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I like HN for insightful, often critical, commentary but I have to admit I'm getting pretty tired of these quick dismissals based on anecdotes and gut-feeling.
by CathedralBorrow 7y ago
I like HN for insightful, often critical, commentary but I have to admit I'm getting pretty tired of these quick dismissals based on anecdotes and gut-feeling.
"No, X is not the issue at all, the issue is Y because Europeans are like this and this is why Europeans do things. I know this because I know."
- refurb 7y agoI’ve noticed this to. Even in areas where I have domain knowledge and know the article conclusions are accurate, I’ll see dozens of posts saying “That’s not it at all, the real reason is...”. There are a lot of very confident, but very wrong people out there.
- vfc1 7y agoFor this subject, it's really just a matter of opinion more than anything. I think if someone is commenting and has subject matter expertise, they should mention that ("I'm a doctor and happen to know that ..."), it's better than having everyone else adding disclaimers to their comments. In an online comment no expertise is usually assumed, but yes this leads to stuff like a scientist with decades of experience publishing a study saying something that people don't want to hear, and then some troll on twitter says "No it's not" and people run with it because that's what they want to hear. I think it's the Internet in general, it's not specific of HN.