[ibn-python]

I’ve realized after building a small amount of competency in 2-3 narrow fields over the years how wrong most people are about those same topics online. Since becoming aware of this several years ago I’ve slowly limited my surfing to higher quality sites such as this one. I’ve always wondered how many completely incorrect beliefs I have about the world due to the compulsive surfing/reading of my younger years.

[bitcharmer]

I don't think HN is a higher quality site in the sense you are referring to here. At least not recently.

You will see some well grounded, expert opinions here down-voted into oblivion simply because they clash with the mental picture of a number of HN users.

As much as I love HN it is slowly sliding into reddit-ism.

[fractionalhare]

You will also see entire threads of people confidently stating utter speculation as if it's fact. HN is well-moderated and has high information density compared to most subreddits, but that doesn't mean the information is correct. What you see on HN is that both correct and incorrect comments tend to adopt the same academic affect in their writing. If you're not fairly familiar with the subject at hand, it's hard to tell who knows what they're talking about because it all sounds coherent and reasonable.

If you really want a lark, read the typical HN subthread on a topic involving trading, finance or economics. It's like watching the YouTube-educated spar with the Wikipedia-educated. Commenters with real world experience are downvoted just as often as they're upvoted when they try to earnestly correct mundane misconceptions.

Likewise you can't have a bug bounty story on HN without someone repeating the farce that web app vulns have some sort of shadowy black market. There is invariably a comment near the top claiming the security researcher could have received so much more money by selling it to criminals. It is amazing that something so wrong gets repeatedly so carelessly and easily.

These are a substantial number of people here who think they can confidently talk about anything if they just deconstruct it to first principles and treat it like something else they know about.

[autocorr]

I think this is the main thing, which is that the quality of the discussion really depends on the topic. As a post-doc in astronomy, I'm happy to report that the quality of HN discussion on astro-related submissions tends to be quite good[1]. The top level posts tend to be either be broad-level questions that get some good replies or "fun facts". This probably has to do with most folks being interested in space but not really having strong opinions, leading to cordial comment sections and a decent supply of actual astronomy experts on HN.

Now, for things like finance, markets, politics, etc. like you're getting at, those are a different store. I've been baffled that some political and finance posts have devolved to threads worse than Reddit... Maybe some subs have become homogeneous enough that they don't generate quite the same conflict?

[1] About once a year there's a Dark Matter related post that usually brings out a very critical set of responses. That and Dark Energy are just things you need a lot of investigation into the evidence of because, like Quantum Mechanics, they are just weird and don't make sense to the uninitiated.

[Wowfunhappy]

I mean, people have been saying this basically since the site began:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926703

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=289254

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66057

(I didn't find these, they're linked in the site guidelines.)

[lmm]

Because Reddit is a moving target. At any given time HN is of a similar quality to Reddit-as-of-three-years-ago and declining towards Reddit-as-of-now.

[Joeri]

I’ve been on HN for many years and don’t notice this decline. Could it be that those who observe a decline in quality simply have gotten more sensitive to low quality posts with age?

[lmm]

It's possible, but I do sometimes look back at comment sections from years ago, and the change seems very real.

[eloisius]

Reddit has always been a few steps ahead of HN in its slide toward redditism, but I agree with GP that it feels like there is more disagreement-downvoting and replies that add nothing to the conversation. Not to the same degree as Reddit, but I think on both sites we’re just witnessing the eternal September as they become less self-selective niche sites and more like mainstream social media.

[bitcharmer]

I'm aware of that. It's just that it got much worse recently.

[Pfhreak]

You joined recently, not sure how you've got any ability to say it's gotten worse 'recently.' Unless you are referring to the past 10 months or so where there was one or two things that might have impacted the discourse a bit.

HN still is the place it's always been. You have more data now, perhaps, but fundamentally it hasn't really changed. People continue to upvote and downvote in roughly the same ways, and they are used to agree and disagree just as they always have been.

[bitcharmer]

We might have different definitions of "recently", but I've been here 7 years in total: 3 years lurking, and 4 years as a user.

[daniellarusso]

You should not assume people keep their original account(s).

