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Comment by Vektorceraptor | Hacker News Reader

I think that people should have the right to express themselves subjectively about something without having to submit a paper. Facts aren't the only thing people talk about, and the feeling that the article might suggest cannot be forced or denied by them.

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Yes, but no one is interested in talking about the author's feelings. The response is to the authors conclusions, which are wrong. Just as it's eminently appropriate for the author to be able to express themselves sujectively, it's equally so for us to call it bullshit.

> The response is to the authors conclusions, which are wrong.

How have you come to the conclusion that the author's conclusions are wrong?

Many in this thread have rightly pointed out that the author is speaking of the future which can't be know with certainty. Are you telling issue with the level of certainty the author seems to have, or do you fished with the argument of impending doom?

I really have to admit - I don't feel threatened by the author or by criticism of the author. I believe, like many others here, that this text actually doesn't deserve much attention. It's clearly apocalyptic. But it's interesting how the internet medium can compel you to engage in debate.

Yeah, so I don't have a problem with a personal blog where a person posts about what interest them. I just don't see a good reason for it to be at the top of HN.

Yes, I see that there are certain demands here. I'm new here and I thought this site was actually free. But I guess I need to adjust my expectations. I think that if you want to expect a certain standard of conversation, then you either have to make the page private or have discussions with real people in person, ideally with your friends. But as soon as you go public and demand that people adapt to your own content standards, then you distort the discourse on a very deep and fundamental level. You can neither educate people to be elitists, nor does the desire for it justify the karma evaluations that you automatically have to subject yourself to.

I think you could view HN as a fishing pond and fish selected voices privately to another private platform if you are really serious about high quality content.

The conversation in the blog post presumes a certain shared understanding of the facts. When you push a conversation out of a context of shared assumptions or understandings, then you are going to have to expect push back. I don't think that says anything bad about HN here. All you are getting is feedback on what a large segment of people think. In some alternative world they may have agreed with those background beliefs, and then the pushback would not have occurred (or it might have pointed in another direction).

If the article had approached its central question--whether to tell people or not--by first saying something like "suppose that we knew the civilization is going to collapse in the next ten years, the question arises: should we tell people?", it could have avoided more of the pushback it received.

They should have the right to express themselves freely but people need to understand that the bar to do so is so much lower than “submitting a paper” as you say.

Therefore any uninformed, emotional crackpot can submit a rant with no proof, no evidence, no citations, with no credentials so it’s not even an appeal to authority, at best it’s an appeal to emotion and or intellectual laziness.

I grant you the freedom to express yourself freely, and in return you grant me the freedom to call your low-effort rant garbage. Its a two way street.

But "no proof, no evidence, no citations, low-effort, rants, etc." do not mean 'no sense'. And the posting is clearly making sense. The claim "that civilization will collapse" is not an evident truth, so the contrary might be said, without further support. Apparently, the article did not have the necessary persuasive power.

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