Hacker News Reader

Given that the first thing I think when I see your username is "who is he going to shit on today", I would suggest that perhaps some "physician, heal thyself" is in order.

I find that, as trite as it sounds, you really do get out of HN what you put in. When I first posted at HN I adopted an aggressive, frankly really fucking douchey attitude that reminds me of your continual one. I'm still slowbanned because of it[1]. When I moderated the dipshit attitude out of my posting, however, it became a lot more fun and I've made a few friends through posting here.

Let's get real here. Ideological downvotes aren't your--and I mean your, in particular--problem. Being an asshole, who apparently can't get through a day of posting without attacking someone or caricaturing a position with which you disagree, is. I mean, come on. "Fandroids hate Apple." "Leftists hate private property." You're not fooling anyone: the schtick you are employing is to make statements that are tailored to offend, under the guise of "stating your opinion," and then get outraged when they do offend and people take advantage of the moderation mechanism of a downvote to say, "we don't want this here." You don't get to be surprised or offended when you do that and conflating rejection of your behavior with rejection of your beliefs is intellectually dishonest.

The problem with the reception of your posts is you. I know this, because I've been there, and I chose not to be quite as much of an ass. You, apparently, have not. Act like less of an asshole and I'll bet you that what you see as "ideological downvotes" go away.

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[1] - The slowban used to annoy me, but I find it moderates my initial, fly-off-the-handle reaction pretty well. I think I'd miss it if it went away.

Edit to add this Disclosure: His opposition to me is he's an Apple hater and I'm not. That's the background behind him deciding to call me names. Of course, since he regularly characterizes me, he chooses to accuse me of characterizing others. I don't make personal insults, I make arguments. I feel the later are more powerful. He can't so he attacks me. Is this what you want on this site? Are you able to put aside your opinion about Apple, or do you hate me and upvote him simply because I'm not an Apple basher? Think about that.

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Thank you for providing a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Rather than address my arguments, you characterize me (simple personal attack) and pretend like it's my fault. This is typical blame the victim. Yeah, I'm "douchy" for not towing the party line.

In case anyone is fooled by your kind of personal attack and "smear the queer" mentality, the fact of the matter is, I have tested it.

And if you were being honest, you'd address the fact that I pointed out that I have tested it. I'll give another example.

I once made a comment that consisted of this, in its entirety: "Apple licensed the technologies that appeared in Mac OS from Xerox via a deal that gave Xerox pre-IPO Shares in Apple".

This simple, innocent, factual, and let's be honest "douchy", statement wsa in response to someone who said "Apple stole Mac OS from Xerox".

Of course, me pointing out this easily verifiable fact was downvoted to invisibility.

You attack me because you cannot be honest enough to admit that you are intolerant of people, like me, who think differently, no matter how well behaved we are. So you smear me, and in doing so, you show why Hacker News is not a place where fruitful discussion can be expected.

I characterize it as you being an asshole because that's how you write in every post I can remember your name attached to. I'm sorry that you don't like that. I'm sure there are some people who downvote you because they don't agree with you. I'm equally sure there are many more who do it because your style of writing is infuriating and not conducive to discussion.

Right now that post has 32 points, so apparently some folks think I have a point when I say it has nothing to do with what you say and how you say it. But I realize that that means nothing to you--once you have decided that people are out to get you, an observation like that just means that the people who vote are out to get you.

I once made a comment that consisted of this, in its entirety: "Apple licensed the technologies that appeared in Mac OS from Xerox via a deal that gave Xerox pre-IPO Shares in Apple".

This simple, innocent, factual, and let's be honest "douchy", statement wsa in response to someone who said "Apple stole Mac OS from Xerox".

Can you link me to the exact thread in which this happened? I'm interested in seeing it.

You attack me because you cannot be honest enough to admit that you are intolerant of people, like me, who think differently, no matter how well behaved we are.

I disagree, politely and even rather productively, on a fairly regular basis with many people. But I've noticed a consistent history of your posts being aggressive and unpleasant to read. I have noticed that you are, to use your own phrase, not "well behaved." And, as such, I am not surprised that many of your posts get downvotes.

A pursuit of "fruitful discussion" does not mean having to abide jerks.

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Edit to add this Disclosure: His opposition to me is he's an Apple hater and I'm not.

My opposition to you is because your behavior in this social forum is disruptive and unpleasant, not because of your beliefs. I quite literally do not care what you believe so long as you are pleasant to discuss with. In person I disengage from and avoid people who speak and act as you write, and my social circles tend to do likewise. On HN, the analogue to this is a downvote swarm.

(Also, as it happens I'm posting from my retina MBP, which is a brilliant piece of technology which I love very, very much, while I watch Netflix through the Mac mini attached to my TV. A true Apple hater, here.)

