Negativity's to be expected when any controversial issue's brought up, and this is certainly a controversial issue on a number of fronts. The people-spending-lots-of-money front, the how-should-we-make-people-less-sick front, the are-corporations-taking-over-our-lives front... all sorts of things that're bound to raise hackles.
The nature of all three sites you brought up, this one and Reddit and Slashdot, make the problem a bit worse by throwing voting and ranking into the mix. When people feel their opinion is being publicly valued, they become more defensive about their opinions and thoughts. The tyranny of the majority means that any thread will display the most popular opinion first, and therefore there's a valuation occurring in every conversation here that can be bothersome when you're in the minority.
That's not entirely the cause – sites with threaded discussions also have frequent arguments over controversy. But there are methods of encouraging positivity in online discussions, they're just not ones built into HN, and the system that is built-in favors more contentious back-and-forths.
I don't see why giving away free flu vaccines should be at all controversial. Does not compute. It may be related to controversial topics, but it is not in itself controversial.
This isn't controversial on that front unless you're a scammer or a moron.
Seriously. We need to stop pretending like the anti-vaxxers actually have an argument. We're not CNN. We can financially afford to state the facts of the matter without injecting false balance.
Heh, I wasn't even thinking of the anti-vaxxers! I meant more the "how should we pay for the things that make people less sick" front, which seems to the debate broiling up here.
That's ok, but your comment doesn't come across in that way, and it is also sort of irrelevant. One guy with a lot of money decided to give free flu shots to some kids, period. He is not solving the world's health problems and I can't honestly see how that is relevant to what he did.
What kind of "relevant" discussion were you expecting down here? What kind of "relevant" response to "one guy gave free flu shots" can be expected?
I would say that this is not an especially good post for Hacker News, in that it concerns neither programming nor the business of start-ups. Larry Page works for an interesting company, but this is not news of that company doing something interesting; it's a philanthropy report. Good Hacker News threads provoke discussion; there's not much to discuss w/r/t philanthropy unless you bring up the subjects which are now being criticized as too negative.
I would say that, but it's a tradition of Hacker News to be far less focused on its main subjects than it says it is, and posts like this arouse interesting discussion.
That's less the worry than, "It's not totally healthy to have a culture which idolizes people who have a lot of money and then give some of it away, because it reinforces the message that making money = good person, not making money = slob or freeloader." I have a grandfather who hates, hates, welfare recipients, with a passion. If I showed him this story, he would interpret it as "proof that rich people are better than poor people," guaranteed.
> Uh, by giving them access to healthcare, like vaccines?
Yes, but as has been mentioned elsewhere, the problem isn't "let's give them healthcare!" Almost everybody thinks that's a good idea. The bigger question is, how do we pay for that healthcare? A much thornier question, as this thread proves.
> what the hell does Larry's employer have to do with his personal donation of money for vaccines.
See the above "are we validating wealth as the only means of value" question, only add to that the perspective that our lives revolve unhealthily around our employers already, that we work arbitrarily hard because our economic system forces us to work just for basic, unrelated needs (it's like "making money = good" only worse, because this is more like "working a lot = not dying of sickness"), and that perhaps employers working even harder to take control of every aspect of our lives, like where we live (Google dorms) and what we eat and how we stay healthy, is yet another sign of dysfunction.
> I'm sorry, I don't buy this attempt to legitimize the miserable attitudes of some in this thread.
I don't fully agree with any of the three opinions I stated above, to be clear. But I think that each is a valid and interesting perspective, and each one is worth a discussion.
Honestly, why post a story to Hacker News if you don't want a discussion? And aren't discussions about interesting, controversial perspectives better than discussions that go "Man, I wish I was Larry Page," and "Look at this other rich person that gave money too!", and "Boy, this proves that not all rich people are evil people, rah rah 1%, boo boo Occupy Wall Street!" – I mean, aren't conversations that introduce new and interesting perspectives good in general?
I get what you're saying and I apologize if my comment seemed to attack you. That having been said, these ARE VERY important discussions, but I feel like the only one that serves as a criticism of Larry taking independent action is that it might support the "just let the super rich be charitable"... and I think a further discussion of that is a GOP tactic to distract from the bigger issue of making up the difference through a more guaranteed and reliable method (ie, public health care).
No worries; your comment didn't seem like an attack at all! It raised interesting points, and the only reason I'm joining in here is because I think it's an interesting conversation.
I think the criticism you brought up is the most interesting one as well. The other tangents have been lurking in my mind for unrelated reasons (I read a fun short fiction yesterday about Google using its dorms to breed families, which is the only reason I brought it up), but I'd have understood their inclusion in this discussion as well. And it makes sense that the various criticisms as a whole come across way more negatively than this news seems to deserve.
