
The default position of HN is skepticism - Elite
I've noticed recently that for almost every submission that hits the top page, the top-rated comment is a skeptical response to the thesis of the link content or the poster's argument.<p>Go ahead, pick any 5 of the front page posts right now and see if I'm right or not.<p>In general, this is a good thing as taking the skeptical position forces a minimum degree of critical thinking, which makes that comment more useful.  And it's an excellent form of filtering out the large amount of BS we come across everyday.<p>But I certainly would like to see more top comments that agree with what the poster said, or expands on their argument.<p>(Eagerly awaiting the top comment to this post !!)
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icey
In my opinion, this is because there isn't a downvote button on stories.

Because there isn't a downvote button on stories, posting a comment that
disagrees with the premise of the story has become the de facto "downvote"
button.

It's easy karma to get, all you have to do is disagree with the sentiment of
the post with barely more detail than "no, I disagree".

Then, when people come into the comments to argue that they don't agree, they
see that there is already a comment that says essentially what they want to
say so they upvote it.

The newest type of default comment that we're starting to see is the
"disarming comment". On reddit this showed up as pun threads. I'm not sure
exactly the form they will ultimately take here, but they're usually pretty
highly rated as well. In any contentious thread there will be supporters by
way of upvotes, detractors by way of the critical / skeptical comments, and
people who attempt to make peace with comments that are either light-hearted
or attempt to be conciliatory.

It's not just an HN thing though. Any community has these sorts of behaviors.
It's just that there isn't a default way for someone to register their
disagreement in the same numbers of ways there are for them to register their
agreements; especially since comments that do nothing more than agree whole-
heartedly with the submission and add nothing new to the conversation tend to
stagnate or get downvoted.

~~~
Elite
How do I downvote this comment? You're disproving my argument ;)

~~~
SandB0x
You can't downvote direct replies, and icey's comment is a direct reply to
your post. You should be able to downvote a grandchild, if you have sufficient
karma.

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wzdd
I took your challenge. The top 5 posts, in order:

1\. "There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it".
Top comment: jacqquesm. Character: sceptical ("Nano machinery is real, it
exists, it powers the world, it's called biology.")

2\. How to minimize politics in your company. Top comment: abalashov.
Character: critically supportive ("There are certain problems [...] that
simply cannot be solved or mitigated entirely"; "A few points to add:")

3\. Rapid prototyping as a burnout antidote. Top comment: riffer (but
admittedly only 16 minutes ago). Character: supportive ("Yes, this really
works...")

4\. Apple seeking to patent spyware. Top comment: ubernostrum. Character:
"sceptical" ("vicious lying stinking reeking bullshit FUD")

5\. HTML5 presentation. Top comment: sofuture. Character: meta-sceptical ("I
don't have a better answer, and I'm not even saying HTML5 is the wrong path,
just pondering!")

That's 2 out of 5 which are basically in support of the article, 2 out of 5
which are sceptical of the article, and one (the HTML 5 presentation) which
doesn't address the article so much as address a trend which the article
exemplifies.

Given that giving a sceptical response is much easier than giving a vote-
worthy non-sceptical response (the latter requires specific domain knowledge,
the former doesn't, necessarily), I think that's a pretty good ratio.

Sorry for the sceptical response. :)

~~~
chc
It's not just that giving a voteworthy supportive response requires domain
knowledge — you also need something to add to the original article. I've seen
lots of good articles on topics I know about, but usually I'll just upvote
rather than comment because the original article did a fine job by itself. If
I do comment, a lot of the time it will just be a minor clarification or
tangential thought rather than something that merits a lot of upvotes.

Skepticism, on the other hand, is automatically something meaningful you can
add.

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SandB0x
1) I don't read HN for the stories, I read it for the insight the community
brings to a topic. I will often upvote an article that I disagree with, but
that still brings up interesting questions. Maybe others do this.

2) Sometimes there is just less to discuss when you agree with a submission,
apart from adding your own piece of anecdotal evidence.

3) It's important to challenge ideas and to be able to call bullshit. People
are good at that here.

~~~
est
> I will often upvote an article that I disagree with, but that still brings
> up interesting questions. Maybe others do this.

That's exactly what I like and hate about r/programming and r/netsec on
reddit. People tends to upvote irrelevant submissions just to see insightful
responses. But it's the exact kind of submission made those subreddits eternal
septembered. Upbait is the new flamebait and trollbait.

