[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Have you commented on HN about a court decis...
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Ask HN: Have you commented on HN about a court decision without
reading it? Why?
Inspired by this thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32876982 I'm curious how many
people actually take the time to read primary source material--not
just news articles about it--before writing a comment here. In
this case, the decision is long--113 pages!--so I can understand
why someone wouldn't have read it in its entirety. But if someone
doesn't have the time to read the decision, I don't understand why
they think they're qualified to opine about it here, and why they
think its fair to make other participants in the discussion waste
time wading through their uninformed speculation. It's akin to
writing a review of a film you've never seen and have no intention
of seeing. Is there something HN could do to discourage this?
(One idea that comes to mind would be banning news articles about
court cases in which the article does not link to the actual text
of the decision.)
Author : dpifke
Score : 8 points
Date : 2022-09-17 19:53 UTC (3 hours ago)
| tarakat wrote:
| Perhaps they've read a summary of the decision that they trust?
|
| Also, the decision is based on a single-paragraph long part of
| the constitution. I _tentatively_ disagree with the decision*,
| consider this hypothetical: a one-thousand page long decision
| that ruled the government was allowed to censor all anti-war
| speech, based on the 1st Amendment.
|
| It would be bizarre to expect only people that read through the
| whole thousand pages to comment on such an on-it's-face misguided
| decision.
|
| *But I don't consider it entirely unreasonable, and I think the
| law behind it addresses a very real problem that we shouldn't
| ignore by sticking our heads in the sand and yelling "1st
| amendment".
| peyton wrote:
| > Also, the decision is based on a single-paragraph long part
| of the constitution.
|
| I mean, if you read the ruling, it's based on a bunch of stuff.
| Your comment seems to me like a case in point--correct me if
| I'm misunderstanding your point.
| Bostonian wrote:
| It's my impression that few people who commented on the Supreme
| Court Dobbs abortion decision, especially those critical of the
| outcome, read Alito's majority opinion. They objected to the the
| result -- that states would be able to ban abortion -- and were
| not interested in the majority's reasoning.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's doubly sad because Supreme Court decisions are
| exceptionally easy to read. You may not be able to get all the
| legal references but you'll be able to at least describe the
| arguments, if not steelman them.
|
| But the reality is nobody really cares (and perhaps never
| really cared) as the outcome matters most and justifies
| anything.
| paulcole wrote:
| I don't read any post I comment on, including this one.
| bjourne wrote:
| Comments are ranked based on the number of upvotes they receive
| and when they were posted. This unfortunately means that the
| first comments posted have a tendency to receive upvotes and down
| out all others even if they are completely wrong. HN could
| alleviate that effect by rewarding more recently posted comments
| more. After all, if an article takes 30 minutes to read, the
| comments posted in the first 30 minutes are probably not very
| useful.
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(page generated 2022-09-17 23:02 UTC)