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Hacker News Disease

215 points by sant0sk1 18y ago

tokenadult 18y ago
"People tend to overvalue the skills they have, and undervalue the ones they don’t. Even the most knowledgeable, intelligent people around are rarely experts in more than one or maybe two unrelated subject areas." Very good point. I might add that people whose expertise provides a comfortable income are especially likely to think of themselves as experts on things they know nothing about. I hope that they learn to contribute their intelligence to doing nonprofit community service and solving intractable social problems.
- tdavis 18y ago
  I found that quote interesting because I've always considered myself to feel exactly the opposite. Okay, I can create / run / manage every part of a website from the ground up, but people who really get Calculus make me feel retarded. What about scientists who create new chemical compounds and molecules and crazy stuff like that? Way over my head. Quantum Physicists? Forget it. Doctors? They have to fix bugs which involve an essentially innumerable number of variables! I feel there are all sorts of industries and occupations that are far more difficult to learn and require far more intelligence than my skills in programming, design, and systems administration. Most I think I could probably learn and excel at, given a long enough timeline, but others I feel are likely beyond my grasp. I see no way I could ever become a Mathematician, for example.
  - trefn 17y ago
    I think it is significant that all of the professions you mentioned are science based. I feel exactly the way you do about engineering and science jobs, but less rigorous fields do not have the same effect on me. I think this might be why we are all willing to judge the efforts of politicians, managers, etc - what they do seems to simply require having an opinion and acting on it. In the sciences, though, we know that you have to be really knowledgeable to be successful.
    - tdavis 17y ago
      I feel the same to an extent; I wonder why that is. At the same time, I don't claim I could walk off the street and build a better house than a construction worker, or fix broken pipes better than a plumber. I couldn't even be a better politician; they are better at social hacking such as faking sincerity. I have a low threshold for that stuff. Still, I consider sciences harder in general than those, even if that isn't actually true.
  - phugoid 17y ago
    It saddens me that many people I've met would mistake your humility for weakness. I see it as a great strength.
    - tdavis 17y ago
      It's a strength as far as it keeps me from making a fool of myself (most of the time) ;) The only thing I truly claim to know is that I know nothing. I have a feeling I'll die without truly knowing anything, but that's fine by me.
      - falien 17y ago
        Socrates by way of Plato said something along the lines of "I'm the wisest man in the land because I know that I know nothing." It seems to me that many of the geniuses I've read biographies of started with a similar humility and a healthy dose of curiosity, so I always figured that was a good place to start too.
- chadgeidel 18y ago
  I've often wondered if this were true in general or only in the tech industry. Do Doctors, Lawyers, or Nuclear Physicists think they know about everything else?
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    It depends. I know it exists in finance to a similar degree. I think it has to do with how insular the particular industry is. Tech is often very insular, because all you need are some hackers. My start up, for instance, doesn't need salesmen, or scientists, or accountants, or even a receptionist or whatever else. I really only care about one or two skill sets, so I could just assume that every salesman alive is a moron and still succeed just as well. I feel like it doesn't exist so much in many broader industries. Great businessmen realize that success is about getting people who are good at what they do and giving them everything they need to succeed, and then staying the hell out of their way. In a biotech company, for instance, some of the skill sets required are science, sales, accounting, politics/lobbying, manufacturing, etc. Successes in an industry like that sort of requires you to be willing to admit other people are as smart as you and know more than you about many things.
  - Kaizyn 17y ago
    It probably has more to do with what is used as a measure of status in the field. If your field uses money or prestige, then you are probably less likely to think you know everything about other fields. However, in fields like tech where intelligence is how the nerds establish the pecking order, they are likely to carry over the same sorts of social norms to dealing with those outside the field.
pg 18y ago
The curious thing is, this post is an instance of what it complains about. Matt is not so far as I know a formally trained psychologist. So to the extent he's right, he disproves his own argument. The truth is, while intelligence isn't knowledge, it can be rapidly converted into it. In fact that would do fairly well as a definition of intelligence. And in any case, credentials aren't knowledge either. Ultimately you have to judge any argument by what it says, not who said it.
- anigbrowl 18y ago
  We're just not as smart as he thinks he is.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  Well, I didn't mean it was literally a mental disease, that part was more tongue in cheek. But that's pretty funny. I am, at best, a very amateur psychologist. You're right about credentials though for sure, but how do you judge an intricate argument on its merits when you just don't know much about the topic? For instance, read some of the articles for and against anthropogenic global warming written by scientists. I can find very convincing arguments on either side, full of lots of facts I probably can't easily verify and lots of conclusions drawn from them that I can't easily validate are sound logic, because I know so little about climate science. Without me spending years rapidly converting my intelligence into domain specific knowledge, as the people making those arguments have done, how do I know which side to believe when I step into the voting booth? It's an epistemology problem, and a tough one.
  - ErrantX 18y ago
    So if your not a political expert does that preclude you from voting in an election?
    - mattmaroon 18y ago
      No. It without a doubt precludes me from ever being 100% certain I'm voting the right way. But I feel comfortable voting because I think I'm more frequently correct than the average voter. On the other hand, 80% of men think they're an above average driver.
uuilly 18y ago
Matt, you might be interested in Thomas Sowell: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/author/thomas_sowell/ http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/author/thomas_sowe... His entire political philosophy is anchored on the observation that knowledge is dispersed and that no one person's knowledge of the world entirely eclipses that of 12 random people.
estromberg 18y ago
