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Well then shut up and go do something better.

I'm not sure how to read this as anything but a passive-aggressive complaint that _other_ people aren't doing more about these problems. You try to disqualify yourself from the responsibilities you imply for others, but the fact is we can all be more diligent, if we like, and we can all do work to improve the lives of others.

Guess what? If you _seriously_ try to help other people, as opposed to just posing so, it is really, really hard. There are many excellent reasons for this. Chiefly, people are actually very good problem solvers, and are particularly interested in their own problems. So any one who has a _real_ problem, has a problem that is pretty hard, or they would have already solved it themselves.

For another you have to fight your way through hordes of posers, who want credit for helping but discover that folks have solved all the easy problems on their own. They don't want to do _real_ work, they want to look good, so they chiefly get in the way and muddy the water. And then you discover that "helping people" has become such a poser cottage industry that simply _meaning_ to help counts, and that saying anything remotely unpleasant is cause for ostracism. 'Cause all these folks have to congratulate one another, and tell one another what a difference they're making, which is all kind of difficult if someone is saying "but does this actually work?"

For example, if I explain that it's simpler to tweet a picture than cure diabetes, because tweeting a picture isn't technically that fucking hard but diabetes is a really complicated problem, I'd pop your bubble of woe at how screwed up the world is. The world isn't actually that screwed, and to the extent it is, it has been getting better pretty much daily since 1945. Barring some corners where some major league posers got in charge. If you look at treatment options and outcomes for diabetics I feel pretty sure you'd see a pretty strong and clear progressive improvement. But if the world is getting better then how can you Make A Difference? So what you want to do is complain, and so not having much to complain about is a problem.

If you want a real complaint, go out and try to actually help some people. I guarantee you will very quickly acquire some very real complaints. And that voicing them will get you ostracised by the posers.

So really, the best thing is to shut up and get to work. Failing that, just shutting up is, under these conditions, not a bad second best at all.



> shut up

No. You can say that all you want, and I defy you. You're welcome to suggest that there is some better use of my time, but there is nothing more chilling to freedom of thought and expression than someone saying "That thought is too rude, too lame, to annoying, cuts too close," or whatever else and therefore cannot be uttered.

It's like "Let he is without sin cast the first stone." That's a passive-aggressive way of trying to cut criticism out of society.


Please don't try to twist your dumb rant into some sort of free speech issue.

The multiple people telling you to shut up isn't because they are trying to squelch discussion on the topic. They are telling you to shut up because you, specifically, bring negative value to the discussion and you are responsible for decreasing the signal to noise ratio.

In your example about the dumb, drunken football fan yelling at the TV, the people in the bar are now starting to tell him to STFU because they want to watch the game and not have to listen to the useless, drunken ranting of someone with zero credibility.


What? I don't agree at all. I wrote something in my personal blog on the Internet. That's the bar. If you want to tweet, or write something in on your blog, that's also the bar.

But this is a kind of club where I didn't post those writings. And when I have discussed them, I've been civil as is our rule here.

We have two ways of saying "This is noise, not signal." One is to downvote. The other, flagging, is reserved for special cases."Shut up!" is not one of those ways. And if you count, my words here on HN have over 100 votes.

If you don't like what I have to say, argue with it and/or vote on it. That's what we do here. This isn't Reddit.


The core problem is that 100 more people on Hacker News think that your top comment is valuable, and further that you take this as justification that your viewpoint is supported by the community. As there is no way for folks to only participate in the HN that disagrees with your rants, folks are being negative. That's the only tool they have.

When you sell books on how CoffeeScript is great and then rant that people aren't solving difficult medical device issues, I wish that there was a version of Hacker News that did not include your comments. Maybe someone will make that.


You're being incredibly rude and unfair. The guy wrote a blog post on his personal blog. It gets posted to HN and gets massive criticism. And now you're complaining that he posted a response to that in the comments? If you don't like the voting behavior, add something valuable to the discussion rather than slinging empty complaints and repeating ad hominems. e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5090255 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5089296


You're being incredibly rude and unfair.

