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by mechanical_fish
4284 days ago
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Like anybody, I have a reflexive tendency to feel pride when a number goes up, but pride in my average-point ranking is tempered by the knowledge that it's a statistic-of-convenience. It's not necessarily there because it's worth tracking or optimizing. It's there because the laziest possible stat, "total points," which tends to scale linearly with tenure and with volume of posts, became boring. So now we also have the second-laziest possible stat, "total points divided by total posts". I have nothing against the simple stats -- why waste time on complex pseudoscience when basic pseudoscience will do? -- but the risk is that we'll design a stats page by adding numbers one at a time, in laziest-first order, until the screen starts to look cluttered, at which point we'll pick the most promising pattern we've spotted so far and start trying to optimize it. This is a great way to generate Powerpoint slides with lines that move up and to the right, and a lousy way to measure value. The micromanagement of statistical placebos is the occupational hazard of our age, and we should try to push back. It's easy, too easy, to game my average-points ranking. I should contribute only popular thoughts to popular posts. I should assiduously avoid commenting on anything that's not on the homepage, or replying to people who are not near the top of a thread. I should make sure to comment within the newly-arrived-on-the-home-page time window, which is presumably now measured in milliseconds. I should certainly avoid giving advice to people on Ask HN. That's no way to live. |
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