I have been active since 2009 here.

[kstenerud]

Sites with "high quality" content are only high quality in very specific areas, and are not devoid of noise. HN is good for getting quality information from insiders and experts in various elite fields (particularly technology related). Reddit is good for DIY stuff and special interest groups for personal things (finance, healthy living, repairs, building things, etc).

But of course the content of each site tends to go far outside its areas of competence, which is where moderation is needed (otherwise they turn into 4chan or youtube). You get a feel for the bullshit after being on the site awhile, and once you're well tuned to it you see it everywhere (the "this site has gone downhill" effect).

[TheRealDunkirk]

> Reddit is good for DIY stuff and special interest groups for personal things

If you say so. I used to Reddit heavily, but all the topics I followed definitely started trending into the "crazy people" territory. For instance, personal audio and mechanical keyboards. At one point, the "average" person could get on there and find a good price-per-peformance recommendation.

Now, those subs are taken over by the elites for whom money doesn't matter. I mean, it's neat that someone spent $2,000 building a custom-PCB'd, custom-switched, custom-capped keyboard -- and boy, those pics sure are sexy -- but there are only so many of those posts I can take until I realized that no one was talking about the range I can afford any more.

Reddit exists now as the worlds largest porn hub, with a very, very thin veneer over the top for respectability. If I google something specific -- like a question about a video game -- I specifically add "-site:reddit.com" because 1) 9 times out of 10, there's actually no answer, and 2) it takes a few clicks and many seconds to get TO the answer, because of their horrendous web site.

And, yes, I'm bitter, and bag on Reddit whenever I can.

[friendlybus]

The culture changed, reddit just follows. I still miss the thoughtful discussion of difficult ontological questions in the popular culture around 2017-2018. Soon we will be discussing rhe expectional mechanical keyboards, and then some time after that the tasteful keyboards, and then some time after that the sexy keyboards. It goes on, consistency is not rewarded as the wave of cultural interest moves on.

[haram_masala]

Is it, though? Maybe there’s been some regression to the mean as the readership has grown, but Reddit is pretty much intolerable drivel these days. There’s no comparison. dang and his team have done some heroic work to keep a high quality of content here.

[bitcharmer]

I agree dang and co are doing awesome work trying to maintain some minimal expected level of discourse here, however they are unable to do anything against mass down-voting of perfectly valid comments from people who actually know what they are talking about.

[JohnBooty]

The Reddit experience depends, to an extreme and absolute degree, upon the moderators and culture of the specific subreddit. Each subreddit is almost literally its own independent kingdom.

Saying anything about the quality of "Reddit" as a whole is very much like saying something about the quality of bars, or messageboards, or knitting clubs as a whole.

[haram_masala]

I upvoted you because you’re right and I’m wrong, which is the most un-Reddit thing I’ll do all day.

[knighthack]

> You will see some well grounded, expert opinions here down-voted into oblivion simply because they clash with the mental picture of a number of HN users.

I don't agree. I read HN constantly.

As far as I see, the areas where downvotes tend to occur are where they skew to opinion, or have some tidings to politics. In other areas, HN comments are generally high quality, and have a high signal-to-noise ratio.

I wouldn't also correlate expert opinions being downvoted as just because it would "clash with the mental picture of a number of HN users". That's a false correlation.

[johnisgood]

Well, if I were to talk about addiction and the "opioid crisis", I would most likely be down-voted (happened before) even though what I would say would be supported by tons of evidence. When I bother, I just recommend a credible book instead that talks about it and supports it with lots of evidence.

Actually, I am going to suggest it here just now because it is a great book and I would like more people to have a more accurate view on addiction: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/addiction-and-choice... (Addiction and Choice: Rethinking the relationship by Nick Heather and Gabriel Segal). It is from 2016, but most people's views on addiction is more than a few decades old, and all things considered, it is still fairly recent and all recent studies support these views. Please, if you are interested in addiction, have a read. :) It will get you up to date with it, and dispel lots of misconceptions that are still in the head of laymen.

[watwut]

Sociology, demographic and history are all pretty bad when they appear here.