Very thoughtful post, thanks for sharing. One observation: If, as Matt describes, an executive at a major music label realized the emerging trends of the industry but chose the path that would maximize his stock options over the next 2-3 years at the long-run expense of the stockholders, this would be illegal, and not constitute the "no-brainer" decision that Matt describes. Executives have a fiduciary duty to stockholders to place long-run stockholder interest above their own. In fact, if this was found to be the case, he would most likely lose these options as well as suffer other legal ramifications. (disclaimer: not a lawyer, I just read blogs about lawyers :) You can argue that executives rarely do this, but nonetheless the legal obligation exists. I would like to think that those executives who take the attitude of "i just want to get my money and run, who cares about the long-term state of the corporation" is the minority, rather than the majority.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  Does the law specify a timeline? Even if it did, would it be possible to prove that the CEO knowingly optimized for 3 year gains at the expense of 20 year ones? An executive's options sink or swim with the company's share price. If a company's investors really want their executives to focus on the horizon, they should adjust compensation accordingly. Lengthen CEO tenure, and give stock/option grants with 10 year vesting periods. People will always act in accordance with their own incentives. That's the fundamental principle behind the free market. The only way to get a CEO to focus on your long term success is to tie his long term success to it too.
raganwald 18y ago
Matt, good fellow that you are, this post had many excellent points about the music industry and how last year's executives were incented to not get it. However, I must take issue with you singling out "intelligent" people for thinking other people with expertise are idiots. I invite you to have a drink (on me) at any sports bar in Toronto and we will trip over people who think that various professional players, coaches, and analysts are idiots. And likewise if we seat ourselves on any transit bus or train we will have no trouble earwigging a dozen conversations in which people with no experience or expertise in government will denounce their elected representatives as idiots, and then toss in the unelected civil servants as being twice as dumb. I suggest what you are seeing on HN is a fairly common phenomenon. So while I liked your insight into the executives and their entirely rational behaviour in beating a reluctant and bloody retreat, I take issue with the title. It's simply Peanut Gallery Disease.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  Very good point, and I'll be taking you up on that whenever I get back to your lovely city.
  - raganwald 18y ago
    I look forward to it. And by the way... The people second-guessing Toronto's Mayor David Miller? Obviously they're idiots!
- Batsu 17y ago
  So well put it hurts. Bravo.
- jodrellblank 17y ago
  It's not a disease. If I couldn't talk about things I don't understand, I couldn't talk about anything. Being involved is more fun.
edw519 18y ago
Let's not forget the culture we thrive in, both here at Hacker News and in tech in general. Many of us are mavericks, non-conformists, even revolutionaries. We may be that way by nature, may have become that way in the field, or more likely, a little of each. Why? Because it works. I know people who have slaved away in the same "paradigm" for years, with a cynical view of the world, and an "acceptance" of the status quo. But not so much for us hackers. Especially those of us starting our own businesses. It's not only acceptable to go against the grain, it's often necessary for great success. That certainly doesn't give us carte blanche to question everything, but questioning too much without benefit of background and experience gives rise to "Hacker News Disease". That's the price we pay for pushing the envelope too hard and too often. We overstep our bounds once in a while and have to be put back into our place. Frankly, I'd rather have it this way and ruffle a few feathers along the way than to never make a mistake and fade away into oblivion.
Hexstream 18y ago
"I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen someone post a legal question on Hacker News, and get dozens of replies from people who aren’t attorneys." The only problem I could see with that is if the one posting the legal question has any expectation that he'll get replies from attorneys. I think that's unlikely. The part about dozen of replies from people who aren't attorneys is completely expectable given that it's Hacker News, not Attorney News.
- Gibbon 18y ago
  Not to mention the fact that "legal" posts on HN are more likely to be prefaced with "I'm not a lawyer, so don't take my advice seriously".
carbon8 18y ago
There's also the huge mistake of assuming that people and organizations always make well-considered and rational decisions. This is particularly true with strategic decisions made by large organizations.
- jerf 18y ago
  The argument is fundamentally predicated on this point, which I find extremely naive. I can and do (and did) extend benefit of the doubt, but the idea that we must always assume that people are acting rationally, and that mattmaroon is justified in getting on a soap box when people don't make that assumption, is not justified. (Disclosure: I was linked as one of the cite examples, which I've replied to there as well: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586345 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586345 )
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
jmtame 18y ago
Why did you call this "hacker news" disease? While I read the article and enjoyed some of it, you're still making a point that has been said many times before: smart people tend to think of themselves as smart, and think of others as inferior to them. This happens in a lot of places, it's not just hacker news. So I'm still a bit puzzled as to why you did this--it seems these days that sticking "hacker" or "hacker news" in front of a title is meant for readership and less to make a thought-provoking point that might not have been made before.
sstrudeau 18y ago
"When you look at it from that perspective, it’s a no-brainer. You sue everyone and everything you can. If a 65 year old woman’s grandson downloads a CD of songs from Sesame Street on her computer, you sue her, sue the kid who spawned the little bastard, take the grandkid to juvenile court, and sue everyone on their block just for being within a reasonable proximity." Perhaps not a stupid course of action, but certainly a scummy one. So the sue-happy recording industry CEO isn't stupid; he's just a scumbag.
- jcl 18y ago
  OK, I can understand Matt's rationale for the RIAA suing file-sharers, but I'm having trouble applying the same reasoning to them suing a person who doesn't own a computer at all and is, in addition, dead. (http://www.betanews.com/article/RIAA-Sues-Deceased-Grandmother/1107532260 http://www.betanews.com/article/RIAA-Sues-Deceased-Grandmoth...) Experts though they may be, sometimes what looks like a screw-up is actually a screw-up.
jraines 18y ago
Symptoms I'd add: 1) Recency bias 2) Mistaking "Easy to have an interesting debate about" for "interesting". That last one's a fine line, so to clarify, an example might be "Twitter's impact on X" vs. "Friendfeed's use of MySQL to store schemaless data"
