Proposal: A new kind of blog comment system - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/stories/2010/08/22/proposalANewKindOfBlogComm.html <comment><USER2> Meh, 24 hours is too long to wait. By that time, I likely no longer care to read any comments on the subject, so they all go unread. I mean who is going to return to a blog post a day later just so they can read comments? Might as well just leave the comments off. Let's face it, the author is still working through his trauma from a time when he apparently left comments unmoderated and unrestricted and got burned, and this is his therapy. He's making his way back into the social, but he's taking baby steps.

Also, when you're boasting of feats like inventing blog comments, you might be slightly more prone to being trolled than your average blogger.

<comment><USER3> I feel that comments on blogs themselves are slowly being replaced by comments on sites such as HN, Reddit, etc. I notice again and again, at least with personal blogs, that a post with 90 comments on HN will only have two or three comments on the post on the original site. Additionally the posts on HN are more likely to be negative than the posts on the original site.

Perhaps it is because people feel less inhibited when they are posting their thoughts in another neutral space. If the author of the article doesn't want to be trolled or flamed on his own site then why not just link to the HN discussion, as I have seen other bloggers do?

If your post is controversial or interesting people will discuss it, and you can do nothing to stop it, because closing comments on the main site will just cause people to discuss it on another site, as this HN post is proving.

<comment><USER4> "Additionally the posts on HN are more likely to be negative"

What exactly do you mean? That people do not comment on here, ohh this is brilliant, we love you, you're our god, even if the guy said something obvious or something which isn't brilliant at all, or do you mean that here people write down their thoughts as they are not biased. I do not see why the latter would necessarily mean negative however? There are criticisms, but are reasonable criticisms something negative?

I think posts here are positive, even for the owner of the site, unless he takes it personally. You know, its just business :P

<comment><USER3> I am just referring to a general trend that I have noticed in submitted articles, after comparing HN comments with on-site comments for the past year or so.

On HN you are more likely to see nitpicks or deconstructions of the article, even criticisms of the person who wrote the article. Also the best way to get upvotes is often to criticize the article submitted and point out a flaw.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing... I'm just sharing my observations.

<comment><USER5> That makes some sense to me, and I think I'm somewhat more negative on 3rd- party comment sites than on bloggers' own sites as well. On a blogger's site, it feels like I'm writing a reply _to the blogger_ , which I make more effort to try to keep constructive, soften negative points, make sure to balance them with positive ones, etc. On a 3rd-party site it feels like I'm writing a comment for the site's own community, not really directed at the author, who often isn't present (e.g. I doubt NYTimes journalists are here reading our comments on their articles).

The fact that they are sometimes present makes that a little tricky, and maybe requires recalibration. Traditionally, I was able to assume that an author of an external blog post _wasn't_ part of the community, because if they were, they would've just posted their post in the community instead. For example, in the heydey of Kuro5hin, if you were part of the community, you most often subumitted your articles to K5. If something was linked externally instead of published on K5, you could assume it probably wasn't by a community member. Same on Usenet--- if you were writing an article as part of a community, you posted it _to_ the community. And I think it does make sense for discussions to have a different tone when the author is present and engaging versus when they aren't.

It's a separate (though related) issue, but I think there are real advantages to that kind of community-centric site, where the discussion _and the articles_ make up the community, instead of the HN-style collection of on-site discussion and off-site blog posts, some of which are by community members and some of which aren't (with no easy way of distinguishing, unless you remember which URLs are blogs of HN members).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "If you want to rebut a post, then you can create your own blog and post > your rebuttal there."

This is actually the common mode of conversation in one area of the academic blogosphere I follow, and it's _annoying as hell_. I would definitely not want it to become a common model.

Instead of centralizing a discussion in comments somewhere, I have to follow a web of "Just writing a quick note in reply to Michael here" and trackbacks and whatnot amongst 5-8 blogs that usually participate in the conversation. If you're not following it in real-time, it's especially annoying to try to reconstruct the conversation, versus if it were in one blog's comments, or a web forum somewhere, or on a mailing list, or anything else other than 5-8 people with separate blogs replying to each other on their own blogs. In this case, though, it's less due to blog authors not wanting comments (most have them on), and more due to the repliers always thinking their reply is so important that it has to be kicked up to a reply-post, rather than living as a mere blog comment.

I do like the "blogs are publishing" analogy he uses, but for negative reasons: instead of people conversing directly, this model of "reply on your own blog" results in the equivalent of everyone printing up broadsides or pamphlets with their ideas. So you print your pamphlet, and if someone disagrees, they print their own, and instead of 5 people discussing things, you have 5 pamphleteers scattering their dueling pamphlets around town.

Nonetheless, the old model of publishing documents on the web seems fine, but I don't see why it should be in blog format then. If you have a document that's worth "publishing", imo it should usually be of somewhat lasting interest, and you should pick a format other than reverse-chronological-order to organize your published documents (though it's fine to have a "recent documents" list to direct frequent readers to what's new).

<comment><USER6> The "blog post as direct response" model works _really_ well on Tumblr.

Everywhere else it only works at the extreme ends — for total takedowns like the recent Kurzweil/Myers dustup and friendly 'Sue's post on x inspired me to post this on y', but not anything in between. Trackbacks were the worst thing to come out of SixApart, and those guys were chock full of bad ideas. Basically tailor-made for spam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Quote: "I know some people think that blogs are conversations, but I don't. I think they're publications. And I think the role of comments is to add value to the posts. If you want to rebut a post, then you can create your own blog and post your rebuttal there."

Something about this rubs me the wrong way-- probably the fact that it assumes that rebutting a post doesn't add any value. If I (or Dave Winer) post about something and completely mischaracterize what it is, how it functions, what it means, etc., a comment that rebuts that mistake is certainly quite valuable. It gives the author a chance to revise or reconsider his opinion or take on the matter.

A blog post disagreeing with a high-profile author like Dave Winer is unlikely to have the same kind of impact, especially when it comes from a low-profile site (which, let's face it, most blogs are). It is far too easy for an author to ignore dissenting posts at other sites than it is a highly-visible comment that appears directly under the post in question.

IMHO, Dave Winer is a particularly bad comment moderator-- he routinely removes comments that disagree with his opinions simply because of that disagreement. Anecdotally, I no longer comment at Scripting News precisely because he banned my OpenID from the site when I disagreed with one of his more volatile political posts. Not particularly strong evidence, I know, but it is a routine event at SN to see Winer completely shut down or remove posts that differ with his opinions.

Now, as Winer is fond of saying, those dissenters are certainly capable of starting a free blog an any number of free services (or going so far as to transform an old PC into a Wordpress site of their very own), but, as I've mentioned before, this certainly doesn't merit the same level of visibility that posting a comment does.

All of which is to say: I read the above and don't necessarily see Winer trying to "improve" his site. I see him trying to justify marginalizing those who disagree with him.

