
Negative comments - jmsdnns
https://www.hackerschool.com/blog/64-negative-comments
======
fishtoaster
This is pretty subjective, but I honestly enjoy a certain amount of negative
comments.

When I click a link on hacker news and end up on a project page, it’s
generally all positive. You go to some new kickstarter and you don’t see “This
product I want to build is _alright_.” You see “This new thing I’ve got is
AMAZING!”. Every startup landing page tells you, at length, why it’s the best
thing since sliced bread. Most github project list off all the things they’re
good for.

When I click on an HN project link, I generally get a page telling me how
awesome that project is.

So when I go back to the comments afterwards, I want a counterpoint. I’d like
a list of things wrong with the glowing self-review I just read. I handful of
“Gee, that’s nifty!” comments might be nice, but they don’t really help me
evaluate the thing I just read about, and they’re not terribly useful for
fostering interesting discussion.

This isn’t as critical for some software products where I can reasonably
evaluate their merit on my own, but there are a lot of areas where I’m not an
expert. If some post comes along with a tool that it claims will revolutionize
farming, I’d _love_ to have someone with a strong agriculture background come
by and explain why it’s not nearly as good as advertised.

Of course, there’s a long ways between “this is shit!” and “This is neat, but
here are some flaws.” I’m all for criticism being constructive, rather than
destructive, but let’s not throw out useful negativity. When people put up
sites telling me how awesome something is, it’s quite valuable to have
reasonably well informed people arguing the other side.

~~~
amalcon
Likewise, one reason that there are so many negative comments on (for example)
HN is that the article probably already said most of the positive things.
There's no need to simply repeat what the article already says, unless it's to
explain things that might be unclear.

Again, this isn't an endorsement for pointless or mean-spirited criticism.

~~~
sanderjd
Yeah, if you agree entirely with someone's point, then a comment saying so is
not typically very worthwhile. That's what the upvote is for!

(And yes, I'm aware of the irony in making a comment agreeing with someone
that just agreeing with someone is typically not worth a comment.)

~~~
kazagistar
You are using the valid use of a positive comment: Not just agreeing, but also
expanding on the idea.

~~~
noobermin
Interesting, so could one say being negative is easier, but expanding/adding
to an idea is harder? I personally find that somewhat true.

The issue is people look at upvotes but read comments. An upvote doesn't say
as much as a comment does (quite literally).

~~~
jimkri
I agree that adding to an idea or expanding on one is harder. The first thing
I think of is a college class, when none of the students will explain an
answer or add to discussion.

------
placebo
How can one start to criticise such an article without proving it right? :)

>So next time you read something, try this: Instead of looking for the parts
you can prove are false, try to find pieces you can learn from.

Who says the two are mutually exclusive? If you seek the truth of something,
then as a reader you should do both, and as the writer you should welcome
constructive criticism. If I were to write something that had inconsistencies,
false assumptions, or driven by an agenda other than seeking the truth, no one
would be doing me any favours by not pointing it out.

I suggest that the problem is not criticism, but what drives it, and that
there are two different motives for criticism (although both can exist
simultaneously in an individual): One is the pure search for truth. What
drives this is a strong sense of wonder and curiosity at everything. The other
is ego, whose trademark is that it usually ruins everything it touches and
turns everything into a fight/competition instead of learning and cooperation.

The blend of ego vs. integrity behind criticism is usually evident in the
ratios of information vs. demagoguery that are used.

I'd therefore change the suggestion to "next time you read something, check
whether it's you ego or your curiosity speaking before you reply, and if it's
more of the former, double check that you really have something to contribute
before hitting 'send'".

And of course, I welcome any criticism regarding the above opinion :)

~~~
A_COMPUTER
I agree :-) But I suspect the (correct) distinction you made between the two
different motivations for criticism are irrelevant to Hacker School because
criticism of any kind is seen as an impediment because some groups find
criticism intimidating, and a primary goal of Hacker School is inclusivity and
diversity. That is why the conclusion of the essay was to stop being so
critical rather than be more judicious about what you criticize. I totally
agree with them that there is too much worthless criticism, but what works for
them can't be a universal prescription. But maybe I'm reading to much into it.