thorax 18y ago
Hacker News Disease? This issue is as old as the oldest of: armchair coaching, backseat driving, parody ballads, cocktail parties, in-laws, or op-ed columns. What he's really saying is that he doesn't like hearing people's opinions when they're not experts, especially if they're condescending, dismissively rude, or disrepectful. I feel the same way, but not enough to write a long post on it-- I'm more of the type to provide my own comment for temperance or move on to a thread where people are being less judgemental and know-it-all-ish. I think his best bet, on a site like Hacker News, is to avoid reading the comments for border-line inappropriate posts about YouTube takedowns, Disney acquisitions, international trade, etc. All the hacker-specific topics are bound to have some experts floating around here, though. When there's not an expert on a given topic, I do like to hear polite advice from other smart people that may have had an alternative idea in mind that didn't occur to me. This site has always been good about that. It's one of the benefits of having smart people floating around since knowledgeable people aren't always handy.
- billswift 17y ago
  I hate the term "judgemental". It is almost as stupid and self-contradictory as "opinionated".
  - beta 17y ago
    So much for maintaining objectivity...
tc7 18y ago
I read it, and kept wondering if he was saying that if we're not formally trained in whatever the issue is, we should assume it's valid simply because the people involved are formally trained. It seems that it would be dangerous to take this view very far. Experts should be given weight in a discussion because they have better arguments, not simply because we assume they know what they're talking about... I may have missed some subtleties, or the whole point :).
noodle 18y ago
with respect to point #1, not having knowledge shouldn't preclude intelligent discourse with full disclosure of knowledge. intelligent discourse tends to lead towards knowledge acquisition.
philh 18y ago
I only skimmed "The Future of the Recording Industry", but it seems to be a case of exactly this. "Though not mathematically proven (which would be virtually impossible) it logically seems as if DRM must actually cost artists and labels money on recorded music sales." So recording industry execs could increase short-term revenue - which is what they care about - by changing their strategy. How does this sit with "they're not stupid, and they know the situation far better than you"? And now you claim that the industry is doing what you advised/predicted. So it seems that intelligent people can analyse situations where they are not in possession of as many facts as other intelligent people, and still come out with a more correct answer. (Or at least, an answer that appears more correct given the industry's actions at the time. Possibly it already had the correct answer, and was just moving slowly.) Maybe these intelligent people will be wrong more often than not, but looking at incentives: if you're right, you look like a prophet or at least get to feel self-satisfied. If you're wrong, everyone forgets; you lose nothing except the time spent thinking and writing, which was probably fun and educational anyway. You probably don't even need a reward for being right to make this worthwhile.
mechanical_fish 18y ago
Not a disease at all. Playing around with objects and concepts that you don't understand is perhaps the very definition of "hacking". Why dabble in things that you don't understand? Why treat the world as if it were one big toy? Why pretend that duct tape is a reasonable substitute for the correct part, as designed by an expert? Because it's fun! And educational. As many people know, a good way to learn how to do things correctly is to begin by doing them wrong, and then let experience, the laws of nature, trial and error, the advice of friendly, expert onlookers, and the guidance of your peers guide you toward something better. Obviously you can take this too far. There's a difference between armchair lawyering and actually practicing law, just as there's a difference between armchair quarterbacking and actually playing quarterback. But every quarterback started out as someone having fun, and every expert, trained lawyer got their start by being an inexpert, untrained, full-of-crap college sophomore with an interest in the law. Hacker News isn't a law firm. Its knobs aren't connected to anything vital. [1] Why not fiddle with them? You might learn something. --- [1] How would you recognize someone on HN who probably is a real lawyer, or law student? They take pains to explicitly disconnect the knobs before they frob them, by saying something like: "I am a lawyer, but this is not sound legal advice. Blah blah blah highly meaningful defensive boilerplate blah blah blah." Usually the disclaimer is three times longer than the post itself.
- tokenadult 18y ago
  How would you recognize someone on HN who probably is a real lawyer, or law student? Often enough, by their very reluctance to contribute opinions in threads that are discussing legal issues. I AM a lawyer (although I'm not particularly experienced about many of the legal issues that show up most on HN). I often don't hazard an opinion at all, because the thread leaves me feeling I have too little sure knowledge of the relevant facts to offer an opinion. Someone who spouts off an opinion instantly after reading an "Ask HN: . . . ?" post is, as you correctly suggest, almost certainly not a lawyer.
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    That's exactly been my experience with lawyers, in the many times I've talked to them. They don't give you an opinion until you pay them for it.
utsmokingaces 18y ago
Startup CEOS are forced to learn to be proficient in numerous areas. The 80/20 rules applies well startup CEOS. They don't have to spend years in school in a specific subject to have great use of it. There is no a way a person can be an expert in programming, design, finance, marketing, and so on. However being an expert doesn't mean you have utilized your knowledge in the most useful ways possible. Good startup CEOs are able to recognize what is worth learning and how to tie different aspect of his knowledge together. I would be willing to take advice in may areas from a good Entrepreneur. This is why take advice from PG on everything from how to be a great programmer, entrepreneur, angel investor, and much more.
randallsquared 18y ago
"That’s what they did, and it’s what I’d do too, and I have standardized tests to prove that I’m at least not an idiot. But everyone in the tech industry just assumes they’re stupid and they don’t get it." Well, as you say, the alternative is that they're knowingly using the legal system to bully people into bankruptcy to stave off having to actually produce value for the money they're getting. We may hope that they're ignorant or stupid, because the alternative is worse.
baddox 18y ago
Doesn't he mean mistaking knowledge for intelligence?
- TJensen 17y ago
  No. There is another interesting issue there, but in this case, it is really smart people thinking that smarts trumps domain expertise (knowledge).
aswanson 18y ago
