> " This pretty negative post topping Hacker News last month sparked these questions, and I decided to find some answers, of course, using AI"
The pretty negative post cited is https://tomrenner.com/posts/llm-inevitabilism/. I went ahead to read it, and found it, imo, fair. It's not making any direct pretty negative claims about AI, although it's clear the author has concerns. But the thrust is inviting the reader to not fall into the trap of the current framing by proponents of AI, rather questioning first if the future being peddled is actually what we want. Seems a fair question to ask if you're unsure?
I got concerned that this is framed as "pretty negative post", and it impacted my read of the rest of this author's article
All of the anti-big-tech comments I've ever seen that are flagged are flagged because they blatantly break the guidelines and/or are contentless and don't contribute in any meaningful sense aside from trying to incite outrage.
And those should be flagged.
I explicitly enable flagged and dead because sometimes there are nuggets in there which provide interesting context to what people think.
I will never flag anything. I dont get it.
Not sure if part of a broader trend, or a simply reflection of it, but when mentoring/coaching middle and high school aged kids, I’m finding they struggle to accept feedback in anyway other than “I failed.” A few years back, the same age group was more likely to accept and view feedback as an opportunity so long as you led with praising strengths. Now it’s like threading a needle every time.
For instance, in a lot of threads on some new technology or idea, one of the top comments is "I'm amazed by the negativity here on HN. This is a cool <thing> and even though it's not perfect we should appreciate the effort the author has put in" - where the other toplevel comments are legitimate technical criticism (usually in a polite manner, no less).
I've seen this same comment, in various flavors, at the top of dozens of HN thread in the past couple of years.
Some of these people are being genuine, but others are literally just engaging in amigdala-hijacking because they want to shut down criticism of something they like, and that contributes to the "everything that isn't gushing positivity is negative" effect that you're seeing.
- "you should reevaluate your experience level and seniority."
- "Sounds more like "Expert Hobbyist" than "Expert Programmer"."
- "Go is hardly a replacement with its weaker type system."
- "Wouldn’t want to have to pay attention ;-)"
- "I'm surprised how devs are afraid to look behind the curtain of a library"
- "I know the author is making shit up"
- "popular with the wannabes"
Hacker News comments are absolutely riddled with this kind of empty put-down that isn't worth the diskspace it's saved on let alone the combined hours of reader-lifetime wasted reading it; is it so bad to have a reminder that there's more to a discussion than shitting on things and people?
> "legitimate technical criticism"
So what? One can make correct criticism of anything. Just because you can think of a criticism doesn't make it useful, relevant, meaningful, interesting, or valuable. Some criticism might be, but not because it is criticism and accurate.
> "they can undermine others' thinking skills"
Are you seriously arguing that not posting a flood of every legitimate criticism means the reader's thinking skills must have been undermined? That the only time it's reasonable to be positive, optimistic, enthusiastic, or supportive, is for something which is literally perfect?
Amigdala-hijacking, emotional manipulation, and categorical dismissiveness of others' criticisms are clearly not good.
> Look at this Nim thread
Yes, I'm looking at it, and I'm seeing a lot of good criticism (including the second-to-top comment[1], some of which is out of love for the language.
You cherry-picked a tiny subset of comments that are negative, over half of which aren't even about the topic of the post - which means that they're completely unrelated to my comment, and you either put them there because you didn't read my comment carefully before replying to it, or you intentionally put them there to try to dishonestly bolster your argument.
As an example of the effect I'm referring to, this recent thread on STG[2], the top comment of which starts with "Lots of bad takes in this thread" as a way of dismissing every single valid criticism in the rest of the submission.
> is it so bad to have a reminder that there's more to a discussion than shitting on things and people?
This is a dishonest portrayal of what's going on, which is that, instead of downvoting and flagging those empty put-downs, or responding to specific bad comments, malicious users post a sneering, value-less, emotionally manipulative comment at the toplevel of a submission that vaguely gestures to "negative" comments in the rest of the thread, that dismisses every legitimate criticism along with all of the bad ones. This is "sneering", and it's against the HN guidelines, as well as dishonest and value-less.
> So what? One can make correct criticism of anything. Just because you can think of a criticism doesn't make it useful, relevant, meaningful, interesting, or valuable. Some criticism might be, but not because it is criticism and accurate.
I never claimed that all criticism is "useful, relevant, meaningful, interesting, or valuable". Don't put words in my mouth.