</comment><comment><USER8> To me this is a very old school, closed off way of looking at things. Who are the comments for? Just the author? If so, why make them public at all? If they are for the readers, how many readers are going to come back 24 hours later to check out the comments?

The idea that if you disagree or have a lot to say you should create your own blog post is also a bit ridiculous. Is it OK in that case to leave a comment saying "I have responded to this on my blog here at xxxxxxx"? I mean, how is the context between the original post and the followup to be maintained or even seen by the original readers?

This just seems to be more of a throwback to old school print where the interconnectedness of ideas was severely limited. Unless you were aware of and read all publications on a subject you were likely to see the entire "conversation" on a subject.

I guess if you want to see a blog article as a publication that's your prerogative, but there is a reason print media is dieing out. We should be trying to increase the interconnectedness of ideas, not stifle it.

<comment><USER9> _The idea that if you disagree or have a lot to say you should create your own blog post is also a bit ridiculous._

Indeed. If you want interesting conversations about your blog posts, have commenting (threaded is better; saves a lot of time). If you don't, just don't have them.

<comment><USER10> from tfa: "I know some people think that blogs are conversations, but I don't. I think they're publications."

It's not about interesting conversations.

It's about on-topic replies to the author's post. IE people being able to read and comprehend a post before making a comment on it.

<comment><USER9> I also view blog posts much like publications, but the comments on a blog post are not part of the publication. Or, they don't have to be.

It's not clear to me what metric is being sought, if it's not interestingness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't bother blogging about it, do it, test it for a month or more, _then_ blog about the results.

<comment><USER12> Maybe he is a afraid that people miss the 24-hour window if he doesn't give a heads-up (nyuk, nyuk).

(I agree that this an idea doomed to failure.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _I know some people think that blogs are conversations, but I don't. I think they're publications._

Why does there have to be a strict dichotomy between these two things? It's not uncommon to see conversations happen (very slowly) through traditional publications and everything posted online is, in a sense, published.

</comment><comment><USER14> My first thought when reading this is that this evolves into a "battle rap" scenario where bloggers rebut one another via their medium, blog posts (rap songs), rather than just talking directly in the comments. I think that got 2pac and Notorious B.I.G. shot.

I think blogs can at once be a publishing medium and also a host for conversation - and why they can't crosspolinate seems ridiculous to me. Winer seems a bit too obsessive-compulsive about his comment system - just let it be what it is, a place for conversation. That, or close it. He cares and talks wayyy too much about it - it's not that serious.

Maybe there are some deep-rooted self esteem issues under there somewhere?

</comment><comment><USER15> That's just tuning parameters, there's nothing groundbreaking there. The title should be something more like:

Proposal: Sane defaults for blog commenting system

Still, commenting (if at all) should be very specific to character of the site commented upon. Like, for example, do you enable replying and threading? That's something that's very dependant on community dynamic.

Personally I think you should leave commenting and discussion for more 'local' communities — like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. Internet's just too big to aggregate all people's opinions on your site. And you can gain some more visiblity that way, too.

</comment><comment><USER16> Or just turn off comments altogether and let people comment on HN (et al). This happens inevitably, right? Many times the comment thread for an article is actually longer and more rich here than on the source website itself.

<comment><USER17> That, too, has its downsides. Raganwald has a lucid post about it here: [http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/07/thanks-for-submitting- my...](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/07/thanks-for-submitting-my-post- to.html)

<comment><USER18> If bloggers want the discussion to happen on their blogs and not on HN or reddit, then they really need to offer something better than HN or reddit. Hell if you can't even do threaded comments or something similar to make it easier to follow the flow of discussion, it is obvious to me that you don't care too much about getting comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "If you want to rebut a post, then you can create your own blog and post your rebuttal there."

Did he just ask commenters not to disagree with him?

</comment><comment><USER20> I really like Andrew Sullivan's simple system, soliciting readers to comment via email and then selectively publishing those he believes create and add to an ongoing conversation.

<http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com>

<comment><USER21> Not only that, he also links to posts on other blogs that talk about an issue, putting them in context with each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution has an interesting real-world analogue when he has to deal with q&a during his public speaking event. He believes that people are behaving in status-seeking ways and so forces people who want to ask questions to write them down and pass them up where he answers them anonymously[1]. Winer's 24-hour limit seems to be partially addressing this problem as well, but I agree with the comments already posted about that being too much time to care.

One possible solution I'm thinking about implementing in a new blog I'm starting is a separate Twitter comments account. This forces brevity and accountability among other things, and people could link to their own posts or places where my posts are (hopefully) being discussed. In addition, if the blog is successful, I could potentially see what comments are being retweeted, etc. and run some quick and dirty analytics to help determine high-value comments. Additional benefits would be connecting with high-value readers in a more intimate way that could improve dialogue as well as gently guide users to providing comments via email for longer dialogues. I'm concerned that 140 characters is too short to provide feedback, though the majority of comments I post on non-conversational sites seem to fit into that range.

Any thoughts?

[1] Sorry, I can't find a link to the article so I'm paraphrasing heavily.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why not grab the users Mac address and IP and award them a badge based on each comment they leave? A disqus like startup can add such a system and the badges would range from extremely positive to extremely negative (hateful useless troll).

<comment><USER24> You can't see the MAC address of someone who visited your site.

<comment><USER23> Ah yeah it's been awhile since I took a networking class; more into front end coding these days & start-ups.

I guess even the IP address since it's based by router would not be completely effective, especially in large companies. Though it could gather that there a lot of trolls at one company or organization. Thinking of recent Yahoo/Skype debacle and that guy losing his job over trolls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My prediction: he implements his experiment for a few weeks, notices that nobody comments on his posts any more and then he backpedals.

If you don't already know Dave Winer, he's very bitter about not getting the recognition that he thinks he's owed (read the first sentence of the linked article, it's actually quite representative of the guy) so he keeps coming up with these "revolutionary" new things in the hope to invent something.

He'll come up with another wacky idea in a month.

</comment><comment><USER26> Every blog post, every URL, and every domain should have it's own forum. Make that forum universal enough, fast enough, and easy enough to use, and you have the twitter of forums.

This has been blatantly obvious to me for about 4 years now. The only reason I don't pursue it is because I get distracted by easier and more interesting "low hanging fruit".

</comment><comment><USER27> A popular nlp blogger posted ( <http://nlpers.blogspot.com/2010/08/readers- kill-blogs.html> ) about a related problem with comments (ie, that they're getting more and more distributed).

</comment><comment><USER28> This removes any real incentive to comment on an article as well as any use comments may provide (as they aren't going to be viewed when the largest traffic occurs but rather when people are looking through archives or revisiting old posts).

