3,684 karma · joined October 30, 2007
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Please send HN questions to hn@ycombinator.com.
> I'm in a mood to be especially caustic for one who is flatly wrong...
Comments like this are never acceptable here, no matter how right you are or feel you are. This site is for people who have basic standards of decency, at the very least. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Swipes are not allowed on HN, and comments that invoke national/regional/cultural stereotypes are particularly out of line here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
But one of your central complaints was about the guidelines, which have been constant for nearly two decades, so we’re just not having a serious conversation here. We’re always looking for signs that indicate if and how we can be doing better, but this interaction has nothing to grab onto.
> I’m a designer, not a writer
Most people are not "writers" but anyone can write their own story in their own words, and it's always much more charming than the output of a text-generation tool, especially when the topic is something you did for your pet :)
Sometimes you think you’ve been accused of everything you could be accused of. Wonders never cease!
> The "moderation by less", as well as the guidelines, are both farcical in nature. They've given way to ruination of an otherwise decent tech discussion forum
The guidelines have been constant (with minor updates) for most of the two decades HN has existed. Dan’s a moderator for 14 years and I’ve been one for several. Both of us have been active participants almost since the beginning. When did the ruination begin?
Your comment seems a generic vent, largely unrelated to the parent comment but if you have any actionable suggestions you’re welcome to email us.
You assert that there’s a decade of HN history to support your claim, but you don’t share any analysis of that history or point to anyone else’s. When pressed by someone else you “defend” yourself by saying that it’s a vibes argument [1]. It’s a basic principle of debating that an unfalsifiable claim is a worthless claim.
Your apparent central claim – that HN’s consensus position about AI has been pessimistic and oppositional because the audience is made up of software engineers who fear for their jobs – does not bear much scrutiny. HN users were the earliest adopters of AI coding tools like Claude Code and Codex. HN is where the biggest discussions happen about every new AI model and software dev tool. HN is where the developers and vendors of these models and tools come to see how their products are being received and utilized by the best software developers from all around the world.
Sure, there’s still negativity and criticism about AI here, and often for good reason. Plenty of the most bullish predictions about AI have not come to fruition, for reasons that are unsurprising to people who understand the technology.
The discussion in this thread just consists of people casting doubt on the claims in the article based on their understanding of technology. If they’re wrong, point out how they’re wrong, based on your understanding of the technology.
But please avoid acting like a jerk here, for your own sake as much as anyone else’s. Yes, it’s against the guidelines because it drags the place down, which should be reason enough, especially when your very complaint is about this place being too negative. But aside from that, sneering at others is bad for the soul and in my experience is not what highly successful people do.
People throughout the tech industry have been variously wrong or right in their predictions. Nobody has been consistently precise. Some of the industry's top luminaries have had to admit to being wildly wrong in their predictions (others haven't but I still notice how bad their predictions were and how little damage it's done to their position of authority).
Plenty of people have consistently made solid assessments here. Some of the best writing about AI anywhere has been by writers who are among HN’s leading figures. And, sure, plenty of people have said things that turned out to be wrong. That says nothing about HN as an entity and says only unsurprising things about large groups of people and the difficulty of anyone to make accurate predictions in a rapidly changing climate. It's easy for anyone to feel superior in hindsight and insist others were stupid, but unless you can point to records of specific predictions you made 5+ years ago for everyone to evaluate, a comment like this is just an asshole move.
The guidelines specifically state: Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Please observe the guidelines if you want to participate here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
HN is countless different people with the full range of views on most topics. “It” doesn't hate (or love) any one thing, and these kinds of comments insinuating that it is one entity with one view are so lame. Please observe the guidelines if you want to participate here.
It’s not really cool to post callouts like this, especially when it’s immediately after you’ve had a moderation reply. it can seem like you’re avoiding taking responsibility and are trying to deflect attention away from your own breach onto others.
The flag link is there and can be used on any comment you see that’s a breach of the guidelines.
The people who are optimistic about AI believe it can help to address or reverse these trends. It's fine to debate the merits of that belief, but the original comment wasn't trying to do anything like that.