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Sometimes, when a climate-denial comment on HN seems especially troll-like, and when I have time to kill, I'll look at the comment history of the apparent troll
by dmlorenzetti 8y ago
Sometimes, when a climate-denial comment on HN seems especially troll-like, and when I have time to kill, I'll look at the comment history of the apparent troll.
Occasionally the person's comments only include political opinions, but I would say that, for the majority of these posters, the technical/programming comments outweigh the political ones.
I don't know about other discussion boards. HN is the only forum on which I actively participate -- maybe because it's so good at self-policing that the trolls don't tend to survive long here.
- mikeash 8y agoI’m not surprised. It seems like engineers tend to have a strong contrarian streak. Climate change is an ideal target for contrarian tendencies: it’s controversial enough to not feel like you’re just tilting at windmills, but it’s still extremely lopsided. And it’s fuzzy enough that a smart person can dig into it and come up with a lot of good-sounding reasons to hold the contrary position. It’s not just climate change. Another prominent example that comes to mind is dark matter. HN posts about dark matter tend to have lots of comments about how it’s a cop-out, or how MOND is a better theory despite failing to match many observations, or whatever.