Speaking of the law, I would advise anyone, whether interested in becoming a lawyer or not, to buy and work the problems in LSAT practice workbooks. It is a serious exercise in forming logically coherent arguments that will provide across-the-board mental benefits.
jacoblyles 18y ago
The examples that Matt points out are more examples of tech culture groupthink than a phenomenon that is unique to hacker news. That is, they are ideas that are widely and passionately agreed upon within the culture to the point that disagreeing with them makes you look like a curmudgeon. This happens in lots of cultures. It is not something unique to hackers, smart people, or Hacker News.
tsally 18y ago
As the one who directly responded to Matt about the Lessig issue, I still stand by my statement. Indeed, many of the thoughts in Matt's post did in fact occur to me, and I still decided to make the argument that suing Lessig is a bad idea. I find it amusing that Matt decides to believe with no evidence that my views and the views of others are not thought out. On a different note, I agree with the idiocy of arguing about fair use without any background in it. You will however see that I never brought up fair use in my writing. All and all, I'd say that Matt has badly mischaracterized the discussion that went on. I invite you to review it for yourself. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586154 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586154 Also Matt, something to consider about the Lessig issue. Even if he loses, Warner's loss will be bigger. The more exposure the public gets to big business's senseless ideas about copyright, the quicker it will be killed off. When did RIAA's suits against individuals stop? When some court cases got serious publicity. The RIAA won the court cases in question, but what mattered more was the fact that the public was exposed to what was going on. The current iteration of copyright law and precedent is outdated and eventually it is all going to change. In the mean time they should just keep quiet and earn as much money as they can off of an outdated system. Suing Lessig strikes me as an effort to change the direction copyright reform is moving in. That simply is not going to happen.
cia_plant 18y ago
Don't all of these points apply to discussions of, say, "energy healing"? My view of energy healing is that it's obvious bullshit. However, there are a number of very smart people who believe in energy healing, and they have studied energy healing much more extensively than I have.
owinebarger 17y ago
This actually strikes close to home. Two of the closest people to me are lawyers, and they hate discussing law with me. The problem as I see it is that I'm interested in what the best law/result would be, and they're focused on what's likely to happen in the real world. An abstract problem for me is making sausage for them. Of course, they might believe that the sausage is also the best result, and that there is no platonic ideal solution, or they might have just learned not to care, or something else. I don't know. In any case, if you believe in being a responsible citizen in a democratic society, you should spend some time thinking about how government should work, and part of that is how the legal system works. If you think that's all a pile of BS we teach our kids to keep them innocent, you probably aren't wasting your time on thinking about these kinds of problems, as it's just how lawyers justify their existence (in terms of making a living).
sscheper 17y ago
Honestly, the technology sector is better than every other sector
ahoyhere 17y ago
Pretty good, and true in its way, altho like many things on HN, it just touches the surface and doesn't go further down to the core issue. Which is: Intelligence (capability) is not knowledge (facts), AND knowledge (facts) do not equate to wisdom (judgment). Many people here on HN pretend to have knowledge they don't, that's true. But they also do not have or exercise wisdom, or reason. For an example, just go back to that thread where I baited that misogynist jerk time_management into revealing his true colors. He may have been stating facts up to that point, and people defended his statement of facts or debated their factualness, but nobody else questioned that selection of "facts" -- and the motive behind stating them. If only other people would study the art of rhetoric.
slvrspoon 17y ago
Wow HN(!) what a discussion. its.. fun.. sort of. Matt: if the philosophical underpinnings of the country you live in.. (e.g. the constitution) agreed with you, we'd have no JURY SYSTEM brother :). believe me, i (and many readers here) share your sentiments often, but respect for formal knowledge must come from knowledge itself, not prior experience or credentials. Also, as a former tech analyst who spent a LOT of time working with the labels in 1998-2000 on DRM and MP3, i can offer you this perspective: the music "industry" as we know it, only existed for a small amount of time between the first, nearly accidental, record sales, and the advent of the digital age. Musical artists as a group have never truly profited much from recorded distributed music - they have made money from live performance.. where, as you look at recent trends with companies such as LiveNation, things are predictably returning to. The execs yachts will be repo'd and among their jury may be the very people they prosecuted. rob
10ren 17y ago
The CD is plainly marked for extinction, to be replaced by digital downloads, most of which will be traded from one person to another for free. You made me realize that we don't really know this. It does look like it, but what if networks and PCs (Windows) really were universally filtered? (Which is happening) It's unlikely, bad - but possible. Prediction can be tricky, particularly of the future.
c00p3r 17y ago
There was a similiar discussion not long ago about 'everyone is a damn expert'. It could be described as copy-and-paste sindrome. Read in one tab of the browser and write in the next, without digesting or even understanding. Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V for faster scoring.
andrewljohnson 17y ago
This is a boring, windy, piece of garbage writing.
radley 17y ago
Any chance I can earn points for not responding?
pageman 17y ago
I felt I needed to comment on this because it hits too close to home and I qualify - 1) dealt with IP vs. another music lable (hint!) 2) we have our own IP lawyers 3) the music labels want you to assume they have a "battery" of lawyers 4) they probably do but they're entangled in other litigation issues or they don't want study the finer points so they issue pre-emptive attacks or don't do anything at all 5) even on our side of the fence, the best IP lawyer/s don't want to study the finer points of the argument (you'd wish they'd do that) 6) in the end, it becomes a question of will and who has the war chest. I understand where Matt is coming from but it looks different when you're neck deep into this.
billswift 17y ago
I think the reason for the upper quartile underestimating their abilities relative to the others is related to the fact that bright people tend to overestimate the intelligence of people they have casual contact with. Which would result in lowering their own self-appraisal relative to the others.