ANnything that requires empathy for different demographics too. (Like old people.)

[daniellarusso]

As long as they are still readable, and not hidden, it can be reconciled.

When things start ‘disappearing’, that makes it much more difficult to contrast.

I have been on HN long enough to know that points != facts.

But, yeah, I have noticed lots of downvotes for people stating facts or their own personal observations.

[csomar]

Quality in HN has always been in a pendulum. It swings between Reddit and comes back to old HN or better. I think it goes in waves, maybe new users, or maybe it's the weather affecting people mentally.

[xenihn]

Supplement your HN with Blind.

[vecinu]

I personally find Blind to be a low quality, young demographic driven community with egotistical folks obsessed with money.

Was your experience different?

[fctorial]

What is 'blind'? Can't google it.

[ALittleLight]

The blind that fits the given description is a social network / app where you can register with a company email but are otherwise anonymous, so that you can post anonymously with people from your company.

A lot of people (at least where I work) are disgruntled there. I get the feeling they joined because they were unhappy and want to vent about the company anonymously, but with people who know what they're talking about. Maybe I'm just projecting though.

[ryandrake]

> register with a company email

> you can post anonymously

These two don't square. Your anonymity clearly depends on the site not being hacked.

[grzm]

https://www.teamblind.com

[GuB-42]

One strange thing I noticed on HN is that some of my most upvoted posts are in area outside my field of expertise. I do everything I can to fact check myself, but I'm sure I have been wrong several times and there are people more qualified than me to answer.

And some of my posts that are well within my field of expertise stay at zero.

When I get downvoted it is usually when I post an unpopular opinion, but rarely as a result of being wrong.

All this to say that while HN is, I think, one of the best communities, it doesn't mean you should leave your guard down. I'd say it is even more insidious here because you won't find easily debunked bullshit, no flat earthers here. Falsehoods here are to be subtle enough to go unnoticed by an educated mind, and you are not guaranteed to be corrected by a real expert.

[ehnto]

My least popular comments are also comments I have made with hard won experience in my field.

My not-very-humble guess is that it is two fold: One, if you only have a shallow understanding of something, it is easy to dismiss things as wrong if they don't align with your understanding so far. Two, if you do have a deep understanding of a topic but different experiences in the field, you may have really strong opinions in a different direction.

Disappointingly they are also usually the least discussed comments of mine and I rarely figure out why they were downvoted.

[croissants]

Can you link to some of your "hard won experience" comments? Now I'm curious about them.

[randcraw]

In my case, I work for a large pharmaceutical. Many of the driving forces behind drug development or healthcare decisions arise in business priorities, practices, and regulations that are complex and unintuitive to outsiders. Unless I reinforce my POV with explanation of why and how these subterranean forces drive outcomes, I'm likely to find myself downvoted — presumably because readers discount my perspective as insufficiently plausible or wrong outright, perhaps because I haven't offered enough explanation. But since longwinded explication of arcane background minutiae is tiresome to write and for others to read, so I often demur to the detriment of my score.

[kasey_junk]

You’ll read pretty wildly off comments on this site about certain topics.

For instance, it’s gotten better over time but effectively anytime you see comments about how the markets work on HN it will be filled with inaccuracies.

[splonk]

Poker is another topic where people wildly overestimate their knowledge but can sometimes present their incorrect ideas in a reasonably coherent way that allows them to be upvoted by other people who also aren't experts. At the bottom of every HN thread about poker you'll find a couple people who actually know what they're talking about shouting into the void, "wait, that's not actually how that works..." before they give up and wander off.

[nubbins]

Across all my HN comments I've found there is an optimum level of detail where it sounds like you know what you're talking about, beyond which is too complicated to get many upvotes. The exception is occasionally on HN you get an undisputed expert on something to come in and set the record straight.

[TylerE]

My personal favorite: Any topic involving airplanes will involve 99% of the people sounding very confidant and very very wrong.

[sentenza]

Believe me, there are worse topics.

The best way to get yelled at or down-voted on HN is having a basic understanding of how EU regulations and the EU legislative process work.