>"I characterize it as you being an asshole"

Because you cannot argue to the point, and in doing so, you prove my point.

But by admitting it, you lost the debate. You are the problem. There is no excuse for this.

I know if I returned this in kind, that I would be hellbanned.

This is why abusive people like you feel free to call others "asshole" or "douche". Because the moderators have your back.

So, not only are you the problem, but the moderators who censor those who think differently and let people who have nothing but name calling slide, are the problem.

>"Right now that post has 32 points"

Which proves my conclusion- a purely ad hominem post, that argues to the person, and includes calling me names, is well upvoted.

You're incapable of making a rational argument, so you egnage in name calling. Other people like to see me attacked for the "crime" of thinking differently, so they up vote you. Now this thread has you calling me names twice, at length, and derailing the possibility of productive discussion.

Frankly, I think its sad that your mind is so overrun by ideology that you're unable to think sufficiently to construct acounter argument, or your integrity is so low that you think "smearing the queer" and getting applauded for it is some sort of a victory.

And of course, blame the queer. He had it coming. For daring to be different. You are nothing more than a bigot. Unable to make an argument, so you call people names.

And you are what is ruining this site.

You have elected to write a great deal about your perceived injustices but have not provided the link to the apparently well-remembered post you have described; searching for the alleged exact text[1] with or without your username returns only this thread.

Once more, if it is as straightforward as you claim I will be more than happy to agree that your point has some validity, but I'd like to see proof rather than unfounded assertions (whereas I would say that my assertions have been pretty well demonstrated by your behavior in this thread).

[1] - http://goo.gl/ubWZ7

I love you all.

Did some searching on hnsearch, found this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3240050

This also seems to be related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2934973

Nice detective work. I'm not surprised to see both of those downvoted. The first reply to the second one you linked sums it up pretty well:

There's an unreasonable amount of emotionally charged language in your post. This is Hacker News, not "call people uninformed barely-computer literate consumers and haters because they don't share your viewpoint news". Make your arguments in a civil manner, please.

If you write with the assumption that people who disagree with you are dishonest, liars, haters, etc., it's going to leak into your writing unless you are a particularly gifted writer--your phrasing and word choice will betray it. And people don't much like it when your entire schtick involves emotionally charged accusations against them. Which is why I'm not surprised to see either of those downvoted.

People are good at tagging, and ignoring, jerks. There's a decent amount of indirect jerkdom in both of those posts. I can't be surprised they got nuked, but I doubt it'd be because he's writing in defense of Apple.

The problem with his posts is that he makes big claims and then fails to back them up with any references. For example from your second link:

>Xerox did not invent the GUI.

What?

Normally I'd never weigh in on a discussion like this but I'll make an exception since you post a lot here and I think you need a bit of friendly advice. I'm one of the oldtimers here, so I've seen how HN has progressed over the years, I also believe My comments are valued in this community since they consistently get upvoted. You can see my average on the leaderboard. Just so you know where I'm coming from.

I'm sorry to say, but eropple is right, you have a terrible attitude. It's obvious that you're a bright guy (or gal), and reading through your comments I'd say you definitely have something to contribute to HN. But the words often seem to come out the wrong way. You should think about that and try to do something about it, primarily for your own sake. The way the world works is that if you have a positive attitude, respect other people, take their arguments to heart and don't point fingers you'll be more successful and lead a happier life.

I'm guessing you're not as old as me, so take this as friendly advice from an old man that has seen a lot of people and learnt a few things about how they work.

I'll look forward to seeing some great comments from you in the future.

I find I disagree with a lot of your opinions but do find many of them interesting. I haven't made of study of your posts so I can't say whether they _all_ bear the pattern that eropple describes but I'm sorry to say that many of them do. Your first post in this thread does, as eropple pointed out.

I do think there is a lot of bad downvoting and that there are certain demographics (were you expecting a flat distribution?) which results in the suppression of certain types of opinion to some extent. You are correct there. But this doesn't help:

"haters going to hate, and leftists hate private property and fandroids hate apple."

If you take an offensive position right at the top of the thread, how do you expect people to respond?

By your terms, "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" is a story about blaming the victim.

Oh, an insult! How original! And blame the victim for pointing out that you're blaming the victim. What a clever retort!

My argument that the site was overrun with this kind of stuff is only supported by you continuing to produce it.

So, please do.

Let me guess, it's only ever other people who are screwups.

I'm not seeing it myself. While I hew to the "leftist" side of the political line, I'm also somewhat pro-IP. Every time I have posted a legitimate, well-cited criticism of an anti-IP article, I have gotten upvoted to the top. Not mindless tropes like "IP incentivizes innovation," which are actually ideological statements masquerading as factual statements, but actually factual statements.