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patio11
The community values articulate cleverness, and sometimes folks optimize for
this by trying to be more clever than the author of the article under
discussion.

The easiest way to move community norms is to write the comments you want to
see on the site. (I'm trying to be better at this myself.)

~~~
todayiamme
You know skepticism is a good thing, but too much of it makes people reluctant
to learn and even share things. I just think that an argument is something no
one wins. [edit: as arethuza pointed out what I am truly against is cynicism
i.e. crab behavior. I know you're wrong because I know what's right and you
can't be right because I know I am right. That is exactly the sort of thing
that the world doesn't need]

So, whenever I think someone is wrong instead of just screaming it out on them
like I used to and sometimes still do. I try to be nice and genuinely listen
to what they have to say. If I realize that I'm indeed right I try to gently
nudge the idea into their minds.

I am not that good at it right now, since old habits die hard, but someday...

~~~
arethuza
I think your description of "too much skepticism" is really describing
cynicism:

[http://chipberlet.blogspot.com/2005/06/skepticism-or-
cynicis...](http://chipberlet.blogspot.com/2005/06/skepticism-or-
cynicism.html)

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NickPollard
Skepticism is generally the rational position - unless the evidence contained
in one article is overwhelmingly conclusive.

The whole idea of the Scientific Method is to not believe something until
proven. Just flat out believing anything you are told without questioning it
is what leads to flat-earth maps and golden chariots pulling the sun across
the sky.

~~~
CWuestefeld
Right. And a skeptical discussion isn't necessarily a negative thing, or even
indicative of disagreement. I certainly use a Socratic way of extracting
deeper information, and this frequently comes across as disagreement or even
being argumentative.

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tome
Not true currently. The top comment of two of the top five posts are
supportive:

 _Rapid prototyping as burnout antidote_ , riffer: "Yes this really works"

 _Things I've Learned from Traveling Around the World for Three Years_ ,
acabal: "I can attest that everything in this article is true."

Irony prize: _There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing
at it_ , jacquesm: "For those that are skeptical about nano machinery, google
'ribosome' and be amazed." Skepticism about skepticism! Perhaps he counts
double for the purposes of your argument :)

~~~
_delirium
And right now 4 of the top 5 are positive! It'd be interesting what the
proportion is in a bigger sample size over time, though.

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olalonde
I think it is generally a good thing as long as it's not skepticism for the
sake of skepticism, without any substantial argument.

To illustrate this, I've often found myself totally agreeing with an article
until I read a rebuttal from an HN comment which helped me put the article in
perspective.

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patrickk
I have a theory as to why the default HN attitude is one of skepticism.

Here's a quote from an article from Philip Greenspun, who company's board
(ArsDigita) was taken over by VCs:

 _....But for most of this year Chip, Peter, and Allen_ [the suits] _didn't
want to listen to me. They even developed a theory for why they didn't have to
listen to me: I'd hurt their feelings by criticizing their performance and
capabilities; self-esteem was the most important thing in running a business;
ergo, because I was injuring their self-esteem it was better if they just
turned a deaf ear. I'm not sure how much time these three guys had ever spent
with engineers. Chuck Vest, the president of MIT, in a private communication
to some faculty, once described MIT as "a no-praise zone". My first week as an
electrical engineering and computer science graduate student I asked a
professor for help with a problem. He talked to me for a bit and then said
"You're having trouble with this problem because you don't know anything and
you're not working very hard."_

<http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/>

(I found this from a link in the footnotes of pg's essay "A Unified Theory of
VC Suckage" <http://paulgraham.com/venturecapital.html>)

