This submission could not have come at a better time.
Over the past couple of weeks, I've been contemplating making a submission urging HNers to be human, and to recognize that everyone else who comments here is also a human, and that stories about startups and notable figures are essentially about humans - humans who all have families, friends, ambitions, desires, flaws, struggles.
All too often I see people here forgetting about that. I myself have been guilty of it in the past too. But there's something about the negativity and criticism here that grates on me more than on other sites. I think people here tend to assume that being an engineer/programmer means that not only must they treat their code with utmost logic and rationality, but that they should look at life in the same manner - that to be an empathetic and emotional person puts them at some sort of optimizational and productive disadvantage. All that leads to is cold, harsh discourse and criticism without considering the more abstract, but very real ways humans feel and behave. It's sad to see.
So, I guess this is that submission. Next time you write a comment, ask yourself if you're being human and remind yourself that whatever you're about to say is directed at another human.
I agree with you, and there is a specific type of pedantry I find especially grating. I'm talking about the constant insistence on citations and double-blind studies, even when it isn't appropriate - even when someone obviously means only to share their own experience. There's an aggressive form ("Citation Needed") and a passive-aggressive form ("Say, friend, that's a bold claim! I sure am interested in this. Do you have a source where I might read more about it?")
Sometimes, this is completely appropriate, as when someone is using an anecdote as their only support in a vigorous debate, or when information is clearly being presented as factual, when it probably isn't. But as "Citation Needed" has become a rampant meme in its own right, I think it is increasingly applied in knee-jerk, cargo-cultish, and inappropriate ways.
Sharing anecdotes and experiences is one of the fundamental ways that humans share information about the myriad little nooks of the world that we move through. I know it isn't science. I'm quite well read on cognitive biases, statistics, and the scientific method; and I do not need to be reminded about these by HN commenters continually, every time somebody shares a story, or an opinion based on their experience.
I'm concerned about a chilling effect on the sharing of anecdotal information. There is information - information that I can use - in the many experiences related by others. I don't need or desire to get fully 100% of my information from peer-reviewed scientific studies. I know the difference between science and personal experience, and I would much rather bear the burden of telling the difference for myself, as the reader, than to have fewer people talking about their personal experiences.
Thanks for eloquently stating a problem I've noticed for a while. I think there's a fear of not coming off as a hard-nosed, logical thinker, so the constant need for citation is a proxy for "I believed XYZ because some authority said it was true. If I'm wrong, it's not me, it's because I was mislead."
The world is full of single data points. If you see an anecdote, see it as a data point, but more importantly, see it as a metaphor which could apply to your situation.
Sometimes I think some people wouldn't hug their kids until a study said it was ok (hrm, weren't there studies in the 50s saying you should do the opposite?). I'd like to think I'm rational, but sometimes you need to move beyond the cover-your-ass safety net of "the study says" and do what feels right. Citation? Here's a meta-study that most medical research studies are false (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/).
The study you mention brings me to another point: In some cases the discussion here on HN revolves about believe systems, papers an references cited are often selected for an argument by authority. Moreover: would a paper in itself be enough? wouldn't you have to, critically follow through to the reviewing peers? concurring papers? This is indeed death of any discussion and it proves nothing in the end.
Typical thread of citations against citations: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3749114 but the debate is never coming beyond the point of "how do yo know this?" questions, masking "I don't like your point" as "you have no data backing this up".
Good point. To disagree so strongly when anectodal evidence is shared regardless of context became a culture in itself rather than a model for rational behaviour and is disruptive.
Academic science is an entirely different story. It's a growing body, and it grows by using previous information in its body, so any probability of disruptive/wrong data entering the system has to be reduced as much as it can with strict discipline. To apply the same standard to our daily lives is absurd - you could as well be against spoken conversation because it's too lossy and converse using pen&paper - speech recognition is tricky after all.
