5 ms·

When I see a seemingly "random" post on HN I always wonder if someone happened across some random bit of info and thought it so interesting they just had to sha

When I see a seemingly "random" post on HN I always wonder if someone happened across some random bit of info and thought it so interesting they just had to share, or if there's some other bit of related news I haven't heard about. Did we just discover space starfish on Mars? I'm guessing I would have heard about that. Or did someone post a paper challenging axial twist orthodoxy? Guess I can google that. But there's a delightful span between seeing someone post something on HN unrelated to AI, Cryptocurrencies or startups selling VS-Code extensions and the moment when I satisfy myself something outlandish (like space starfish) hasn't happened. During that time, all things are plausible. [Edit. Which is not to say I disparage or discourage posting cool things you've found on the net. That's kind of what many of us are here for.]

mk_stjames 1y ago
One of the most delightful things involving reading HN is seeing a strange, context-less post in the morning, and then, later in the day or evening, coming across another piece of information- maybe a popular article on another website or a very popular youtube video- that then leads you to some research hole, possibly wikipedia'ing and following the older, linked sources- where you wind up on the exact page linked from the random post that morning and it becomes pretty obvious that you just retraced the exact steps that a like-minded individual had done earlier that day. It's happened to me several times where I doubt it could be simply recency bias coupled with chance of topics, due to the specificity and narrow directed-ness of the graph.
- parpfish 1y ago
  same. it happens to me all the time on HN. on one hand, i feel like this is a text-book example of the Bader-Meinhoff illusion [0]. but... there's an actual causal mechanism that could drive it. show an interesting article to the HN crowd -> some subset of HN readers are inspired to go down a wikipedia rabbit hole and post some cool thing they found back on HN -> people that saw the original interesting post will not only see the related followup post, but they'll upvote it and cause even MORE to see it [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
  - NobodyNada 1y ago
    This is definitely an actual phenomenon on HN -- someone posts something interesting and it gets a bunch of HNers to go down the rabbit hole together. A couple weeks ago there was one about leeches: "You shouldn't salt a leech that's sucking your blood" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45001005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45001005 "How Leeches Made Their Comeback" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45045235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45045235 "Leeches and the Legitimacy of Folk-Medicine" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45009629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45009629 "This is my brain on leeches" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45037109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45037109
    - temp0826 1y ago
      Ah yes. We should have an annual Leech Day to commemorate. (HN feature request- community calendar)
      - xenophonf 1y ago
        I hereby declare August 28 as Leech Day. Everybody save up your favorite weird HN posts for the year, and we'll compile them in an annual celebration of all the nerdsniping that goes on here.
        mcny 1y ago
        For all I know there is already a /calendar because I didn't know about /best for a long time.
        OhMeadhbh 1y ago
        It is definitely a delightful thing to learn about dimly illuminated corners of the human experience. I enjoy learning about new, weird things almost as much as I enjoy seeing the glee with which people chat about them.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
adamjb 1y ago
>axial twist orthodoxy My impression is that this isn't exactly settled science. If you look in the history for the article you can see that it's mainly written by the lead author of the main citations. He also did the cute illustrations that everyone loves https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Marci68 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Marci68

mk_stjames 1y ago

One of the most delightful things involving reading HN is seeing a strange, context-less post in the morning, and then, later in the day or evening, coming across another piece of information- maybe a popular article on another website or a very popular youtube video- that then leads you to some research hole, possibly wikipedia'ing and following the older, linked sources- where you wind up on the exact page linked from the random post that morning and it becomes pretty obvious that you just retraced the exact steps that a like-minded individual had done earlier that day. It's happened to me several times where I doubt it could be simply recency bias coupled with chance of topics, due to the specificity and narrow directed-ness of the graph.

parpfish 1y ago
same. it happens to me all the time on HN. on one hand, i feel like this is a text-book example of the Bader-Meinhoff illusion [0]. but... there's an actual causal mechanism that could drive it. show an interesting article to the HN crowd -> some subset of HN readers are inspired to go down a wikipedia rabbit hole and post some cool thing they found back on HN -> people that saw the original interesting post will not only see the related followup post, but they'll upvote it and cause even MORE to see it [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
- NobodyNada 1y ago
  This is definitely an actual phenomenon on HN -- someone posts something interesting and it gets a bunch of HNers to go down the rabbit hole together. A couple weeks ago there was one about leeches: "You shouldn't salt a leech that's sucking your blood" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45001005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45001005 "How Leeches Made Their Comeback" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45045235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45045235 "Leeches and the Legitimacy of Folk-Medicine" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45009629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45009629 "This is my brain on leeches" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45037109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45037109
  - temp0826 1y ago
    Ah yes. We should have an annual Leech Day to commemorate. (HN feature request- community calendar)
    - xenophonf 1y ago
      I hereby declare August 28 as Leech Day. Everybody save up your favorite weird HN posts for the year, and we'll compile them in an annual celebration of all the nerdsniping that goes on here.
      - mcny 1y ago
        For all I know there is already a /calendar because I didn't know about /best for a long time.
        OhMeadhbh 1y ago
        It is definitely a delightful thing to learn about dimly illuminated corners of the human experience. I enjoy learning about new, weird things almost as much as I enjoy seeing the glee with which people chat about them.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago

adamjb 1y ago

>axial twist orthodoxy My impression is that this isn't exactly settled science. If you look in the history for the article you can see that it's mainly written by the lead author of the main citations. He also did the cute illustrations that everyone loves https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Marci68 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Marci68