In many areas in the hard sciences, maths and engineering, when you are wrong,
you are wrong. No discussion. Many on HN have a background in these areas,
hence their skeptical attitude to things that are fuzzy or as yet unproven
(such as in the marketplace). People here often seem to assume that whatever
is being discussed in a given article is dubious (or bullshit as the case may
be). I believe this is healthy. The opposite attitude leads to all sorts of
problems.

~~~
diN0bot
seeing the world in black and white is typically reserved for teenagers. as we
mature, we are able to understand more perspectives and see how numerous
factors influence a problem, and how solutions can have complex and unexpected
consequences. we tend to see bigger and bigger pictures. discussions becomes
more than arguing over particular numbers; now they include the meanings of
those numbers, and then the experience of the discussion itself matters.

Being critical and firm is fine, but being mean is unnecessary energy. If
anything, we should encourage creativity and boldness. We should strive to be
ourselves open and lead by example, as teammates not enemies.

I went to MIT. The cultural "no-praise" was both present, and yet seemingly
lifting, if not in academia itself, then in the more mature "millenials" (!$!
_& @!(@!#(!) who seem to have more optimism, and thus more guts and less
defensive reactions. In general the computer hacker culture has been
broadening and is filled with a more inventive than argumentative mindset,
which I think spirals positively on itself in terms of inclusiveness.

I've had the good fortune to have incredibly smart _mentors*, who not only
solve hard problems, but also lead by example on how it is possible to be a
great engineer and socially fantastic.

So, to respecify the problem, if we could separate the skeptisism and
interesting perspectives from reactionary negativity and meanness, that'd be
hot.

I'm not sure skeptism or meanness is actually a problem---many have stated why
skeptism tends to prevade the top and/or majority of comments---I just wanted
to separate the problem domain into two distinct problems.

------
Confusion

      But I certainly would like to see more top comments that agree with what
      the poster said, or expands on their argument.
    

There are plenty of those, but it's easy to mistake them for sceptical
comments. Questions, side notes, alternate interpretations, etc. _are_
expansions of an argument, into territory not covered by the original post.
When someone starts a comment with 'However ...' or 'I mostly agree, but ...',
the remainder of the comment is usually supportive, constructive and littered
with tidbits that add to understanding of the point under discussion. However,
simply due to the way the argument starts, we view it is 'criticism', because
it sets itself up as countering the article, due to the use of an 'inverting'
word/phrase, like 'however' or 'but'. There's probably a word for those words
and this effect in English, but I don't know it.

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bnoordhuis
People are more likely to post when they disagree with something because what
is there to say when you are in full agreement? "Spot on! You rock!"? That
kind of non-informative comment HN frowns upon.

Not that I disagree with you. :-)

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brk
I sometimes wonder if there are camps or cliques forming on HN. Sometimes the
top voted stories are junk (sorry), and may have been submitted and voted up
by Group A users. Group B users then voice their opinion of the submission in
the comments, with the best of these negative comments getting voted up.

It would be interesting to see the data and trends behind submission upvoters
and comment upvoters.

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benologist
The default position seems to be we're supposed to applaud certain things
automatically... anything YC-funded, any attempts to dislodge Flash using
js/canvas games that are garbage by post-1980 standards, ridiculous stuff with
CSS.

Some of the stuff and companies applauded on here are in my opinion really,
really weak. There's no downvoting of submissions so you can only express
dislike in a comment.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Unlike actual disagreement, mere dislike is not informative. Just saying that
the post is not for HN will get you down-voted, and the guy who writes that
you should just click on the stories you want to see on HN will get as many up
votes.

Mere Dislike doesn't explain the top comments that disagree.

It could be that someone who doesn't like a story thinks about how he could
disagree with it, and write the comment in the hope that it will stop the
story to get up-voted. But that strikes me as a bit convoluted.

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dieterrams
> In general, this is a good thing as taking the skeptical position forces a
> minimum degree of critical thinking, which makes that comment more useful.

One thing I've noticed is that comments which basically start off with
"Bullshit" followed by a heated, not obviously wrong rebuttal tend to get a
lot of upvotes.[1] And it can still accumulate upvotes even after another
comment has shown that rebuttal to be wrong, and not even wrong in a good way.

Default skepticism is a good thing, but I think we're overly susceptible to
assuming that anything resembling a righteous debunking from another HNer is
right.

The other thing I've noticed is that if a submitted article isn't popular with
some faction, but seriously damaging criticisms have not been forthcoming,
then a comment demonstrating that a non-critical claim is wrong, or merely
uncertain, will tend to get highly upvoted and treated as if it justified
dismissing the whole article.

[1] Recent example: back in the New App Rejection Reason thread, the most
downvoted top-level comment initially had 9+ karma, and had the structure I
just described. Thankfully, more thoughtful people showed how it didn't make
any sense, and it quickly got downvoted into oblivion. But a good number of