------
furyofantares
The negativity of the internet bothers me as well. Somewhat amusingly, I find
it is often difficult to express agreement with someone without confusing
them, there seems to be an assumption that if you are replying to someone you
are probably disagreeing with them.

Despite feeling this way, any time I go back and read my own recent comment
history, I am shocked to find that most of my comments are still
corrections/disagreements.

~~~
drcomputer
I am in the habit of persistently deleting comments. Sometimes my
disagreements are just one half of a conversation I should be having in my
head, alone.

~~~
kazagistar
"Essay writing" is a nice habit to help with this. Sometimes, my brain is too
small to store the extent of a conversation, so I pull up a text editor, and
write comments there, respond to them, and so on.

------
Animats
The Internet is a medium full of ads and self-promotion. A sizable number of
articles on blogs, including this one, are of the form "why X is great", by
someone selling X. We have plenty of boosterism on line already. Some
negativity is useful.

This is a big problem on Wikipedia. In the old days, five years ago, most of
the self-promotion on Wikipedia was by bands and DJs. Now it's companies and
rich people. There are at least three rich convicted felons, famous for their
crimes, with their own paid Wikipedia editors trying to launder their history.

It helps if the negativity is not anonymous. That's why I edit under my own
real name.

~~~
drdaeman
Real names (as opposed to anonymity and pseudonymity) are double-edged sword,
too. In a less civilized countries you can get physically hurt if someone
didn't agree with your writings, no matter whenever they're valid and
constructive or not. Maybe on civilized ones too, since a joke about punching
on s face over TCP/IP didn't happened out of nowhere.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Real names keeps unintentional trolling down. Besides, I live too far away for
anyone to punch me.

------
ThomPete
Critical thinking is overrated, constructive thinking is underrated.

Too many turn into critics rather than creators because saying to the world
"this is what I stand for, this is what I created" is so much harder than to
simply tear someone elses down.

The US is actually much better than Europe but unfortunately academic
disciplines and craftmanship are mostly separated in the education system when
they should never have been separated to begin with.

Its a shame really cause creation is what matters. And yes I understand the
irony of my comment :)

~~~
Tossrock
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong
man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The
credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred
by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short
again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but
who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the
great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows
in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails,
at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with
those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." \- Theodore
Roosevelt

~~~
vacri
I'd much rather read from film critics about which films are good to see,
rather than bloody myself and waste my time seeing five terrible films to find
the one good one.

Folks have too narrow a view of what critics do. Critics critique. That can be
a hugely beneficial thing. Ever had anyone proofread something for you? That's
criticism. Ever had a mentor or an advisor? That involves criticism. And
contrary to Roosevelt's comment, criticism can be a very worthy thing.

'Criticism' is not synonymous with 'disparagement'.

~~~
kansface
Film critics almost never do what online pseudonymous posters do; invariably,
in every thread on HN, the top comment shits on the article. Film critics love
film- they try to get others to go watch the films they love (or at least read
their articles). The HN top comment just functions to show how smart the
poster is.

~~~
vacri
I disagree. Frequently the top comment on HN is continuing the conversation.
Often that involves some disagreement, but that's not the same as shitting on
the article.

Looking at the first ten articles on the front page right now:

    
    
      Streem: "I am glad that someone is working on a new stream processing language, it is a very interesting paradigm. "
      Margaret Hamilton: "What a truly inspiring human being. I can only dream of aspiring to her levels of contribution."
      Sony Hack: "This is the angle on the Sony hack that I find most interesting/troubling/etc. "
      DeepDive: "It does probabilistic inference![1]"
      Youth metabolism: "I don't really understand the comments here, and especially on the article itself, deriding this research because "people should just get off their butts and exercise" or similar."
      Other Money Problem: "One of his essays from a couple of months ago [shows philosophical opposition from essays from 10 years ago]"
      Irregular Verbs: "As Steven Pinker points out in this very interesting article... [discussion of verbs]"
      LLVM developers meeting: "For those who are curious, Part 1 of Chandler Carruth's Pass Manager talk is avaliable here:"
      Overhaul law enforcement: "I'm getting to the point where I can't stand local law enforcement."
      Prismatic Android app: "As someone who is rapidly becoming an old-timer, I have to say I miss the old days of Make."
    

One of the comments disagrees with the article (the last one). One of the
comments is questioning the quality of other comments. All of the comments are
contributing to the conversation, and none of them can be characterised to be
shitting on the article.

The trends continue on with the following articles, but I couldn't be bothered
setting up the quoting - this is left as an exercise for the reader.

