my assertion, in friendly disagreement with you, is that popularity DOES correlate with validity to a useful degree here Unfortunately, this doesn't scale. It

my assertion, in friendly disagreement with you, is that popularity DOES correlate with validity to a useful degree here Unfortunately, this doesn't scale. It is true now and that makes HN valuable. As HN grows there may be more people who express opinions that are not thoughtful and well reasoned, and then popularity no longer corresponds with useful. I think that's the problem that pg is trying to solve.