215 points by sant0sk1 18y ago

"People tend to overvalue the skills they have, and undervalue the ones they don’t. Even the most knowledgeable, intelligent people around are rarely experts in more than one or maybe two unrelated subject areas." Very good point. I might add that people whose expertise provides a comfortable income are especially likely to think of themselves as experts on things they know nothing about. I hope that they learn to contribute their intelligence to doing nonprofit community service and solving intractable social problems.

tdavis 18y ago
I found that quote interesting because I've always considered myself to feel exactly the opposite. Okay, I can create / run / manage every part of a website from the ground up, but people who really get Calculus make me feel retarded. What about scientists who create new chemical compounds and molecules and crazy stuff like that? Way over my head. Quantum Physicists? Forget it. Doctors? They have to fix bugs which involve an essentially innumerable number of variables! I feel there are all sorts of industries and occupations that are far more difficult to learn and require far more intelligence than my skills in programming, design, and systems administration. Most I think I could probably learn and excel at, given a long enough timeline, but others I feel are likely beyond my grasp. I see no way I could ever become a Mathematician, for example.
- trefn 17y ago
  I think it is significant that all of the professions you mentioned are science based. I feel exactly the way you do about engineering and science jobs, but less rigorous fields do not have the same effect on me. I think this might be why we are all willing to judge the efforts of politicians, managers, etc - what they do seems to simply require having an opinion and acting on it. In the sciences, though, we know that you have to be really knowledgeable to be successful.
  - tdavis 17y ago
    I feel the same to an extent; I wonder why that is. At the same time, I don't claim I could walk off the street and build a better house than a construction worker, or fix broken pipes better than a plumber. I couldn't even be a better politician; they are better at social hacking such as faking sincerity. I have a low threshold for that stuff. Still, I consider sciences harder in general than those, even if that isn't actually true.
- phugoid 17y ago
  It saddens me that many people I've met would mistake your humility for weakness. I see it as a great strength.
  - tdavis 17y ago
    It's a strength as far as it keeps me from making a fool of myself (most of the time) ;) The only thing I truly claim to know is that I know nothing. I have a feeling I'll die without truly knowing anything, but that's fine by me.
    - falien 17y ago
      Socrates by way of Plato said something along the lines of "I'm the wisest man in the land because I know that I know nothing." It seems to me that many of the geniuses I've read biographies of started with a similar humility and a healthy dose of curiosity, so I always figured that was a good place to start too.
chadgeidel 18y ago
I've often wondered if this were true in general or only in the tech industry. Do Doctors, Lawyers, or Nuclear Physicists think they know about everything else?
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  It depends. I know it exists in finance to a similar degree. I think it has to do with how insular the particular industry is. Tech is often very insular, because all you need are some hackers. My start up, for instance, doesn't need salesmen, or scientists, or accountants, or even a receptionist or whatever else. I really only care about one or two skill sets, so I could just assume that every salesman alive is a moron and still succeed just as well. I feel like it doesn't exist so much in many broader industries. Great businessmen realize that success is about getting people who are good at what they do and giving them everything they need to succeed, and then staying the hell out of their way. In a biotech company, for instance, some of the skill sets required are science, sales, accounting, politics/lobbying, manufacturing, etc. Successes in an industry like that sort of requires you to be willing to admit other people are as smart as you and know more than you about many things.
- Kaizyn 17y ago
  It probably has more to do with what is used as a measure of status in the field. If your field uses money or prestige, then you are probably less likely to think you know everything about other fields. However, in fields like tech where intelligence is how the nerds establish the pecking order, they are likely to carry over the same sorts of social norms to dealing with those outside the field.

pg 18y ago

The curious thing is, this post is an instance of what it complains about. Matt is not so far as I know a formally trained psychologist. So to the extent he's right, he disproves his own argument. The truth is, while intelligence isn't knowledge, it can be rapidly converted into it. In fact that would do fairly well as a definition of intelligence. And in any case, credentials aren't knowledge either. Ultimately you have to judge any argument by what it says, not who said it.

anigbrowl 18y ago
We're just not as smart as he thinks he is.
mattmaroon 18y ago
Well, I didn't mean it was literally a mental disease, that part was more tongue in cheek. But that's pretty funny. I am, at best, a very amateur psychologist. You're right about credentials though for sure, but how do you judge an intricate argument on its merits when you just don't know much about the topic? For instance, read some of the articles for and against anthropogenic global warming written by scientists. I can find very convincing arguments on either side, full of lots of facts I probably can't easily verify and lots of conclusions drawn from them that I can't easily validate are sound logic, because I know so little about climate science. Without me spending years rapidly converting my intelligence into domain specific knowledge, as the people making those arguments have done, how do I know which side to believe when I step into the voting booth? It's an epistemology problem, and a tough one.
- ErrantX 18y ago
  So if your not a political expert does that preclude you from voting in an election?
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    No. It without a doubt precludes me from ever being 100% certain I'm voting the right way. But I feel comfortable voting because I think I'm more frequently correct than the average voter. On the other hand, 80% of men think they're an above average driver.

uuilly 18y ago

Matt, you might be interested in Thomas Sowell: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/author/thomas_sowell/ http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/author/thomas_sowe... His entire political philosophy is anchored on the observation that knowledge is dispersed and that no one person's knowledge of the world entirely eclipses that of 12 random people.