~~~
ThomPete
This discussion is not just about HN.

~~~
vacri
Are you aware of the irony of this comment as well?

~~~
ThomPete
Sure it's all meta. That doesn't change that we aren't talking about HN only
though :)

~~~
vacri
The irony I saw is that I was responding to a point made by kansface,
rebutting a misconception that really isn't true. In doing so, I provided
evidence to that, pulling in quotes and citing my methods. I _created
content_. Yes, it's not a prize essay, but it took some minor effort, and more
importantly it added information to the conversation. It also wasn't
derogatory - I didn't imply kansface was a fool, I only discussed the
misconception itself.

Then, despite your earlier protestations of people tearing down instead of
creating, you just dismissed what I did out of hand with a mere "we're not
talking about that". You added nothing to the conversation with that comment,
and tried to stifle a conversation branch in process.

While the greater conversation is about more than HN, a specific point on HN
was made, and the same specific point was rebutted. Cutting off that
conversation is doing exactly what you were complaining about originally.

~~~
ThomPete
And now you continue the irony!

As I said. It's all meta :)

~~~
vacri
Claiming 'meta' is orthogonal to behaving hypocritically.

------
samdk
My initial reaction to this post was similar to many of the other commenters
here. There's a real danger in making "negative" comments taboo.

But I don't think Nick's saying "don't make critical comments" here. This
sentence encapsulates the idea quite well:

    
    
        But I fear emphasis has shifted from critically
        reflecting on and examining our own beliefs to simply 
        criticizing and pointing out errors in other people’s work.
    

If someone proposes an idea and you think it's terrible, it's worth taking a
few minutes to think about whether you're wrong or misunderstanding or missing
some part of the bigger picture. It's not about accepting ideas un-critically,
but instead about examining your own ideas and beliefs just as critically as
you're examining others.

I suspect it's just always been the case that many people are bad at this.
It's just that the internet has democratized and scaled up the process of
getting poorly thought out negative opinions about your work.

------
3pt14159
I like three general types of comments: 1. Personal stories that expand on the
submitted article. 2. Corrections or expansions to the submitted article in
details. 3. Corrections or expansions to the submitted article in the core
theme.

The ones I dislike are uninformed or overly emotional.

------
hristov
Sorry but some negative comments are necessary and very good for society.
People constantly try to peddle lies in the media and on the internet for
their own benefit.

The sooner those lies are shot down the better. I have been reading a lot of
financial articles lately, and i have to say at least half of the financial
editorials i see peddle some idea that is false and/or extremely harmful to
anyone that believes it.

A critical mind is absolutely necessary to survive in modern society. And when
one expresses critical thinking one is just helping others.

Of course as with anything one can always go overboard. Some people exhibit a
type of reflexive negativity, they simply dismiss everything that is new and
different without thinking much about it. I think PG called this "the
middlebrow putdown." One should always consider things carefully before
criticizing in public.

But saying negative comments are bad in general is just wrong.

~~~
throwawaymsft
The "middlebrow dismissal", yes. I don't think negative comments are bad, but
I think our mental dials are set to 80% negative. In a way, we end up looking
for reasons why something won't work, vs. why it could. That attitude tends to
shut down discussion and iteration.

------
jsnell
I don't really buy the theory of this all being due to the education systems
of Western culture. In my 20 years of education there was very little emphasis
on challenging ideas or proving them wrong. I'm almost tempted to say that
there was absolutely none. But as you can see from this very message, I'm
totally happy to write a knee-jerk negative reply.

