Comment by snakeyjake
2 days ago
>The article also throws shade at him as a “eugenicist.” I looked it up, and again, the truth is more complex.
You didn't look it up very well.
>In 1911, Fisher became founding Chairman of the University of Cambridge Eugenics Society, whose other founding members included John Maynard Keynes, R. C. Punnett, and Horace Darwin. After members of the Cambridge Society – including Fisher – stewarded the First International Eugenics Congress in London in summer 1912, a link was forged with the Eugenics Society (UK).[122] He saw eugenics as addressing pressing social and scientific issues that encompassed and drove his interest in both genetics and statistics. During World War I Fisher started writing book reviews for The Eugenics Review and volunteered to undertake all such reviews for the journal, being hired for a part-time position.
I think that if you:
1. are the founding chairman of the University of Cambridge Eugenics Society,
2. stewarded the First International Eugenics Congress in London in summer 1912,
3. saw eugenics as addressing pressing social and scientific issues, and
4. started writing book reviews for The Eugenics Review and volunteered to undertake all such reviews for the journal
..you are a eugenicist.
My research consisted of clicking on, and reading, the link you yourself posted.
Can you please make your substantive points without crossing into the flamewar style? When someone else is mistaken, it's enough to respectfully explain how they are mistaken.
Tossing in swipes like "You didn't look it up very well", or snark twisters like "My research consisted of clicking on, and reading, the link you yourself posted", is bad for many reasons, including that (1) it degrades the forum; (2) it evokes worse from others; and (3) it discredits your viewpoint, which is particularly bad if it happens to be true.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
How else should the parent had framed his comment ? Can you give an example of the correct wording ?
I’m genuinely confused because his comment was valuable to me.
OP had either made an error or was attempting to mislead the audience by downplaying critical facts in his argument and patent highlighted it, which I appreciate because no one has the time to digest all the references.
Cherry picking or skippping over critical context is unhelpful at best or deceptive st worst.
If the comment hadn't started with "You didn't look it up very well" or ended with "My research consisted of clicking on, and reading, the link you yourself posted", both of which were needless swipes, I wouldn't have posted a moderation reply. Does that answer your question?
"I believe this is not the case because: XXX" would be a neutral response. And one that most people would give to most other strangers if they are meeting in real life. But on the internet it happens very often that people aren't actually as respectful as they would be in real life. And it happens very naturally too - I have close friends who have had insane arguments over chat apps which they would never have done in an eye to eye situation.
In general responding with a statement that assigns a quality to someone's work and effort is not appropriate. You can say "That information is not correct" if you want to be assertive but saying "You have not researched or read the correct information" is doing more then correcting information and becomes personal.
I've seen a lot of people, myself included have trouble with this distinction. But I have found it to be an important part of being "considerate" of others and being charismatic to them. People really react differently to the smallest of nuance in tone and wording regardless if they are adults. (I'd actually wager adults react much more strongly to that nuance due to having more experience to tell the nuances apart)
One can singlehandedly provide valuable information and degrade the quality of the conversation. Best to not, of course.
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Genuine question. Is it better or worse for a site like HN to have guidelines in place which leads to hypersenstivity when it comes to comments? Aren't we all adults here on this site who should be able to handle some pushback?
My take is that it takes only a small percentage of people to be toxic, for the lack of a better term, for most of the conversation to be toxic. E.g. someone acts inappropriately, then a few people overreact (i.e. follow suit), then whoever isn't interested in thinking in baser terms altogether skips the conversation: ergo, the conversation is dominated by the outraged, divisive minority.
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> Aren't we all adults here on this site who should be able to handle some pushback?
Sadly not. I'm tempted to say "most adults aren't adults", but the actual dynamics are more what dmos62 described.
Let's say most of us are adults most of the time, but that gap between "most" and "all" is, given a large-enough population, more than enough to ruin every thread if care isn't taken to avoid this.
Edit: one factor that often goes unappreciated is the size of the community. Small, cohesive communities can support more robust (or even aggressive) styles of interaction—especially when people have other things in common that unite them. In the past I've often compared this to rugby teams [1] that beat the crap out of each other and then go to the pub together; or literary or comedy communities where the art of insulting each other is part of the fun. These dynamics break down completely in a context like HN, where the group size is orders of magnitude larger and the bonds holding people together are super weak, if they exist at all.