<comment><USER29> If your incentive for commenting is to be seen by others rather than provide feedback to the author, you're exactly the kind of commenter he wasn't interested in seeing:

"I know some people think that blogs are conversations, but I don't. I think they're publications. And I think the role of comments is to add value to the posts. If you want to rebut a post, then you can create your own blog and post your rebuttal there."

<comment><USER28> I haven't ever commented on a blog but I was responding more to this:

> And I think the role of comments is to add value to the posts.

Which you have quoted there. The value shouldn't just be for authors it should be for everyone, HN comments can add value to posts as well as value to the posts' authors but choosing one over the other seems silly to me.

If he doesn't want comments to be valuable to the community (can't really think of a better word) who reads his blog then he could simply add a contact me to the bottom of the page like Mark Pilgrims blog posts show after a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "I think they're publications."

Old-school thinking, alive and well.

<comment><USER4> what's the new school thinking?

<comment><USER31> The Internet possesses and endless and continual discussion about a million topics.

A blog post is the author's prompt to gain focus in the ongoing (and evergoing) discussion to a particular topic, and relative to the author's given position.

It's like a button sewn into the conversation fabric. It's also part of the fabric and it has a little more gravity than a comment thread.

<comment><USER11> That's a beautiful analogy.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The 10 cars most likely to kill you - <AUTHOR> http://dadaviz.com/i/3324

<comment><USER2> This doesn't appear normalised making it pretty worthless. Meaning is car A sells 2x as many as car B, then car A will likely be "more likely to kill you" on this chart, regardless of how safe it actually is (even if it was much safer than car B).

It would be much more interesting to make a chart with an ordered ratio with [car] total sold/[car] death per million. At the moment all you're telling us is which cars sold a lot.

<comment><USER3> Was this originally posted without the normalization?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Driver death per 1 million". 1 million what? Miles driven? Population of USA? Number of cars sold?

<comment><USER5> Per million registered vehicle years. The "IIHS" link on the left leads to the source report: [http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/driver-death- rates](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/driver-death-rates)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> These would be most likely to kill me if I were the driver. But I'm not. I'm the person the driver crashes their car into.

I want to see the list of which car will kill ME. Guessing an SUV.

</comment><comment><USER6> These charts are so tiny I can't read most of them. I don't see a way to zoom in either.

Edit: If I resize my browser window and then reload the page, images are larger. This is annoying.</comment>


Martin Odersky's Functional Programming Principles in Scala - <AUTHOR> https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun The Martin Odersky's course starts September 16th. Has anyone taken this course before? If you did, what's your experience? <comment><AUTHOR> The course starts September 16th. Has anyone here taken this course before? If you did, what's your experience?

<comment><USER2> I have, it is a good introduction to both functional programming and Scala. I later found out that many of the assignments are derived from SICP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you eranation.

I've played a bit with Scheme and Haskell. Scala is the next on the list and this course looks like an excellent opportunity to check it out.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacker_news_scraper - <AUTHOR> hacker_news_scraper | https://github.com/victoriastuart/hacker_news_scraper
A Python 3 script for scraping the Hacker News feed, filtering that content by
* number of points, and/or
* number of comments, and/or
* excluding posts {dead | flagged | youtube | wikipedia | ...} according to a keywords list
Run via ~/.bashrc alias or crontab.
Experimental code; I will monitor it locally (scheduled to run {06:00 | 18:00} daily, starting 2020-04-14) for bugs, etc. <comment><USER2> Not to discount your effort, but is there a benefit for scraping the data when HN offers an official API[1]? Does the API not expose all the data you need?

[1] [https://github.com/HackerNews/API](https://github.com/HackerNews/API)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to know; thank you. :-) I suppose the advantages (mine) may include keyword exclusions (I'm not sure if that functionality is available in the API), and local hosted (hence, more "private" \-- whatever that means these days ;-) code.</comment></comment>


Vim Considered Harmful - <AUTHOR> https://www.madetech.com/news/vim-considered-harmful <comment><USER2> Clickbait title on top of an opinion piece that doesn't justify author's position. From my perspective, it's a good thing that the link leads to a non- existing page and reader needs to dig quite deep to find the article.</comment>


DADACONF 0: Big Dada Is Real - <AUTHOR> http://dadaconf.com/ <comment><USER2> Hey everyone, I'm helping plan this event as well. Super excited to throw an art, code, and more retreat in the woods. We're fundraising via tilt and would love people from the hackernews crowd to attend. Check it out here: [https://www.tilt.com/campaigns/dadaconf-0/](https://www.tilt.com/campaigns/dadaconf-0/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd think about going if Einstürzende Neubauten perform. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB8mucNRvyw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB8mucNRvyw)</comment>


Essential may have accidentally shared customers' driver's licenses - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/30/16226028/essential-customer-email-drivers-license-phishing <comment><USER2> I understand why the article is focusing on the "misconfiguration" but the real mistake here is asking for (and providing) sensitive data via email at all.</comment>


Natural Gas characterized as Freedom Gas in official US government press release - <AUTHOR> https://www.energy.gov/articles/department-energy-authorizes-additional-lng-exports-freeport-lng <comment><USER2> Flagged for the misleading title submission by OP.

No, they aren't renaming anything. It was a simple neologism to drive home the point that using our own energy vs OPEC imports move us towards energy independence.

<comment><USER3> The text of the report is still pretty star-spangled ridiculous though. I was entertained.

<comment><USER4> No kidding.. I had to scroll back up to the top to make sure I wasn't on The Onion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These a petty name change like this feels like corporate driven re-branding, or worse like stuff I would associate with a banana republic.

I mean if you want to name your new bill something silly or absurd that is one thing, renaming actual things is kinda weird.

</comment><comment><USER6> Since there is a quote calling it "natural gas" later on, I'm guessing this is a typo on the city "Freemont", since that's where the gas is coming from.

I've since been corrected... Seems I didn't read closely enough.

<comment><USER7> The article calls it natural gas a number of times, it's the quoted officials that are using fanciful language

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> >"Approval of additional LNG exports from Freeport LNG furthers this Administration's commitment to promoting American energy, American jobs, and the American economy. Further, increased supplies of U.S. natural gas on the world market are critical to advancing clean energy and the energy security of our allies around the globe. With the U.S. in another year of record-setting natural gas production, I am pleased that the Department of Energy is doing what it can to promote an efficient regulatory system that allows for molecules of U.S. freedom to be exported to the world," said Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Steven Winberg, who signed the export order and was also in attendance at the Clean Energy Ministerial.

Yeah, flag OP all you want, but its pretty friggin ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER9> "an efficient regulatory system that allows for molecules of U.S. freedom to be exported to the world". Sometimes it's hard to tell truth from satire

</comment><comment><USER10> The US becomes more self-parodying by the day.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is still flagged and my new post on the same subject from another source was flagged and closed down.