What I believe is really happening is that it's hard for a yes-man to add any
value to the conversation. "What great points you have! Totally agree! +1" is
going to be just noise. It takes a large amount of effort to simultaneously
agree and add something to the original article. In contrast it's very easy to
add value by pointing out any parts that are actually wrong, or by
highlighting areas of disagreement since that's likely where the meat of the
issue lies. (Of course there's going to be a threshold at which the value of
pointing out errors is lower than the cost of the reply aggregated across all
readers, such as pointing out insignificant typos or grammar mistakes).

Finally, I strongly disagree with this: "But pointing out all the places other
people are wrong rarely teaches us anything". It probably doesn't teach
anything to the person who disagrees, since they hopefully are already
familiar with whatever issue they're disagree with. But it does teach
something to others. And a place where people go to learn but nobody teaches
sounds pretty miserable.

~~~
Swizec
> In my 20 years of education there was very little emphasis on challenging
> ideas or proving them wrong. I'm almost tempted to say that there was
> absolutely none.

In your 20 years of education you were never asked to write an essay? Or
invited to partake in a class debate about this or that thing in a piece of
literature?

~~~
jsnell
Needing to present a cogent argument for whatever point you've chosen to make,
sure. Being told to rip apart someone else's argument just for the purpose of
disagreeing? Never.

------
ojiikun

      > The cynical explanation for this is that people write negative comments to
      > show off how clever they are or how much they know. But I don’t think
      > that’s enough to explain how dedicated many commenters are to posting
      > negative feedback. Instead, I think people do it because they believe it’s
      > the right thing. Our cultural obsession with critical thinking compels us
      > to point out errors when we perceive them; errors are injustices that we
      > must right.
    

That explains why we tend to be so critical online, but I would expand upon
the theory as to why we tend to do so so _often_.

Most of the web falls into three categories: Trying to Get Page Views, Trying
to Sell You Something, or Trying to Proselytize. Just looking at the front
page of HN, many story titles are intentionally vague, if not inflamatory.
Read any thread on reddit, and many comments try to filter or twist facts to
support an opinion rather than make an insight. Whether you call it
mediaspeak, doublespeak, or bulshytt, it is still an offensive tactic for
attention at the cost of truth, and our cognitive capacity is a resource worth
defending.

    
    
      > I think this in part explains why the Hacker School community is so much
      > more positive than the world at large: People come here firstly to learn
      > new things, not to dispute them. This suggests an interesting question:
      > Could you build a site like Hacker News with a community focused on
      > learning above all else?
    

If it is possible, the system would need to go beyond current implementations
of moderation that boil down to "up/down, flag/don't flag" and address the
difference between disagreement and fact-checking (slashdot tried this by
differentiating between "insightful, interesting, and informative"). I also
suspect it would take a moderation team that vigilantly replaces link-bait
summary articles with original sources and carefully considers the validity of
paid content or opinion pieces.

Tangential Postscript: I would pay money for a news site like HN or /. that
focused exclusively on news, information, and data. Nothing is worse than the
almost-daily links we get from someone who thinks they know how to improve a
business, technology, or process, but offers no hard data to back up their
ideas or observations. Hypothesis is fine in comments, but I expect a bit more
from articles.

------
Mz
_Incidentally, I think this in part explains why the Hacker School community
is so much more positive than the world at large: People come here firstly to
learn new things, not to dispute them. This suggests an interesting question:
Could you build a site like Hacker News with a community focused on learning
above all else?_

Sigh.

I have no idea how big this Hacker School community is, but I imagine it is a
good bit smaller than the traffic one sees on Hacker News. It is much, much,
much easier to have a "positive" atmosphere when you have a community of under
roughly 150 active members. I have seen stats that suggest that Internet
forums typically have about 10% of the community very active and another 10%
intermittently active and the rest lurkers. So, my experience has been that at
around 700 members or so, you hit that roughly 150 mark of active members,
above which you start seeing spin off communities, sub-communities and so on
as some of the ways the community copes with having exceeded normal human
bandwidth for community-making (based on the size of some brain part, etc).

