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"Arbiters of truth" ? Smug self-righteousness and self congratulation seem to get a lot of upvotes on Hacker News.
by natfriedman 17y ago
"Arbiters of truth" ? Smug self-righteousness and self congratulation seem to get a lot of upvotes on Hacker News.
- unalone 17y agoAre you surprised by that? This is a site sponsored by an organization that looks for elite people in order to sponsor them as they start businesses. As a result, a large part of the crowd here consists of people who either think they're elite or who want to learn how to be elite. Combine that with the fact that computer people have a tendency towards being smug/rude/insecure, and you have an audience that's drawn like a magnet towards anything remotely congratulatory.
- madair 17y agoIf by elite people you mean talented entrepreneurs then you might have something ;-)
- madair 17y agoAh yes, vote me down, you're elite people you are.
- natfriedman 17y agoGood point. And some degree of overconfidence and maybe hubris is perhaps necessary to start a company and to suffer the slings and arrows of that experience long enough to have a shot at success. Channel that kind of energy into creating something useful, and you can do a lot of good in the world. So it comes with the territory. But the self-applause can get a little monotonous when there isn't also interesting new content.
- unalone 17y agoAnd some degree of overconfidence and maybe hubris is perhaps necessary to start a company and to suffer the slings and arrows of that experience long enough to have a shot at success. Absolutely. And I'm the worst of the lot. When I work on anything, my ego swells to a level that has to be experienced in person to be believed. So the hubris is a good thing. As you said, where it goes wrong is when that ego forces itself upon topics that aren't work-related.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]