It's a website with the smartest people in the world. The level of conversations here are unrivaled in internet communities.
It's understandable to be addicted. Lol.
I visit this place multiple times a day.
It's a website with the smartest people in the world. The level of conversations here are unrivaled in internet communities.
It's understandable to be addicted. Lol.
I visit this place multiple times a day.
99% of social science or political topics and 50% of technical topics here do not… read as smart, and you’d be much better off spending the same time reading the first chapter of a relevant 101-level college textbook.
It's entirely possible that this is the smartest place on the internet, but also often dumb. In fact, it seems likely. More of an indictment of the rest of the places on the internet.
> It's entirely possible that this is the smartest place on the internet,
i cant find the link, but there was a post about how to "be nice" and it was a revelation to a worrying amount of "geniuses" on here. bare in mind the sum total of the advice was "be nice, dont be rude"
1. niceness and genius are orthogonal
2. your characterization of the article sounds uncharitable
3. my point isn't exactly that this is necessarily the smartest place
1. but social skills and genius are 2. im still staggered at how elementary it was 3. ok?
Intelligence has many dimensions.
> It's entirely possible that this is the smartest place on the internet, but also often dumb. In fact, it seems likely. More of an indictment of the rest of the places on the internet.
Almost every (non-troll) online community that is relatively peaceful and has some semblance of moderation to remove flamewars thinks of itself as "the best community". Usually as compared to reddit, though if it's on reddit they will compare themselves to some other (hated) sub.
It's a fact of the internet. Every online community thinks of itself as the smartest, more thoughtful, more civilized. HN is no exception.
It goes without saying HN is not the smartest or more thoughtful online community. It's just... ok. Not the worst, not the best. Certainly NOT the place with the smartest people, though some smart people frequent it. As a regular, you can soon figure out HN's unspoken rules, blindspots, and areas where the group opinion is more likely to be accurate.
> It goes without saying HN is not the smartest or more thoughtful online community.
How does that go without saying? Name some others then, compare and contrast. As-is your argument is just posturing.
> Name some others then, compare and contrast.
No need, because whether an online community is more thoughtful or smarter than another is very subjective. Almost by definition, HN is not it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all that. Of course, by internet law, HN (or a subset of its members) considers itself to be the smartest, more thoughtful online community.
There are communities I like better, which are smarter and more thoughtful, but I've no desire to argue with you.
> As-is your argument is just posturing
Nah. Hard pass. Nice try though!
I see you're downvoted, it wasn't me. I wasn't making any claim, you're making claims and disparaging remarks that you won't substantiate.
Which disparaging remarks? I just claimed HN is ok/average, not "the smartest place on the internet", and that it's typical of online communities to consider themselves "the best".
The unsubstantiated claim that "HN is the smartest place on the internet" is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence, which wasn't provided.
The downvotes only prove my point.
> Of course, by internet law, HN (or a subset of its members) considers itself to be the smartest, more thoughtful online community.
I would call that disparaging.
If we're going to be pedantic, the post you initially quoted said "it's entirely possible" and "it seems likely." That's not a claim, that's a suggestion that invites a substantive counter-argument. Just saying "uh no, it's obviously not" is not substantive.
"It goes without saying HN is not the smartest" is more of a claim.
It really should not be that difficult to actually attempt to make an argument rather than point out that someone else's is probabilistically not totally factually correct. It's just bad faith, pure negation. You're defending the lack of substance in your argument by saying someone else's argument lacked substance. Put something forth yourself.
I'm not just trying to debate here, I am genuinely curious to hear about what other communities people find "smarter and more thoughtful." If they can't even be named then yes I am going to call that empty posturing.
Well, to be fair the comment that sparked this subtree asserted (maybe in jest? I hope!):
> It's a website with the smartest people in the world. The level of conversations here are unrivaled in internet communities.
Surely that HN is without question NOT the "unrivaled" website "with the smartest people in the world" should feel neither disparaging nor a surprise to you?
By the way, you got me wrong: I'm not really making a probabilistic argument. I genuinely don't think HN is populated by the smartest people on the internet. Nothing I've read here, in many years of being a regular, has led me to believe people here are anything other than average internet nerds/hackers/entrepreneurs. Maybe slightly above average? There's certainly interesting conversation to be had here, but why would I think HN has the smartest people?
> I'm not just trying to debate here, I am genuinely curious to hear about what other communities people find "smarter and more thoughtful." If they can't even be named then yes I am going to call that empty posturing.
I've zero interest in going down the route of exchanging subjective opinions with you about what is or isn't smart, nothing good can come out of it. I will point out many "rationalist" communities do believe themselves to be smarter than HN (do I agree with them? Nope. But that's not the point, is it? The point is that most serious online communities will tend to believe themselves better, and HN is no exception).
I'm sorry you feel this is "empty posturing". Maybe I just don't fit with the smartest people on the internet :(
It's really not 'the smartest people.' It's people interested in tech, and often in making-a-lot-of-money-in-tech. It does have a lot of people with significant industry experience, which is cool.
> It's really not 'the smartest people.'
This was especially obvious during Covid, I even stopped visiting because the comment section was so crazy.
> the smartest people in the world
But also, people like me. Be careful what you choose to believe on this website
> It's a website with the smartest people in the world.
Nice joke!
At least, I hope it was a joke...
Any professional forum or technical subreddit with good moderation and gatekeeping blows Hacker News out of the water any day of the week.
Also the level of flak is unrivaled.
Poe's Law for a parody of the self-important sv techbro
It's a testament to Poe's Law that I genuinely cannot tell if the OP was being funny or not.
There's a reason why HN of all places has such a terrible record of handling actual sarcasm and telling it apart from genuine belief and that reason is NOT that "HN is really smart" lol
Agreed! I think HN is average, and its userbase think themselves smarter than they really are.
... but I still cannot tell if the original commenter was sarcastic or not! ;)