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Why I’m quitting Hacker News

61 points edgefield | 3 comments | 04 Jun 23 18:44 UTC | HN request time: 0.644s | source

I just shared a post about the world’s oceans setting record temperatures for 80 continuous days. After the post achieved 130+ upvotes and the top spot within several hours, it was nuked. My experience is that every post on Hacker News addressing climate change is removed or downvoted to oblivion. I don’t want to be part of a community that turns away from probably the most important threat facing humanity in the 21st century. Goodbye and farewell!
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matthewdgreen ◴[04 Jun 23 18:57 UTC] No.36188402[source]▶
I noticed how highly voted the post was, so I went in to read the comments for a couple of minutes. When I hit "back" to return to the main page the post had mysteriously disappeared. I found it fleeing down the second page, past many stories which had lower scores and had been lingering for much longer periods. It was very surprising.

These current-events climate stories are the most important pieces of news on the site. If the moderators are deliberately nerfing them (ETA: or exploitable algorithmic policy is allowing them to be nerfed), I find that extremely terrifying. I hope it is not the case.

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joecool1029 ◴[04 Jun 23 19:02 UTC] No.36188441[source]▶
> These current-events climate stories are the most important pieces of news on the site.

In your opinion. Many other HN users don't feel that way and get tired of seeing the same topic over and over again. If it's not intellectually interesting and seems overly political it's getting that flag button clicked.

EDIT: Before downvoting/flagging me consider that maybe I don't hold the views you dislike. I'm making commentary in the comment section and only pointing out that perhaps it's not dang killing submissions but actually other HN users that don't agree with you.

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minusf ◴[04 Jun 23 19:11 UTC] No.36188520[source]▶
so why dont i see that with ai related stuff? hn has been basically a gpt news site the last 4 months. quite sick of it actually. i dont remember even 5 climate change big threads recently, it's like the issue doesnt exist here at all. climate change is not only political - there's tons of research and science involved. but it's better to know someone put gpt on self driving cars that can cook asian fusion hallucinated recipes. hn has its blind spots just like any other site.
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version_five ◴[04 Jun 23 19:27 UTC] No.36188684[source]▶
I get the sense that a lot of people hate AI stuff, but a lot of people are also interested, so it gets downweighted but a lot of stories still appear. This is based on seeing a few dang comments about it, plus getting lots of upvotes on some anti AI post comments I've made. I agree it's too much. Otoh, it's a new and evolving field (llms et al) that has regular new information, that's relevant to the community. I think there's more new information in the AI posts than in the "here's evidence climate change is bad" posts. Posts about tech that addresses climate change would be interesting and do get discussed periodically.
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1. joecool1029 ◴[04 Jun 23 19:40 UTC] No.36188815[source]▶
It's priorities, more users on this site work in software that uses AI and are concerned about their livelihood. How many people come to this site to learn about tooling or new ways they can make money? I would guess it's a pretty large amount.

It's short-sighted but if you have to survive and pay the bills this is what you have to do. Not everyone is a tenured professor with the ability to have this as their primary priority.

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2. matthewdgreen ◴[04 Jun 23 21:55 UTC] No.36189973[source]▶
I’m not a tenured professor with the ability to have this as my primary priority. I’m a person who has kids and wants to know if they’re going to have a world to live in. Even a world with AI and no jobs is a hell of a lot better than a world where we can’t grow crops because the climate hit a tipping point and we all shut our eyes.
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3. joecool1029 ◴[04 Jun 23 23:49 UTC] No.36190669[source]▶
>I’m not a tenured professor with the ability to have this as my primary priority.

Can you see now why it's bad to assume things and engage in bad faith ad hominem?

>I’m a person who has kids and wants to know if they’re going to have a world to live in

They will. It will be different and might be worse. They won't have the same food, weather might harm them.

If you haven't written me off for my last comment, I rent a cottage on a small farm. On the land stands a sole american chestnut in a region where there was once billions. We have planted seedlings started from this tree. For what? The world didn't go away for this survivor, but the stress of the blight afflicts it and it will almost certainly take its young when they mature. Science has made it possible to bring the closest version of this tree back through genetic modification, but should it be done? I am of the mindset that yes, we should do that. Many will disagree. Should we keep trying to hybridize it with foreign species, or should we let it fade into the fossil record? There's no consensus so national policy hasn't changed.

I bring this up because I do notice, I see the changes in the world around me but I as an individual only have the power to struggle on my own to adapt to them. Do you understand that it's not a lack of my caring, but a fatigue of hearing the same 'worse this year' reporting that there's not much point in discussing?