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Comment by tlrobinson | Hacker News Reader

It turns out when you let people pseudonymously vote for things you get research vessels named Boaty McBoatface and similar (which I think would be awesome BTW http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/world/europe/boaty-mcbo... )

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FWIW, that wasn't the issue in this case. We knew about that possibility and planned for it and even called it by that name. But Kevin and I decided not to treat Maciej's application as a troll. The earnest comments he posted were what convinced us of that, and I don't think we were wrong there.

I admit to being flummoxed by the combination of trollish and serious elements--it basically does a denial of service on my brain; if it were stage hypnosis I'd be squawking like a chicken. But I'm starting to think one could have taken all the jokes out of this and much the same thing would still have happened. If that's so, then the troll aspect is a red herring.

I admit to being flummoxed by the combination of trollish and serious elements--it basically does a denial of service on my brain

For very good reason: Trolls often pretend to be serious, but serious people pretending to be trolls is incredibly rare.

You seem to be implying that you think Maciej is a troll. Have you read much of his writing? He is a jester: he tends to couch the things he's serious about in a lot of humor.

This sounds like something Paul Graham would say. It's only missing the words "it turns out that".

I don't know if it's really that rare, though. From where I sit Maciej is playing the fox/anansi/trickster character to a tee, with a healthy dose of ha ha only serious (http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/ha-ha-only-serious.ht...). Whether it's a character he's pretending to be or just his natural communication style is for him to say, but dude-who-wanders-in-to-fuck-up-your-ego-with-practical-jokes is a pretty well-established archetype that predates "troll".

Now I'm blushing.

I think you're just drunk.

I think we agree? When you let "the crowd" make decisions for you, sometimes they make weird, possibly dumb decisions -- that's why "the crowd" doesn't get to do that very often. It's also why I was so impressed by the idea that we'd get to pick these companies to get funded -- if not by literal vote, at least by discussion. THAT was the innovative bit.

You also get Republican nominees named "Donald Trump". https://medium.com/@ginsudo/president-trump-is-your-fault-e5...

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