That's OK, then? This community has no other way to deal with controversy, than to sweep it under the carpet?

</comment><comment><USER12> Freedom Fries anyone? Anyone?

<comment><USER5> I'm kinda ok with freedom fries as it is random restaurants doing whatever they want. It might be silly, but whatever.

Government goes copy and paste over natural gas... for some reason that creeps me out a bit.

<comment><USER13> > I'm kinda ok with freedom fries as it is random restaurants doing whatever > they want.

No, Freedom Fries was the US Congress' Chair of the Committee on House Administration directing three congressional cafeterias.

<comment><USER5> Cafeteria, it's petty for sure, but IMO still low enough / unimportant enough for me not to care as much.

For some reason this seems one step into the more wonky / serious thing.

It probabbly also matters that I feel like I've seen other "banana republic" like isms out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> But methane is still methane, thank goodness.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is it still April 1st?

</comment><comment><USER16> This is hilarious. /Ron Swanson America gif

</comment><comment><USER8> "GW Molecules"

</comment><comment><USER17> this is 1984?

</comment><comment><USER18> "2 dozen people were killed in a Freedom Gas explosion last night..."</comment>


The one button sign-up - <AUTHOR> http://sam.bluwiki.com/blog/2008/07/one-button-sign-up.php

<comment><USER2> By giving people random user names, you force them to do _more_ work long term.

Step 1: Click the one button and get my user name Step 2: Go write it down somewhere Step 3: Cookie expires/is cleaned - now user forgets the random user name or email. Step 4: Go look it up, enter info

Repeat steps 3 & 4 ad nauseum.

<comment><USER3> Agreed - with things like usernames and passwords, you want to make it feel like they're being involved in process, which helps create a connection. It also helps with the 'stickiness' of your website.

If I were to give 2 real world examples, imagine a conversation between 2 people.

In conversation one, Person A is constantly talking at Person B, not too, but at - Person B doesn't feel included in the conversation, so probably loses interest and tunes out at some point.

Conversation two is a simple exchange between 2 people, with information going backwards and forwards. This conversation is more 'sticky'

If anything, I would work at ensuring that you have minimal information required at signup - username, password, email address, simple and interactive.

To take it one step further, one could argue that this is infact the perfect configuration for signup information because you are requesting 3 pieces of simple information which is perfect given the human brain's natural affinity to the number 3.

Example 1) Comedians usually deliver jokes with the punchline as the third part of the joke, because it has been proven to be naturally funnier...

Example 2) Lots of marketers like to highlight that their product takes only "3 easy steps".

Thats not to say that thinking outside the box is a bad idea - kudos for giving it a try dude :)

<comment> A-Merchant Agree with both of these comments.

I want to feel involved. Plus, if I'm using a website to the extent that I'm going to want a username and password I pretty much expect that I may have to fill out more information upon registration so it is not as bothersome.

It also depends on what your website offers. If you are selling products (like ebay), instant gratification also comes into the picture. Whenever I'm shopping online and go to "checkout" I'm much more satisfied when I my information is already in the system and I can checkout with a few clicks, rather than having to enter all the information, etc. before I can actually purchase my product.

Re: your reference to Craiglist, sometimes I wish I did have an account with Craigslist so I could see my selling/buying history or have my email address or phone number stored.

Again though, depends on what your website is offering...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >>Does ebay really need my address if I just want to watch an item?

No ebay doesn't need it for watching items, but it does need most of this information before you bid on an auction.

If a user sees an auction ending in 1 minute but is then required to jump through some hoops before bidding - thats just as bad an experience.</comment>


Browsable History of Philosophy - <AUTHOR> https://www.denizcemonduygu.com/philo/browse/ <comment><USER2> Regarding the other commenters baring their teeth to attack the UI, how in the world is that in any way useful or productive?

Just yesterday we were upvoting Collison's top questions, one of which was that the book needs to be reinvented for learning. In fact it's still on the homepage with 971 points[1].

I'm not saying this particular presentation is correct or the answer, but I'm thrilled to see attempts being made and can't imagine why you would be hostile toward someone for (and thus discourage others from) making the attempt to try something new.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18105129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18105129)

Edit: There's a similar hypocrisy behind the "doesn't work on X" observations in the other comments.

On the one hand, we talk about getting something launched and out there, and on the other we get on our high horse and complain that it isn't functional on every platform and screen size?

I feel strongly that this should be a supportive environment for new and interesting attempts (and thus uncertain and perhaps buggy ones).

<comment><USER3> I fully agree with your sentiment but in this case the UI renders it almost unusable making it very hard to evaluate the content. I've tried Firefox and Edge on Windows 10 and Chrome on Android, and from other comments in the thread it doesn't look like a case of "not working on every platform and screen size".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great, but small usability requests (from a Macbook user):

1\. Scroll should scroll, rather than zoom. It seems to me scrolling the list is a much more common action than needing to zoom (which doesn't seem to be very useful as the writing becomes unintelligible quickly). On a Macbook/touchscreen pinch can be used for zoom, some modifier key in other cases.

2\. Filtering on topics should remove instead of greying out, similar to what clicking on a line does. With the greying out you need to zoom out and somehow (haven't yet figured out how) zoom back in? Or scroll endlessly.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure how it's supposed to work on anything. It's unusable on Firefox. Why does the scroll wheel change font size? Why is the list slanted? Why is it a list at all given it's a web of connections?

</comment><comment><USER6> Note: this is the history of _Western_ Philosophy. All the other philosophy in the history of the world is left out.

<comment><USER7> Is this a fair criticism? Western philosophy is highly interconnected, and the design is apparently intended to focus on those interconnections. Some Western philosophers were influenced by Asian ideas (particularly Buddhism), but does it go the other way around? Were modern Asian philosophers influenced by or commenting on Western philosophers? I don't know nearly enough to say one way or the other, except to know that a number of modern Indian philosophers attended English universities.

Moreover, the data set for this is clearly not a fixed, immutable thing. It can and should be evolved (I immediately thought it needs a wiki-like editing ability), and connections to non-Western philosophers could be added there.

I'd also like to see the data popped out into another dimension, where broader concepts of metaphysics, epistomology, and morality can be linked to the philosophers that addressed them. (For example, look up "murder", and see links to the philosophers that have talked about it).

But honestly, complaining about how it's just "Western philosophy" is suspiciously close to content-free moralizing. I'm strongly leftist and "SJW", but this feels unfair to me.

<comment><USER6> They literally titled it "The History of Philosophy". That's like if I wrote a book about all the versions of MS Windows and called it "The History of Operating Systems", or a book about American food and called it "The History of Food". This isn't moralizing, it's pointing out a blatantly self-important title that's insulting to the rest of the world.

