I'm curious how the hacker news algorithm works that something with (to me, currently) 9 upvotes and 1 comment can hit number 1 on the site and be hugged to death.
1. How can a post with 9 upvotes and 1 comment be number 1 on HN
2. How can a post with so few metrics of engagement be hugged to death.
The first is likely due to the late hour - time is a factor in the HN algorithm and with fewer people interacting with content the bar for getting the number 1 spot is much lower.
The second is probably attributable to the myriad clients using the HN API to scrape content from links shared here or the likely large population of HN users who engage with content but neither comment nor upvote.
The ranking formula is points divided by submission age raised to some constant. This means that a relatively few votes in a short amount of time is all it takes to outrank much older submissions, even with many more total votes. 9 votes in under 20 minutes will do it when the majority of other front page submissions are many hours old.
I'd say it's more "The ranking formula is points divided by submission age raised to some constant minus a large value if one or more mods feel like it". Not implying some grand conspiracy here, but some posts disappear entirely if the mods think it doesn't belong, regardless of the number of upvotes or comments.
There is also the flame war penalty. If the ratio of comments and upvotes is indicating flaming, then the post gets some negative points for the purpose of ranking.
I don't discount the value of having expertise in law among those who write our laws. That said, I think that lawyers have their own significant blind spots as well. A lawyer is an expert on the law, but also will often be out of touch with the actual lives and needs of the people. Ideally, Congress should have lawyers - but also plenty of non lawyers (from diverse backgrounds), who can bring their own experiences and perspectives that lawyers lack.
Well, that's how you get "laws by lawyers, for lawyers", like "software by engineers, for engineers".
Maybe Congress needs the equivalent of UX and product types who actually care about what the people want... and can explain how it works to us in fancy how-to videos.
> Maybe Congress needs the equivalent of UX and product types who actually care about what the people want...
Members of Congress have plenty of support devoted to both what people say they want and what they actually positively respond to. That’s...the entire political side of the operation.
It's telling that your comment is currently 2nd ranked. It comes across generous "there are bright math kids everywhere" but really boils down to "don't talk about how they're black" and "don't talk about how they're women." And finished with "my male friend was disadvantaged, the conversation should be about that."
Obviously a large number of the HN crowd agrees with you because these types of comments always land at the top of any article praising a woman or underrepresented minority for their accomplishments. "Why does it matter? We are all people." That's very easy to say when you are in the position of not having your accomplishments and intelligence questioned based on your race or gender. And it shows how homogeneous the HN community is that these types of comments continue to be upvoted to the top.
Representation matters. When you have no concept of what it is like to be black in the deep south. Or to be a woman in the deep south, much less both, you have no appreciation for why stories like this are so interesting and inspiring to the people who relate to them.
> It's telling that your comment is currently 2nd ranked.
Fwiw i think only because it's relatively recent. Not a lot of upvotes currently.
> It comes across generous "there are bright math kids everywhere" but really boils down to "don't talk about how they're black" and "don't talk about how they're women." And finished with "my male friend was disadvantaged, the conversation should be about that."
Wow now I think you're reading a lot more into it than what I wrote.
> Obviously a large number of the HN crowd agrees with you because these types of comments always land at the top of any article praising a woman or underrepresented minority for their accomplishments. "Why does it matter? We are all people."
That's not actually my claim. I do agree that representation matters. But I find it condescending when someone's accomplishments are only ever mentioned in the same sentence as some statistically surprising fact about their identity, as if what we were saying here is "not bad for a X". (And fwiw I do find it condescending when I'm a recipient of such praise in settings where I'm in the minority.)
I think many are simply tired of having scientific or mathematical or technological progress updates, that should be about the thing that is actually new, intermingled with political agenda or racism. Not everything needs to be turned into a discussion about race or the disadvantaged. It is not helpful and it is not on-topic. Many people don't like being off-topiced and would rather engage in on-topic discussion.
Articles which put much emphasis on these things are often coming across as racist themselves, because of the underlying meaning "Even a X can do it!" as if it was something unusual that an X actually manged to do whatever the article is about. Often this kind of expressed surprise hints at more racism of the authors of such an article, as it shows, that they still try to establish an associtation between race and ability.
In a way the "we are all people" mindset is less racist than all of the acting surprised about a X being able to do it and focussing on the "they are a X" aspect mindset.
