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It's a totally non-conscious change that keeps pulling you in further. You get so addicted to pleasing, or at least not upsetting the forum. You unknowingly ada
by solve 11y ago
It's a totally non-conscious change that keeps pulling you in further. You get so addicted to pleasing, or at least not upsetting the forum. You unknowingly adapt to learn their language, try to stay ahead of the latest themes. Pretty soon, mixed in with the great stuff, you also start believing some total uninformed nonsense that the community has emergently evolved to, and you don't even realize how terribly wrong some of it was until years later when you experience how badly they mislead you first hand.
That includes a few things that HN believes too. So terribly wrong, on a few particular things. No different than religion. We're made to fall for this stuff. People who believe themselves smart, MORE SO than anyone else.
Same reason that parents try so hard to keep their children from "falling in with a bad crowd". Your mind is weak and desperate to please those you're surrounded with.
- unclebucknasty 11y agoDon't know why you were downvoted, but have an upvote from me. You nailed it. There is such an assuredness of the rightness of some beliefs here and I have used the word religion to describe it as well. It's a shame. It's called Hacker News and presumably seemed to have Libertarian leanings that you might expect. Yet, in reality, there is a solid emphasis on conforming over individualism. A bunch of comformist hackers (oxymoron) and professed libertarians who insist that you believe as they do? And, to your point, I think a lot of people do conform (knowingly or not). Because, unless everyone actually does agree with one another on everything (not likely), then the choices are to conform or simply stop participating.