<comment><USER7> The word "philosophy" has usually meant "western philosophy" in academic use. Eastern thinkers aren't a major component of the western academic tradition. Therefore, the use of the word here is in line with conventional usage. You are welcome to get on your high horse about the conventional usage, but you might want to start with the thousands of universities that teach "Intro to Philosophy" without touching on Chuang Tzu or Buddhism.

Your counterexamples aren't particularly good, because it seems likely to me (arguing without proof) that the majority of written philosophy that survives to the present day is part of the western tradition. MS Windows is but a tiny minority of the world's operating systems, for example.

And I will repeat, there is nothing about this site that particularly limits it to western philosophers. It's a data model, and data can (and probably will) be added - in fact, open or semi-open access to the data set would be one of the best additions. Then you could add all the non-western philosophers you like, and the connections between them. I'd argue your criticism is more like complaining that the corner diner shouldn't say "good food" because it doesn't serve sushi, and sushi is good food too. Absolute inclusiveness is an unreasonable goal, because it's an impossible goal.

<comment><USER6> Your arguments, simplified, are 1) "we don't need to include other philosophy, because we only teach western philosophy", 2) "it seems kind of like all written philosophy is western, so your example is bunk", 3) "somebody can eventually add some other culture's philosophy to this page so we don't need to change it at all right now".

They should either change the title of the page, or include all other philosophy. But the current state is at the very least incredibly lazy and misleading, and at worst, insulting.

<comment><USER7> You should read Bluestrike's comments about the lack of Arabic philosophers, downthread. _That 's_ how you make a point of incompleteness, not just politically correct yelling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure I would call that "browsable," but it seems like there is a lot of great work that's gone into cataloging the philosophers, ideas, and connections.

A less experimental and more usable UI would make this a great site.

<comment><USER9> Wiki style, with links. The arcs linking concepts look nice but make browsing impossible.

<comment><USER10> I (kinda) disagree. For me, the wiki style doesn't feel as browsable as it should. Not sure why.

I personally feel like I need some visual map of the connections between ideas. You're right that the attempt here falls short in many ways but I'm glad someone is giving it a shot.

<comment><USER9> Visual maps (mind-maps) don't scale well over 20-30 items because the model becomes hard to grasp and lots of scrolling is necessary. Such models are nice while they are small.

I'd love to see a cross between a wiki and a mind-map where parts of a larger mind-map are represented on individual pages of the wiki, with links between them. I'd use such a tool to organise my ideas / learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really neat in concept. However, I would be cautious about the substance here. I took a look at one philosopher that I know well---Socrates ---and several of the entries seem very doubtful to me.

> We need to know how to conduct our lives and ourselves.

Sure, but doesn't everyone think that?

> Things like 'justice' do exist; not materially, but in some sort of essence.

This is getting metaphysical, something quite foreign to Socrates.

> There can be no cut and dried answers; answers themselves are open to > question.

This reads to much in to the conversational aspect of the dialogues. Socrates is always pointing out that in many areas of life there are experts who know the correct answers and can be appealed to. In the moral realm, sadly, there seem to be no experts (though there are pretenders, hence lots of questions), but the point is that it would be great if there were experts here too!

> To the man who preserves his integrity no real, long-term harm can come.

"Integrity" sounds too personal or individual; this should be "the just man", or "the righteous man". And it does not need to "long-term" qualification.

That is four out of seven items. There rest of the list seems broadly ok, though it is a rather eccentric selection of Socrates views. Gotta start somewhere though, I guess.

One the other hand Socrates presents unusual problems of interpretation, so this may well not be a representative entry.

<comment><USER12> I'm familiar with Socrates too. I haven't clicked the link, I'm on limited data and worried the site would suck it up.

I'm curious about the other three items. Would you mind sharing them?

As for the last point, Socrates had this idea of "caring for one's soul". Not sure about the nature of the soul besides it being one's "true self". Notably he believed that it's better to be harmed than to harm someone because the latter hurts one's soul (not sure how this is supposed to work).

BTW I am interested in developing his ideas that no one willingly does wrong, and the related one that the only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

<comment><USER13> The other three items listed for Socrates are:

* Knowledge of the universe does not affect our behavior.

* We should pity the perpetrator of injustice, not the victim of injustice.

* No one really knowingly does wrong.

<comment><USER12> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm impressed, was pretty good, it's a bit biased and leaves out some important people (i.e. Duns Scotus, Sigmund Freud) as well as some modern philosophers but that was expected. The user-experience is not very good. I also think it's a trap to think philosophy as a linear-progress and this presentation kind of enhances that view. But anyway the content is good, the presentation could be improved

<comment><USER15> I thought it actually undermined the philosophy as linear-progress by focusing on the links, which show a chaotic cycle of idea development. The linearity of the names seems to come from going with time on that axis, but that's just an arbitrary device for the sake of organization rather than the driver of the interpretation of the content, in my view.

<comment><USER14> Yes good point, the connections are really good in that sense. The time-scale is a bit misleading at least for me. I don't know how it could be improved, maybe each segment of connected philosophers could have their own time-scales. I'm not sure time is as relevant really, some questions are timeless as well as different answers to them..

<comment><USER15> I like that idea of using time in a way that scales better or chunks relevant sections together. There's definitely room for improvement in how time is exhibited in this interface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the content is solid on average, but there are some challenges here with how/when to connect figures (really, this seems like an impossible task). For instance, Mackie's denial of moral facts is a disagreement with quite a lot of people (ditto for Hobbes' contention that we are just machines). I was similarly surprised to see that Ramsey's connection of justification to reliable belief formation had no connections to reliabilist epistemolgy in the late 20th century.

As far as the individual sentences, I didn't go through everything, but I thought the gloss of Sellars on the given was not on target. Also, did Anscombe really think that we needed new values for a secular culture? She was a devout Catholic, and frequently wrote from a Catholic perspective.

<comment><USER17> One of Anscombe's most influential papers, "Modern Moral Philosophy" (written in 1958), makes the following claims: "it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy [...] until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology", and "the concepts of [...] _moral_ obligation and _moral_ duty [...] and of what is [...] _morally_ right and wrong, and of the _moral_ sense of "ought", ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible; because they are survivals, or derivatives from survivals, from an earlier conception of ethics which no longer generally survives, and are only harmful without it."

The earlier conception of ethics is what she calls "a law conception of ethics" later in the paper, and she ascribes that to Christianity. The idea is that terms like "ought" and "bound" and "obliged" all presuppose an idea of ethics-as-law, and she's suggesting that if we've abandoned Christianity then we should abandon ethical notions that presuppose it.

So I assume that's where the "new values for a secular culture" thing is coming from. I have to say that the impression I get from her paper isn't quite that, though; it feels more as if she is complaining that post-Christian ethics produces results she finds unacceptable, and would prefer that its practitioners stop (as she might see it) pretending that they're really doing ethics at all.