people got fooled.

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terra_t
My impression is that HN readers write more intelligent and critical comments
than other places.

I gave up on Slashdot back in 1999 because, back then, I was somewhat aware of
what was to be biggest drop event for domain names in history. A certain story
was a link to a clueless article about the topic, and the comments were
dominated by people who knew nothing but sounded authoritative, so they were
getting their comments voted up.

Then I thought about it and realized that the information I had was
commercially valuable, why the hell would I share it with a bunch of people
who couldn't tell right information from wrong information.

The drop event came, our detection system worked, and we grabbed 6000 names
that we wanted before anybody else.

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protomyth
I think it goes along with having a mostly technical / programmer audience. It
reminds me of a saying (not sure origin):

"When crossing a one-way street, a normal person looks one way. A good
programmer will look both ways. A good tester also looks up."

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logicalmind
Something I noticed quite some time ago is that any sufficiently long comment
thread on HN will converge on a semantic argument.

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dhs
I must say that I love it this way. I see a headline that _seems_ interesting,
and there's a discussion, I read the skeptic first comment before all else,
because it usually states quite clearly what the author of that headline is
trying to _sell_. It's Anti-PR. I find this useful in more than one way.

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m0nastic
I think part of it is just the nature of what gets posted here. One could make
the argument that articles favor sensationalism for the purpose of link-bait
(or a less cynical argument might be that they subconsciously favor
sensationalism to stand out from the crowd), but if a large portion of "news"
is inherently inflammatory/hyperbolic, then I think a skeptical response is
both warranted and natural.

Also, a lot of articles that get posted here are technical blog entries
whereby someone makes a pronouncement on the positive or negative effects of
some technology/methodology. These are fundamentally opinions, and will
immediately garner a response from someone who holds a differing opinion.

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robryan
I'd wager this doesn't happen though on things which are truly laid out in
front of us as a great idea/ argument/ event that has no perceivable flaw or
downside. I think it is healthy to be sceptical by default though otherwise
you end up with close enough is good enough. Things that actually need work/
refining are given unreserved praise and that discourages future pieces on the
idea.

Interestingly enough if you go onto search yc and check the top submissions
ever by karma most of the top comments are what you are looking for more of.
The difference there are that some of those posts are defiantly great and
don't warrant that level of skepticism.

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nanairo
My gut feeling (and this is completely not scientific) is that Hacker News
tends to have a large percentage of people who are contrarian... which kind of
makes some sense since if you were just following the crowd then you'd
probably not be on HN, or possibly not even a hacker.

But the end result is that people take a lot more pleasure in showing that
they can debunk or argument against something. Saying: "I totally agree" may
feel a bit like you are following someone else's thought, and most people here
take pride in thinking differently.

I also think patio (HN values cleverness) is another important factor.

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dolphenstein
I think HN proves that skepticism + optimism = entrepreneurism! Skepticism in
using critical thinking to question everything, including the standard way of
doing things. Skepticism leads to new insights in improving the way things are
done (wrongly or rightly). Optimism kicks in and the HN'er runs off to build
the new tool that will facilitate this new insight.

Alas, entrepreneurism!

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diego_moita
I believe the term "skepticism" is, many times, just a curtain to hide plain
and simple ideological bias.

But this is not exclusive to HN. Reddit is the same, although in a more
leftist way, while HN has more conservatives. But it is funny how each place
has its own paranoia and conspiracy theories.

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char
My default view on _anything_ is skepticism. I imagine that most HNers, being
critical and logical thinkers, have similar positions. The abundance of
skeptical posts makes sense to me.

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sosuke
I always thought a healthy dose of skepticism was considered a good thing. We
can't always take what we read at face value.

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wccrawford
It's going to be skepticism, of course.

When someone comes up with a new idea, it's up to them to present it. If they
fail to, only skepticism will result. If they do well, there will initially
only be skepticism and a few people who 'believe'. 'Belief' is not scientific.
You have to wait a while for confirmations to come in, and a fast-moving news
site like HN is going to drop the story before confirmation has had time to
happen.

That's just life.

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tome
The highest rated reply to this comment will disagree with what I've written
here.

~~~
friendlyhacker
I disagree.

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jules
I just looked at the top three articles and the top comments are all positive.

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grandalf
Hear hear!

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topbanana
Prove it