Rude? Maybe. Unfair? Hardly. The OP completely mischaracterizes what the best groups in our industry do, then laments that people aren't helping his friend, and this lamentation is the extent of his contribution to his friend's plight.

Ad hominem means that I disagree with him because of his person, which is not true. I disagree with him because of specific hypocrisy and finger pointing. I am further disappointed that this story is so popular on Hacker News, because I read Hacker News for insightful posts, and this is just demagoguery - popular because it's what people want to hear. That doesn't make him more wrong, but it does make me more likely to say something about it.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5089296

pg is good about handling people with kid gloves. He addresses the OPs points in a rational way that is insightful and without reproach. But I don't think that pg speaks to the problem, which is that a popular, long time contributor to the community is apparently upset that people work to make money and that some things are difficult for non-technical reasons. Bad apples ruin a community, and if the community isn't tended to it devolves into blithering noise.

I also did not comment on his original post, but on a comment thread that began with:

That being said, sometimes a man in a saloon has a few drinks and yells at the television, telling the coach of some football team what to do next. Just because he's drunk and in a saloon doesn't mean he's wrong, just boorish.

And any drunkard yelling at a television is wrong. His non-participation means that he doesn't actually understand the problem, and without that he cannot be anything other than wrong.


"disagree with him because of hypocrisy and finger-pointing"

Neither of those are ways to disagree with someone's words. That's the Ad Hominem fallacy. What you may mean is that you dislike the fact that I'm saying them, or the way that I'm saying them, or the color of my tie, or something along those lines. Which is a perfectly valid feeling to have, but it isn't disagreement and Hacker News has specific guidelines discouraging incivility as well as a long-standing antipathy to Ad Hominem abuse.


or the color of my tie

This kind of response further devolves the discussion. I said nothing so flippant, and suggesting so is disrespectful to me.

Neither of those are ways to disagree with someone's words.

Hypocrisy shows that someone either doesn't understand a problem, or that they are not honest in arguing against it. Finger pointing shows that they want someone else to solve this problem for them, which suggests that they feel superior to the issue.

Hacker News has specific guidelines discouraging incivility as well as a long-standing antipathy to Ad Hominem abuse.

To paraphrase your original article, Why the fuck do people on Hacker News always cry "ad hominem" and point to the guidelines so much? Ad hominem attacks are far more common in real life, when people actually know each other. I am only aware of you insomuch as I have read "your words", so why are you so quick to assume that I disagree with you personally?

Your original post is either naive, flippant, or blinded by emotion. It isn't constructive, it denigrates the work of others, and childishly demands that the world be a better place.

Don't lean on ad hominem, that only serves to mask that there are far bigger problems on the table.


Would you prefer "stop posing"?

You're complaining about social priorities that have arrived at tweetable pictures before diabetes management -- while noting you haven't the diligence to apply yourself to the problem. Well gee whiz I am just not sure I see the point of that particular statement. Except to put everyone on notice of your noble intentions.

And as I noted, at length, it's my experience that this sort of thing does more to hinder the people who are quietly getting on with exactly what you'd like to see done.

So please get busy. If you cannot manage that, get out of the way.


No I would not prefer "stop posing." And all I see from your words is a deep commitment to being abrasive. If this is the way you wish to comport yourself here, I suggest you direct your words to others who will be more receptive to the style in which you choose to express yourself.

Plonk.


In most endeavors you can divide people into roughly two camps – those who talk shit and those who bring the shit. You happen to be talking shit, in a domain that you (presumably) have no experience in. Add to that the angry, hyperbolic tone of the post, and the fact that you offer no suggestions whatsoever as to the marshaling of Internet tech resources towards something as unrelated to the skills of most Google employees as Diabetes research, and it's not hard to see why people would be dismissive.


You can make this point perfectly well without being so nasty.


