This is even more true of the comment section of HN than it is in the media. For several domains I know something about, the comments here are painfully misguided and just bad, with the possible exception of some programming topics.
It turns out that, although possibly a virtue when programming, hubris can easily lead you astray if you're outside your field of expertise. Humility is more useful in these situations.
I am sure that this holds true for many other topics; it should give us all pause before we accept statements as true just because they sound agreeable to us, or before we regurgitate opinions whose veracity we're not in a position to verify.
Incidentally, I've also spotted this on the TV show QI, many of whose clever 'facts' are misleading at best or just plain incorrect.
It's Wrong.
It's Correct, and you are mistaken.
It's Correct, but poorly communicated.
PS: This is also far worse on the softer ends of hard science. Diet, Economics, Climate, Astronomy, and Evolution all suffer from studying complex things with limited ability to experiment.
I know this is veering wildly offtopic, but when I see misconceptions about evolution on HN, they're usually not being displayed by people with too rudimentary a science background, it's mostly people with an altogether unscientific background such as creationism or other religious and philosophical ideas that are in conflict with factual information.
> Incidentally, I've also spotted this on the TV show QI, many of whose clever 'facts' are misleading at best or just plain incorrect.
I'm not familiar with that show, but that's a common problem in science journalism now, and it's not even confined to "popular" science anymore either. Maybe it's always been that way, and I just notice it more nowadays.
There is also a lot of the opposite - but just as bad - phenomenon going on: I believe shouting out unreflected gotcha!-style rebuttals to comments has become somewhat of a sport around here, to the point where I sometimes wonder if misunderstanding the original comment was maybe an intentional act.
Some people scan comments looking for specific things that conflict with some narrative they're promoting, usually with regards to a product. They will:
* only reply to comments that are going to be seen by many people, e.g. those near the top, at certain times of the day, within a certain time of being posted
* write the reply in the shortest amount of time
* write a reply that deflects attention away from the original comment, irrespective of whether that reply makes any sense
But in the case of HN, if you leave them that way in a way it's your fault :-P Meaning, that you could write a paragraph or two setting the rest of us straight. The exception is subjects that are extremely politically sensitive and controversial, in which your paragraph or two could be downvoted to oblivion and start a uselessly derailed thread, no matter how incredibly polite you are. If HN has 'groupthink' opinion that is completely wrong on kernel scheduling, you can set it right, politely and by sticking to the facts. If HN has 'groupthink' opinion that is completely wrong on a political or other controversial issue, I would politely abstain.
No way! I love commenting on political and controversial issues. Never let a fear of downvotes act as a chilling effect on your speech. If you believe you have something truly valuable to add then get it out there!
I often find myself surprised that I'm upvoted for swimming against the current. It may turn out that there were multiple people who had the same idea as me but they were staying out of it until I commented.
> OP's controversial comment (-50)
> response (+10)
> OP's responds back with evidence or clarification (+100)
where OP was simply misunderstood.
I'll give you a recent example: there's nothing wrong with servers running ad-block detectors and not serving content to people running ad-blockers. It's within their rights. It's not "within their rights" for people to circumvent these and try to see the content anyway.
Since on a technical level the content owner's web server is both serving the content to you at their expense, for which your browser makes a request, and also is specifically serving copyrighted content, and finally on a moral level has created that content at their expense, I consider it absolutely, 100% within their moral, legal, technical, and decent rights to throw up a TOS saying: "Our business model is showing you advertising, and you agree to load and not block ads. Click 'I agree' to proceed". It's in my opinion within their moral, ethical, technical, and legal rights to detect and block people using ad blockers. It's not a technical "arms race" for people installing plugins that let them trick the server into serving them content even though they're not displaying ads, while the server chooses not to display them content. Even if there is NO such click-through TOS being thrown up, the server by running ad-detection algorithms makes this relationship abundantly clear.
I wrote this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11458626
All of my contributions were downvoted, which is fine, but people were also extremely rude. They didn't understand my bakery analogy, and focused on something irrelevant, the TOS. (This is like saying the bakery didn't have a sign up saying you couldn't reach behind the counter and take something. I mean, the fact that the server is actively running ad-block detection and wanting not to serve you isn't enough? It's also irrelevant because it takes one line to add that to a TOS so it's not a real response.)