estromberg 18y ago

Very thoughtful post, thanks for sharing. One observation: If, as Matt describes, an executive at a major music label realized the emerging trends of the industry but chose the path that would maximize his stock options over the next 2-3 years at the long-run expense of the stockholders, this would be illegal, and not constitute the "no-brainer" decision that Matt describes. Executives have a fiduciary duty to stockholders to place long-run stockholder interest above their own. In fact, if this was found to be the case, he would most likely lose these options as well as suffer other legal ramifications. (disclaimer: not a lawyer, I just read blogs about lawyers :) You can argue that executives rarely do this, but nonetheless the legal obligation exists. I would like to think that those executives who take the attitude of "i just want to get my money and run, who cares about the long-term state of the corporation" is the minority, rather than the majority.

mattmaroon 18y ago
Does the law specify a timeline? Even if it did, would it be possible to prove that the CEO knowingly optimized for 3 year gains at the expense of 20 year ones? An executive's options sink or swim with the company's share price. If a company's investors really want their executives to focus on the horizon, they should adjust compensation accordingly. Lengthen CEO tenure, and give stock/option grants with 10 year vesting periods. People will always act in accordance with their own incentives. That's the fundamental principle behind the free market. The only way to get a CEO to focus on your long term success is to tie his long term success to it too.

raganwald 18y ago

Matt, good fellow that you are, this post had many excellent points about the music industry and how last year's executives were incented to not get it. However, I must take issue with you singling out "intelligent" people for thinking other people with expertise are idiots. I invite you to have a drink (on me) at any sports bar in Toronto and we will trip over people who think that various professional players, coaches, and analysts are idiots. And likewise if we seat ourselves on any transit bus or train we will have no trouble earwigging a dozen conversations in which people with no experience or expertise in government will denounce their elected representatives as idiots, and then toss in the unelected civil servants as being twice as dumb. I suggest what you are seeing on HN is a fairly common phenomenon. So while I liked your insight into the executives and their entirely rational behaviour in beating a reluctant and bloody retreat, I take issue with the title. It's simply Peanut Gallery Disease.

mattmaroon 18y ago
Very good point, and I'll be taking you up on that whenever I get back to your lovely city.
- raganwald 18y ago
  I look forward to it. And by the way... The people second-guessing Toronto's Mayor David Miller? Obviously they're idiots!
Batsu 17y ago
So well put it hurts. Bravo.
jodrellblank 17y ago
It's not a disease. If I couldn't talk about things I don't understand, I couldn't talk about anything. Being involved is more fun.

edw519 18y ago

Let's not forget the culture we thrive in, both here at Hacker News and in tech in general. Many of us are mavericks, non-conformists, even revolutionaries. We may be that way by nature, may have become that way in the field, or more likely, a little of each. Why? Because it works. I know people who have slaved away in the same "paradigm" for years, with a cynical view of the world, and an "acceptance" of the status quo. But not so much for us hackers. Especially those of us starting our own businesses. It's not only acceptable to go against the grain, it's often necessary for great success. That certainly doesn't give us carte blanche to question everything, but questioning too much without benefit of background and experience gives rise to "Hacker News Disease". That's the price we pay for pushing the envelope too hard and too often. We overstep our bounds once in a while and have to be put back into our place. Frankly, I'd rather have it this way and ruffle a few feathers along the way than to never make a mistake and fade away into oblivion.

Hexstream 18y ago

"I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen someone post a legal question on Hacker News, and get dozens of replies from people who aren’t attorneys." The only problem I could see with that is if the one posting the legal question has any expectation that he'll get replies from attorneys. I think that's unlikely. The part about dozen of replies from people who aren't attorneys is completely expectable given that it's Hacker News, not Attorney News.

Gibbon 18y ago
Not to mention the fact that "legal" posts on HN are more likely to be prefaced with "I'm not a lawyer, so don't take my advice seriously".

carbon8 18y ago

There's also the huge mistake of assuming that people and organizations always make well-considered and rational decisions. This is particularly true with strategic decisions made by large organizations.

jerf 18y ago
The argument is fundamentally predicated on this point, which I find extremely naive. I can and do (and did) extend benefit of the doubt, but the idea that we must always assume that people are acting rationally, and that mattmaroon is justified in getting on a soap box when people don't make that assumption, is not justified. (Disclosure: I was linked as one of the cite examples, which I've replied to there as well: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586345 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586345 )
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]

jmtame 18y ago

Why did you call this "hacker news" disease? While I read the article and enjoyed some of it, you're still making a point that has been said many times before: smart people tend to think of themselves as smart, and think of others as inferior to them. This happens in a lot of places, it's not just hacker news. So I'm still a bit puzzled as to why you did this--it seems these days that sticking "hacker" or "hacker news" in front of a title is meant for readership and less to make a thought-provoking point that might not have been made before.

sstrudeau 18y ago

"When you look at it from that perspective, it’s a no-brainer. You sue everyone and everything you can. If a 65 year old woman’s grandson downloads a CD of songs from Sesame Street on her computer, you sue her, sue the kid who spawned the little bastard, take the grandkid to juvenile court, and sue everyone on their block just for being within a reasonable proximity." Perhaps not a stupid course of action, but certainly a scummy one. So the sue-happy recording industry CEO isn't stupid; he's just a scumbag.

jcl 18y ago
OK, I can understand Matt's rationale for the RIAA suing file-sharers, but I'm having trouble applying the same reasoning to them suing a person who doesn't own a computer at all and is, in addition, dead. (http://www.betanews.com/article/RIAA-Sues-Deceased-Grandmother/1107532260 http://www.betanews.com/article/RIAA-Sues-Deceased-Grandmoth...) Experts though they may be, sometimes what looks like a screw-up is actually a screw-up.

