Comment by appreciatorBus
4 days ago
Negative bias has been observed in all forms of media. What would be unusual and newsworthy would be if hacker news was an exception to this.
4 days ago
Negative bias has been observed in all forms of media. What would be unusual and newsworthy would be if hacker news was an exception to this.
No one wants to spend time writing "I agree", mostly they move on or give an upvote. Doesn't look like TFA counts upvotes as we don't see them.
Somtetimes people write "This", and that's apparently a no-no. You are told to just upvote.
Maybe there should be a setting for hiding such short replies or something like "shadow ban", you can write "thanks" or "This." and only person posting it will see their own "thanks".
Downside is that there is still some cost to it, like writing "please" and "thank you" to LLM...
The counterargument is that, if you think a post is idiotic, you could say so but, if you don't articulate why in detail, you'll probably be downvoted or modded. So better to just downvote if you care and move on.
I agree.
The depressing thing is how some forums like StackOverflow actually ban "thank you" comments. It makes the world a more heartless place.
From an evolutionary standpoint, which circumstances should a thinking being prioritize to best ensure its safety and survival? Should it seek out "positive sentiment" and seek to avoid "negative sentiment" (even though this likely doesn't mean evading negative circumstances merely avoiding the sentiment until it is too late)?
Negative bias is probably inevitable in cognition itself.
The tv show Pluribus delves into this a bit. An event (speaking generally to avoid spoilers) causes most people to become extremely happy and positive, and also super ethical, to the point that survival of the human race is in question, and the "most miserable" person on the planet is left to save things.