It's not that those other styles of communication are bad or wrong—they're great! in contexts where they don't cause people to come to blows—but they're not good here, because the context can't support them. In the current context—the large, anonymous, public internet forum—the cost of keeping the community going is a certain blandness [2] of communication. I'm not fond of that either, but one can't wish these tradeoffs away.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I think we’ve learned, in the last 50 years or so of online discussion, how magnetic flame wars are, and how easy they are to kindle. An assumption of bad faith leads to an accusation which leads to a heated response which leads to people taking sides. Humans love conflict.
Yet it derails topics, it leads to bad feelings, it brings out the worst in us. Better to stop it at the root. The guidelines are simple. Dang tends to ask nicely rather than ban people. Mostly it works.
I don’t see this as hypersensitivity. I mean, there are plenty of places online where you can insult people however you please and it flows like water. I, for one, enjoy a place that tries to be the opposite.
A good question.
The whole domain of interpersonal relations at scale is vastly understudied.
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Wouldn't you profit from believing that the other party acts in good faith?
There are no apologists in this thread, snakeyjake. You’re making bad-faith assumptions and trying to start shit. This isn’t the place for that.
Aggressive first mover abuse of the truth is fine, but in defense one must be polite.
This is absolute nonsense tone-policing. Y’all allow so many posts here saying straight up racist things, yet you have problems with someone correcting a misrepresentation of facts? Absolutely terrible look
The fallacy here is your assumption that we've seen those other posts. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted to HN—there's far too much.
If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Oh, I looked him up just fine. I’m not trying to defend the man, or write a full biography. I hoped that providing some background to this awful article would further the discussion. So thank you :)
>you are a eugenicist.
Is it possible to say “were a eugenicist”? Your info is about him decades before the equal rights quote from the GP. It’s possible he changed his mind over the prevailing four decades (I hope)
It's possible that he changed his mind but realistically we can only entertain that possibility in the face of some pretty strong evidence given his earlier statements and actions. It's not technically impossible that he grew a horn out of the middle of his forehead either, but much like his views on genetics things we know for sure to be true make it reasonable to assume that this didn't happen unless someone can present a really compelling case that it did.
> It’s possible he changed his mind over the prevailing four decades (I hope)
There's far less justification for inventing a conversion out of whole cloth.
Obama and Clinton changed their minds on gay marriage.
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Why the hostility? We are discussing the history of science in the early 20th century, not a property dispute about your house.
not Keynes :( used to be a fan what is it with rich kids always coming up with the most dysfunctional philosphies Keynes, Malthus, Leibniz, Darwin
would be cool to read alternative history fiction where poor people came up with belief systems
>>Fisher became founding Chairman of the University of Cambridge Eugenics Society, whose other founding members included John Maynard Keynes
Keynes was the leading economist of the 20th century. He has some ideas I think are dubious, and his followers have doubled down (I still can't believe people believe in fiscal multipliers greater than 1). Nevertheless, it would be an incredible cheap shot to label Keynes a "eugenicist" when criticizing his economic theories.
Just in case, I think the comment you are responding to doesn't doubt the great utility of Fisher's contributions to statistics, but specifically to the suggestion that Fisher wasn't very much of an eugenicist.
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More clarity on the slippery slope from eugenics to genocide, despite the existence of a theoretical morally-defensible version of non-genocidal, consensual eugenics: https://nautil.us/how-eugenics-shaped-statistics-238014/
anyone that tries to model a multi dimensional search space with a sample + univariate function combo should not be considered great no matter the circumstances the issue is not that stats couldn't be objective there just isn't enough data
imo if you told me the NSA was aggregating data about everyone's daily movements, made corrections for wealth, upbringing, network as well as other factors maybe would be a good start
but even then there will be coefficients the rich kids running the clusters will be like "wealth isn't paying for tuition it's flying to europe for vacation" or "having two cars did not contribute in any shape way or form to my learning how to drive I did it because I'm inherently chosen" or "your family beating you anytime you socialized couldn't form socially crippling neural pathways so if you can't network it's because you aren't chosen" so they set the coefficient to that now some poor schmuck who couldn't afford any of those things and had the worst upbringing gets euthanized in the name of science
eugenics to be even remotely ethical would need so much data we just don't have. maybe in a thousand years but who knows how the rich kids will be like then one thing I've learned the world is not for the poor