[Udo]

I believe this is not relevant to most hackers, except if they happen to be bio researchers. Worse yet, while being mostly irrelevant, it's also a barely disguised flamebait piece designed to incite a fruitless ethics debate. This should be posted somewhere else.

And I don't care how many downvotes I get either; the guys who where complaining about the increasing lack of focus on HN earlier today were right.

[pacohn]

Thanks for the answer. Personally, I don't see it so much as flamebait as an interesting issue. Even so, as long as people remain civil, I think discussions of conflicting viewpoints can be very valuable.

I had the impression that HN was for broad content, as long as it was intellectually stimulating. However, based on this recent post about the decline of HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696 I get the feeling that there are conflicting communities here.

Perhaps you are right. This is my second post. I am feeling conflicted, actually.

[Udo]

I'm obviously mistaken, otherwise the thread wouldn't have received so many positive votes. In fact, I apologize, it's me who apparently lost the plot. I bow to the majority opinion.

> I get the feeling that there are conflicting communities here.

Maybe, though that matter seems to be resolving itself on its own currently.

> Personally, I don't see it so much as flamebait as an interesting issue

Science research should be held to a higher standard, it shouldn't be compared to household rat catching. This shouldn't be thought-provoking at all. It's a case of apples and oranges. It's also borderline politics.

[pacohn]

>> I get the feeling that there are conflicting communities here. >Maybe, though that matter seems to be resolving itself on its own currently.

Well I think HN grew due to the hacker community. After reading some in the post I linked. I am thinking that it might not be right that it be hijacked. I was a big Redditor and felt driven away somewhat recently. I guess this is all tangential, but no offense taken. Best.

[YuriNiyazov]

Reading this article made me think "wow, not everything is lost, this is exactly the kind of stuff that HN used to have on it before the decline", so I definitely disagree with Udo

[Udo]

I feel bad hijacking the discussion like this. But I'd really like to know how a blog post on how the government should abolish ethics oversight in research is hacker news? Obviously, you have been here way longer, so what is that I'm not getting?

[YuriNiyazov]

Very well. From the HN guidelines, what to submit can be summed up in one line: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

First of all, you view the article in a very narrow view. You just see someone complaining about ethics committees. I see an article that is well-written (on par with PG's essays), and is talking about stuff that I wouldn't usually notice on my regular path on the Internet. Mice brain tumors? Academic research?

Second of all, an average "CS hacker" out there, back in high school/college, could take multiple paths - physics, math, bio, acting (yes, acting), painting, music, etc. - in fact, many of them during really bad coding moments (such as when you need to refactor a 1000-line java method) wish many times over that they stuck to biology, or music, or acting, or anything else back in college.

This article appeals to both wanting to read something well-written, and also to gratifying someone's intellectual curiosity about something that they could've ended up doing, but didn't; and, it explains in great detail what problems they would've encountered if they had actually gone down that route.

HN needs more of exactly this kind of content.

[devinj]

Really? I thought it was thought-provoking, even if I'm not entirely sure that I agree with the author. Certainly more intellectually stimulating than the usual "Company X did Thing Y" items.

But then, I've never really been clear on the topic of HN. Seems to me it's "stuff interesting to hackers", which this may well be, even if it isn't interesting to one individual hacker.

[spoondan]

The standard for an article's appropriateness is whether it's something "that good hackers would find interesting", not whether it's "relevant to most hackers."

[chc]

They were also complaining about lack of civility, which is the reason your comment (which has a very snide tone) is getting downvoted.

[Udo]

I know why I'm being downvoted, it's always a risk when posting a comment with a certain tone. Though I don't normally post in this style, I just didn't care when I wrote it. I realize this thread may have prompted an inordinate amount of frustration in me which should probably have been directed towards worthier targets.