Comment by beedeebeedee
5 months ago
All of your criticisms are unrelated to understanding the analysis (or software). Let's read it, work through it and discuss it, rather than dismissing it for all the wrong reasons. Flagging this submission is anti-curious. Instead of not engaging if you're not interested in doing the work, you're trying to suppress other people from doing the work. It may turn out that none of it is convincing, but we don't know that right now and what has already been presented is surprising and worth investigating.
I looked at the source blog post and decided it was pretty shoddy. I kind of agree that a reasonable person would doubt the veracity of this post, not just for the reasons loeg mentioned, but because the presented "evidence" is a single cherry-pick from data with lots of inherent variance.
I think it's valid criticism to say that you should have taken a closer look before submitting, and concluded that it was too junky for HN. In which case the flagging is appropriate.
Can you share your analysis of the data? Other commenters have included details. I think we all would be interested in more than vague value judgments that you took a look, didn't like it and therefore tried to flag to repress discussion of it
> and therefore tried to flag to repress discussion of it
nice mind reading skills over there
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This is not a forum for original research. Additionally, this community is not well-equipped for sober analysis of divisive topics.
Trying to repress discussion is the opposite of soberly analyzing divisive topics, so you are attempting to prove your point. There are many people who disagree with you (including me) and would encourage you to dig in and practice curiosity and open discussion
> so you are attempting to prove your point
They're sharing their opinion; no proofs to be found anywhere, nor evidences.
> Trying to repress discussion is the opposite of soberly analyzing divisive topics
In your opinion, right? Because under mathematical logic, the opposite of "repressing discussion" is "encouraging discussion", nothing less, nothing more.
Suppose there's a divisive topic that is posted on a forum with mostly common or at least topic-unaligned appeal. Stands to reason then that most discussion on that topic will be of low quality, since again, the community on the forum is not well-aligned to debate on the matter, right? That is the reasoning behind their opinion I'd imagine, and I can definitely agree with this personally.
And while inevitably there would be a minority of people who are well equipped to engage the topic productively, even if they post and their posts gain traction, the discussions around them will be nevertheless low quality - I think this prediction is agreeable as well at least.
Note also that nowhere in this model is the intent of the participants represented anywhere. So even though your intent is commendable:
> would encourage you to dig in and practice curiosity and open discussion
... it nevertheless misses the point. You're also (supposedly) asking for topically better aligned minds to put themselves through the torture of engaging those (supposedly) overwhelmingly not, both in the sense that they're (supposedly) super not capable, and in the sense that (supposedly) there are a lot more of them in here than not.
This is further supported how for example in this thread you exercised what I refer to as mind reading in both of the comments I've seen from you.
Example #[1]:
> and therefore tried to flag to repress discussion of it
They said that they flagged it because it's:
> too junky
... not because they're trying to repress discussion of it. Naturally, I do recognize that the post getting flagged would prevent further discussion of it, but it is both dishonest to say that they did it with that goal in mind (their goal is in their mind, which you cannot read) and also just completely untrue (in my opinion).
Example #[2]:
> so you are attempting to prove your point
In this scenario you're telling them what they're doing, which is again something only they can know. You only really know what you think they're doing, but that is not what you're saying. Consider the following alternative:
> so I think that goes directly against your point.
Note the "I think" part.
These are both very standout signs (for me at least) that quality discourse, especially on divisive topics, would not be possible with you. I further think that this is true for many other people as well, in most of the threads here. I highly question if it is possible to do with me as well, particularly in specific topics, and with consistency. I'd go as far as to say that with random people, on the internet, it is essentially impossible to have productive discussion on divisive matters, if it is even a possibility at all, ever.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42996763
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This is not wikipedia. About the only relevant thing in the guidelines is that most stories about politics are off-topic, but that's not the reason you provided.