(I just had a look at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article on Anscombe. It mentions both readings, and suggests that the "straight" one is more common, but my impression is that the author of that article agrees with me about what Anscombe was really up to.)

<comment><USER16> Thanks. The immense confusion I felt while reading MMP a decade ago is all coming back to me!

I share your sense that she doesn't seem optimistic about the ability of secular philosophers to do ethics at all, though it's definitely open to debate, and I don't pretend to know whether she was endorsing virtue ethics.

(Regarding her own way of doing ethics, as opposed to meta-ethics, 14 years later, this is one of her speeches: [http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/AnscombeChastity.php](http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/AnscombeChastity.php)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a neat idea, and fun to play around with. But there are a few obvious pitfalls to be aware of:

1\. Many philosophers are inconsistent with themselves. They change their mind. Wittgenstein wrote two books: the second comprehensively refuted the first. In other cases, thinkers write twelve or so books that are not internally consistent. It doesn't make sense, when you get down to things, to treat thinkers as the 'unit' of thought.

2\. Most of the things important to most philosophers are not other philosophers (although that is usually very important too), e.g. the greatest influence on Hobbes was the English Civil War, on Nietzsche it was Wagner, on Rawls it was Protestant theology, on Dewey it was Darwin (and so on).

3\. You miss a lot if you translate all of these thinkers into a single commensurable language. The different conceptual structures they use, and the linguistic context in which those conceptual structures find their force, are essential to understanding these thinkers. If you translate those particular languages into a single, universal one, you miss a lot.

4\. There's also an issue about what is and is not philosophy. Whoever did this is prioritising formal analytic philosophy (especially epistemology). This is conspicuous in, for example, the case of Sartre. A lot of what Sartre wrote about was political/Marxist, but none of that is included. The list of twentieth century philosophers is extraordinarily unrepresentative, for this reason.

How can you include William Frankena, Peter Winch, and John Mackie, who no one outside of analytic philosophy will have heard of, or have been influenced by, and not epochal figures like Freud, Schmitt, Arendt, Hayek, Adorno or Fanon?

<comment><USER7> A five or so line summary of the concepts of any given philosopher will be necessarily incomplete. It's certainly not going to handle things like the evolution of their own ideas over time (and many philosophers contradict their own early work with later works).

On the other hand, as a rough guide to the structure of the history of philosophy, this is a very interesting approach. All philosophers are standing on the shoulders of giants. They are influenced by and comment on each other's ideas. Putting those concepts into an easy to follow link-based format is a terrific idea, and could be very useful to a lot of us who study philosophy.

<comment><USER18> There is a difference between something being incomplete, and being misleading. I think this would be a very bad starting point for the _history_ of philosophy, unless you don't know any of the canon to begin with. It is entirely ahistorical, for the reasons I stated (point 2 and 3).

But yes, it can serve some pedagogical purposes, I'm sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I love this visualization idea! Maybe it's my computer, but the rendering is really slow. I'm using 32GB RAM and i5 processor with Windows Firefox. This is a bit unusual considering they are mostly all just text-based content.

I agree with some comments below on mouse zooming issues and navigation. While the visualization is very nice, there are some UX issues need to be fine tuned. Looking forward to the next version!

</comment><comment><USER20> Should be renamed History of _Western_ Philosophy.

</comment><comment><USER21> Being able to make the connections between different philosophical positions is pretty neat. Good work!

</comment><comment><USER22> As others mentioned, if you fix UI, this can be a great site that can be used by many.

(Also the domain in my opinion.)

</comment><comment><USER23> Really interesting project, though it's tough to browse/navigate though it. Keep at it!

</comment><comment><USER24> Very good for philosophy101 students, or examen philosoficum as we call it.

</comment><comment><USER25> I love the ambition but this is nearly unusable on both Firefox and Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if this would look good as a force-directed graph.

</comment><comment><USER27> The range: Thales 580 BC to Daniel Dennet 1942.

</comment><comment><USER28> Where did the data catalogue come from?

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow! Works well for me on Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER29> Doesn't work on Android

</comment><comment><USER30> This can be greatly simplified since there are only 4 major philosophers: Plato/Kant and Aristotle/Rand who took the fundamental opposite positions of the Primacy of Consciousness versus the Primacy of Existence, respectively.

Kant secularized and removed the contradictions in Plato's theories whereas Rand completed Aristotle's revolution which began with the Law of Identity and which she applied to consciousness itself and solved the problem of universals and answered the skeptics.

<comment><USER31> Ah _the_ four great philosophers, the very four that would roll off any one's lips: Plato, Kant, Aristotle,.....and Ayn Rand.

<comment><USER30> I know, hard for you to believe but nevertheless it is true.</comment></comment></comment>


Yamato becomes Japan's first city to 'ban' use of phones while walking - <AUTHOR> https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/06/25/national/yamato-japan-ban-phones-walking/ <comment><USER3> In general I find people using their phones whilst walking to be a nuisance, but I'm still not particularly in favour of this.

There are at least two legitimate use cases that don't cause too many problems:

1\. Using your phone as an actual phone (i.e., an audio only conversation with the thing held to your ear, or with a headset).

2\. Using it as a navigational aid. If I'm not too sure where I'm going I'll often use either Google or Apple Maps to set up directions before I start walking. I'll then put the phone in my pocket and just pull it out from time to time to check I'm still heading in the right direction.

The real problems are caused by people reading, playing games, having video calls, or filming themselves (or others) whilst walking. They tend to dawdle, lose awareness of their surroundings and others around them, and in general behave like absolute goobers. Doing these things whilst navigating stairs or escalators is particularly aggravating - not to mention dangerous.

This doesn't appear to be limited to any particular demographic or age group that I can see.

<comment><USER4> >1\. Using your phone as an actual phone (i.e., an audio only conversation with the thing held to your ear, or with a headset).

There's no indication this bans audio calls, given it specifically calls out smart phones I'd wager that's not their intent.

>2\. Using it as a navigational aid. If I'm not too sure where I'm going I'll often use either Google or Apple Maps to set up directions before I start walking. I'll then put the phone in my pocket and just pull it out from time to time to check I'm still heading in the right direction.

So be respectful and step out of the flow of foot traffic to check it? They didn't say you couldn't use your smartphone in public, they said not to do it while you're walking. I'm sure they got sick of idiots either running into other people or walking into traffic with their faces glued to their phones. Can't say I blame them.

<comment><USER5> Phones can be a real-time navigational aid for the blind[1]. This requires the phone to record your surroundings, which means either holding your phone while walking or making a holster for the phone on the front of your shirt/jacket.

1\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_AI](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_AI)

<comment><USER4> There are exceptions to pretty much everything. I doubt their intent is to punish the blind and I'm sure if they ever put any teeth behind the law there would be a carve out. No different then the countless "no pets allowed" laws that still allow seeing eye dogs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My dream is that one day, everyone will see the imaginary lines down the sidewalk that I do. Keep to the right, just like you're driving, and even someone texting while walking won't run into. Sadly, these lines are imaginary and while people tend to keep right, don't take it very seriously.