jraines 18y ago

Symptoms I'd add: 1) Recency bias 2) Mistaking "Easy to have an interesting debate about" for "interesting". That last one's a fine line, so to clarify, an example might be "Twitter's impact on X" vs. "Friendfeed's use of MySQL to store schemaless data"

thorax 18y ago

Hacker News Disease? This issue is as old as the oldest of: armchair coaching, backseat driving, parody ballads, cocktail parties, in-laws, or op-ed columns. What he's really saying is that he doesn't like hearing people's opinions when they're not experts, especially if they're condescending, dismissively rude, or disrepectful. I feel the same way, but not enough to write a long post on it-- I'm more of the type to provide my own comment for temperance or move on to a thread where people are being less judgemental and know-it-all-ish. I think his best bet, on a site like Hacker News, is to avoid reading the comments for border-line inappropriate posts about YouTube takedowns, Disney acquisitions, international trade, etc. All the hacker-specific topics are bound to have some experts floating around here, though. When there's not an expert on a given topic, I do like to hear polite advice from other smart people that may have had an alternative idea in mind that didn't occur to me. This site has always been good about that. It's one of the benefits of having smart people floating around since knowledgeable people aren't always handy.

billswift 17y ago
I hate the term "judgemental". It is almost as stupid and self-contradictory as "opinionated".
- beta 17y ago
  So much for maintaining objectivity...

tc7 18y ago

I read it, and kept wondering if he was saying that if we're not formally trained in whatever the issue is, we should assume it's valid simply because the people involved are formally trained. It seems that it would be dangerous to take this view very far. Experts should be given weight in a discussion because they have better arguments, not simply because we assume they know what they're talking about... I may have missed some subtleties, or the whole point :).

noodle 18y ago

with respect to point #1, not having knowledge shouldn't preclude intelligent discourse with full disclosure of knowledge. intelligent discourse tends to lead towards knowledge acquisition.

philh 18y ago

I only skimmed "The Future of the Recording Industry", but it seems to be a case of exactly this. "Though not mathematically proven (which would be virtually impossible) it logically seems as if DRM must actually cost artists and labels money on recorded music sales." So recording industry execs could increase short-term revenue - which is what they care about - by changing their strategy. How does this sit with "they're not stupid, and they know the situation far better than you"? And now you claim that the industry is doing what you advised/predicted. So it seems that intelligent people can analyse situations where they are not in possession of as many facts as other intelligent people, and still come out with a more correct answer. (Or at least, an answer that appears more correct given the industry's actions at the time. Possibly it already had the correct answer, and was just moving slowly.) Maybe these intelligent people will be wrong more often than not, but looking at incentives: if you're right, you look like a prophet or at least get to feel self-satisfied. If you're wrong, everyone forgets; you lose nothing except the time spent thinking and writing, which was probably fun and educational anyway. You probably don't even need a reward for being right to make this worthwhile.

mechanical_fish 18y ago

Not a disease at all. Playing around with objects and concepts that you don't understand is perhaps the very definition of "hacking". Why dabble in things that you don't understand? Why treat the world as if it were one big toy? Why pretend that duct tape is a reasonable substitute for the correct part, as designed by an expert? Because it's fun! And educational. As many people know, a good way to learn how to do things correctly is to begin by doing them wrong, and then let experience, the laws of nature, trial and error, the advice of friendly, expert onlookers, and the guidance of your peers guide you toward something better. Obviously you can take this too far. There's a difference between armchair lawyering and actually practicing law, just as there's a difference between armchair quarterbacking and actually playing quarterback. But every quarterback started out as someone having fun, and every expert, trained lawyer got their start by being an inexpert, untrained, full-of-crap college sophomore with an interest in the law. Hacker News isn't a law firm. Its knobs aren't connected to anything vital. [1] Why not fiddle with them? You might learn something. --- [1] How would you recognize someone on HN who probably is a real lawyer, or law student? They take pains to explicitly disconnect the knobs before they frob them, by saying something like: "I am a lawyer, but this is not sound legal advice. Blah blah blah highly meaningful defensive boilerplate blah blah blah." Usually the disclaimer is three times longer than the post itself.

tokenadult 18y ago
How would you recognize someone on HN who probably is a real lawyer, or law student? Often enough, by their very reluctance to contribute opinions in threads that are discussing legal issues. I AM a lawyer (although I'm not particularly experienced about many of the legal issues that show up most on HN). I often don't hazard an opinion at all, because the thread leaves me feeling I have too little sure knowledge of the relevant facts to offer an opinion. Someone who spouts off an opinion instantly after reading an "Ask HN: . . . ?" post is, as you correctly suggest, almost certainly not a lawyer.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  That's exactly been my experience with lawyers, in the many times I've talked to them. They don't give you an opinion until you pay them for it.

utsmokingaces 18y ago

Startup CEOS are forced to learn to be proficient in numerous areas. The 80/20 rules applies well startup CEOS. They don't have to spend years in school in a specific subject to have great use of it. There is no a way a person can be an expert in programming, design, finance, marketing, and so on. However being an expert doesn't mean you have utilized your knowledge in the most useful ways possible. Good startup CEOs are able to recognize what is worth learning and how to tie different aspect of his knowledge together. I would be willing to take advice in may areas from a good Entrepreneur. This is why take advice from PG on everything from how to be a great programmer, entrepreneur, angel investor, and much more.

randallsquared 18y ago

"That’s what they did, and it’s what I’d do too, and I have standardized tests to prove that I’m at least not an idiot. But everyone in the tech industry just assumes they’re stupid and they don’t get it." Well, as you say, the alternative is that they're knowingly using the legal system to bully people into bankruptcy to stave off having to actually produce value for the money they're getting. We may hope that they're ignorant or stupid, because the alternative is worse.

baddox 18y ago

Doesn't he mean mistaking knowledge for intelligence?

