In a world dominated by hyperboles, opinions, click bait and general Fox newsification, I do realize that demanding unbiased facts can be an alien concept, but generally expected the hacker news community to embrace this thinking. I've been repeatedly surprised by down voting for not being an echo chamber - HN doesn't like dissidents.
Anywhere - free speech IS non negotiable, free speech IS essential. However, intelligent speech is what I expect to gain traction on HN. There's plenty of free and inaccurate speech on the internet. I mistakenly expected a democratic, community curated forum to up vote accurate speech. Alas
BTW- it's okay for a stranger on the internet to disagree with one's blog/opinion. Clearly, for every stickler like me, there are hundreds who actually enjoy the baroque writing and opinions. I'm just likely not the target audience - which is just fine by the author and a cursory glancer such as I.
But you see, my speech is drowned out in a sea of upvotes that completely disagree with the me, somehow lending more credence to the author. It's like a town hall meeting where the crowd boos someone because of differing popular opinion - they only want to hear what they already think.
Because your complaints about the article make no sense. The article neither claims to be an academic paper, nor is there anything particularly wrong with it. You even admit you didn't read it so why are you writing comments complaining about it?
I'm entitled to my opinion just like you're entitled to yours, and my opinion happens to be negative, the reason for which is spelt out clearly in my opening salvo.
I'm stunned that you think your point of view is somehow the only one. Why are you quelling criticism?
But my reasoning is spelt out clearly in my first post- I find the opening statement of the article to be a frivolous hyperbole in a world facing cancer, global warming, hunger, poverty, antibiotic resistant infections....
The part they might have been trying to understand is how that specifically fits in with the complaint about the line being unscientific.
I certainly do disagree with the line you quoted and complained of ("complained" here used in a neutral sense). I don't think humanity will ever invent true AGI. (I think attempting it may be worthwhile, but I don't think it is likely to succeed, and I certainly don't think it is of prime importance).
The thing that might not be understood is why you (seem to?) think it is inappropriate (not forbidden, just not-worth-your-time or whatever judgement you made of it) for an article to have both opinion based non-empirical statements, as well as other more technical statements, or something like that.
I'm not sure that the article purported to be a scientific article in the sense that you meant, nor do I think that the submitter claimed it was.
I don't at all mean to suggest that you are incorrect for disliking the first sentence enough to not read the rest of the article. I think that's reasonable. However, I don't really understand the complaint being on the basis of it conflicting with the blog post being a "scientific article".
I agree that its good for there to be things which just document things without including things like the first sentence there, but I think its also good for there to be things which also do have things like the first sentence there.
I can think of a number of other complaints about that sentence that make a fair bit of sense to me, but I don't /really/ understand the reasoning behind yours.
If this was like, a news article or something, I would agree more I think, but seeing as it seems to just be someone's personal blog, I don't see why I would expect[1] an entirely detached and objective view from it, instead of a mix of personal viewpoints along with statements of fact (though, I would expect/hope that the viewpoints and the facts not be conflated).
[1]expect in the approval sense, not in the prediction sense.
sorry this post is long I'm often not good with being concise
It boils down to personal preference I suppose. I'm used to the tech press mixing opinions & facts, and probably unreasonably expect actual practitioners/inventots of tech to omit opinions, especially omniscient, overarching, grand opinions.
Also, please note that the author is a professor at NYU. I'm certain of his higher intellect than mine, humbly noting.
However, he's no stranger to peer review, both as an author and reviewer. The opening statement of this post just wouldn't make it past his own editorial standards - a point worth noting.