Maybe. I've been 25 years experimenting with it.

If every person complaining the world should be better would take the time to visit with a mentally handicapped person, or wipe the drool off an Alzheimer patient's chin, or have coffee with the lonely dude in the corner -- the world _would_ be an enormously better place. Better than they dream.

This is obvious. Also, that these things aren't sexy. Which leads to implications for people's motivations.

One reason Jesus commanded that his followers not let their right hand know the charities the left was up to, was that the pursuit of opinion spoils those charities.

This is an old and important problem. I am not sure that some occasional rudeness to the vainly well-meaning isn't part of the solution.


I am not sure that some occasional rudeness to the vainly well-meaning isn't part of the solution.

Let's grant that this may be the case in general regardless of whether it influences me personally. It's important to consider the net benefit or loss to a social environment. It could be that incivility does discourage some people from posting things you think are unhelpful or noisy.

On the other hand, such incivility also signals to other people that incivility is acceptable. You may have the judgment to make such a thing "occasional," but can you be sure everyone else will share your restraint?

I think that the HN style as espoused by Paul and as specifically mentioned in the guidelines is to err on the side of civility here on HN, and the evidence so far seems to suggest that civility does work.

Look at this thread. There is some rudeness, but there're lots of perfectly cogent and civil arguments explaining that my rant was flawed.

Which do you think contributes more to HN? Which do you think is most likely to influence me personally in the future?


Neither of us know much of one another beyond what we've read here. I can tell you I've gone through a master class in earnest and civil argumentation, and discovered that it is not universally successful.

Because many people, who say they mean well and actually believe they do, have unconsciously shaped the problems to arrive at those solutions most convenient to themselves. I have done this myself. This sort of self-deception accounts for a large proportion of trouble in the world.

Now if we grant that such people exist, then it won't be a surprise that it is mighty goddam hard to talk them out of anything. Because we can all rationalize all sorts of contradictory input, and what we can't, we can conveniently ignore. Again, I speak from personal experience of my own thinking.

So perhaps you might see why whacking someone with something along the lines of "That's ridiculous, snap out of it" might actually sometimes be more effective than sweet reason.

How well this applies to _you_ is beyond my ken. Seriously. Maybe I have it all wrong.

You find my remarks annoying. Ok, but I have your attention -- and it isn't as if there isn't any thought to what I wrote. It's something more than well-done name-calling. And perhaps you'll agree that there are some people, perhaps not yourself, who might not notice a more polite approach. Again, I haven't anything but a guess about _you_. I'm responding to a _post_.

I hope I strive to be civil. If civility actually interferes with communication, is it actually a good thing in those moments?


I don't find your words annoying. But consider the difference between sending me an email that says, "Reg, that was a lame post," and saying the same thing on HN.

I hear the same message either way, but one of those also sends a signal--for better or for worse--to everyone else on HN.

As I joked on my twitter feed, I can hardly write a post titled "Why the fuck?" and get upset if people are profane in response. I tend to think of HN as a special case.


But there are also those who read the post and think ooh, me too.

Please don't mistake me, I think civility is really important. I'm just saying it isn't always the right rule. And I hope that, when I break it, I break not from anger or pique, but for effect.


Baffling that you mention the guidelines when your blog psot (although not submitted by you) had a tremendously link-baity title and had little of interest to say.


The "not submitted by me" is the key point. I submit my own posts when I think they're of interest to HN. I have zero problem with people downvoting or even flagging a post that doesn't belong here.

But when we comment on the post, we ought to follow our guidelines. As you did, you were able to criticize the post without being rude, mean, or nasty.


I don't know if you are more closely acquainted with the OP than I but I wouldn't assume that he isn't actually doing anything good in the world. If nothing else he's trying to encourage others to do something good and from the looks of things, you're right, he has gotten a complaint. I really hope he doesn't use it as an excuse to give up and never accomplish anything like the complainer seems to have.




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