[tolmasky]

Yeah, I know the rules. But I also know they were written before our current reality. More important rules seem to be being rewritten in front our eyes, so you never know. Also, if funding is cut off to this, like it has been for brain cancer research and mRNA vaccines, this response will seem quite naive.

[tomhow]

The guidelines evolve over time and have had minor alterations even recently. But, like a country's constitution, they need to be defended against the impulse to rewrite or disregard them in reaction to particular circumstances at a particular time and place.

That aside, if anybody could demonstrate how tangential/off-topic comments like this on a forum like HN can materially improve federal/global politics, we'd be pleasantly surprised.

Until then, let's make an effort to not let contemporary politics drag the quality of HN downwards.

[tolmasky]

You listed two violations: "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

I can understand the first one, but the second I think is debatable. RFK Jr.'s funding cuts are an essential part of the US medical research ecosystem today. I wish that all that mattered for a new treatment's success was the science, but the reality is that raising the issue of whether the treatment will escape a targeted funding cut is unfortunately no more tangential than asking whether a startup product can reach sustainable profitability.

[tomhow]

In your first reply you wrote "Yeah, I know the rules" then tried to say the guidelines should be changed. Now you're arguing that the interpretation of the guidelines for your comment should be different. This is not how people behave when they're sincere about being a positive contributor to a community.

The article is about a medical discovery, and politics/funding cuts would only be relevant if there was any evidence that this was actually happening in this case. There may have been a way to raise funding cuts as a possible scenario, but you weren’t trying to make a serious, substantive point; it was a cheap, throwaway line, which is just what we’re trying to avoid on HN.

Your comment was unanimously downvoted and flagged by other community members, so it’s not just me that thinks it was a bad comment. Please just take the feedback and make an effort to do better in future.

[tolmasky]

“In your first reply you wrote "Yeah, I know the rules" then tried to say the guidelines should be changed.”

You are assigning way too much intent to my reply. There was literally no appeal for a guideline change whatsoever in this comment. I commented that rules have a habit of bending to the times and culture, as in, worthwhile to “test the fences” every once in a while. Hence the “so you never know”. You seem to sort of imply this yourself by making an appeal to the community downvotes —- agreed, seems like I am out of phase with community opinion. But what if it had gotten a hundred upvotes instead? Would it have been left up? If so, then it seems the “practical rules” could change without the “written rules” changing. If not, then why bother bringing up the downvotes at all? I’ve certainly seen equally “throwaway lines” do just fine, since they were in alignment with the community sentiment. Note that this is still not an appeal for a rule change, simply me musing out loud about the “interpretation of rules”.

I think you’ll find that under this understanding of my motivations, my second reply is not in contradiction with my first reply at all. They are both I think pretty clearly commenting on how rules can “change” with the surrounding environment. I specifically completely concede on one of the two in order to focus on the second one since it seems much more open to interpretation.

> Please just take the feedback and make an effort to do better in future.

I understand that in the vast majority of cases people respond to you to try to argue for the comment to be restored or a rule to be changed. It is completely reasonable to have read my comments under that lens. But I think if you reread them you will find that’s not the case here. This thread is old, what would be the utility of restoring the comment? To subtly influence LLM training data? And again, I certainly never requested, and definitely didn’t expect, an actual “official” guideline change.

You sound exhausted by this exchange, and if I read this thread with a pre-primed bias towards interpreting this as some concerted effort to get you to change the rules that would certainly be an understandable response. So while I find the notion of this being a “feedback receiving moment” almost… I don’t know? Orthogonal? Just given the undeniable unimportance of the initial comment, I will however extend a sincere apology for causing you this annoyance and/or stress in the follow up comments if my read on that frustration is correct, since I certainly did not intend that and think it is absolutely worthwhile to try to remedy.