unabst

So I am being asked to self-censor by "the community"? Was this comment downvoted because we're not allowed to talk about downvotes? But the topic is downvoting.

I'm genuinely curious and believe there is a better way to treat users on the internet other than handing out wrist slapping rights to everyone, and permitting petty downvoting without recourse or discourse.

I am not trolling, not spreading propaganda, have no hidden agenda, my analysis is fact-based, and I care. I may not be the best at it, but I try to make my points as accurately and respectfully as possible. But none of that matters.

I'm dead.

So what exactly is wrong with this answer that it deserves to be downvoted?

If it's far from perfect, let's improve it. It's not downvote or nothing.

Downvotes are meant to tame the insults and offensive comments. But what if downvotes themselves are insulting and offensive? Are there really no other options?

But the even deeper issue is that this may be the HN the moderators want, and it does sound like it is.

Deeper issues are often ideological discussions. Yet, ideological battles are not to be fought on HN.

But the ideology needs to be settled before technical solutions can commence. Implementing a better downvote or an alternative is a technical problem. Deciding to do so requires ideological decisions, such as, prioritize free speech.

I get it, but this position makes HN definitively anti-free speech. You restrict speech and you restrict how people think. Calibrating speech is not free speech and neither is fading speech.

> the community signals that it has found something wrong with a comment.

A bully fat shaming would be "the community signaling that there is something wrong". The HN equivalent would be PC shaming.

What someone thinks of something has no bearing on right or wrong. Also "the community" isn't downvoting. It's always an individual.

A sincere course correcting response is the simple and natural fix, and what already happens. Downvoting helps with reducing responses, but comments are people. People do not enjoy being reduced.

> extremely important for calibrating users' perceptions of the community

I have enough experience now that I can write in HN mode. I cannot however, think in HN mode. I try, but whenever I think, comments like this one happens. This comment also violates the "ideology battle" clause from the HN guidelines because I am not allowed to fight for free speech. But stories about politics and ideologies make the top page all the time, and aren't most good disagreements ideological? Tabs versus spaces, React versus Vue, Open versus Closed source. Downvoting.

The technical part is never that deep. The deepest it can get is deeply technical.

With all that said, everything else about HN is the best on the internet hands down.

In business, the survival motive becomes the profit motive. For content creators, the profit motive then manifests online as attention grabbing content. However, virality and truth are highly specific properties that rarely overlap. Clickbait is the author stretching virality to somewhat overlap with their message which hopefully holds some truth, but the entire piece can also just be an attention grabber.

If you work at a news source that values truth, sadly you're still not immune to the profit motive, so long as the content at any level is still required to make money. Hypocrisy arises when they begin to deny this.

But without the profit motive, outlets can easily become ideology driven. As hard as NPR may try not to be this, to some their bend is obvious. And then their is ideology as part of the profit motive. Like Fox.

What I would love to see is a platform that simply collects and sorts the events of the world as they unfold. Covid sites are one example. No agenda, no authors. Just the information that accurately describes the world as it unfold, or at least in theory. Another example would a police log published live at every department aggregated at the national level. No decisions would be involved in the publishing except that the post is accurate. The rest is each officer simply doing their job, and hopefully a great job. But the leap is in considering this a more valuable form of news. From attention grabbing to accurately exposing the state of affairs for easy consumption.

The problem with this of course is politics. When the events are what these representatives say, and what they say is dishonest, then even the honest news is the state of the dishonest affairs.

Clarity and brevity are good, but when everyone is focused, no one is talking. Silence is the sound of everyone working. Talking can be a symptom of mismanagement.

Also, better English won't help when the goal is to dodge work or responsibility, which is often what's behind miscommunicating team members. A well spoken excuse is still a poor excuse.

Ya, it should just read "slippery when wet". Maybe add an exclamation mark to show urgency and that you care.

So how we would describe the sign is usually what it should say. Like, "STOP".

Not only do we share some common perception, we're also all real. We are part of the universe. So to say people are subjective or that imagination is imaginary or that reality is an illusion for the purpose of dismissing them from reality is all wrong. You need a model that is more inclusive that describes it all with physics as the premise. For example, a dream requires a sleeping biological brain full of memories drawn from physical experiences.

Truth isn't reality itself in the physical sense. But the word "apple" isn't an actual apple either in the physical sense. Yet, for the purposes of language, it is. And that is the exact extent to which truth is reality in language. When we claim truth, we claim to be making a statement of reality. If that statement includes God, then your reality includes God. If it includes only physical evidence, then your reality is based on physical evidence. We can align our realities scientifically by aligning them with science. But again, based on your life, your work, and your beliefs, your reality will deviate. That's just part of what makes us all unique.