This post strikes me as being written by someone who has zero appreciation for
the sheer scale of Hacker News. It felt a LOT more like a real community when
I initially joined it several years ago. In recent months, it seems to me it
is a bit more female-friendly, and I suspect there are multiple reasons why it
is evolving in that direction. So there are some good points and bad points,
but it seems it has not managed to return to that same sense of community it
once had.

The fact of the matter is that in all of human history, being able to bring
together so very many people from such diverse backgrounds in real time is
unprecedented. It should hardly shock people that this involves a high degree
of friction and a fundamental need to invent new ways to interact, new
cultural paradigms that have some hope of keeping things in that zone of warm
sense of community. I think Hacker News is a victim of it's own success. It's
sheer scale and level of traffic make this challenging. That doesn't mean it
cannot be done. But that does mean it is kind of crappy to thump your own
chest and brag about your pet theory as to why your undoubtedly much smaller
community is running more smoothly at this time than Hacker News.

------
alecco
As a writer of critical comments of "hacker" school, I think this is typical
of the times. If you call out somebody you are dismissed as a debbie-downer,
cynical asshat, or other things like that. This comes from a culture now
dominated by PR/marketing/sales, getting crazier by the growing viral
marketing and astroturfing craze.

I strongly recommend you to watch Smile or Die, a talk by Barbara Ehrenreich.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo)

The parallel with that is a delusion SOLD to the community. In the case of
"hacker" school I criticize it as I did with the "MBA" program by Seth Godin.
And I consider that I might be _completely_ wrong in both cases, but what is
telling is how aggressive people got with me for speaking up my opinion.

~~~
tptacek
That does not appear to be true of Hacker School.

~~~
alecco
May I differ with my opinion? That's the point of my comment. Thanks for the
downvotes proving my point.

Edit: clarifying, I got very, very angry replies and dozens of downvotes at
the time. Monoculture leads to fixed mindset and drives smart people away.

Edit 2: I didn't downvote you (I prefer words in this case). My comment was in
the negative when you replied, but surprisingly it's risen to positive. Thank
you, whoever you are. This gives me hope on HN community.

------
johnvschmitt
Jim Morgan [1] had this (relevant) mantra:

"Bad news is good news. Good news is no news. No news is bad news."

Essentially, it means:

Bad news (criticism) done right will show you where you need to focus to
improve. That's why we upvote those comments.

Good news will give you little or no actionable items to improve.

No news means you are not getting any feedback, which means your progress will
stall.

[1] I worked (far) under Jim Moran when he was the long-time CEO of a huge
hardware tech company: [http://www.appliedmaterials.com/en-in/profiles/james-
c-morga...](http://www.appliedmaterials.com/en-in/profiles/james-c-morgan)

------
compbio
[http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

~~~
hansy
tl;dr Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement [image]

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Gra...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.svg/1280px-
Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.svg.png)

~~~
mkramlich
I wish you kids would use "summary:" instead of "tl;dr" though kudos for
putting it at the beginning rather than the end.

I mean this in a friendly constructive way, and realize you may not be a kid.
But while there's lots of positive innovation happening in culture and esp
related to the Internet, I feel strongly that "tl;dr" is not one of them, its
a step backward. It's typically placed in the worst possible location (the
very end rather than the very top/beginning) and it's far less likely to be
understandable than "summary". It's also reinventing the wheel. Again, not a
criticism of your comment, meant more for other readers, esp younger or less
educated ones, who don't know about the word summary and how it is
traditionally used to solve the need well already. :-)

~~~
erickhill
I actually find tl;dr to be more immediately dismissive in tone (and therefore
occasionally negative, whether it is intended to be or not). A summary implies
you actually _read_ something and are trying to boil it down.

~~~
mkramlich
good observation. agree I've seen that correlation. as a prefix for snark.

------
lowbloodsugar
>Here’s a theory for why there are so many negative comments on the Internet:
We train people to write them.

I agree.

>Indeed, Western culture trains us to disagree as part of learning to be
critical thinkers.

I disagree.

I don't think Western culture teaches critical thinking at all. My wife just
took a Critical Thinking course at college. I never took such a thing in all
my years of schooling. The key to Critical Thinking, if anything, is to
develop in oneself the ability to _not_ react automatically, and to start from
a position of no-bias.