My experience with HN has been, at least up to this point, that ideological ranting will largely be met with ideological upvoting. That is to say if your arguments are based on ideology, you're going to get upvotes or downvotes based on your ideological compatibility with people on the site. However unlike reddit, if you base your comments on defensible assertions and evidence, you will get upvoted even if your comment goes against the grain of the prevailing ideology.

I was open to that hypothesis until I posted "Apple licensed the technology in Mac OS from Xerox via an arrangment that gave Xerox pre-IPO shares of Apple", and that comment was downvoted to oblivion. (Of course, that's not the only one.)

There are actually people who seem to follow me around (like the one who attacked me in this thread) for the sole purpose of harassing me... for the "crime" of thinking differently.

If you find the right subject at the right time, you can make an argument that is good and get upvoted. I don't deny that.

I'm not saying always, I'm saying too often, and it feels to me, the majority of the time, its ideological.

There are actually people who seem to follow me around (like the one who attacked me in this thread) for the sole purpose of harassing me... for the "crime" of thinking differently.

Nobody's following you around. The most likely explanation is that you and they are attracted to the same articles for the same reasons, so you keep bumping into each other. After a while you'll start to recognize each other, and by that point, they'll remember all your previous interactions and take them into account when you run into them again.

Could you please produce a link to this post? Google seems to think it does not exist. Given that you stated in a sibling comment that you posted exactly that post and search engines tend to be good at finding exact strings, I find that strange.

1) Kick things off with sweeping generalizations of four sites spanning ten years as "haters", "fandroids", "leftists" and "fascists".

2) Spend the rest of the tangent hypocritically complaining about name-calling while demanding that someone refute your purely anecdotal evidence.

3) Triumphantly explain how I've somehow proven your point by posting this.

I think human curation has failed. Ideological downvotes have killed the signal to noise ratio of all four of these sites.

Uncontrolled, collective curation has a lot of flaws, perhaps, but 'human curation' generally is more important than ever particularly from individuals or small groups. You just need to choose your gatekeepers carefully and steer clear of the herd mentality if it doesn't work for you.

How about some specifics? I get suspicious when I see "leftists" thrown around.

I find it's best to ignore a post when any rash generalization is made; be it against people I side with or not.

Here's some specifics:

Anything having to do with the 2008 fiscal crisis. Anything having to do with monetary policy in general.

Hell, just try pointing out that the IR absorption of CO2 is less than that of water vapor (eg: clouds) in a discussion of global warming. You'll get no end of "all scientists believe in global warming[1]" and downvotes, for this scientific fact.

[1] This is, by far, the most anti-intellectual and offensive statement. Science doesn't work by majority. Worse, it is simply factually false. There is no survey of scientists to determine their votes, and there is a sizable contingent of scientists who refute it or dispute it. Further, the references to "science" that this side makes generally come from IPCC reports, which is to say, reports prepared by politicians which in the past have often been refuted by the very scientists whose research they claim to be summarizing.

This issue is really a good one, because it is a purely scientific one, it is relatively straightforward and easy to disprove (Mars was warming at the same time, with the earth and the solar cycle, despite having no Hummers, the earth has been getting cooler for the past decade, despite CO2 going up, the "warming" period coincides with ice ages, and the "evidence", namely the Mann "hockey stick" was the result of outright fraud).... yet the people who believe it believe it for ideological reasons, and actually reject science, making scientific discussions impossible. (Global warming is the left's creationism!) all you can get is insistence that all scientists believe in it (all christians believe in creationism, right? Actually they don't all believe in it, possibly a majority don't.) Or you can get pointers to scientific sounding blog posts that at the root end up being nonsense.

The closest I've ever gotten to an actual scientific debate on global warming was with a physicist who, in the end, was reduced to insisting that man made carbon dioxide had different effects on the atmosphere than "naturally occurring" carbon dioxide. At that point I gave up- I can't argue with a belief like that.

How many people do you think on Hacker News believe in Global Warming? How many of them have ever looked up the IR absorption of CO2? Or would listen to that point?

How many people on Hacker News reject intellectual property out of hand? How many of them can derive, from first principles, an explanation for any private property ownership? I believe the former is the majority and the latter is a tiny fraction. Yet they "believe in private property" -- but only situationally. (EG: Ok to steal movies, but not cars, or money, unless you're the government, then its ok to steal money if you call it taxes. Is that not a reasonable characterization of "leftist" positions? Ok, then how can a leftist believe in the principle of private property if its sometimes ok to steal? By redefining the word "steal"?)

