If there are 25,000 homeless and an EMT sees 1000 homeless people in a year (which I'd say I'm probably vastly over estimating) in situations where they are in greatest need, then all you have is a limited anecdotal view of a small proportion of the total population of homeless people at the lowest and least dignified point in their lives.
It doesn't tell you how they got to be in that situation.
It doesn't show you their day to day grind.
It doesn't indicate if they always want to be homeless, or you've just seen them when they are feeling defensive or aren't in full control of their faculties.
In short, it just shows you that because of the nature of being an EMT, he sees people in dire situations, on occasions that would frustrate anyone viewing the homeless person because of any number of high stress factors, including mental illness but also malnutrition, poor sleep or severe discomfort.
Posting "you're full of shit" or "citation needed" is lazy and rude. You don't want to speak up with something more sensible? Fine. That's why those little arrows next to the comment exist. Don't post rude garbage instead.
It's not rude to question assumptions or to ask where someone gets their data from.
The voting system is good on HN, but it's limited. If you post something controversial, but possibly accurate, then if only people who don't like what you say vote you down, then it just shows that people don't like what you say. If you write something popular but kind of dodgy, then you'll get voted up significantly - and given nobody but yourself can see your score then your comment just shows in normal font weight. Those who vote it down can get it to a score of 1, and nobody will be any the wiser.
So the vote mechanism is very good here, and very effective, but it doesn't necessarily improve discourse. Nor does it force people to justify their views. Nor does it help progress understanding.
I've often been asked to provide a source for my views. I'm always happy to do so. Heck, there have even been a few times it has forced me to concede that my view wasn't well thought out. If anything, bring politely questioned helped me more than it did the questioner. Other times there has been the pleasant and surprising occassion where the questioner thanked me for my sources and agreed that I was probably correct.
That's hardly "rude garbage".
One day I had an epiphany. I realised that you can't just argue with these people, you need to have a reverse citation system - you need to clearly mark out information that is dubious, ill-informed, the result of ingrained prejudice (often unconsciously so) and almost always inaccurate.
At the same time, there needed to be a way of allowing controversial views and sometimes accurate but controversial facts be detailed on the encyclopaedia.
There was only one way I could see to do it - use the same citation system that referenced sources but invert it to highlight information that needed a source. Hence I created citation needed (originally without the square brackets, whoever added them was a genius in their own right).
Guess what? It worked. 11 years later, despite the many issues on Wikipedia, finding out the source of assumptions is no longer a problem. People can go to the citations and see where the factoid is documented, or whose opinion is being expressed. It allows ordinary people to judge the view being expressed more accurately, or to look at how the data was extrapolated, to understand how the academic study was conducted, or to verify that what is claimed is actually what the original claimant was indeed claiming.
On Wikipedia, there was no way of allowing people to say that you are full of shit without destroying the project. Yet people needed a mechanism to dispute what was written. Talk pages weren't enough - bad actors could keep conversations going indefinitely without really bring challenged, whilst most readers wouldn't see the controversy of their contributions. By marking up text with [citation needed] it allowed people to think "hang on, this is disputed, where did they get this idea/information from?".
If my one contribution to society all those years ago was to have helped people improve their critical faculties and question the information given to them, then I'm satisfied I've made a positive impact on society. I certainly didn't expect it to take off like it did. I'm also not arrogant enough to think I started this questioning, merely helped start a meme that was actually useful.
If Hacker News now has its own culture of asking "where did you get that information from?" then it's a [citation needed]. You should applaud it. You should cherish that people have found a way of politely questioning the views of others and make them justify what they say without resort to personal abuse. You should be happy that people are using their critical faculties when they question implicit assumptions and claims.
You say it casts doubts on the truthfulness or provenance of the original poster's claims. Good! If the claims are of good provenance, then the poster can show that provenance. If the original poster is being truthful, then they can prove it by showing their sources.
