Can you please edit swipes like that out of your comments here? They tend to degrade discussion. If you simply provide correct information, your comments will be stronger and their effect on the thread at large more salutary.
That is hypocritical then. This is not a swipe from op?
So could we please all not throw about big proclamations about what "AI today" is ("just" or not), without first making sure that we have a thorough understanding of what we are saying?
It's a matter of degree (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...). I agree with you that that comment implied that the person being addressed didn't know what they were talking about, which is arguably a swipe and should have been replaced with something with no such insinuation. But "You are completely missing the point" is much worse.
It's easy to understand how a mild swipe provokes a more aggressive one; indeed it's hard to resist being carried by that current, but that's just what the site guidelines ask us all to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
No, that is not a swipe. That is me being very nice and polite in telling people to make sure they know what they're saying before saying it, followed by an awkward attempt at humour to avoid any misunderstanding of my tone.
Edit: Sorry, I see you are the OP in the thread. Note that I did not aim that specifically at you and I included myself in "us". I understand you may have felt frustrated that I challenged your knowledge of AI but I sincerely think that you could have researched the subject a bit better before stating what you think it is.
Edit II: At the very least you could have tried to talk a bit more about why you think that "AI today is just capable of curve fitting". Making such a strong statement without any attempt to back it up with some kind of explanation (I'm not saying you should reference sources and bring "evidence" or anything, just explain it) comes across as a bit, well, ill-informed. With respect.
I get (and am glad) that you intended to be nice and polite, but I don't think that's how that statement exactly lands with the reader. At least I didn't think so, and certainly not the person it was addressed to. It still carries the connotation that they are uneducated and ignorant on the topic. So does "you could have researched the subject a bit better before stating what you think it is".
If someone's comments seem ignorant or under-researched, the way to address that is not to put them down, however mildly, but to add correct information about the topic. This has the bonus effect that, in the case where they actually do know a lot about the topic but just have a very different view of it, you won't inadvertently insult them. Also, it's worth remembering that if X is the topic, then "the level of someone's knowledge about X" is actually already a step off topic. Stepping off topic can be great when the step is in a curious direction, but definitely not when it's in a provocative direction.
I just saw this. Thanks for the reply and the advice. I'll try to follow your advice. I think I'm a bit too hot-headed sometimes and I forget to read my own comments as if they were someone else's comments replying to myself. Also, I'm certainly carrying along bad conversation habbits from other internet forums that didn't try as hard as HN to cultivate reasonable debate.
I'm actually annoyed at myself about this, so I'm definitely trying to remember to be more careful in my comments. Your level-headed moderation is a great help in that, thanks.
I have to say something though- curiosity is only one side of the coin (the coin being the pursuit of knowledge, I guess). The other half is passion. Passion is what causes heated debate, but it's also what causes people to debate in the first place. I think it's a hard balance to strike and we will all need an adult in the room, to help focus our conversations, for a long time to come. Probably not what you want to hear though :)
that you could have researched the subject a bit better before stating what you think it is.
You just defended a swipe using another swipe.
Your argument is rooted in terminology. Yes, in academia, AI means more than deep learning. Practically speaking, AI and deep learning are synonymous in startup land. And yes, supervised NN techniques are just curve fitting, and are not practical for program synthesis. Which was the original subject of this monotonous thread.
If you believe that "AI" is used differently in academia and in startups, then making it plain that you use the term in one or the other way could have helped clarify your meaning.
I agree that this thread is dragging on a bit, but it started with a very bold proclamation expressed in strident language criticising peoples' apparent ignorance of the subject- by yourself: "Good grief" and "When will people wake up" rather set the tone of your comment. If you choose to open a conversation like that, with a broadside against "peoples'" ill-informed views I would expect you are prepared to take a bit of criticism regarding the lack of depth of your own views. If not and my criticism has upset you, I apologise, but in that case, maybe you can try to be less provocative in how you express your views in the future, because provocativeness tends to elicit robust reactions.
Edit: In any case I just wanted to say: I get that you're annoyed by our conversation but I'd like to thank you for keeping it civil (if a bit tense) and not resorting to personal attacks. Cheers.
That's a weird thing to tell someone. A person can't say that they're being misunderstood because that degrades a discussion? Degrades how? Are you putting yourself as supreme judge of the situation? Reading through the back and forth, I agree that OP had some of their statements made into strawmen. Does it degrade to mention that I think they may be in the right? Maybe miss worded a bit, yes. But the general point made throughout, I think is valid. Is me disagreeing with you degrading your sensibilities?
Of course not, but there's a long road between "disagreeing" (which is no problem) to "saying you're being misunderstood" (may be fine, but usually is already a step down in discussion quality) to "you're completely missing the point" (outright swipe). Commenters here should stay in the former zone and avoid the latter. That's not hard to do.
Well, if you meant it in that straightforward sense, then it was not a swipe.
But I've seen the same statement used in a derogatory manner in the sense of "get this done, it's not difficult [if you're not an idiot]" by a bad manager or two. To me it does carry that other sense.
Can you please edit swipes like that out of your comments here? They tend to degrade discussion. If you simply provide correct information, your comments will be stronger and their effect on the thread at large more salutary.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html