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It's very easy to shape public opinion, dang; we shouldn't let anonymous posters set the tone of discussion or flung FUD around on the most important issue of our lives.
When I go to the doctor, I know I can trust them because I see a diploma on the wall, they have a name, I can ask other doctors about them. Would you, dang, let someone you just met on the street operate on you? Or diagnose you? Just because they said they were a doctor?
Re costs: Look at https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=oceanthrowaway - the odds that this commenter is legit are quite high. Would it would have been better if they had posted under a regular username? Sure, but people sometimes have good reasons for making throwaway accounts to post about topics they're professionally expert in. Such comments add value to HN, sometimes a lot of value (e.g. sometimes they give important inside information about a topic), and punishing people for doing that is against the community interest.
Re benefits: it's not at all easy to "shape public opinion" by an anonymous comment on an internet forum. You'd have to do it repeatedly, and the more repetitive it gets, the more predictable the comments become, and the more likely the community will have an immune response to it. In my experience from moderating this place over the years, internet users are far too quick to assume that they're encountering manipulative stealth behavior.
What you should be responding to instead is the quality of the comments. If a throwaway account is repeatedly posting low-quality comments, then sure, that's a good reason to be critical - but the throwawayness of the account should not be the high-order bit.
If you had made your point less aggressively, I probably wouldn't have responded, but you came down on the GP like a hammer (e.g. "spreading FUD from behind anononymity") and that put your comment on the wrong side of the HN guidelines.
But that's the thing, isn't it? I'm not an expert in climate science, I can't judge what's quality and what's FUD reasonably phrased. Neither the vast majority on HN. There is no way for us to determine if this anonymous guy makes some good points or just wants to spread some doubt towards the study. Just because climate science seems more approachable than maths, doesn't mean people are equipped to determine what's true, what's manipulation or what's plausible.
Blows my mind some guy made an account, said he was a physical oceanographer, made some grammatically correct comments and everyone believed it. Just like that!
> internet users are far too quick to assume that they're encountering manipulative stealth behavior.
It's 2023 and it's about climate change, dang...
> I can't judge what's quality and what's FUD
I hear you! but you attacked the other person specifically for "spreading FUD". That is not a helpful thing to do, even if you can judge the question.
Awarding credibility on the basis of having a public face is absurd, and it's trivial to conceive of the way that could be politically silencing of dissident views, or that lack of anonymity would incentivize sticking to consensus.
People disagree anonymously on the internet all the time, since the beginning. Are you incapable of judging the merits of an argument without requiring some appeal to authority?
The crux of my disagreement was his claim a name attached to an argument a priori makes it more valid than one that is anonymous.
In a highly politicized environment, it can possibly be argue that a real name makes it less credible and more likely to be consensus. Putting that aside, it certainly doesn't it make it more credible.
You are totally right that my comment is worth significantly less than a peer reviewed study.
Uncomfortable truths and all that...
Meanwhile, you should try to respond to the arguments made, not to the man. From behind -ironically - your own anonymity.
Am I reading this right—currently scientists that bring bad news aren’t treated all that much better than…being executed?
One of the bits that made it into the guidelines is that if there are multiple explanations for a comment that you're supposed to go with the stronger one. You seem to have picked the wrong interpretation on purpose. Please don't do that.
I didn’t suggest that my reading was that they are being executed in the literal sense. I was saying that my reading was that what’s happening to scientists is only a little bit better than literal execution—and because I found that reading so surprising, I asked if that was correct.
> One of the bits that made it into the guidelines is that if there are multiple explanations for a comment that you're supposed to go with the stronger one. You seem to have picked the wrong interpretation on purpose. Please don't do that.
Seems to me there’s a bit of hypocrisy going on here. I literally asked if my reading of it was correct. For you to say that I purposely picked a wrong interpretation (though I’m not sure your explanation suggests that my actual interpretation was wrong) would seem to mean that you think my question was insincere—that I wasn’t actually wanting to know if my interpretation of it was correct. That’s fine, but you had the choice of believing I was being sincere or that I was being insincere. Did you pick the “stronger”?
And to be clear, I’m generally on your side with regard to your overall point. The trend over the last decade or more of people attacking scientists who dare find results that conflict with their politics makes me furious.