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leanstartupnoob | 1 year ago
Your comment of "discussion here is marginally* more substantive" footnoted that it's not particularly good also seems a bit condescending. Its dismissive to those attempting to engage with these stories in good faith even if a vocal minority are behaving in bad faith. When a dozen stories are popping up and disappearing in a few hours it feels a lot harder to participate in a thoughtful and substantial ways.
I can understand HN is in a rough spot. But on the other hand, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
dang|1 year ago
I've made a list of 23 threads (see the reply below), all from the last month. There are over 13k comments in those threads alone, and it's not a complete list.
It's interesting how claims like "only non-controversial stories" or "no discussion of this sort shall be allowed" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42976817) arise during periods when there's a sharp increase in such threads (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978572).
At first that seems counterintuitive (like Jevons' paradox, or Yogi Berra's "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded"). But it's not so paradoxical. These aren't factual propositions, they're expressions of a feeling—what people are really saying is not that there is no coverage of these topics, but that they would like more coverage. They often use words like "no", "zero", "never", and "nothing" to express how they feel, but what they mean by these words is "not enough". Which is fair enough. The community always splits between users who want more and users who feel like it's too much.
Also, it's easy to miss any particular thread or sequence of threads. Even among regular HN readers, there will be many who haven't seen even one of the 23 threads listed below, or who only saw 1 or 2, and therefore might naturally feel like none of this is being discussed. Among those, there will be some who feel strongly about it, and some of these will naturally express their feeling in the way I described above. Nonetheless, in reality there is a large amount of this discussion happening—it is by far the most-discussed topic of recent weeks, and will likely continue to be.
> also seems a bit condescending
Sorry for giving that impression! I often add a disclaimer like that because I don't want to sound like I'm making excessive claims about HN's discussion quality. The most I can say is that median discussion quality here is modestly better than elsewhere on the internet, but at its worst it's still pretty bad. I don't mean to put down HN commenters who are using the site thoughtfully. You have to remember that as moderators we see a lot of stuff like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43018472, to pick the most recent example. In fact we must see more of that than any other reader, simply because it's our job to.
dang|1 year ago
Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42981756 - Feb 2025 (1768 comments)
Announcing the data.gov archive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42970039 - Feb 2025 (127 comments)
Elon Musk's Demolition Crew - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42968430 - Feb 2025 (348 comments)
DOGE staffer resigns over racist posts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42966412 - Feb 2025 (105 comments)
DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42951458 - Feb 2025 (373 comments)
20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42950790 - Feb 2025 (547 comments)
What's happening inside the NIH and NSF - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42940257 - Feb 2025 (1519 comments)
Onlookers freak out as 25-year-old set loose on Treasury computer system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42936421 - Feb 2025 (133 comments)
Payments crisis of 2025: Not “read only” access anymore - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42933219 - Feb 2025 (654 comments)
Words flagged in search of current NSF awards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42932760 - Feb 2025 (154 comments)
The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910910 - Feb 2025 (2978 comments)
CDC: Unpublished manuscripts mentioning certain topics must be pulled or revised - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42905937 - Feb 2025 (719 comments)
Phyllis Fong, who was investigating Neuralink, "forcefully removed " - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902355 - Feb 2025 (214 comments)
CDC data are disappearing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42897696 - Feb 2025 (589 comments)
The government information crisis is bigger than you think it is - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42895331 - Feb 2025 (270 comments)
NSF starts vetting all grants to comply with executive orders - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42886661 - Jan 2025 (488 comments)
Archivists work to save disappearing data.gov datasets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42881367 - Jan 2025 (238 comments)
Trump's Federal Funding Freeze and Mean-Field Game Theory - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42863339 - Jan 2025 (89 comments)
Deferred resignation email to federal employees - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42859552 - Jan 2025 (151 comments)
'Never seen anything like this' – NIH meetings and travel halted abruptly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42817910 - Jan 2025 (111 comments)
NIH hit with freezes on meetings, travel, communications, and hiring - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42798960 - Jan 2025 (440 comments)
United States Digital Service renamed to DOGE - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42775684 - Jan 2025 (98 comments)
mmooss|1 year ago
Hyperbole is worse than that, IMHO. It inflames and serves almost no other purpose.
Imagine someone writes, "politician X is the most corrupt ever". What does that tell us? One bit of information (yes/no on this politician), and that the author has strong emotions about it (maybe 2-4 more bits - are they 4 of 4 angry? 16 of 16?); or very possibly they want to perform strong emotion because that energizes the interaction, draws attention, 'wins' the day, or is an aggressive negotiating position (reducing it to ~1-2 bits); and/or they could do those things reflexively and without a conscious plan, participating in a fun social dynamic that is muscle memory from years on the the Internet (reducing it to ~0-2 bits). Maybe it's just easier.
Whatever it is, what we don't learn - what the hyperbole wipes out - is knowledge and learning. We learn - acquire novel knowledge - little regarding X; what X does black, white, and mostly grey (what shades?); what is corrupt and not corrupt about X; what corruption is, the grey areas, and how that applies here, and of course much more. There are gigabits or maybe terabits to say here, dissertations and books, more than could be said in a lifetime. Another thing we could learn is the author as a person and their feelings, including their anger - how, why, when, what kind, etc. - giga-terabits more. On these vast landscapes of knowledge and emotion, we need each other's perspectives and insights to navigate and see what's valuable.
But all real information and nuance and complexity is washed away by the ultimate, by hyperbole. It's so ___, there is nothing to think about. Just a few bits is all you need.
leanstartupnoob|1 year ago
The destruction of the federal government is a more critical issue than the origins of Proto-Indo-European people because it directly affects millions of lives in tangible ways. Yes historical curiosities are valuable, but they do not carry the same immediate, material consequences as a government being hollowed out from within.