HN and other forums perpetuate a fallacy (that I assume isn't well known because nobody has published a research paper on it)... but "the wisdom of the crowd" i

HN and other forums perpetuate a fallacy (that I assume isn't well known because nobody has published a research paper on it)... but "the wisdom of the crowd" isn't. "Trusted voices" on HN are often not experts, yet espouse views which are not what the larger body of experts would consider correct. In addition, actual expert voices are drowned out by whatever the popular position is. HN also provides its own cultural bias, in that everything spoken on HN has to follow a rigorous cultural sieve set down by the guidelines, such that a "negative" view, even if correct, is considered either wrong or distasteful and buried. This is exacerbated by banning the use of humor to disarm controversial or heated comments. And this is the comments that HN does get; many opinions are never entered as comments here, so there exists a large knowledge gap. Then there's the "taboo" subjects like race, gender, religion, politics, social justice, etc which get buried for fear of controversy, so you're definitely not gonna find any expert opinions on those, as the stories just aren't there for discussion. The end result is that often experts go unheeded or even downvoted, popular shallow opinions get upvoted, and substantive commentary based on evidence and experience is frequently missing. The fact is that we have no idea who knows what, or what's true or right. We just have "popularity" according to the particular cultural quirks of this site. So you can definitely find out "who thinks what", and who is considered to be more trustworthy to a HNer, but it has absolutely nothing to do with objective truth or the body of real knowledge that exists outside the world of HN comments. This is an echo chamber, but it's not a chamber of experts. It just seems that way because occasionally you see a minor tech celebrity, and people talk with absolute authority regardless of if they have any. You want to find out who knows what? Look at their diplomas and careers. If they've done 20 years in a single field, probably they're an expert. If they have a degree (or multiple) in a field, probably they're an expert. If they spent half their life working on a single hobby, they're at least very knowledgeable in that field. But you can't determine that just by looking at who's talking about what or how many completely subjective "points" they get for what they say. Determining real knowledge requires analysis of specific criteria, filtered to get a higher quality result.