But as you say, our unique realities are still valuable and real. Though error prone as they may be, they are real reality drawn from a real life. It's not separate just because they contradict. That's why our ability to communicate our truths is cital, and Free Speech is sacrosanct.

One-ness is a shape of a thing, much like triangle-ness or circle-ness. Shapes are physical, but they can be copied, unlike the things themselves. And when meaning is associated with a shape, that meaning can then be copied and read. So we can take "one-ness" which is physically measurable and identifiable, associate a new shape such as "1", and now we have a shape with meaning detached from its origin that we can copy, read, and communicate. The source is still reality, and this physical mechanism is what makes communication possible. Gather enough of these symbols and you have a language. Combine these symbols and you have a statement. Have anything that reads and reacts to statements and you have consequences. From DNA to protein, from grocery list to grocery bag, from tweet to insurrection.

Any combination of words can form a statement. So someone comes along and says let's agree on grammar. Then someone comes along and says let's confirm with nature whether statements actually align with nature before we call it a fact. This is modern science and the scientific truth. Scientifically, nature is the single source of truth and is all true. False only exists in the gap between a statement and nature.

(con't) An abstraction is the smallest unit of reason, and logic creates the desired cause and effect as each truth flows through the system.

One-ness is a physical property and that's why we can see it. The magic happens when we call them all one, give it a symbol, and make them all equal. Now "one" has a unique existence of its own on a piece of paper on a mathematicians desk, scribbled alongside other unique symbols, whose relationships come complete with proofs. And the only question then is whether what was scribbled says something true, as in, something that aligns with the reality it came from, because that would make it useful.

Math is a map. Maps are only real insofar as being a map, and only useful insofar as being true.

The drawing of the streets may be drawn with your pencil from memory, but the truth your friend relies on to get them where they need to go is real. The paper and pencil are real. And the physics of the informative truth that transcends from the streets to the paper is also real. Computers are the machines we've built based on the physics of logic, abstraction, and meaning. A computational value is something that means something to something else.

You're still translating the mouse image into "mouse" in your mother tongue, then staring at the Japanese word.

But I do agree translation does about as much harm as good. It's a shortcut that helps you shorten the learning curve by importing what you already know about language and the things you often say generically from another language. Learning a language is really really hard, so for many, without this shortcut, you'd barely get anywhere. That's the only good it does though, because it will set you back from becoming fluent and will continue to prevent you from thinking in that new langauge.

The best way to learn a language is through mimicry, immersion, and repetition as you're surrouned by people who only speak that language, who are also friendly, forgiving, and willing to talk to you. Like, children surrounded by their parents, then friends, then friends and teachers.

I would go far as to say it's obfuscation. But I don't think the CSS people feel the same. At this point I've chalked it up to a difference in philosophy and ideology.

Brevity, explicitness, obviousness, conciseness, and symmetry all contribute to the simplicity and order of a language, which minimizes the learning curve and maximizes ease of utility.

If that were the goal, there are tons of things that could and would have been done differently.

Most lists such as that of the OP and most criticism of CSS I find to be about users from a user standpoint criticising something about CSS that is either obfuscating or obstructive to their experience and productivity.

edit for the record:

> You'll offend them...

If you encounter someone oversensitive, millineal or otherwise, you'll offend them...

The proper response to "hello" is just "hello". I was annoyed at first, but when I saw the phone of one of the kids that kept doing it, I saw his message app had 1283 unread messages. They basically can't keep up with each other, and "hello" is a way of inserting yourself in the queue. That's them calling. You not answering is you not picking up. So ya, ignore it too if you want.

Communication guidelines are necessary and enforcable at a workplace, but this is also no big deal. Being annoyed by it is a problem, and really is your problem until you make it a problem for the person doing it. And it becomes a power issue. So without the guideline and without it being enforced, they may judge you for judging them or be offended by you thinking you can change their behavior.

With that said, communication is a skill that does seem to be lacking. A lot of so called "teams" will have information going around in circles in a game of telephone. Then there are those who can't seem to grasp what is important, and keep deflecting to sentiment or respect issues.

Bill Maher jokes about how millineals are emotional hemophiliacs, but regardless of the characterization the problem is real. You'll offend them and they'll cancel you without telling you. You become someone they talk about behind your back. And you'll cancel them for that. But cancelling each other out doesn't work if they're a client or a coworker that isn't going away. If they work for you I guess you can fire them, and if you work for them, I suppose you can quit. The only other option is to learn their language.

Ergo, communication remains a skill.

That is impossible to police. The topic is Freedom of Speech. You need to ban these topics or there will always be battles, as there should be.

