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HN is really good at programming language, IT, and computer science discussions. It really varies once you get outside that bubble. Sometimes you get a topic o

HN is really good at programming language, IT, and computer science discussions. It really varies once you get outside that bubble. Sometimes you get a topic on mathematics and a few mathematicians are on there answering questions directly and it's great. In my own field of energy markets and power grid operation, I've noticed the comments have a good mixture of informed folks and those that are way off base. I'm sure it's much worse on some topics and that I'm just as guilty at times :) Hopefully there are enough experts in an area to drown out the noise.

red-iron-pine 3y ago
Engineer's Disease: the idea that domain competence translates to anything out of that domain. Put another way, the most hardline, fundamentalist Mormon I've ever known was a former boss, who was a fantastic engineer -- and completely incapable of challenging his assumptions in any other area. Ruthlessly logical when it came to system design, but couldn't apply that to anything else. Point is, you have a lot of adaquate STEM types talking out their ass about stuff outside their domain. Plus a non-trivial amount of marketing and agit-prop bots, which shouldn't come as a surprise to the crowd that was talking about GPT long before it was cool.
- ngngngng 3y ago
  Just to be clear, fundamentalist Mormon means he had multiple wives, and most likely lived on a secluded compound or in one of the surrounding areas of one of these compounds. Your likelihood of interacting with such a person is near zero.
foobiekr 3y ago
HN is not actually good at programming and CS, either.
- bunderbunder 3y ago
  No large, well-known open discussion venue is really very good at discussing any topic. I'm not sure it's even possible for one to be. As the saying goes, "None of us is as dumb as all of us."
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    Because it is filled with all kinds. Junior devs arguing over some pedantic point, and senior devs trying to explain the forest and the trees. Birds are objects, bees are functions. For a thousand niche subjects in CompSi, there are 0-100 levels of knowledge. The discourse can be great, and can also go off the rails.
    - Scarblac 3y ago
      And people post short comments that take strong positions in such a way that it's really hard to decide whether it's a complete beginner bluffing or an expert talking from a wealth of experience.
- 7thaccount 3y ago
  I'm not aware of any better place for people to chat about programming languages including esoteric stuff like APL where someone actively developing the main commercial offering and another writing an open source alternative are actively contributing to the conversation and explaining how low level operations work. I've seen plenty of experts here on stuff like Prolog, Lisp, Forth, Smalltalk (Alan Kay has posted on here), tons on Java, Python, R, C++, Julia...it goes on and on.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - recursive 3y ago
    lambda the ultimate
    - CoastalCoder 3y ago
      For convenience: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/
  - dartos 3y ago
    There are a surprising amount of that on various discord servers. I chat about esoteric languages on the Godot engine discord server once in a while.
    - xvector 3y ago
      Right, but that's very specific, and frankly Discord makes terrible public forums. HN excels as a general purpose forum for technical discussions relating to computer science.
      - krapp 3y ago
        The quality of actual technical discussion on HN is not much better on average than any programming or technical subreddit in my experience, if they are well moderated. It shouldn't be surprising that the most technically adept people here also tend to post the least often. The biggest difference is HN is strongly anti-humor, primarily because of the weird pathology the culture here has about Reddit and appearing "mainstream." But the lack of memes here doesn't make the rest of the content better, rather it tends to result in aggression, knee-jerk contrarianism and overconfident assertions in ignorance becoming low effort virtue signals instead.
- nsonha 3y ago
  so what is better?
- huytersd 3y ago
  That’s just a low effort Reddit trope. Name one place that has better discussion on a broad range of programming topics.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    My work Teams channel
    - huytersd 3y ago
      Broad means more than just your Scala backend and neo4j db.
- godelski 3y ago
  HN is not actually good at self deprecating jokes, either
  - CoastalCoder 3y ago
    > HN is not actually good at self deprecating jokes, either One problem is Hacker News are terrible at recognizing dry humor. 90% of readers interpret tongue-in-cheek posts as face-value. And among those who recognize the humor, 77% want an accompanying "/s" flag iff (day-of-week mod 13 == -2).
    - godelski 3y ago
      This made me laugh haha. I get pushback when I say "If something is too ridiculous, assume it is a joke." Because people are insistent that there are people who really believe dumb shit. They're not wrong, but if they are sincere, why treat them as anything but a joke? It's not like you're going to convincingly correct them when they make such grave errors. So why not a joke? What's the old saying? I'd rather laugh than cry.
causal 3y ago
I think there's a corollary to Gell-Mann amnesia where experts subconsciously believe their expertise in one field transfers to other fields. I've certainly caught myself making this mistake, at least.
- meepmorp 3y ago
  I remember it being both comforting and disappointing to read Plato and find Socrates noting this same phenomenon. We've made many advancements as a species, but in some areas we're largely unchanged from ancient times.
  - ngcc_hk 3y ago
    If he did not write 2nd and 3rd Socrates …
- jq-r 3y ago
  Nitpicking a bit, but Gell-Mann amnesia isn't that. Its about generally trusting newspapers/journalists and then reading an article about a theme you're familiar with. Then you realize that the journalist is full of it and got things completely wrong. By turning the newspapers page you start reading an article about something you're not familiar with. You immediately forget the BS from the page before and continue reading (probably same sort of BS) from another journalist but this time you're again trusting the newspapers as some kind of good source of truth. I've butchered the explanation, but its described much better here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes... PS I've seen this effect many times in my life first hand and its frankly astonishing how much power some journalists wield and some don't even know it.
  - 0xffff2 3y ago
    >Nitpicking a bit, but Gell-Mann amnesia isn't that. Hence "corollary to"...
germinalphrase 3y ago
Dunning-Kruger sponsors all HN threads about aviation, military strategy, and the education system.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  And anything dealing with Psychology or Philosophy. Everyone is an armchair expert spouting common tropes.