So here is an example of a fine contribution in which my view is correct and HN groupthink is completely wrong.
untog pointed out that my comment was correct by stating "Seems telling that you're getting downvotes but no replies explaining how your comparison is wrong..."
Going forward, of course I will not be using that analogy.. Indeed I won't post on any ad-block related subjects.
Of course, this doesn't mean I don't expect people not to run ad-blockers, just as the existence of copyright doesn't mean I don't expect people to torrent stuff. I just mean that they're not morally in the right, they shouldn't act righteous about it, and servers that refuse to serve people content when those people are running ad blockers are in no way (not even a tiny way) in the wrong.
I'll probably be downvoted for this, I just wanted to give you an example of something that I wouldn't post. I literally wouldn't be posting this now except as an example of something people will downvote.
First, snark, sarcasm and satire are certainly an effective way to get a point across sometimes (ex:[0] which is currently the most upvoted 'apply hn').
However, it's not always be the way to express an argument. Indeed, your analogy about the bakery isn't even about the moral, ethical, technical, or legal issues of the topic. Any argument that you may have meant to make about ad blocking is belied by your conclusion which is "(how I feel people sound when they talk about their right to use ad blockers over the wishes of the people who the ads would be paying and whose servers are serving the content.)". You made an argument attacking people, not an argument about how adblocking is wrong (regardless of your intent).
Had I read the above when it was originally posted, I likely would have downvoted it. Not because I disagree with you, but because I feel that HN is not a place where character attacks are welcome. Assuming that this is just 'groupthink' (with no other cause) is an error.
As an aside, I find your bakery analogy amusing. There's a bakery in my town that I've frequented many times and it is operated on the honour system. There's no cashier in the bakery and the displays don't have any glass in front of them. You're expected to just grab what you want and drop the cash in the cash box. You know what? People do it! The fact that the bakery owners so obviously demonstrate their trust to their customers engenders a lot of goodwill.
As for ad-blocking? To me it's a simple matter of the right to control my browser and which content it downloads and how that content is displayed. If your site is going to put neon green text on a purple background, I'm going to tell my browser to ignore that so I can read in black and white.
If you want to tell your web server to refuse access to those it deems are blocking ads, that's totally fair. Just as I have the right to control my browser, you have the right to control your server.
As for copyright? I think the whole concept of exclusive ownership of content is dubious. Study some historical literature and see how heavily George R R Martin borrowed from Greek tragedy, for example. It's silly to me that we should claim he's the sole creator and the owner of this story. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Everybody is indebted to society for a great many reasons.
If sites with paywalls wanted to distribute encrypted PDFs to their customers that would be one thing. But they're using HTML and the whole point of that is that the client renders it. I will always reshape your HTML + requests before I fetch and render it. That's how it works. If you don't like that, this is not the medium for you to engage me in.
Also, ads are grandfathered in, in most people's minds, because they happened before our privacy discussions started. But when you consider the insidious tracking and the anti-anti-tracking measures (how is that not hacking?) going on, they're a hideous technology. If history was different and you just invented internet ads now you'd be called a malware author and privacy abuser (of children!). So it's time public perception catches up with reality and (tracking-capable) ads die a fiery death.
The owners of the server have made it clear that they don't want to serve you content. The principles of fairness and honest dealings say that you should respect those wishes, even if you technically can work around them.
But you haven't done anything to show an obligation, on my part, to view them. You've merely stated how you're so right about there being one.
What the sites are asking for is abusive - to use an open protocol for DRMed content. They're trying to have the benefits without the costs. Well, tough. If they want use DRM - let them use PDFs. Those contain mechanisms to prevent the manipulation of the content.
The web is an accessibility tool, not yet another marketing cesspool.
For example, in hotel industry, you open the fridge for 5seconds, that charges to the bill, and they tell you it has become industry standard everywhere, you'd eventually accept it that they're producing electricity for your service (even just 5 seconds of opening the fridge, and dont touch anything).
I got upvote for simple jokes, but never got upvote for invested comment. I dont understand why, but meh..