A deeper issue is how much of the space between buildings is dedicated to private vehicles. When the sidewalk is 6 feet wide and you're required to social distance by 6 feet past sidewalk cafes and garbage waiting to be picked up, there is no room for pedestrians -- texting or otherwise. Perhaps we should turn the two 8-foot free parking lanes into pedestrian lanes. Then you'd never even notice people walking while texting. Or running 2-abroad. Or kids playing with balls.

It will never happen, though. We need our cars, and more importantly, we need to park them near our high-density housing ;)

<comment><USER7> I believe in Japan, people walk on the left side.

<comment><USER8> Many people in Japan don't drive so they don't really think about "sides" like people who come from car cultures do.

<comment><USER9> Interesting! That's a bit surprising to me. In Japan they have the yellow tiles with bumps near the center of most city sidewalks that I always assumed was a kind of lane system. If it's not to create lanes, what are those tiles for?

<comment><USER10> They are tactile paving for blind and partially sighted people.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactile_paving](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactile_paving)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In London, they used to have a prohibition against absent-mindedly using your phone while walking enforced by privateer motorcyclists who would confiscate your phone.

<comment><USER12> Sadly that tradition is alive and well. Angel is a particular hot spot for it

<comment><USER11> I still remember getting my phone swiped on the sidewalk across from my favorite restaurant on Chapel Market.

(There are many words I've adopted since moving here. "Pavement" is not one of them.")

<comment><USER13> Anecdotally, for some reason, random swiping and lifting of electronics, laptops, etc. seems more prevalent in Europe than in the US. Whenever I've heard of a colleague's laptop of whatever being lifted at dinner, it's _always_ Barcelona, Amsterdam, Brussels, etc. rather than San Francisco or New York City. I'm sure it happens in those places too but it seems less common.

<comment><USER14> I've lived in some really crappy places in the US, but the only place I've often seen and experienced people committing obvious crimes in broad daylight was Europe. It was pretty weird having someone struggle to unzip my backpack while walking down the street. I bound the zippers with a lock and they couldn't get in, but I guess they didn't notice because they really fought to get it open.

Seeing obvious pickpockets and scammers operating 10 feet away from police officers while being directly observed was what really blew my mind though. I hear loads of people say they're disappointed with Europe and the crime is overwhelming these days, but man, they're not kidding. It's insane what's tolerated so openly there. I don't know anyone who hasn't had valuables stolen randomly while in Western Europe for short periods.

<comment><USER15> I personally think it is influenced by differences in the types of organized crime we have. In the US, gangs and similar organizations generally don't bother with organizing petty crime like swiping electronics. They're more focused on drugs, prostitution, etc. In Europe, though, that's not the case [1].

[1] [https://www.europol.europa.eu/crime-areas-and- trends/crime-a...](https://www.europol.europa.eu/crime-areas-and-trends/crime- areas/organised-property-crime)

<comment><USER7> I'm quite certain human trafficking and drug smuggling occur in Europe too.

[https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2017/10/some-6000-people-a- yea...](https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2017/10/some-6000-people-a-year-in-the- netherlands-are-victims-of-trafficking/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I finally figured out what bugs me so much about people walking while looking at their phone. Without phones, when people approach each other in a hallway or on the street, there's a lot of nonvocal communication happening. You don't even have to make eye contact to decide how everyone is going to maneuver around each other. Everyone is generally looking at a point far ahead and walking in a straight line towards it.

Now enter smartphones. This entire communication is simply gone. People on phones only see about a couple meters in front of them. They constantly shift the direction they are walking. It's impossible to predict where they will go. If you're walking towards them, this creates a small spike of anxiety in your lizard brain because it's trying to communicate with them and the lines are down.

<comment><USER17> For me, it creates excitement at the thought that I can inconspicuously shoulder check some inconsiderate jerk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Seems like it was only in force for a day, and carried no penalties. Also seems like it was aimed at people who are looking at their smartphones primarily (i.e. playing Pokémon GO).

I don't think they were looking to cure the menace of 歩きスマホ in the stroke of a pen, but rather wanted awareness of the issues of being engaged primarily with your phone rather than your environment.

[https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASN71728GN71ULOB004.html#:~:t...](https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASN71728GN71ULOB004.html#:~:text=神奈川県大和市で,確保が課題となる。)

The language chosen for defining 歩きスマホ ("walking smartphone") uses the word [https://jisho.org/word/注視](https://jisho.org/word/注視) in its definition, not sure if this is just formal language, or there is some important distinction between 注視 and 見て here.

Nonetheless, here is the draft:

[http://www.city.yamato.lg.jp/web/content/000159510.pdf](http://www.city.yamato.lg.jp/web/content/000159510.pdf)

And if you happen to live in Yamato, and want to track this, here is one of the official pages for tracking the ordinance.

[http://www.city.yamato.lg.jp/web/d-seibi/arukisumahopb.html](http://www.city.yamato.lg.jp/web/d-seibi/arukisumahopb.html)

<comment><USER19> > not sure if this is just formal language, or there is some important > distinction between 注視 and 見て here.

Actually 注視 is as well the word that is used in the law that forbids people from watching the infotainment screen of a car while driving. 注視 means that you are looking at something, while exclusively concentrating your mind on this specific thing, not being aware of your surroundings.

Source:

Non-native Japanese speaker here, having lived in Japan for quite some time, and who took his driving license in Japan.

注視 definition in a Japanese dictionary: [https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E6%B3%A8%E8%A6%96/](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E6%B3%A8%E8%A6%96/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I find the best thing to do when someone's walking towards you, texting, totally oblivious to your coming towards them, is to play chicken with them. Just keep walking, see how close you can get to them before they notice you. It gets pretty close sometimes, almost had a couple collisions, but so far everyone's looked up in the knick of time, gotten embarrassed and quickly veered away. Gets that adrenaline flowing though.

<comment><USER21> So it looks like they're not so unaware of their surroundings after all?

<comment><USER22> The human mind is incredible, the sound of a car in the distance getting slightly muffled by the body now directly in front of you might cue the subconscious mind that something in the scene has changed triggering you to look up. My guess is all the talk of a sixth sense is just tiny cues from the other senses all getting subconsciously analyzed together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I get that people dawdle but simply that 6% of people use their phones whilst walking isn't a problem. It's an observation.

What are they hoping to change and by how much?

<comment><USER24> I've never been to Yamato, but pedestrian congestion is a problem on some crowded sidewalks in the US. If 6% of users are blocking the sidewalk, it can create slow downs for 94% of everyone else who are trying to get somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Could we please do it in Sweden too. Sweden are too distracted in traffic for their own good, its like mobile phone zombies sometime, people staring at a piece of glass. This includes myself sometime.

