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Comment by ggambetta | Hacker News Reader

I'm confused.

When engineers from a company who deals with the military (or some other ethically objectionably client) don't refuse to work on these projects, HN questions their values and urges them to make a stand, refuse, find another job if necessary, etc.

When the engineers do refuse, HN criticises them for beign self-righteous, virtue-signalling, and unpatriotic because countries with a lower ethical bar (Russia and China are the usual ones) are going to surpass the US in cyberwar.

So... which is it?

View on HN

There is not often a monolithic "HN", but instead a group of people who decide to engage or not based on the subject matter.

We need more media literacy around HN and Reddit. You just need a few users to upvote something, and people often respond when they see the opposing view (this is why conservatives and liberals in the US so often take the most extreme statements on the other side, and critique/retweet them; better engagement and an easier way to caricature the opposing side).

It's interesting to think about how different posts attract wholly different tribes, meaning HN is hundreds of sub-groups not a monolith. There might be a post on a Ruby gem, and the entire commenter group are Ruby-ists who hold common views on opposing languages. You might see this as "HN believes X", but instead it's the subset of people attracted by that post that you're really interacting with.

Will add this as an example to my media literacy guide for engs:

https://github.com/nemild/hack-an-engineer

To expand a bit: I think we need to embrace the fact that often times we have posts that don't have a "right" response --- i.e., where you can get a good view of exactly the right way to feel about something given the first few comments. Lots of these issues have many angles you can come from, and I hope people are

(a) willing to keep themselves to a high-enough standard to think for themselves and see that it's a grey area (that they might have a bias for one side or another). You can't just assume the top post is definitely the right thing, even with a good number of upvotes.

(b) willing to read more posts further down, giving them plenty of respect, and contribute to the conversation.

Maybe a better way to rank comments is something more probabilistic rather than just ranking by (num_upvotes - num_downvotes). (Actually, how is it done now?)

> I think we need to embrace the fact that often times we have posts that don't have a "right" response

Indeed. I know I keep seeing during the immigration debate (of which is recent). Liberal-leaning say that we should provide due process and let in refugees. This is argument in good faith.

Conservatives say that we have a body of law that must be adhered to regarding immigration. This too is a valid argument. I may disagree with its interpretation, but I believe it too is in good faith.

"Womp womp", "I dont really care do u" is the style of discourse we're seeing. If the administration comments were on here with HN, dang would likely make the comment dead and leave a message of a ban.

Back to the main point - it feels like society as a whole (and HN within that) is lowering the accuracy and persuasive qualities of language to something I saw elsewhere. Idiocracy. Who can shout the loudest; Who can rapid-fire lies and half-truths; who can redirect hatred and bile - these people seem to be the ones on top dictating properness these days.

But even Dang is just a single person. We really need to design systems (social networks) that encourage this type of thoughtful debate. Right now, all the incentives in social media are around "engagement" (upvotes, likes, retweets, large amounts of comments)

> and people often respond when they see the opposing view (this is why conservatives and liberals in the US so often take the most extreme statements on the other side, and critique/retweet them; better engagement and an easier way to caricature the opposing side)

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-04-07

This is great! Added to my media literacy guide:

https://github.com/nemild/hack-an-engineer/commit/3d8091960e...

Thank you for the resource you’ve created on github. Love seeing using that platform for non-code related projects.

There's probably more than one person on HN

True, but there's at least something to which comments end up at the top. My sense has been that "programmers need better ethics" almost always tops out the "programmers worked with the government" stories, and outside of this chain "programmers are being self-righteous and unpatriotic" has had basically all the top slots in this thread.

I suppose the easy guess is just that people who disagree with a story are more likely to come argue in the comments than people who read it and agree, so every story gets its opposite upvoted.

There's probably more than one person voting on HN.

Also different topics attract people with different views.

When it comes to voting, strong opinions (one way or the other) will always end up on top.

I have pretty strong opinions that never get to the top, such as "Apple tech is mostly gimmicky, trendy garbage whereas Microsoft tech is mostly the best mix of freedom, flexibility and quality". Probably even just using that as my example here will harm me!

There are definite, identifiable leanings from the denizens here on HN.

Yes, but that's a poor example since the reverse would get downvoted as well.

If you want to be the top comment, your dismissal needs to be more middlebrow and noncommittal.

Incorrect. Here's proof - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17414081

Their comment: Windows is terrible. (No downvotes.)

My comment: Windows is the best. (-4 downvotes.)

Agreed! Glad we don't always come to a consensus. Discourse is allowed.

[citation needed] ;)

The problem with discourse in 2018 is outrage motivates people to comment more than anything. “What gets rewarded gets done” so the place becomes an outrage factory, then online discourse self selects for outrage, then cycle.

Maybe I should change that.

In this case frankly I can see both sides. I refused to work on a cigarette company once, but didn’t refuse to work on operation sovereign borders (because of project specifics) other people might decide differently in each case.

Bit of a dull comment probably, but I think there are two sides to it.

"HN" is not a single entity and it is made up of los of people with different opinions and values.

If everybody had the same point of view, there would be no ground for a discussion...

I'm confused.

You seem to think everyone on HN agrees with each other.

Are you really confused, or did you just phrase your comment that way to mock the parent comment?

Are you really wondering their intent, or did you just phrase your question to point out the implication of their comment?

I'm personally glad that HN is not a complete echo chamber and that multiple points of view can surface to the top. Do you find it a problem that the thousands of people who read this site don't all share a consistent philosophy?

Not at all. I'm just surprised that when an article says X, everyone seems to be against X. Then shortly afterwards there's an article that says (not X), and everyone seems to be against (not X).

lol. right now the HN front page item right under this one has everyone celebrating a spacex military contract.

Elon Musk is some kind of enlightened prophet to most techies despite mountains of evidence that he is a shitty person running shitty companies.

> mountains of evidence

> shitty person

> shitty companies

Elaborate?

He's in the middle of a culture clash between (traditionally union-friendly) automotive industry and (traditionally union-hostile) Silicon Valley startup, and he appears to be tossing his lot with the SV startup ecosystem.

That has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

(Possibly more importantly: he's also fallen prey, it seems, to the traditional SV startup ecosystem behavior of overselling capabilities in the Tesla cars, which may be contributing to avoidable deaths as people assume the low-tier driver assist the cars actually have is real self-driving functionality. I'm not sure why this bug hasn't propagated to SpaceX; perhaps he's populated the company with enough rocketeers to know that it's very much a "Screw up and people die" industry, and he's hands-off enough to let them succeed).

It's almost like there's more than one person on HN, with different thoughts and ideas.

You can refuse the work assigned to you and not get fired? Sounds like my dream job :D.

Mu. There is no "HN" as a single mind.

To each his own.

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