plenty of explanation why users would flag that post. Perhaps you're trying not to understand.
Please don't cross into personal attack. It just makes everything worse, and you can make your substantive points without that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
That comment lined up pretty closely with one of my pet peeves. I apologize for overreacting and contributing negatively to what was already a busy day for you. Thank you for all your hard work and patience.
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> I think reading the top comment on that post provides plenty of explanation why users would flag that post.
That top comment complains that the HN title is WSJ's informative subheading instead of its clickbaity headline.
The top comment complains that the title submitted to HN is both not the original headline, and not an accurate characterization of the content of the article.
If there's no possible title to use for a submission that won't get it flagged, then clearly it's not a great article to be submitting.
And it's disingenuous for you to pretend that the issue is HN users being unwilling to reexamine the public health response to Covid-19, when the submission is clearly flouting HN's rules. (The paywall doesn't help its viability as an HN submission, either.)
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Are you asserting that, if the title had remained "Anthony Fauchi [sic] Fesses Up" it would have remained, unflagged?
Maybe you should Submit it again with the original title, and see what happens.
If it had been submitted with that title, it would simply have been harder to pretend there's wasn't plenty of reason for the submission to be flagged.
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Personally, I thought it was already pretty well established that the six-foot rule was based on poor science. I remember hearing about that years ago.
The thing is, you're not even wrong. The six foot rule was based on what the best understanding of the experts was at the time, and probably saved thousands of lives. Just like forced masking up probably saved tens of thousands of lives. Both were great examples of science, which readily admits to tuning when new evidence comes into play.
However, because there's a right wing cult around Donald Trump, whose fortunes were hurt by the pandemic, the six foot rule and masking and vaccines are set up as straw men and attacked by a gigantic and well funded and organized horde of proxies, including the #1 media network in the US. It goes something like this: because a particular individual got COVID, that's proof that vaccines are not 100% effective and so They Lied To Us For Nefarious Purposes. Or because this particular individual stood 6 feet away and still got COVID, that's evidence that Fauci Is In A Conspiracy With The Chinese. Or because this particular individual survived COVID, it's just a cold. Or because masks are not 100% effective when not worn securely, they are not effective. And on and on.
So it's not unreasonable or unlikely that you heard a thing about bad science and six feet of social distance or whatever. But hearing a thing, and the thing being true from foundational motivations of actual science, are very different right now.
>The six foot rule was based on what the best understanding of the experts was at the time, and probably saved thousands of lives.
You can't just make up the beneficial effects of something as you go. Can you cite some randomized controlled trials that support your claim?
>Just like forced masking up probably saved tens of thousands of lives.
One year ago, a huge Cochrane meta-analysis of the available RCTs regarding masking has put that idea to bed: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...
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omg, even talking about the flagging is going to trigger the flamewar :)