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Comment by throwaway6977 | Hacker News Reader

I'm really, really glad I've never spent hours of my time standing up a website dedicated to meticulously and condescendingly criticizing the ideas of others. What a waste of energy.

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You do you, but I find sites like this a nice antidote to the opposite, which seems to be the norm these days.

Sites like https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ I find not only amusing, but interesting and informative. The author was on Michael Lewis' recent podcast, and she was quite interesting as well.

The difference is that the AI site is criticizing people who have sinned by "hyping" AI in the most pathetic way possible, and the web3 site is documenting very real events.

I mean seriously, how can you read this and think it's anything like web3isgoinggreat? https://criticalai.org/2023/05/05/lauren-m-e-goodlad-on-chat...

I'm not, I'm noting that not all critique sites are bad.

Don’t compare Molly White’s excellent editorial and fact reporting to the mediocre attempt at pushing a narrative we have here.

On the contrary, it often takes more effort to identify and call out bullshit* than it does to create it, so I think this is noble work (at least in theory - of course the "call out" could also be bullshit).

*in the technical sense popularised by https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

It’s a lot of typing but I really don’t see a huge amount of effort in the reviews of the news articles on that site. Once in a while they provide a better article but mostly they just quote chunks of text and say they are wrong. That doesn’t strike me as a lot of effort.

It’s their site they can do what they wish, more or less effort.

I don’t doubt countering bs can be huge amount of work, but I’m not sure that site and the Wikipedia idea are quite the same.

Except ML isn't bullshit. The proof is in the pudding. Yes, some people may overhype the positives of it, and maybe it is just my bubble, but I see far more people overhyping the negatives of it. Having a balanced approach to calling out overhyping in both directions would lend more credibility to their organization. Currently they just look like 21st century luddites.

But instead write dismissive comments about the ideas of others on HN?!

To be fair, his dismissal was very shallow and didn't take any effort, so it's internally consistent.

It's not the ideas, it's the unhinged and specious claims.

Providing some sort of balance or counterclaim is very much a good thing.

I mean, while a condescending and dismissive comment requires less energy, it's often also a lot less useful too.

If his comment saved someone from reading any of that terrible website then he has helped humanity.

These are smart people though. And many articles about AI have been low effort paranoia-inducing clickbait. I don’t think their effort here is wasted.

True, it's the new COVID super-contagious variant paranoia. Almost all of which ignored the well established tendencies of viruses to evolve into more contagious, and less dangerous forms. It's this sort of nonsense that allows Trump to say the media is sh*t, and be somewhat truthful.

It feels like this attitude has become pervasive and it is not always good. Sure supporting people is great, but the unfortunate reality is that most new ideas are bad.

Recently I have been trying to find critical views around topics I am researching, especially in the business world. Weird thing is for every 10-20 positive articles I am lucky if I find 1 negative article. These are not math/programmings topics where there is potentially a definitive answer. It's around business processes, where in theory everything should have pros and cons.

I think we have gone through a phase of supporting every idea and not letting alternate views surface. I for one support a dose of cynicism around any hyped up new idea. Only time will tell who is right or wrong. At that point the winning side can gloat.

The condescending tone may be a problem in certain few cases, I agree, but you aren't seriously defending every rando 'tech columnist' spreading, as well as celebrating it, sensationalist BS about AI making human emotion and intellect obsolete, are you.

Seems like big hypes generate a corresponding, co-dependent anti-hype that thrives off generating negativity around the hype (see Donald Trump as 45th President of the USA, Cryptocurrencies, young people discovering sex, etc.). Loud personalities appear in both sides. Les extrêmes se touchent.

Don’t fall into the "neutrality" trap, though. If a lot of people are loudly in favor of drinking the Kool-Aid and a lot of other people are loudly against drinking the Kool-Aid, the neutral, rational thing to do is not to drink half a cup of the Kool-Aid.

Yes, that is a very good point and I like that extension of the Kool-Aid analogy. I didn't mean to make it seem like neutrality is the way to go. We should definitely take an educated position even if we end up agreeing with one of the loud sides. I think what was trying to get it is they act to fuel each other and it causes distractions.

interestingly, the existence of this site says something about the importance of AI/GenAI/LLMs.

Do you also believe all the takedowns about snake oil say something about the nutritional and medicinal value of lizard oil?

I haven't seen any [serious] takedowns about snake oil so "the existence of" test has failed !

I'm using LLMs daily and they've radically improved my productivity at all sorts of tasks - the secret is to use them like junior <x> and of course review and edit their output.

But you are here.

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