This doesn't take much more than common sense to get - you could formalize it for specific cases statistically, maybe using shannon entropy and such - anectodal information is still information and the loss of information by virtue of not being backed up by scientific method is in most cases insignificantly low - just think of it as an efficient compression algorithm.
If you aren't ethically against lossy audio/image/text compression, there is no reason to take such a strict stance against anectodal information. Most times it's very useful, just have your rationality filter/bs detector and the like on at all times like they should be.
You make a lot of good points, but I feel that by lumping in people asking for more information with the "Citation Needed" people you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I, myself, have asked "Do you know anywhere I could read about this a little more" of people, maybe not sharing anecdotal experiences, but definitely anyone discussing a topic I'm interested.
As Wikipedia shows us, assuming good faith is crucial to a civil discussion. There's a fine line on the internet between good faith and passive-aggressive behaviour, and in doubt you should always try to assume that that person asking for more info really is curious.
Let me be more clear. Whether this is a problem is entirely dependent on context. It's not really about the words used. There are times when asking for more information, even citations, is completely reasonable and expected. No objections there.
There are also times when, I believe, a reasonable person knows darn right well that the 'source' is the commenter's personal experience. In those cases, asking for a source looks like rhetorical mischief, only intended to discredit the person's point of view. "That's not science, therefore your comment has no value."
I'm suggesting that as 'citation needed' has become a cultural badge, it seems to be increasingly misused. All I'm hoping is that people will think twice: "Do I really reasonably expect that the information presented is a matter of fact, and sourced somewhere? Or am I using this community-accepted phrasing sardonically, as another way of saying, 'That's like, your opinion, man.'"
Let's not go to extremes, please. The parent has not called for a ban on requests for more information. Part of being human, as the GP requests we act, is using our discrimination. Context and balance are indispensable.
When I was a student of software engineering, I felt strongly that there was not enough emphasis given to what effect the use of computers has on humans, and what sort of software we ought to make to benefit humans. This is related to Tim O'Reilly's call to "Work on Stuff that Matters" (http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/work-on-stuff-that-matters-...). It's not about the machine or the money -- we must add value to people's lives.
This is a different issue than that of being kind to each other on Hacker News, but I happen to think it is deeply related.
In some circumstances, I am spontaneous, playful, and extremely open to my environment and aware of other people. When I spend a lot of time programming, however, I tend to become more cautious, analytical, and insensitive. Partly this is because any time spent programming is, generally speaking, spent away from people and in ignorance of our bodies (and hence, our environments). This is one reason why I think it is so important for engineers to have diverse interests.
It's not just so that we will be kinder to each other on Hacker News. We are, in a very significant way, the people building the future. We need to make sure that we are in the right frame of mind to build a future we want to live in, and not one that is anti-social and inhumane.
Perhaps the reason dystopian sci-fi has so much resonance is because we are already experiencing, unconsciously, the dehumanizing effects of technology.
I ran into this problem myself in the 90s when I first got into the whole internet forum thing. This is something that has worked for me, though YMMV:
I re-read every post I write in my head, and pretend I'm saying it to the other person IRL who is sitting across the table from me. Would I use the same words? The same tone?
The internet is, in its current form, dehumanizing, you have to take care to maintain your own humanity and the humanity of the semi-anonymous non-faces you're interact with.
The negativity on HN doesn't bother me so much as the tone and language. Instead of criticizing, many posters here outright bash. Remember OMGPOP's sale to Zynga? The word "coward" got tossed around as if the company was staffed by an army of unfeeling Mecha-Hitlers.
If a post gets me emotionally fired up, I often type up my response. Read it. Then delete it. Then type it up again. I find just getting the emotional response out helps.
I first really learned to program on an LP-Mud that was in the early to middle stages of development. We had lots of live interactions that went just fine, but our message board conversations were often teetering on the brink of flame wars.
The exact same handful of people, usually around five or so, talking about the same subjects, but with really different results.