Greatgirl also makes an important point. It also appears she only made this point once, here, and has no other "violations". The comment wasn't provoking or ill-meaning. It most certainly did not "trample curiosity".

This. We should call this "fake speech". American absurdism is rooted in fake speech with the intent to cheat and steal. It's perfectly permisible for politicians, businesses, and even individuals to say whatever they need to say to get what is not rightfully theirs. And they all get away with it, because the law hasn't caught up with fake speech yet.

Why did this happen? Because they intended to. But the law only punishes what they did, and provides loopholes for not ever admitting intent, so long as they lie about it. That lie is the true crime. That lie is profitable.

Irnonically, in modern America, it takes a fake news show to be honest about the news, and a comedian to be honest about modern culture. That's also absurd. Hilarious, but absurd.

"When telling the truth, if you don't make them laugh, they will kill you."

Bottom-line, if anyone feels they've been unjustifiably downvoted, or even "sour" for being downvoted, the feature is being followed by a negative experience for the user. If there is nothing that can be done to improve the experience, then that is the price you pay for the positives that feature brings (in this case moderation), but if there is something that could be done, then you have no excuses not to do them, if you are to put the user experience first.

What I would immediately do to improve the experience on HN:

1. As others have suggested, add a score for upvote/downvote total. So 50 upvotes and 51 downvotes = 101 points. Any points cancelled out could even be double Karma, or just the negative flipped to a positive. Engagement is worth valuing, and an upvote/downvote pair is healthy intellectual drama.

2. I would have a small list of keywords to select from displayed next to the comment title AFTER you click downvote. Downvoting should be a rare occasion (and I think it is), and adding one more step to add nuance to the downvote should be positive for the downvoter and the downvoted.

So a comment after downvotes would look like:

unabst 16 hours ago [–] troll 1 tone 2 incorrect 4 flagged dead

This could be done for upvotes too, but maybe make the selection optional.

I have a feeling on HN the shaming and bitterness of downvoting is not a bug but a feature. It's democratic, it's power to the user, it's fair, yada yada yada.

Personally, at this point I am certain downvoting features lead to polarization, toxicity, bullying, group think, hesitation of substantive discourse, and a lot of negativity with the experience. And all the notable platforms with downvote features have suffered.

Upvotes need no further abstraction for their purpose. Good can be good. But if we are to police and shame bad, justice deserves more nuance than this. Downvotes hinder the discussion experience, and it limits participants to those with agendas or characters who can withstand that experience.

Downvotes help you avoid confrontation and discussion. You get to slap anyone on the wrist without them knowing it was you, or why. It's self-policing by censorship that directly counteracts free speech and free thinking. It's too convenient, too powerful, too disrespectful, too arbitrary, and too anonymous. Here comments literally fade out. You're voting to "cancel" a comment.

Why respectfully reply when you run the risk of being downvoted yourself? Being wrong and downvoted is one thing, but what if you were not wrong? The votes are a measure of opinion and sentiment, not fact. And we can police comments, but we cannot police the downvotes. To then call this tally "karma" and equate this with your worth on a platform is a sure way to encourage thought alignment, not debate.

I am not talking about tribal hatred or matters of perspective or what the public thinks or votes about anything here.

I am talking about the masterminds and their intent. Trump clearly intended to steal the election. Wells Fargo and Wall Street clearly intended to cheat for profit.

It's as if intent doesn't matter, when it truly is the source and agency of the bad actors. Wrongful intent continues to enjoy protection in America under the "tricky things about the law", to borrow your words.

You shouldn't be able to steal something just because the lawyers agree with you. In America, that's how it's done (probably everywhere else too, but).

The struggle over vocabulary is evident. The truth is it could be called all or none of these things. There was a professor on NPR who also said how each term (terrorism, insurrection, coup) has legal connotations. But I call BS on all of it. Getting people to not say coup is already evidence of damage control against the factual, universal, objective, scientific "coup-ness" nature of it all. Semmantics is always arguable, but I am not lying, I have no agenda, and I am not gaming anything with how I express the situation. Like with most "normal" people with no power or say in the situation.

But of course, whether anything crosses legal lines in accordance to legal vocabulary is all these bent politicians are concerned about, because that's the only thing that would stop them by landing them in jail. That's why most of them are lawyers. The non-lawyers have a hard time surviving. We'll see what happens with Trump.

Both points apply to both sides.

I feel like there should be some better way to recognize and promote solutions that are future proof. Like transpilers and site generators that only produce vanilla code for deployment. Because it wouldn't matter how dated the tool is. Sticking to vanilla only is not the only option.

But I guess there could still be vulnerabilities in HTML that may need to be addressed? Like cross domain or cookie security...

But then again, same for a vanilla stack.