I read through the article as well and was put off mostly by how it was presented that the students are black females:
> They are female, they are African-American, and they come from an area which is not particularly renowned for producing high academic achievers. This is just an awesome turn of events and one which should inspire anyone — no matter what their gender, ethnic or socio-demographic background — that excellence in your chosen field of study is always attainable if you have enough joy and passion for what you do.
I'm a person of color myself (not black) and seeing this statement (and the fact that the author is white) made it come across as "Look, even a black female can excel in math if they have enough joy and passion in what they do." On the surface, it seems like an innocuous statement, but what it really reads is "the only thing holding you back as an underrepresented person in society, especially being black and female, is your joy and passion, so keep working at it and you too can excel at math". It just reads as tone deaf to me.
My point is there's a way to present the fact that they're black and female, but you have to be careful how you word it because it can otherwise come across as almost condescending.
> A somewhat more subtle form of negation, is refinement of measurement. One man says that a tank weights ninety tons. And for that particular discussion, accuracy is of no consequence. Yet someone’s ego speaks up and says, Ninety-two tons. Maybe he’s right at that. But he’s wrong just the same. […] This is a favorite husband-and-wife game. Let’s be on guard against it.
> The worst trick our ego can play on us, is to demand that we know everything. Let’s discipline ourselves until it’s easy to say, I don’t know. And let’s keep out of discussions when they’re on subjects outside of our recognized sphere. Our lack of real knowledge and experience is bound to display itself, and bring resentment from those who are really qualified to speak. Let’s slap our ego down whenever it starts laying claim to knowledge that’s too various.
> If we want our opinions or beliefs to be accepted, the worst thing that we can do is to press too hard for them, or to make a personal issue of them. Better not crowd for acceptance, but rather invite it. Better tender our advice with a softening It seems to me. Or an It appears. Or a Perhaps. Or with some similar concession to the ideas of our listener. True, there are times when we must speak as authorities in no uncertain terms. Even then, reasonable humility is seldom amiss.
> With our eye on our brother’s ego, we’ll see that concession is the very cornerstone of good human relations. We cannot reach human agreements without mutual concession. The self-respect that every man feels impelled to maintain, demands that he appear at least partly right. Therefore, let’s not ever try to prove anyone wholly wrong. Let’s find something herein we can feel that he’s right. Then let’s say so. We simply must not build up our own ego at any unnecessary expense of our brother’s ego. Let’s keep an eye on concession.
> The worst trick our ego can play on us, is to demand that we know everything. Let’s discipline ourselves until it’s easy to say, I don’t know. And let’s keep out of discussions when they’re on subjects outside of our recognized sphere. Our lack of real knowledge and experience is bound to display itself, and bring resentment from those who are really qualified to speak. Let’s slap our ego down whenever it starts laying claim to knowledge that’s too various.
Growing up, all my self worth was tied to knowing everything. Several years ago I decided to work on that by publicly admitting to not knowing something every day for a month.
It turned out to be one of the best personal growth exercises I've done and led to a lot of professional success. It's actually quite emotionally freeing.
It also turns out that many of the people whose feathers get ruffled if they think their spot in the intellectual pecking order is being threatened will bend over backwards to help you if approached as a mentor. They don't think you're an idiot for asking, they generally love helping (assuming you are actually competent and not asking about basic shit every day).
This is huge. I often mentor mid-career folks by saying "you got here by being the guy/gal who knows the answers. From here on out, you can only grow by figuring out how to succeed when you don't know."
The following is the opening quote from Ray Dalio's book and it's what sold me on working for him:
“Before I begin telling you what I think, I want to establish that I’m a “dumb shit” who doesn’t know much relative to what I need to know. Whatever success I’ve had in life has had more to do with my knowing how to deal with my not knowing than anything I know.”
> But maybe they are preparing a bombshell or something
This is what I don't understand. Didn't they fire an employee for coming out and telling the world they had an AGI? Where is this LLM that convinced an employee it was alive?
And zero acknowledgment that Credit Default Swaps were pioneered by Blythe Masters AT JP Morgan and used relentlessly to move risk off of balance sheets in a house of cards that led to millions losing their homes and life savings.
"In bypassing barriers between different classes, maturities, rating categories, debt seniority levels and so on, credit derivatives are creating enormous opportunities to exploit and profit from associated discontinuities in the pricing of credit risk."