So there's something about the forum or message board format that is dangerous, I think.
With live chat, of course, misunderstandings surface faster so you can correct or elaborate as needed, but I don't think that's the whole story. I think that somehow people read tone into the messages that isn't there. I'm not sure exactly why. Over-aggressive pattern matching maybe. You get an idea in your head around the first or second sentence and then fit the rest to that idea.
Elaborate on this; write a blog post. I'll gladly give you another up vote.
> But there's something about the negativity and criticism here that grates on me more than on other sites.
Honestly, I have had the opposite experience. Everyone here seems focused on getting work done and making great things, yes, but the little criticism that I do see is always well thought-out and explained. Instead of it 'grating' on me, I value it highly, because it's almost all of excellent quality.
> I think people here tend to assume that [...] to be an empathetic and emotional person puts them at some sort of optimizational and productive disadvantage.
Who? That's a foolish viewpoint that I cannot believe anyone here would hold. I haven't run across anyone who seems like they subscribe to this belief — have you?
That is of course an assumption I'm making, but one that's come from years of using HN. More recently there was the article about the girl from Pakistan who received technical certification and sadly passed away. There was a good amount of comments that took a fully rational approach to assessing her credentials concluding that what she'd done was not worthy of praise. That seemed terribly inhuman, and I feel people of this community are more prone to act that way.
I remember that. The nice thing about those comments is that most of them seemed to be focused entirely on correcting journalistic exaggeration, and not on maliciously bashing someone, even if that was the way they were perceived. I know, that doesn't really sound like a nice thing, but I've seen enough actual malicious behavior to much prefer the "inhumanity" of only acting like an asshole as a purely accidental side-effect of being persnickety about technical correctness.
There are a lot of aspects of the Human Condition that I'm not too fond of, so feel free to act inhuman with good intentions around me any time!
> > I think people here tend to assume that [...] to be an empathetic and emotional person puts them at some sort of optimizational and productive disadvantage.
Who? That's a foolish viewpoint that I cannot believe anyone here would hold. I haven't run across anyone who seems like they subscribe to this belief — have you?
I, and I suspect many others, have subscribed to this belief. When working on purely technical problems, I find that there's no need to bring emotions in. There's just the problem, the problem, and nothing but the problem. When I bring emotions in, I lose focus on the technical aspects of the problem, which are all that I need to solve it.
Well reasoned :-) I am reminded of the pithy epithet "Haters are gonna hate." sometimes when I read comments on HN and elsewhere.
The pendulum of 'responsibility' in our society has been swinging toward 'group' responsibility and away from 'personal' responsibility for a while now. The number of people who feel disenfranchised or held back or discriminated against, can reach further now with the Internet than at any time in the past. The combination of these two situations has as one of its outcomes and out pouring of emotion (generally hate) against the 'others.'
I realize that when the pendulum is heavily into the 'personal' side of responsibility those people are more likely to commit suicide rather than to spew vitriol. Clearly that is a bad place to be as well.
The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle, where people take personal responsibility for their own challenges and the group takes responsibility for those things which are (or should be) beyond the responsibility of any one person. The canonical example is education, where the group should be responsible for making sure educational opportunities are available and the individuals should make sure they take advantage of all of the opportunities afforded them.
It is a new thing in the world that the meanest and foulest 10% of society have the ability to reach just as many people as the nicest and wisest 10%, I cannot predict the eventual impact of that fundamental change.
I agree, the pseudo-anonymity of the internet allows us to more freely criticize each other, but is that necessarily a bad thing? We can't improve without feedback, and negative feedback is useful too.
So yes, be more mindful that there's a person behind whatever you're responding to, and try to be polite, but at the same time don't hold back your opinions because you're afraid you might hurt someone's feelings.