> Are you seriously arguing that not posting a flood of every legitimate criticism means the reader's thinking skills must have been undermined? That the only time it's reasonable to be positive, optimistic, enthusiastic, or supportive, is for something which is literally perfect?
I never claimed this either.
It appears that, given the repeated misinterpretations of my points, and the malicious technique of trying to pretend that I made claims that I didn't, you're one of those dishonest people that resorts to emotional manipulation to try to get their way, because they know they can't actually make a coherent argument for it.
Ironic (or, perhaps not?) that someone defending emotional manipulation and dishonesty resorts to it themselves.
So the emotional process which results in the knee-jerk reactions to even the slightest and most valid critiques of AI (and the value structure underpinning Silicon Valley's pursuit of AGI) comes from the same place that religous nuts come from when they perceive an infringement upon their own agenda (Christianity, Islam, pick your flavor -- the reactivity is the same).
I get it to some extent, a lot of people looking to inject doubt and their own ideas show up with some sort of Socratic method that really is meant to drive the conversation to a specific point, not honest.
But it also means actually honest questions are often voted or shouted down.
It seems like the methodology of discussion on the internet now only allows for everyone to show up with very concrete opinions and your opinion will then be judged. No opinion or honest questions... citizens of the internet assume the worst if you're anything but in lock step with them.
And most people here seem to think that's fine; but it's not in line with what I understood when I read the guidelines, and it absolutely strikes me as negativity.
The only subset where HN gets overly negative is coding, way more than they should.
whats so confusing about this, thinking machines have been invented
On the one hand, I completely agree with you. I've even said before, here on Hacker News, that AI is underhyped compared to the real world impact that it will have.
On the other, I run into people in person that seem to think dabbing a little cursor on a project will suddenly turn everyone into 100x engineers. It just doesn't work that way at all, but good luck dealing with the hypemeisters.
I think many here, if people are being honest with themselves, are wondering what does this mean for their career, their ability to provide/live, and what this means for their future especially if they aren't financially secure yet. For tech workers the risk/fear that they are not secure in long term employment is a lot higher than it was 2 years ago; even if they can't predict how all of this will play out. For founders/VC's/businesses/capital owners/etc conversely the hype is there that they will be able to do what they wanted to do with less costs.
More than crypto, NFT, or whatever other hype cycle is - I would argue LLM's in the long term could be the first technology where the the tech worker demand may decline as a result despite the amount of software growing. The focus on AI labs in coding as their "killer app" does not help probably. While we've had "hype" cycles in tech its rarer to see fear cycles.
Like a deer looking at incoming headlights (i.e. I think AI is more of a fear cycle than hype cycle for many people) people are looking for any information related to the threat, taking away focus from everything else.
TL;DR While people are fearful/excited (depending on who) of the changes coming, and seeing the rate of change remains at current pace, IMO the craze won't stop.
And actually it’s funny: self-driving cars and cryptocurrency are continuing to advance dramatically in real life but there are hardly any front page HN stories about them anymore. Shows the power of AI as a topic that crowds out others. And possibly reveals the trendy nature of the HN attention span.
For instance, there are now dozens of products such as cryptocurrency-backed lending via EMV cards or fixed-yield financial instruments based on cryptocurrency staking. Yet if you want to use cryptocurrencies directly the end-user tools haven't appreciably changed for years. Anecdotally, I used the MetaMask wallet software last month and if anything it's worse than it was a few years ago.
Real developments are there, but are much more subtle. Higher-layer blockchains are really popular now when they were rather niche a few years ago - these can increase efficiency but come with their own risks. Also, various zero-knowledge proof technologies that were developed for smart contracts are starting to be used outside of cryptocurrencies too.
This is why I always think the HN reader apps that people make using the API are some of the stupidest things imaginable. They’re always self-described as “beautifully designed” and “clean” but never have any good features.
I would use one and pay for it if it had an ignore feature and the ability to filter out posts and threads based on specific keywords.
I have 0 interest in building one myself as I find the HN site good enough for me.
When will people realize that Hacker News DISCUSSIONS have been taken over by AI? 2027?
roxolotl•7h ago
It’s hard to tell how total that was compared to today. Of course the amount of money involved is way higher so I’d expect it to not be as large but expanding the data set a bit could be interesting to see if there’s waves of comments or not.