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Is this what Gell-Mann amnesia feels like? I happen to be a bit into cryptocurrency, and day after day I see these super basic surface-level takes on blockchain

Is this what Gell-Mann amnesia feels like? I happen to be a bit into cryptocurrency, and day after day I see these super basic surface-level takes on blockchain get posted here and even upvoted to the top spot. Are the other popular submissions here, on programming languages, the internet, entrepeneurship and what have you of similar low quality, but I just don't have the experience in those fields to realize it? This is a serious question.

andreaorru 6y ago
I'm having your same exact doubts. The quality of the conversation about cryptocurrencies here on HN is abysmal. Misinformation, or outdated information, is rampant. Maybe that's the case for everything else that is discussed here, but I just don't have enough domain knowledge to be able to tell...
- dschuler 6y ago
  This is ironic, because your posts are part of the problem.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - andreaorru 6y ago
    Very possible. In that case, joke is on me. :)
gjulianm 6y ago
This happens a lot in topics that the HN community is interested in but not very knowledgeable in general. You can usually trust the top voted articles in programming and entrepeneurship because a lot of people here know about that. But, for example, in maths and music (I happen to know something about those) I see a lot of really bad articles and takes being upvoted.
- lima 6y ago
  I think it happens even for topics of programming and entrepreneurship. HN is not a representative sample of the software industry.
lima 6y ago
> Are the other popular submissions here, on programming languages, the internet, entrepeneurship and what have you of similar low quality, but I just don't have the experience in those fields to realize it? Yes, absolutely. There's some niche topics that I happen to know a lot about, and the top stories and comments tend to be very superficial and/or plain wrong. On the other hand, there's usually someone around to call out the inaccuracies :)
ravanave 6y ago
Technical content is generally of much higher standard. Although HackerNews sometimes feels a bit like an echo chamber with the type of content that gets popular. I think there’s just too many crypto-sceptics here, and that’s a shame because crypto solved a lot of challenges they’re talking about, and is on the rally to democratise everything financial related. Something big that many people still miss on, but with about 0.5% adoption rate we’re at the early stage of the innovators stage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cyc... Give it a few years until we get to the early adopters and for sure the quality of content will improve. It just needs more people reading about it and adopting it.
freddie_mercury 6y ago
Yes, absolutely. Outside of extremely narrow programming niches, discussions on HN are generally very bad. I don't think that's anything particularly unique to HN but is simply a fundamental weakness of the "one forum for all subjects" approach that HN takes contra Reddit.

andreaorru 6y ago

I'm having your same exact doubts. The quality of the conversation about cryptocurrencies here on HN is abysmal. Misinformation, or outdated information, is rampant. Maybe that's the case for everything else that is discussed here, but I just don't have enough domain knowledge to be able to tell...

dschuler 6y ago
This is ironic, because your posts are part of the problem.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- andreaorru 6y ago
  Very possible. In that case, joke is on me. :)

gjulianm 6y ago

This happens a lot in topics that the HN community is interested in but not very knowledgeable in general. You can usually trust the top voted articles in programming and entrepeneurship because a lot of people here know about that. But, for example, in maths and music (I happen to know something about those) I see a lot of really bad articles and takes being upvoted.

lima 6y ago
I think it happens even for topics of programming and entrepreneurship. HN is not a representative sample of the software industry.

lima 6y ago

> Are the other popular submissions here, on programming languages, the internet, entrepeneurship and what have you of similar low quality, but I just don't have the experience in those fields to realize it? Yes, absolutely. There's some niche topics that I happen to know a lot about, and the top stories and comments tend to be very superficial and/or plain wrong. On the other hand, there's usually someone around to call out the inaccuracies :)

ravanave 6y ago

Technical content is generally of much higher standard. Although HackerNews sometimes feels a bit like an echo chamber with the type of content that gets popular. I think there’s just too many crypto-sceptics here, and that’s a shame because crypto solved a lot of challenges they’re talking about, and is on the rally to democratise everything financial related. Something big that many people still miss on, but with about 0.5% adoption rate we’re at the early stage of the innovators stage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cyc... Give it a few years until we get to the early adopters and for sure the quality of content will improve. It just needs more people reading about it and adopting it.

freddie_mercury 6y ago

Yes, absolutely. Outside of extremely narrow programming niches, discussions on HN are generally very bad. I don't think that's anything particularly unique to HN but is simply a fundamental weakness of the "one forum for all subjects" approach that HN takes contra Reddit.