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Comment by verisimi | Hacker News Reader

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Are you saying you reject the use of "we" for any group that doesn't include you?

I assume it is essentially more about if it includes the author of the article. In the specific case, the author is a journalist not a scientist part of the actual group that did the work, so their "we" seems to forcingly include everybody in the planet, thus also OP here. I dont think OP would have an issue if one of the scientists in this case used "we".

Ah good shout, I was assuming the author of the article was also on the team of the discovery, but it's Gizmodo, so I shouldn't have thought that.

Yeah tbh the comment sounded weird to me at first, prob because the actual problem is not that I (ie the reader) am not part of the people that made the discovery, but because the author of the article who uses "we" is not. Maybe if I was part of such a discovery it would actually feel even weirder reading somebody I have not worked with on it as "we did it", but I have not been part of such a newsworthy discovery to test it.

It's specially annoying when people use it to latch on to achievements they had no part in. Like Americans today going "We stopped Hitler" etc.

I use it to give credit to peers if I've done something good (and maybe to take/share some blame if I wasn't directly responsible). The one that makes me cringe is people saying us/we when referring to their preferred sportsball team though

For this reason I've never understood the emotion "pride" when applied to anything you didn't personally do.

For example pride in getting a bug fixed, or running a personal record lap, makes perfect sense. But "proud to be an American," or "proud of our troops," "proud of some sports team," I just don't get it.

Ah, in that sense yeah, I also feel similarly. I thought that the article was written by someone on the discovering team, hence my confusion.

Yes. If I wasn't one of the group members, I shouldn't be included in the collective noun "we".

I did nothing to detect triboelectric discharge, I assure you. I have very low awareness of the thing. Why does the reporter assume I did anything? Why should I be bathed in the glory (or infamy) of it?

Similarly, when people say 'the UK has sent weapons to so-and-so', I object to being included, as if I had anything to do with it.

I think it's the false attribution, the welling of pride that I guess I'm meant to feel and the casual duplicitous use of language (lying, misleading) that bothers me.

Why not relay the truth of the matter, when its perfectly simple to do?

I'd assume most French would be happy with "France detected Lightning on Mars"

I read the title as equivalent to "Humanity detected Lightning on Mars", which I'm also perfectly happy with

The journalist writing the article starts with

> Scientists analyzed 28 hours of recordings over two Martian years, listening for electrical signals.

Not with

> We analyzed 28 hours of recordings over two Martian years, listening for electrical signals.

Nor

> Humanity analyzed 28 hours of recordings over two Martian years, listening for electrical signals.

Somehow it would be weird to assume that "everybody" put the effort into this, but "we" all reap the success.

On the other hand, this is done with taxpayer money, and even if not, it is done in the context of the whole global economy and we are all interconnected and everybody steps on the shoulders of giants anyway, so, in the grand scale of things, a use of "we" can make sense for everything that happens.

Moreover, OP's argument holds also for the france case anyway.

I did not think much of the title before reading the parent comment as I also read "humanity", but now it's the lack of consistency and double standards that annoy me. "France detected Lightning on Mars", fine, let's stop cutting the funding of public research so we can keep on saying we. Also let's title "We released GPT-5", "We landed a rocket on a barge".

Maybe let's extend it to negative things, too. "We crashed a Yugo into a bollard."

Right? It wasn’t me. So was it Gizmodo, the website where this was posted?

I assume you're downvoted for pedantry (understandable) but it is a real pattern. Whenever it's a space topic it's always "we" or "Japan" or "America". Nobody is so vague on other topics. I suspect it's a throwback to the Cold War space race when the major players did flights in a geopolitical context. If the institute's name is very long, like here, maybe "Scientists detected ..." or "Researchers ..."

> Whenever it's a space topic

It relates "us" to "earthlings". We, as in "humans", live on Earth. Space is "outside". We humans look outside to space and discover things there.

I feel it's more that sense of making clear that it's "us", humans, doing the discovery vs some other species or entity out there.

Imho it's a quirk due to English's hate for the passive voice. Most languages would just go with "Lightning was detected on Mars". Naming the institute does not add any value to the average reader here, nor does the word "Scientists". "France" adds a bit of value, so that'd be the next best thing after the passive voice

Passive voice in english is fine but it does not make for as catchy news articles (as also in other languages).

"Scientists detected lighting on mars" is also just fine.

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