TJensen 17y ago
No. There is another interesting issue there, but in this case, it is really smart people thinking that smarts trumps domain expertise (knowledge).

aswanson 18y ago

Speaking of the law, I would advise anyone, whether interested in becoming a lawyer or not, to buy and work the problems in LSAT practice workbooks. It is a serious exercise in forming logically coherent arguments that will provide across-the-board mental benefits.

jacoblyles 18y ago

The examples that Matt points out are more examples of tech culture groupthink than a phenomenon that is unique to hacker news. That is, they are ideas that are widely and passionately agreed upon within the culture to the point that disagreeing with them makes you look like a curmudgeon. This happens in lots of cultures. It is not something unique to hackers, smart people, or Hacker News.

tsally 18y ago

As the one who directly responded to Matt about the Lessig issue, I still stand by my statement. Indeed, many of the thoughts in Matt's post did in fact occur to me, and I still decided to make the argument that suing Lessig is a bad idea. I find it amusing that Matt decides to believe with no evidence that my views and the views of others are not thought out. On a different note, I agree with the idiocy of arguing about fair use without any background in it. You will however see that I never brought up fair use in my writing. All and all, I'd say that Matt has badly mischaracterized the discussion that went on. I invite you to review it for yourself. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586154 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586154 Also Matt, something to consider about the Lessig issue. Even if he loses, Warner's loss will be bigger. The more exposure the public gets to big business's senseless ideas about copyright, the quicker it will be killed off. When did RIAA's suits against individuals stop? When some court cases got serious publicity. The RIAA won the court cases in question, but what mattered more was the fact that the public was exposed to what was going on. The current iteration of copyright law and precedent is outdated and eventually it is all going to change. In the mean time they should just keep quiet and earn as much money as they can off of an outdated system. Suing Lessig strikes me as an effort to change the direction copyright reform is moving in. That simply is not going to happen.

cia_plant 18y ago

Don't all of these points apply to discussions of, say, "energy healing"? My view of energy healing is that it's obvious bullshit. However, there are a number of very smart people who believe in energy healing, and they have studied energy healing much more extensively than I have.

owinebarger 17y ago

This actually strikes close to home. Two of the closest people to me are lawyers, and they hate discussing law with me. The problem as I see it is that I'm interested in what the best law/result would be, and they're focused on what's likely to happen in the real world. An abstract problem for me is making sausage for them. Of course, they might believe that the sausage is also the best result, and that there is no platonic ideal solution, or they might have just learned not to care, or something else. I don't know. In any case, if you believe in being a responsible citizen in a democratic society, you should spend some time thinking about how government should work, and part of that is how the legal system works. If you think that's all a pile of BS we teach our kids to keep them innocent, you probably aren't wasting your time on thinking about these kinds of problems, as it's just how lawyers justify their existence (in terms of making a living).

sscheper 17y ago

Honestly, the technology sector is better than every other sector

ahoyhere 17y ago

Pretty good, and true in its way, altho like many things on HN, it just touches the surface and doesn't go further down to the core issue. Which is: Intelligence (capability) is not knowledge (facts), AND knowledge (facts) do not equate to wisdom (judgment). Many people here on HN pretend to have knowledge they don't, that's true. But they also do not have or exercise wisdom, or reason. For an example, just go back to that thread where I baited that misogynist jerk time_management into revealing his true colors. He may have been stating facts up to that point, and people defended his statement of facts or debated their factualness, but nobody else questioned that selection of "facts" -- and the motive behind stating them. If only other people would study the art of rhetoric.

slvrspoon 17y ago

Wow HN(!) what a discussion. its.. fun.. sort of. Matt: if the philosophical underpinnings of the country you live in.. (e.g. the constitution) agreed with you, we'd have no JURY SYSTEM brother :). believe me, i (and many readers here) share your sentiments often, but respect for formal knowledge must come from knowledge itself, not prior experience or credentials. Also, as a former tech analyst who spent a LOT of time working with the labels in 1998-2000 on DRM and MP3, i can offer you this perspective: the music "industry" as we know it, only existed for a small amount of time between the first, nearly accidental, record sales, and the advent of the digital age. Musical artists as a group have never truly profited much from recorded distributed music - they have made money from live performance.. where, as you look at recent trends with companies such as LiveNation, things are predictably returning to. The execs yachts will be repo'd and among their jury may be the very people they prosecuted. rob

10ren 17y ago

The CD is plainly marked for extinction, to be replaced by digital downloads, most of which will be traded from one person to another for free. You made me realize that we don't really know this. It does look like it, but what if networks and PCs (Windows) really were universally filtered? (Which is happening) It's unlikely, bad - but possible. Prediction can be tricky, particularly of the future.

c00p3r 17y ago

There was a similiar discussion not long ago about 'everyone is a damn expert'. It could be described as copy-and-paste sindrome. Read in one tab of the browser and write in the next, without digesting or even understanding. Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V for faster scoring.

andrewljohnson 17y ago

This is a boring, windy, piece of garbage writing.

radley 17y ago

Any chance I can earn points for not responding?

pageman 17y ago

I felt I needed to comment on this because it hits too close to home and I qualify - 1) dealt with IP vs. another music lable (hint!) 2) we have our own IP lawyers 3) the music labels want you to assume they have a "battery" of lawyers 4) they probably do but they're entangled in other litigation issues or they don't want study the finer points so they issue pre-emptive attacks or don't do anything at all 5) even on our side of the fence, the best IP lawyer/s don't want to study the finer points of the argument (you'd wish they'd do that) 6) in the end, it becomes a question of will and who has the war chest. I understand where Matt is coming from but it looks different when you're neck deep into this.

billswift 17y ago

I think the reason for the upper quartile underestimating their abilities relative to the others is related to the fact that bright people tend to overestimate the intelligence of people they have casual contact with. Which would result in lowering their own self-appraisal relative to the others.