Personally, I find Stephan Kinsella's argument on how intellectual property is fundamentally different from physical property to be convincing. That may be just because it reinforces my biases, though.

By the way, if you want an honest opinion of someone who has upvoted your posts in the past -to correct "disagree" downvotes-, I frankly find your posts aggressive, to the point that you lose me as an audience. It's often not about the content - I think we can agree that e.g. Russ Roberts is not a leftist, yet I enjoy what he has to say - but the form.

Given that only radicals are against all taxation, I don't think that it is accurate to describe "taxes" as a leftist position.

You seem to have fallen off of an ideological deep end to the point of resisting basic facts, and an unwillingness to accept any position other than your own as "leftist".

The IR absorption of CO2 is well-known. As is its longevity in the atmosphere, and the amount being put up there by people.

The IR absorption of H2O is also well-known. As is the fact that it tends to precipitate out of the atmosphere, and is not being released by human activities in much greater quantity than was the case historically. (However it is released as the climate changes.) Furthermore H20 has multiple effects - in the form of vapor it is a great greenhouse gas, in the form of clouds it is a great reflector of light, as it precipitates, it removes other things that can cause global warming, if it precipitates as snow, it causes cooling, etc. In any detailed modeling of climate, it is very important and difficult to get the impacts of H20 right.

However in your world global warming is false, and anyone who believes in it is an ignorant leftist. And you think that you can argue this from an IR curve that I guarantee has been thought about more deeply by scientists than you have ever thought about it.

I also suspect that your understanding and my understanding of "private property" is different than yours. You would claim my disagreement with your viewpoint to be ignorance. I, most Americans, most lawyers, and legal historians all disagree with you. At some point you should consider whether it is more likely that you're the lone genius who knows what is right, or whether you're out of touch with reality.

I'm eagerly looking forward to your paper that is going to disprove the current consensus on climate change, once and for all.

Until then, if you allow, I'll stick with what the IPCC and the PNAS publish on behalf of over a thousand scientists from dozens of countries.

They were probably all bribed by the Solar industry and Tesla Motors, but I'm afraid it's the best we have until you get published with your revolutionary findings about CO2.

Science doesn't work by majority.

Yes, and tobacco does not cause cancer. It's all just one big lefty conspiracy.

>Here's some specifics:

>Anything having to do with the 2008 fiscal crisis. Anything having to do with monetary policy in general.

These are not specifics. Could you link to some actual examples?

I don't reject IP out of hand. I do think patent law needs to be reformed, but you paint this with a really broad brush. I honestly have never gotten a full-on all-anti-IP vibe here. I do believe most people here oppose software patents, but software patents are only a small subset of IP, and a recent one at that.

I've taken controversial/unpopular views on plenty of issues, including monetary policy and the financial crisis, as well as religion. Yet in my entire comment history, I only have one post that's below 0 (I deserved it).

Your posts get downvoted more than mine because of a difference in the way the two of us behave. I tried to explain this to you over a year ago, and someone else quoted it in this very thread: you include an "unreasonable amount of emotionally charged language in your post[s]." You seem to have trouble staying away from name-calling and cheap shots.

I propose an experiment: for the next month or so, before you hit the "reply" button, carefully read over your post and remove anything that could be considered name-calling (that is, any label applied to a person that they wouldn't voluntarily apply to themselves -- such as "haters", or associations with "creationism".) Remove explicit comments about others lacking intellect or having inappropriate motivation. Compare the number of downvotes you get, after removing these non-insightful statements, to the number of downvotes you get now.

I just read this comment thread then realised how pointless it was, therefore creating an example of what the author of the article was talking about. Very meta!

Most things written for the web are written to get page views. Whenever a social news site gets big enough, then people will start submitting content to it for that purpose. That's where the money is. If a blog posts an article about Apple violating court rulings, boom, lots of traffic and ad money for little to no research costs, even if it isn't really anything worthwhile for programmers to read. You could always look for some other source of articles to read, such as following your coworkers on Twitter or Yammer or something, or curating your own set of RSS feeds of programming blogs, etc..

Absolutely, you're right. And that's what I'm doing. I'm using a machine curation service that is in beta. Unfortunately it's little more than a "subscribe to several RSS feeds at once by expressing an interest in a general topic"... but I think that's the direction to go.

Curious, is it Prismatic?

"Hacker News has become the source of the noise for me and I'm increasingly not coming here. I often block it in my hosts file, in fact, along with reddit and Facebook."

If any website causes you to often block it in your HOSTS file, then perhaps you should make a real effort at not unblocking it?

All I'm saying is that if chewing on glass gives you discomfort, well, stop chewing.

The anecdote about your post would be more helpful if you linked to it, rather than merely described it.