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Re:It’s Not China; It’s Efficiency That Is Killing Our Jobs by tansey on Sunday October 23, 2011 @11:13AM (#3146258)
> Good grief, it's so lame it's almost trolling.

Because it is trolling. HN is reading, upvoting, and commenting on an economics essay by someone who studied "Fine Arts" at the "School of Visual Arts" in NY and now works at "CYCLE Interactive" as a designer. The author hand waves about the 80/20 rule as if discussing things using their own common sense is equivalent to mathematical rigor or scientific evidence. It's simply a link-bait headline that evokes a response from a large portion of the users on HN.

Honestly, it's disturbing how many red flags there are in this article and yet it makes the front page of HN.

Everyone's half-baked opinion is not equal. The way I feel every time I watch a movie where a machine spontaneously "comes alive", and then have to listen to people talk about "what if it really happened", must be similar to how economists feel every day. No wonder it's the dismal science.

Re:It’s Not China; It’s Efficiency That Is Killing Our Jobs by bestes on Sunday October 23, 2011 @11:40AM (#3146333)
Ignore an idea/essay/whatever because the author doesn't have a college degree in the area?
Re:It’s Not China; It’s Efficiency That Is Killing Our Jobs by knowtheory on Sunday October 23, 2011 @11:55AM (#3146387)
Actually i think HN has just taken down the article on its merits, i.e. that it has none.

What remains a mystery is why this was upvoted in the first place.

Re:It’s Not China; It’s Efficiency That Is Killing Our Jobs by rphlx on Sunday October 23, 2011 @04:02PM (#3147093)
It's upvoted because, after people post a comment utterly destroying it, they want their comment's unique wisdom and intelligence to be visible to others. Even (maybe, especially) when the original article is garbage.

It's a perverse incentive problem in social news.

Re:It’s Not China; It’s Efficiency That Is Killing Our Jobs by knowtheory on Sunday October 23, 2011 @05:52PM (#3147380)
Well, i will add that the major determinant for whether an article stays on the front page is whether there is an active discussion.

So the more chatter there is, the longer it stays on the homepage. The longer it stays on the home page, the more people upboat it without reading the post or the comments.

But that's me retreating to the study of aggregate behavior. sigh

Re:It’s Not China; It’s Efficiency That Is Killing Our Jobs by csomar on Sunday October 23, 2011 @05:50PM (#3147373)
Because it's interesting. I usually read the comments and not the article.
Re:It’s Not China; It’s Efficiency That Is Killing Our Jobs by throwawayday on Monday October 24, 2011 @03:58PM (#3151306)
I've almost gotten to the point where I don't read the comments. Quality has (subjectively) been declining over the last couple of years.
Re:It’s Not China; It’s Efficiency That Is Killing Our Jobs by Jarred on Sunday October 23, 2011 @01:33PM (#3146695)
Genetic Fallacy?