Comment by nvm0n2
1 year ago
This isn't actually COVID specific. It's a nasty and frequent tactic on this forum, where someone makes strong assertions about one side of an argument whilst simultaneously claiming that the other side can't be allowed to speak because it would be "fighting", a "flamewar", a "trash fire", "not curious", "tedious" or whatever. It's an attempt to manipulate the site rules to suppress debate and is itself anti-curious.
Concrete examples from your comment history: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32104731
"Given the weak sourcing, it feels like this article, in particular, flunks the "divisive subjects require more thought and substance" test."
(on a Bari Weiss article arguing that health authorities weren't really driven by science, something they now admit themselves was true).
In other comments you asserted that COVID vaccines can't possibly be dangerous but also said, "Convincing suspicious vaccine-skeptics of the value of vaccines is not the goal here. We're not a public health service; we're a forum for curious conversation. Tedious rehashes of antivax arguments aren't curious; they're just tedious."
If you don't like such discussions, ignore them! Nobody forces you to click through to the comments section. But this tactic of trying to define disagreement with your very strong opinions as not "curious" enough is tiresome. Other people do in fact want curious conversation, which will sometimes mean conversations about topics that you don't like. I'll say it again: leave those discussions alone. Stay away by all means, but don't interfere with other people's curiousity.
Hm. I think what I'm going to do instead is relentlessly flag them.
Check this out. It's barely on the front page, and has just 3 comments right now. How great is this post? How much more would I rather be reading comments on this than about Bari Weiss? Infinity times more:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39235484
My son is a biochemist (interviewing for grad school slots right now, as in this actual evening, I'm living vicariously through him, wish him luck). I've been for years paying attention to bio/chem/biotech experts on HN, because I'm a biochem dad. We have lots of expertise about COVID here. None of it is on these COVID threads because all of them would apparently rather eat a bug than "truth it out" with people paraphrasing Bari Weiss. The verdict is in. You're on the wrong side of it!
But these have been useful data points for me, and I appreciate you offering them up. Have a great weekend!
Congratulations on your son becoming a biochemist! A wonderful achievement.
Surely his middle school biology teachers had something to do with it. You should pay them a visit. Maybe ask them how many genders there are and see their faces contort in horror.
Please note that on this, covid, and whatever other such... things.. I offer no opinions of my own. I don't actually care very much about those topics and also, perhaps similarly to you, am put off by the far-(right|left) fanatics obsessed with them.
My peeve is with what it did to good public discourse and good people.
Perhaps if you see it on the faces of your sons teachers, who no doubt have had a rather increasingly stressful job in the not so many years since he left them, and to whom he owes at least a modicum of his no doubt bright future - you will understand my objection to your behavior of drumming out people in this fashion.
> How much more would I rather be reading comments on this than about Bari Weiss? Infinity times more
So do so! Nobody forces you to click on the Bari Weiss stuff. There is no doubt an evil twilight zone tptacek who flags the other way. And you both think you're great sheriffs clearing the joint from scum.
How much would I rather the thread you linked on daunting papers. How much more would I rather be reading comments on this than "you-are-wrong-about-my-sacred-cow, flagged!" remarks.
In my opinion you should just let people be wrong (see, no snarky air quotes from me! I hope you understand my tone and where I'm coming from) in the covid threads, leave each other alone and it won't boil over to more interesting threads. It's weird adults teach this in kindergarten but on a fancy I so smart forum we can't bring ourselves to rise above.
Flags don't cancel each other out, so me and twilight-zone me get along just fine.
[flagged]
It's a serious forum for a range of topics with many people contributing serious comments.
You're correct that this is not a serious COVID forum, nor a particularly serious biochem forum and that's OK.
Surely there is some other site where you can hear these dissenting voices loud and clear.
[flagged]
I don't think you understand the difference between a public health official and a biochemist. He cares what proteins think about his work, not what Bari Weiss does. It's not a persuasion job.
Anyways, my point is: we have subject matter experts on virology on HN. They tend not to participate in COVID threads, which are invariably overheated and Weiss-ian.