I've noticed this too. It's a vicious hit-and-run attack on a thread's discussion that presumes only the empirical viewpoint is worth considering. It often trainwrecks the thread into intellectual pissing contests, rather than discussing subjects with fellow human beings.
Removing karma entirely might help. Too many people treat it as a vanity metric, and game it.
And the way to game it is by posting "middlebrow dismissals".
As a poster I am often surprised by what gets upvoted. Everyone surely can see this: negativity is rewarded. It only reinforces in my mind that "karma" means little anymore.
You can get karma just by being dismissive. Look at the tone of some of the posters who consistently jump into the top spot, thanks to their "karma". I get tired of seeing those same monikers over and over^1; the comments are often rubbish. No matter how articulate and cogent their commetns may have been in the past, no one is 100% consistent; we should not have to read _everything_ they say. But it doesn't matter if they are on the mark from day to day because they get a top spot no matter what they contribute, based on accumulated karma. You are forced to read what they've said, no matter how silly it is.
1. Unless you need to contact someone, I find usernames and profiles to be about as useful as karma (=not very), but I doubt many others would share my view. My interest is in quality comments that offer useful information, not "reputations". People with great "reputations" often make some very dumb comments. Judging the quality of a comment by the author's username instead of its content is a fool's game. It's also a basis for the HN algorithm.
I would be far more interested in a discussion about how we could identify the factors that lead to a community that doesn't appear to be following the aging and health norms of other communities rather than just saying "the article is stupid and isn't worth reading".
> I would be far more interested in a discussion about how we could identify the factors that lead to a community that doesn't appear to be following the aging and health norms of other communities rather than just saying "the article is stupid and isn't worth reading".
OK, I don't think we're using 'empirical' in the same way, then. 'Empirical', the way I've always seen it used, just means 'evidence-based' or, more verbosely, 'based on observed facts and not purely theory or philosophy'.
In particle physics, the fine structure constant is an empirical constant: We don't know how to derive it from any theory that doesn't include it already; if we want to have the correct value for the fine structure constant in a theory, we have to explicitly put in the value we know from experiment, that is, the value we derive empirically. Compare this to the value of the acceleration due to gravity between two objects of known mass: We can compute this value, derive it from a theory, called the theory of universal gravitation. We don't have to physically construct an apparatus and perform an experiment every time.
Frankly, it seems that you're tired of people being dismissive based on an imperfect knowledge of a set of specific formal and informal fallacies they came across once.
No, we aren't using the word empirically differently. I'm just saying that the interesting conversations revolve around where to look, not whether to look or not.
"Empirically" there is something interesting on that island. I'd love to hear ideas of what it could be, along with ways to test those ideas. The former without the latter is how snake-oil gets sold, but shutting down all conversation because snake-oil could be sold doesn't move us forward.
Really, it's intellectual pedanticism at it's finest.
It's amusing that people are so worried about being correct (and others being correct) on the Internet. Insisting on only talking about empirically measurable things is not a fail-safe way to raise the S/N ratio of a site; it just dulls the topics to those we already know well.
Meanwhile, it potentially rules out threads on things that we're still trying to discover the inner workings of: nutrition, aging, sleep, and many others. Those topics are extremely interesting because they can veer into uncharted intellectual territory. And we may only have anecdotes to go on. Quelle horreur!
And we find out where to look based on empirical evidence most of the time
-- This is most often not true.
Conscious thought is terribly inefficient. Most 'looking' is instinctive, or intuitive. That's not to say it has not been educated or modified by empirical data at some stage. But this illusion of such hyper-rationality is worth avoiding.
What is interesting (sometimes) is to hear other people's intuition and prioritization as the evaluate what to look for. This is typically what seperates out class in real world performance. This can be considered "framing" done loosely. when, why and where people create a box (in which to think, in the manner you are suggesting above).
To the parent's point, it's often times boring to disregard an interesting framing (out of hand) because of a technical flaw. Similarly, there is endless boredom to be had reading articles with reasoned logic in flawed or boring frames (ie, those which exclude or impugn the interesting bits).
We see this alot in the media, now, because its part of the PR spin game. The formula is to put bounds around the problem that suit your desired result. Journalists also often due this due to ignorance of a technical subject matter. We also see this as part of the fairness doctrine -- every story needs 'two sides' so a (often false) dichotomey is cookie cutter textbook inserted into every 'analysis'. ect.
Removing karma entirely might help. Too many people treat it as a vanity metric, and game it.