On the other hand, any child who has ever sat in a Western class room knows
that many teachers (for some children, all their teachers) "teach" by asking
students a question and then telling them they are wrong.

I think the fundamental problem, however, is fantasy vs reality. I find I do
this with my development team: I have this idea in my head of what the product
should look like; I ineffectively deliver this vision to my team; the team
delivers (well) on this ineffective vision; I berate them for what is wrong
with it. I, in my role as teacher, perpetuate the awful process, by teaching
it to my team as I learned it from my teachers.

It is hard to turn fantasies into reality through communication. We have
learned to solve this through "trial and error", with an emphasis on "error".

Perhaps changing the conversation from, "This sucks! This isn't at all what I
wanted!" to "This is great! Now how about if it does this...!"

------
zackchase
On the topic of negative comments, this article prompts me to leave what the
author assuredly would consider one. Frankly, if our society fails in
education it's that students make it through without acquiring critical
thinking skills.

The idea that we are critical because "it’s so much easier to challenge other
people’s thinking than our own" is hard to take. If anything, this speaks to a
failure to be self-critical more than a surplus of outward negativity.

More generally, I'm frustrated by what I see as an increasing tendency of
people to parse the world into "positive" and "negative". This by itself
speaks to a lack of truly critical thinking.

Further, I believe that the idea that critically taking apart other ideas is
somehow a fundamentally distinct activity from developing one's own ideas is
incorrect. In mathematics you develop ideas precisely by searching for what
might be unsatisfying in the arguments and theories of others. And most
successful start-ups seem to have some roots in looking at how what others are
doing is sub-optimal.

------
gobengo
This is related to something I occasionally think about.

I used to take a lot of pride in 'critical' thought. Certainly I frequently
take this attitude toward the things floating around in my head, and I like
that.

But I've learned not to do the same for ideas from others, especially in short
comments on the internet, where it's basically a given that the other didn't
fully express themselves anyway.

'critical' thought isn't all there is. 'constructive' thought is important
too; maybe even more important. It's easy to be a critic and find 10 things
wrong with another idea. It's harder, riskier, but more rewarding to then
prioritize which of those 10 things should be worked out first and in what
way.

If someone throws out a half baked idea. You can critique it. Most people stop
there. But you can also continue forward and construct on top of it, propose
changes, make it better.

I now try now to be not just critical but constructive in most parts of my
life.

------
gojomo
Another factor: people with negative moods have marginally more time to
comment, and more need for the affirmation of quick-reactions (positive or
negative) – feeding a cycle of adverse selection on the most-active threads.

------
kijin
For individuals, negative comments might be ego-boosting to write and heart-
breaking to read. We cannot deny that many people write negative comments for
less than healthy reasons, and that many others suffer psychologically as a
result of such comments.

As a society, on the other hand, negative comments are indispensible for
maintaining a balanced conversation, protecting human rights, and generally
improving the state of our civilization.

> _Western culture trains us to disagree as part of learning to be critical
> thinkers._

And that's one of the most important reasons why liberal democracy has such a
hard time taking root in other cultures.

In (idealized) Western courtrooms, it's the job of each attorney to try to
tear apart every single thing that the other attorney says. It's unpleasant,
of course. It often wastes time and resources. But it's the only way we've
found so far to make sure that the process as a whole reaches a balanced
conclusion. It's our worst solution except all the others.

Like the market economy, the power of this process comes from the fact that it
harnesses the power of human selfishness for the greater good. Really, it's
genius. The system is not only fault-tolerant (where "fault" means moral
fault), it actually thrives on the faults of its participants.

A society that treats negative comments as a taboo will stagnate and go
corrupt. Because you can't eliminate selfishness, cynicism, and blind spots
from human nature. To pretend that such traits don't exist, or even worse, to
try to suppress them, is bound to fail. (Yeah, we tried that with human
sexuality.) The only solution is to acknowledge that we are often selfish,
cynical, and partially blind, and to channel that energy into productive use.