It definitely seems like maximum future-proofness should be more of a thing.

>the former is a pretextual cover for the latter

Setting aside completely how I feel because it absolutely does not matter, the question should be, was it the latter or wasn't it?

> but you probably wouldn't be able to prove this in a court of law.

Exactly. And for this to be the standard for how we certify the truth is at the heart of American absurdism. It's how we let politicians, big banks, Wall Street, et al get away with being full of shit. And I am not exaggerating. The partisan impeachment vote, Wells Fargo's fake bank account, and the financial crisis are all examples of absurdism.

Here is Matt Gaetz after the raid. Do you know why they applaud? Because he gave them the well formed arguments they need to get away with betraying their country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfmyACLmZ7s

None of this is an exaggeration.

Trump has always gotten away with the things he was gravely incompetent at on the basis of his incompetence. This is just another case. He was pushing Pence to use power he didn't have. His allies all pushed the fraud narrative. And he provoked a riot that proceeded to follow his orders and storm the capital.

This is what a weak coup looks like in 2020 America. None of the action above were based on preserving order or upholding the constitution or fullfilling his oath of office or protecting our democracy or being in the right. It was a power grab doomed from the start, but never the less, a power grab and a sorry attempt at a coup.

Right, except the protesters were sheep led by Trump and his Republican goons. This was nothing short of a failed coup. That can't be an exaggeration.

Stephen Colbert did a great job of bringing this up in his interview with ex-prosecutor Sen. Klobuchar who went straight back to work with her traitor colleagues. She dodged the question of whether more public officials should be prosecuted with a tactful deflection of laying it all on Trump. That bugged me.

https://youtu.be/5PiA9mJommE?t=414

I've figured it out.

The minimum "accidental complexity" in a system can only be equal or greater than the "essential complexity" imported from outside the system. If the complexity could be less, then that would be reducing the essential complexity as well.

Complexity can be measured by the number of abstractions (words, terms, and expressions) needed to express the system.

So if accounting is essential complexity, then the complexity of a computer system for accounting starts at essential complexity, and goes up. The best a system can do is provide 1 accidental abstraction implemented for 1 essential abstraction that needs implementation.

All implementation beyond the naming of the functions is accidental.

UCLA and Cedars-Sinai are both world class providers, but take little to no insurance available on Covered California. LA Care is a rare "public option" run by LA county. When I switched from Oscar to LA Care this year, I did so because both UCLA and Cedars showed up as "in network" for LA Care. And when they assigned a UCLA clinic physican down the street as our primary, I was pleasantly surprised to say the least. But I knew not to celebrate prematurely, and I was right. LA Care did pull through, and our appointment this morning went great. I'm still holding my breath until I see the bill and it's not wrong.

I checked the LA Care provider directory yesterday, and there were no Cedars doctors. I can only assume there's something up with that.

I had Blue Cross a few years ago, and I still have PTSD from the three way call between them and Covered California where their rep flat out contradicted an email they had sent me, even after I read it out word for word. She was also trained to not help me. This training is ass-backwards.

Exactly. If that was the debt at the end of his practice, just imagine how much debt he bestowed during the 30 years it ran. I wonder how many patients went bankrupt... seriously, with the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US being medical. But that wouldn't be a story. That's just every clinic in the USA. And who wants to be reminded of that?

I just changed my insurance to LA Care. The doctor they gave me was with UCLA medical. I called and they said they did not and never have accepted LA Care. I called LA Care. The lady said, "I really wish their clinics stopped doing that." She called the UCLA clinic with me on the line and sorted it out. I was then left to give them the rest of my info... At the last step when they asked for my ID, they insisted it was too short and that they couldn't run my insurance. I called LA Care. They said that's the only number and it's not too short. My appointment is tomorrow.

The common voice of a receptionist that's been denying patients all day. They're trained to not help you. To think this is the system that's responsible for keeping us all alive.

Are we sure the availability of options equals entropy? It doesn't appear as though we all act to simply increase our options. Preferring options over reward may also constitute delayed gratification and sacrifice, which is another interesting can of worms, but can it be predicated in terms of just preference of options over reward when those are your only two artificial options?

Human behavior appears to point towards the maximization of current order as an investment in power/potential to drive future entropy, as opposed to simply maximizing entropy. This is the difference between building a nuclear bomb and keeping it, as opposed to building the bomb to use it. When one was used, it was meant to end a war, not start one. And success in life may as well be defined by hoarding order, be it technologically, financially, socially, or just objects. The pyramids were a feat in lowering entropy, not increasing it. And we love our diamonds.

This is also an extrapolation from the evidence in biology that energy entering a system increases order and contributes to the orderly structuring of matter and hence life [1].

[1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-o...