Also cell phones should be banned in traffic because it causes distractions. Attention in traffic is very important.

<comment><USER26> Sweden made it an offence to use a mobile while driving and then rescinded it when they discovered that the law made no difference to the accident rate.

<comment><USER27> pretty difficult to know how high the compliance actually was. One of the first articles I could find was that the police found it difficult to apply.

So likely less of an issue of it not being dangerous but rather hard to enforce.

<comment><USER26> My impression was that analysis of the accident statistics failed to reveal any effect. Of course that doesn't mean that there wasn't one but it does suggest that it was too small to be useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What a weird idea. What if you're using it for navigation? What if I want to pause the audiobook I'm listening to? I have to stop and remove myself from the flow of traffic? (not even possible sometimes)

<comment><USER18> I think probably _minimal_ use like that would not be an issue, and there is no penalty at the moment. It'd be nice if they would link to the actual draft ordinance, so I could read it.

Added: Yeah, seems like you would have no problem. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23731864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23731864)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Japan needs to focus on real problems such as banning smoking everywhere instead of use of phones.

<comment><USER30> They are [https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/04/01/national/japan-...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/04/01/national/japan- ban-indoor-smoking/#.XwFkLS0_C0A)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I really don't understand how you can walk around on your phone with zero situational awareness. Surely if you did it enough you'd have enough practice to develop it? When I was young I used to walk around reading books; I can't see a phone being significantly harder than that to look past…

</comment><comment><USER31> Am I the only one that doesn't have a problem walking and chewing bubble gum?

<comment><USER32> On a planet with 7 billion people? Probably not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> What will be more effective in the end is if walking (also: eating, sitting at a table, etc.) while immersed in a phone finally becomes uncool with young people. So far it doesn't seem to happen (unfortunately).

</comment><comment><USER34> If you're proposing a law, and a study says that 12% of people would violate this law, it's a major indication that this is a bad law.

<comment><USER35> Is it?

Studies seem to indicate that around that many people admitted to or have drove drunk in America for example. Does that mean drinking and driving laws are bad?

<comment><USER34> Drunk driving had to be banned because it's just too dangerous. It had to be eradicated at all costs even despite many people violating this law. On the other hand there's no indication that texting while walking is more dangerous than walking while drunk. Walking is a low-risk activity which doesn't require a license and people routinely do it while being under an influence.

<comment><USER35> I mean sure, but that wasn't your original argument. Your original argument was that if it affects 12% of people, then it's a bad law. We've now demonstrated that reducing things down like that doesn't work.

There's an argument to be made that texting while walking can be dangerous because if you're sharing a small space with cyclists or others then you're potentially leaving yourself open to colliding with them. And ultimately the cost to fix this problem is low and unobtrusive (ie just step aside).

<comment><USER36> Their original argument was it's a MAJOR INDICATION of a bad law. Which is to say that if you're law is going to be broken by double-digit percentages of the population, there needs to be a solid argument as to WHY. A real counter- example would need to be a law that is widely broken, has no demonstrable benefit, and is still somehow a good law. Which is tautologically impossible, criminalizing people for no benefit is inherently bad lawmaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> We did this sort of ban in the 80's but with the Walkman: [https://patch.com/new-jersey/woodbridge/walkmans-banned- wood...](https://patch.com/new-jersey/woodbridge/walkmans-banned-woodbridge- yes-law-still-books)

</comment><comment><USER38> Eventually more people will be moving out of cities after enough of them enforce one too many rules to appease some people. Obviously, not everyone will, but it rules like this seem counter to what the global system wants, which is to cram people into cities.

<comment><USER27> This is Japan, not the US. People in Japan don't balk at every regulation and are generally pretty accepting of putting rules in place in public spaces if it improves quality of public life, which is true for people in most cities on the globe to be honest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It will be as effective as JR recommending people not to use phones next to elderly seats. Entirely ignored.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think the problem will be lessened slightly as wearables get better.

</comment><comment><USER41> Will this be effective without some form of punishment as a deterent?

<comment><USER42> There are quite a few rules and local laws in Japan that don't carry any punishment or, indeed, aren't even enforced but are still followed. Making it law in this case is more of a nudge than anything else. Honestly, it's much more scary here to be stared down by a group old people than the police.

<comment> iso8859-1 Just curious, what happens when the old people come after you? Is it because they could be yakuza?

<comment><USER42> It's just extremely uncomfortable. I try to participate in the neighborhood events as well so it's better to just fall in line (wherever the line is, not really clear either). Just a recent example, I forgot to wear a mask last week when I went to the supermarket and kept getting stares by other shoppers. That wouldn't be an issue even a couple of months ago.

I'm guilty of it now, too, though. If anyone is smoking on the road while walking or biking, I lock eyes with them and they usually stop or at least turn away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> how does ban without penalty even work? isn't it called recommendation in English?

</comment><comment><USER44> More bans like this may well be a big driving force in the adoption and more rapid progression of AR tech

<comment><USER45> For smartphones!? I can only imagine that being more hazardous.

Do you notice how we negotiate paths when we are walking? body language, with particular emphasis on the position of the head and eyes. Try this experiment: as you walk towards someone without a clear path to their left or right - <USER2> with intent to go slightly one side with your eyes/head slightly to the other, usually your intent comes across far more ambiguous and requires more negotiation than usual... now imagine people are not looking where they are going (literally), while appearing to be looking where they are going. And I don't buy that AR magically solves concentration by keeping your field of view.

At least with those zombies staring down it's clear they are distracted so you can ignore their body language.

<comment><USER13> I'm sure I'm showing my age when I say that I really don't like walking in cities (or anywhere really) with ear buds/headphones in. It's too much isolation from the environment and I'm just not comfortable with it. I imagine that's a minority option though and many will claim that the isolation really isn't a problem with the right earpieces. But I can only speak to how I personally feel.

<comment><USER46> Transparency mode works well on Airpods pro but I never walk around busy streets with both earbuds in. I strongly recommend only using one and listening to audio books or podcasts

<comment><USER13> I've heard that about the Airpod Pros.

I guess part of it is that I don't really feel a need to always be listening to some kind of soundtrack. I actually do listen to podcasts when I drive, especially on the highway. But I don't even routinely have music on in my house and don't really like working with music in the background.

<comment><USER47> Ugh, I hate that, those people with contonuous soundtracks. They don't seem to realize it's loud, makes them speak louder still and is a huge hit to their ability to pay attention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Good. I'm tired of phone zombies walking literally INTO me. There at least needs to be some clearly defined etiquette.

"keep right" only works in right-hand drive countries, nor is it consistently applied (shopping center escalators, etc.) except for Germany, lol</comment>