It's really the politeness that is key. It's the difference between "You suck" and "Your X could be improved by Y" Sadly the tubes are clogged with the former and the latter is much less common. I wonder how many of us really remember learning to program and all the "stupid" questions we asked. Or installing that "Linux thing" the first time, or whatever. As we get farther away from that point it can be harder to remember just what it was like.
I am not so sure human is something one ought to aspire to be. There is a certain comfort in dealing with people who, when they criticise your ideas, you can be confident that they are doing so purely from a rational position.
I believe it is worthwhile to pursue and encourage this mindset, if I am wrong about something, I want to know about it, not be encouraged to pursue a path of questionable value purely because it might be perceived as mean to educate me.
I want to be treated this way and I want to treat others this way. It is not at all innately vicious or an excess of negative emotion, if anything its precisely the opposite, the complete absence of emotion.
Agreed. I think something along these lines every time someone says things like "I hope that xxx company goes under," etc. I guess it's all too easy to forget that there really are people with families and lives behind everything.
It's very easy to dwell on that too. Companies rise and fall, some are well lead, others not. A frequent jump is to raise the "family card" in order to prop up a failing business. The error in the latter case is ignoring people on the other side of the equation.
I quite like this side as a way to feed my pedantic side since nobody else will let me.
There's more criticism and less encouragement here partly because people here are just harder to impress on the whole.
The anti-humor thing can get annoying sometimes, although I'm glad it's not full of people posting "witty" variations on internet memes every other post. Sometimes you see a post that has an original and relevant joke or something that is meant tongue in cheek to just get downvoted to oblivion.
I normally come here for the articles, not the discussion, but it doesn't seem too bad here. However, tech forums can often become a place of arrogance, pride, and incivility, and it never hurts to look at yourself in the mirror now and then.
I got curious what you meant by 'INTJ and INTP'. I founds this in the WikiPedia:
"INTJ (introversion, intuition, thinking, judgment) is an abbreviation used in the publications of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to refer to one of the sixteen personality types."
Ah, Myers-Briggs, a pyschometric system. I've read some criticism about it: (two excerpts)
An American woman, Katherine Briggs, bought Jung's book and was fascinated by it. She recommended it to her married daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, who had a degree in political science. The two of them got hooked on the idea of psychological metrics. Together they sat down and codified their own interpretation of Carl Jung, making a few important changes of their own. Jung had everyone fitting into one of four basic buckets. Myers and Briggs decided that each person probably combined elements, so they modified Jung's system and made it a little more complex, ending up with four dichotomies, like binary switches. Any combination of the four switches is allowed, and Myers and Briggs reasoned that just about every personality type could be well described by one of the sixteen possible ways for those switches to be set. Basically, according to Myers and Briggs, we're all represented by a four-digit binary number.
[...] the MBTI's practical use is overwhelmingly unscientific, and it's often criticized for this. Criticism ranges from the pragmatic fact that neither Jung nor Myers and Briggs ever employed scientific studies to develop or test these concepts, relying instead on their own observations, anecdotes, and intuitions; all the way to charges that your MBTI score is hardly more meaningful than your zodiac sign.
Over the past couple of weeks, I've been contemplating making a submission urging HNers to be human, and to recognize that everyone else who comments here is also a human, and that stories about startups and notable figures are essentially about humans - humans who all have families, friends, ambitions, desires, flaws, struggles.
All too often I see people here forgetting about that. I myself have been guilty of it in the past too. But there's something about the negativity and criticism here that grates on me more than on other sites. I think people here tend to assume that being an engineer/programmer means that not only must they treat their code with utmost logic and rationality, but that they should look at life in the same manner - that to be an empathetic and emotional person puts them at some sort of optimizational and productive disadvantage. All that leads to is cold, harsh discourse and criticism without considering the more abstract, but very real ways humans feel and behave. It's sad to see.
So, I guess this is that submission. Next time you write a comment, ask yourself if you're being human and remind yourself that whatever you're about to say is directed at another human.
Stop being robots, and just act human.