red-iron-pine 3y ago

Engineer's Disease: the idea that domain competence translates to anything out of that domain. Put another way, the most hardline, fundamentalist Mormon I've ever known was a former boss, who was a fantastic engineer -- and completely incapable of challenging his assumptions in any other area. Ruthlessly logical when it came to system design, but couldn't apply that to anything else. Point is, you have a lot of adaquate STEM types talking out their ass about stuff outside their domain. Plus a non-trivial amount of marketing and agit-prop bots, which shouldn't come as a surprise to the crowd that was talking about GPT long before it was cool.

ngngngng 3y ago
Just to be clear, fundamentalist Mormon means he had multiple wives, and most likely lived on a secluded compound or in one of the surrounding areas of one of these compounds. Your likelihood of interacting with such a person is near zero.

foobiekr 3y ago

HN is not actually good at programming and CS, either.

bunderbunder 3y ago
No large, well-known open discussion venue is really very good at discussing any topic. I'm not sure it's even possible for one to be. As the saying goes, "None of us is as dumb as all of us."
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  Because it is filled with all kinds. Junior devs arguing over some pedantic point, and senior devs trying to explain the forest and the trees. Birds are objects, bees are functions. For a thousand niche subjects in CompSi, there are 0-100 levels of knowledge. The discourse can be great, and can also go off the rails.
  - Scarblac 3y ago
    And people post short comments that take strong positions in such a way that it's really hard to decide whether it's a complete beginner bluffing or an expert talking from a wealth of experience.
7thaccount 3y ago
I'm not aware of any better place for people to chat about programming languages including esoteric stuff like APL where someone actively developing the main commercial offering and another writing an open source alternative are actively contributing to the conversation and explaining how low level operations work. I've seen plenty of experts here on stuff like Prolog, Lisp, Forth, Smalltalk (Alan Kay has posted on here), tons on Java, Python, R, C++, Julia...it goes on and on.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- recursive 3y ago
  lambda the ultimate
  - CoastalCoder 3y ago
    For convenience: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/
- dartos 3y ago
  There are a surprising amount of that on various discord servers. I chat about esoteric languages on the Godot engine discord server once in a while.
  - xvector 3y ago
    Right, but that's very specific, and frankly Discord makes terrible public forums. HN excels as a general purpose forum for technical discussions relating to computer science.
    - krapp 3y ago
      The quality of actual technical discussion on HN is not much better on average than any programming or technical subreddit in my experience, if they are well moderated. It shouldn't be surprising that the most technically adept people here also tend to post the least often. The biggest difference is HN is strongly anti-humor, primarily because of the weird pathology the culture here has about Reddit and appearing "mainstream." But the lack of memes here doesn't make the rest of the content better, rather it tends to result in aggression, knee-jerk contrarianism and overconfident assertions in ignorance becoming low effort virtue signals instead.
nsonha 3y ago
so what is better?
huytersd 3y ago
That’s just a low effort Reddit trope. Name one place that has better discussion on a broad range of programming topics.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  My work Teams channel
  - huytersd 3y ago
    Broad means more than just your Scala backend and neo4j db.
godelski 3y ago
HN is not actually good at self deprecating jokes, either
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  > HN is not actually good at self deprecating jokes, either One problem is Hacker News are terrible at recognizing dry humor. 90% of readers interpret tongue-in-cheek posts as face-value. And among those who recognize the humor, 77% want an accompanying "/s" flag iff (day-of-week mod 13 == -2).
  - godelski 3y ago
    This made me laugh haha. I get pushback when I say "If something is too ridiculous, assume it is a joke." Because people are insistent that there are people who really believe dumb shit. They're not wrong, but if they are sincere, why treat them as anything but a joke? It's not like you're going to convincingly correct them when they make such grave errors. So why not a joke? What's the old saying? I'd rather laugh than cry.

causal 3y ago

I think there's a corollary to Gell-Mann amnesia where experts subconsciously believe their expertise in one field transfers to other fields. I've certainly caught myself making this mistake, at least.

meepmorp 3y ago
I remember it being both comforting and disappointing to read Plato and find Socrates noting this same phenomenon. We've made many advancements as a species, but in some areas we're largely unchanged from ancient times.
- ngcc_hk 3y ago
  If he did not write 2nd and 3rd Socrates …
jq-r 3y ago
Nitpicking a bit, but Gell-Mann amnesia isn't that. Its about generally trusting newspapers/journalists and then reading an article about a theme you're familiar with. Then you realize that the journalist is full of it and got things completely wrong. By turning the newspapers page you start reading an article about something you're not familiar with. You immediately forget the BS from the page before and continue reading (probably same sort of BS) from another journalist but this time you're again trusting the newspapers as some kind of good source of truth. I've butchered the explanation, but its described much better here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes... PS I've seen this effect many times in my life first hand and its frankly astonishing how much power some journalists wield and some don't even know it.
- 0xffff2 3y ago
  >Nitpicking a bit, but Gell-Mann amnesia isn't that. Hence "corollary to"...

germinalphrase 3y ago

Dunning-Kruger sponsors all HN threads about aviation, military strategy, and the education system.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
And anything dealing with Psychology or Philosophy. Everyone is an armchair expert spouting common tropes.