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> Reading some comments on hackernews, I often come up on a comment that seems to be speaking another language. At first I'm intimidated into thinking that ther
by seibelj 6y ago
> Reading some comments on hackernews, I often come up on a comment that seems to be speaking another language. At first I'm intimidated into thinking that there's a secret club of intellectuals that understand exactly what this comment is talking about. But then I start to wonder.. is this actually elite minds speaking in a very high-level way with extremely advanced context? Or, is it just some overly opinionated junior person who just assumes everybody is working on the same web tech stack they are, and speaks with that implicit assumption?
I love HN don’t get me wrong, but my coworkers and I like to poke fun at it. Some jokes are “why didn’t you just use rust?” and “Well what did Paul Graham have to say about it?” when debating something. It’s a culture like any other. I would say a lot of super smart people are here, who have deep knowledge on the most esoteric niche subjects, and provide a lot of sage wisdom and advice. But there are a lot of cranks too (including myself!).
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoHeh. I'm (I hope) a person with sage wisdom... on some subjects. On others, I'm a crank. And you, who call yourself a crank, I suspect there are some subjects on which you have sage wisdom.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y ago#WWPGD
- mrwnmonm 6y agoWait, is this related to the secret club of intellectuals?
- phist_mcgee 6y agoMy favourite HN stereotype is that every comment chain involves the next poster correcting the last poster over a tiny detail, and then descending into long threads arguing minute details of no consequence. I think this forum attracts a non-trivial number of people who have a hyperfocus issue beginning with the letter A.
- cmendel 6y agoIn this instance wouldn't 'preceding poster' be more correct than 'last poster'? ;)
- ryandrake 6y agoIt's even worse when the thread veers into something political. You can write a 5 paragraph essay about some topic and someone will eventually come out of the woodwork to point out: "On paragraph 4, in this statement, you generalized and said 'all' and I can find a counterexample. Aha! You should have said 'many'! Your entire point is therefore invalid!!" Pedantic nitpicking is just part of this culture.
- phist_mcgee 6y agoMy favourite fallacy of all is the fallacy fallacy: whereby it is a fallacy of an argument to reject another argument if it contains or is composed of a fallacy. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy) It's why grammar nazis are the most insufferable, because their picking apart of your sentences appears to invalidate your argument, when really they're just being pricks.
- vram22 6y ago