> _writing negative comments feels good: It exercises our critical thinking
> skills without challenging anything we hold dear ... pointing out all the
> places other people are wrong rarely teaches us anything._

Exactly. And when I do that, it's YOUR job to challenge what I hold dear by
exercising your critical thinking skills. At the end of the day, we can both
learn! The more we do this to one another, the better it will be for all of
us. Learning by criticism is not an individual task, it's a social project.

Of course, some people can't handle this. Ever been to DeviantArt? Everybody
there praises everyone else's work all the time, no matter how shitty it is.
Given the delicate sensibilities of a certain demographic that frequents
DeviantArt, this policy probably saves lives. But should we all act like emo
teenagers just because some of us behave like emo teenagers?

------
philh
See also: Why our kind can't cooperate.
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/3h/why_our_kind_cant_cooperate/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/3h/why_our_kind_cant_cooperate/)

------
chrismcb
Is the author trying to say only people who agree should write comments? The
whole point of a discourse is to discuss various sides of an issue. Life would
be boring if everyone agreed

------
zackchase
Broadly speaking, I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding in much of
this thread of what "critical thinking" means.

------
proveanegative
>Some errors are injustices and should be corrected, but most are not.

How do you decide which are which?

------
robert_tweed
Of course comments are going to be mostly negative. Including this one.

HN doesn't really have a problem with vacuous comments like "this is great" or
"this is shit" which are equally as bad as each other since they add nothing
of value. Those get downvoted. Commenters shouldn't be putting people down
without saying anything constructive, but it's not our job to bolster anyone's
ego with boundless support and positivity either.

The main purpose of comments is to provide criticism, or point out things that
are similar that others might be interested in as a follow-up on a good
article.

As a result that's going to come across as either negative (picking holes,
focusing on what's wrong - since that's what criticism mainly consists of), or
derisory (this isn't new, here's a bunch of similar stuff). In both cases
there may not be any intention of malice or even a negative tone to the
comment, but unless the author sugar-coats everything by adding weasel phrases
like "this is awesome but...", it's going to come across as negative by
default.

Comments can also contain questions, which can often read as
criticism/negativity. E.g. "why does this exist when there is already Foo?".
How one chooses to interpret comments like these is up to the reader. I find
it's best to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Never attribute to malice
that which can be attributed to poor communication.

It's always nice to see or be able to comment along the lines of "this is
awesome and here's why it's awesome" in a way that the explanation adds some
value. But usually it's just redundant fluff and more ego stroking.

The reason these comments are less common isn't because western culture is
broken, the education system is broken, or because the illuminati wants to
oppress us by keeping us all demotivated. It's just because the opportunity
for insightful, positive comments is much rarer than the opportunity for
insightful, negative comments.

Positivity is nice and all, but I'd rather have zero comments than waste my
time reading dozens of "this is great" me-too comments. Insightfulness is a
million times more important than positivity.

It's not about people showing off how clever they are, it's about commenters
doing what commenters are supposed to do: provide commentary and criticism
that _adds value_. If you want to immerse yourself in positive comments, there
are plenty of Reddit circlejerks that do just that. HN is not that. If you
think HN is negative, try reading Slashdot for a month instead. You'll
appreciate just how good HN comments really are when you come back.

The system works. Mostly.

------
curiously
i think that when we type, we use a different part of the brain than when we
speak. I have no evidence to back this up but sure as hell know that people
won't say half the crap they spew on youtube etc.

I actually find the "negative" comments refreshing on YC. Youtube comments are
the bane of existence...

------
djrogers
The article is completely wrong. There's hardly any negativity on the Internet
at all, and none of it comes from our training.

~~~
andywood
Your comment is worthless without at least one footnote with a link to a
published study.

~~~
schoen
In this case, academic research is totally irrelevant to the parent
commenter's point.

~~~
andywood
I've seen countless instances where an anecdote is perfectly reasonable and
interesting by itself, yet the anecdote itself is denigrated or at least
devalued. [1] I don't like it. I don't think it's reasonable to expect people
to have research at arms length in the general case.

1\. I say this anecdotally, of course.

