Comment by dang
2 days ago
Oh for sure it is. "Please stop $Fooing" and its more aggressive cousin, "Stop $Fooing" (not to mention "For the love of god would you all please stop $Fooing or I will $Bar you" and sundry variations) belong to a family of internet linkbait tropes.
> is it simply the case that we can't be outwardly critical of AI itself at all anymore
You need only, er, delve into any large HN thread about AI to see that this is very far from the case! especially the more generic threads about opinion pieces and so on.
I think the air on HN is too cynical and curmudgeonly towards new tech right now, and that worries me. Not that healthy skepticism is unwarranted (it's fine of course) but for HN itself to be healthy, there ought to be more of a balance. Cranky comments about "slop"* ought not to be the main staple here—what we want is curious conversation about interesting things—but right now it's not only the main staple, I feel like we're eating it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
But I'm not immune from the bias I'm forever pointing out to other people (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43134194), and that's probably why we have opposite perceptions of this!
* (yes it annoys me too, that's not my point here though)
I'll admit, I don't know if I understand the point, regardless of our differing biases here. Curious or critical conversation does not itself guarantee an even number of yaysayers and naysayers to a given topic, and it seems a doomed project to try to make it so. I guess I like to come here because it feels like a certain reflection of my peers, where sometimes my views put me in the minority, sometimes not, and thats ok! I understand policing tone and baityness and flamewar, I understand limiting outright politics as much as possible, and I empathize with your singular, probably pretty wretched perspective to The Discourse right now as ever; but to have "balance" for the sake of itself, at perhaps the cost of, lets say, editorial freedom in this instance does feel like a change, one even that could maybe be articulated in the guidelines (although I am at a loss personally for how to formulate it). I just can't help but think of how different this all would be if the topic in question was, e.g., climate change, or vaccination, or modern slavery.
But regardless, its not really important for me to understand, and this place has been here way before me, and will perhaps be here way after! For me personally, its at least enlightening to know this is the official stance and will help me adjust my future participation! Thanks for the time.
The goal isn't an "equal number of yaysayer and naysayers". I agree that would be doomed for a lot of reasons. Rather my complaint about these threads is that there's too much reflexive naysaying in the form of shallow dismissals, indignant denunciations, snarky formulations and so on.
If these commenters were arriving at their naysaying through curious exploration, that would be fine, but in that case we'd see indications of this in the comments—they would be lighter and more playful, would contain interesting details, and so on. This is unfortunately pretty rare among the naysayers. What I'm seeing instead is a lot of cranky curmudgeonism. Cranky curmudgeonism is a different internet game than the one we want HN to be playing.
Gotcha, I really don't want to push this anymore, I just want to point out that what we are discussing in this instance, or at least what I thought, is not reflexive crankiness in comments, but someone's essay/post that is, as far as it goes, thoughtful and nuanced.
But here, I think I can fill out your response: while the post itself is not reflexive curmudgeonism, the original headline itself would arguably encourage it in the comments, and that is something that falls under the purview of the guidelines, and gives reason for mods to editorialize. Submitters and authors and commenters must not only care about the content itself, but how it might be perceived at the surface (what the bait is), but only insofar as this fosters productive/curious conversation.
While I am still a little haunted by certain counterfactuals one could formulate in this case, and notwithstanding the one big elephant in the room I won't even bring up, this can check out for me and I get it and thanks. Again, its just good to know where HN stands, and I personally have benefited some from this reality check about the state of things for the site from your point of view.