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Ask HN: Is Hacker News a Waste of Time?
Although this might be a rather controversial question, I think it is a very interesting and maybe important self reflecting question. Of course there is no right or wrong answers, as my lecturers sometimes like to emphasise.
I usually wake up every morning and read the guardian, specifically its comments section which is a particular interesting section (most days)
Thinking about it though, I realise that most of the things I read on it are not relevant to myself. They speak of wars, problems society in general is facing, there are calls for mobilisation in regards to recycling, civil rights or some new found scandal.
These things are important to know of course and certainly interesting. Nonetheless I am reading the opinion of someone else. Someone who I have no reason to believe has a better or more righteous opinion than myself. I can not help it sometimes but think, in reflection, that they are maybe even influencing my own opinion, whether for good or bad.
I do not like my opinion to be influenced not based on facts, but words someone wrote without giving it too much thought. If their opinions are not based on facts or superior knowledge why should I give them the opportunity to influence myself, especially when bearing in mind that most of them have an agenda.
The guardian newspaper is of course very different from hacker news. Hacker News is a community which besides trying to take advantage of the fact that there is strength in numbers, i.e someone likes a story, others decide whether they like it or not, if many like a story, then there is a good chance that it is a good story, it also has a certain "code of conduct". Going further, as far as the website itself is concerned, the signal to noise ratio is high. There is a lot of good and interesting content.
The question though is whether interesting is good enough.
This particular website seems to appeal to the above average intellect crowd who require intellectual stimulation, but is it a waste of time?
I have mentioned the guardian, one of UK's leading newspapers, and compared it somewhat on this particular point to hacker news. Therefore I do not mean whether hacker news per se is a waste of time, I am speaking of the activity itself.
The activity can be defined as spending time reading fragmented material which is interesting to know, but not necessarily relevant to yourself. Material which is not relevant to yourself might not mean practically useless or that it does not indirectly effect your thinking and ability to perform. Nonetheless it does seem to mean in the context of this particular activity that it is knowledge somewhat remote with no use besides some mental ejaculation.
I do not wish to come accross as someone who would rather be isolated to his own enclave without wishing to know what goes on in the world, or find out interesting things such as the finding of a study about psychopathy. I am naturaly interested on many things and believe they have contributed to some extend towards my perception of the world.
The question is whether those 4 hour or so in the morning reading the guardian newspaper and then the articles on hackers news are worth it.
What do you think?
- GHFigs 18y agoIf you have to ask, you've passed the point where it is. Reading the news is the kind of thing you do to fill in interstitial time that is not fungible with other activities, not something you do for its own sake, or should ever "make time" for, or that is ever inherently important. There may be important news, but the defining property of news is not importance, but newness. I think that many here (and elsewhere) likely suffer from (to some degree) a kind of information-age malaise akin to scrupulosity (obsession over sinfulness). It's a condition where people feel anxiety over not being completely informed, or at least informed enough to have an opinion on every subject. How often do you read an article (or bookmark it, or InstaPaper it, or tag it "toread", etc.) not because you want to read that article, but you feel like you should know more about that subject? How many unread items do you have in your RSS reader that you keep thinking you're actually going to read someday? That's what I mean. It's an impossible task, but trying can very easily consume all of your time. You "just" have to learn to flip the switch from input to output without ever feeling "done".
- tokenadult 18y agoThe question is whether those 4 hour or so in the morning reading the guardian newspaper and then the articles on hackers news are worth it. Learning is generally worthwhile. Four hours each morning puts a lot of pressure on your schedule to be efficient in other activities, like running your start-up or caring for your family.
- sam_in_nyc 18y agoI'm going to admit that I barely read any of your post. I'm just going to answer: Your question is like asking "Is the Internet a Waste of Time?" It really depends. The stories are generally titled in such a way that I ignore stuff that I already know, don't need to know, don't care about, etc. Conversely, I read the stories that seem interesting or relevant. There's a lot of cutting edge stuff discussed here and I like that. I haven't been here long enough for any one particular thing about HN to piss me off yet, either. So, yeah.. it's a waste of time if you waste your time. And it's not a waste of time if there's a takeaway. So make a point to learn something each time you go on HN.
- 18y ago