Comment by dang
2 years ago
It's human nature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias. Everyone does it, but we perceive other people as doing it more than we do, which is itself a variation of the bias.
You can even see it in the title of the OP, in the word "overwhelmingly". That's excessive: the negative bias is noticeable, but if you look closely, it's not overwhelming. (To make up some numbers, it's more like 60-40, not 90-10.)
However, it often feels as if it is overwhelming; in fact, one or two datapoints, plus negativity bias, are enough to create just such a feeling. The feeling gets expressed in ways that trigger similar feelings in other people, so we end up with a positive* feedback loop.
The interesting question is, what factors mitigate this? how do we dampen negativity bias? or, how do we get negative feedback into our positive feedback loop of negative affect? That must also be happening all the time, or we'd be in a "war of all against all", which isn't the case, though (again) it may feel like it.
* ['positive' in the sense of increasing; a positive loop of negative affect!]
If I'm looking for more reading I'll sometimes go back a random number of years to find something from the front page of that day. It struck me a while back that around 8-10 years ago HN comments were way more snippy, pointed, almost needlessly argumentative than today. Not bringing that up to say it was better or worse, but that when people complain about comment quality they are probably different than our collective memory serves.
People also recognized each other far more often, sometimes on a first name basis, which is maybe just a function of growth. It may also behoove someone to pick their words more carefully if someone recognized anothers work 2-3 years after they were nasty to them. Or possibly growing acceptance of throwaways, multiple accounts.
It was pointed out in a comment I really liked a while back that HN demonstrates that one can be critical without being mean. But it also takes effort of the person receiving feedback to understand the one giving is, usually, doing so to help, not tear them down. Which is almost always not the case on Twitter, Instagram, FB, et al. And I've seen very thoughtful, intelligent people say they just don't read comments at all on things they worked on.
If anyone is interested in trying this themselves here is 2016 - https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2016-05-20
2013 - https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2013-05-20
2007 - https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2007-05-20
I'd also posit that there is a bit of a "Baader–Meinhof phenomenon" equivalent that plays a part in one's (such as the OP) potential bias towards constantly seeing recurrent patterns of negativity.
It is human nature, yes, but equally bad ideas outweigh good ideas.
We all have lots of ideas. Most are bad. The worst are easily self-evaluated and discarded.
The next layer are the ones that are bad, but -you- haven't figured out why yet. The best thing here is to bounce them off others to see if they can spot the flaw.
If you don't do this, or you ignore it, then you build something, it doesn't matter how well you built it, it's still bad. Lots of stuff on HN falls into this category.
Some tiny portion of ideas are good. But then execution matters (a lot). Like maybe someone else has done it already. Or your execution has bad UI or whatever.
Lastly, no idea is good for everyone, no product is executed to everyone's taste. There is always some quota to ehom it doesn't apply.
And thats before we get to tribal reflexes (me and mine are better than you and yours) - like the endless Linux, Windows, Mac comments.
Tldr; there are more negative comments because there are more bad ideas ranging good ideas.
PS - having bad ideas, badly executing them, and seeing it get killed are all fine. We call that experience.
> The interesting question is, what factors mitigate this?
One thing is to foster a culture where substantiation is expected in negative responses (and downvotes) (i.e. we expect a genuine effort to support a different perspective). I've never downvoted, but the lazy drive-by criticisms always tempt me.