[mongol]

That is actually a topic I hardly see discussed here. And one that would be interesting to see a factual discussion about. Seems to me that perceived conceptions about it are behind Brexit.

[kasey_junk]

I have no knowledge of nuclear sea vessels but the sheer number of comments and the certainty implied makes me suspicious on that topic.

[User23]

I don’t know about that, but I’m absolutely certain the bicycle shed needs to be green.

[claudiawerner]

If you think discussions on markets are bad, try philosophy, especially political philosophy, or sociology. I don't often comment on "very wrong" comments because they're unlikely to get anywhere.

I've found that for all HN detests conformity, more often than not it tends to be a certain kind of perceived conformity, and more often, what is seen as conformity in startup culture. What is often missed in my (honestly) humble opinion, is that this counter-conformity rests squarely in the larger conformity!

[sudosysgen]

I definitely agree. Whenever you try to have a discussion that goes against some sacred assumptions, which happens very often when talking about sociology or (political) philosophy, or non-liberal politics in general, no matter how respectfully or qualifiedly you make your point it's almost certain your interlocutors will not engage productively.

And indeed, because these assumptions are not even known to be assumptions, it's not even visible to the reader that this is a case of conformity.

Interestingly, I've noticed that these modes of conformity often come in temporal waves, in that at different times of the day you get downvoted - or receive less constructive discussion - for differing subjects. I should try to make a more involved analysis eventually.

[asdff]

The timing thing probably has to do with when people get off work or aren't prepping meals.

[sudosysgen]

I had this intuition too, but time zones, breaks, procrastination, variation in meal prep + time zones very likely cancel it out.

It's not simply the amplitude changing, but the sign of comments too - it can go from neutral to upvoted to downvoted and back, so simple patterns in activity can't quite explain it.

[paganel]

To be fair I’m not sure the economists know either, and some of them have even admitted to that.

I’m in bed and on my phone and too lazy to search for an exact link, but for a quick example I can give you the international government-bond market which the theory said that its price should have not ever fallen below zero. At some point in 2019 I think bonds worth $17 trillion (40% of the market if I’m not mistaken) were priced below that zero threshold.

[asdff]

Don't even bother reading anything biology related from here. 1/100 commenters have anything more than a high school biology background, and chances are the article at hand is 5 paragraphs of boilerplate overstatement anyway.

[dougmwne]

Same. I was working on some personal projects that are not of a technical nature. There was a lot of information and discussions on the internet about it, but it was all incredibly wrong and written with great confidence by people who had zero authority on the topic. I ended up hiring professionals to help and I got my money's worth. My conclusion is the internet is mostly marketing and entertainment aside from a few very specific corners.

[roenxi]

> I’ve always wondered how many completely incorrect beliefs I have about the world due to the compulsive surfing/reading of my younger years.

A good rule of thumb, if maybe excessively defensive, is the more strongly held a belief the more likely it is to be wrong. Reality has a nasty habit of being moderate, murky and uncertain. An extremist moderate might be on the right political track, I suppose.

One of the fun parts of being an engineer is that they have to interact with the real world and the theoretical one and learn just how many stupid practical details blow apart theoretically pure ideas.

[drivebycomment]

I wholeheartedly agree. I would add that it is very difficult to tell when to break away from that rule of thumb thus a good decision making is a never ending struggle with a self doubt and a leap of faith.

[deathgrips]

I think HN is lower quality than Reddit because it's harder to spot who doesn't know what they're talking about. On Reddit the clowns have bad grammar and don't even attempt to substantiate their beliefs. On HN the clowns have flowing prose, a Stanford degree and immaculate clown makeup.

[agumonkey]

Also how a majority of the world lives on the average wrong understanding of things. I guess society is not about precision efficiency.

[Bakary]

There's no guarantee that what you describe as higher quality sites offer much better views of the world.

[da02]

What are those 2-3 fields? What are some of the things people say that are wrong about those topics?

[hinkley]

I’m sure you’ve had the experience of being downvoted for being right but with unpleasant news.

[RhodesianHunter]

I don't feel like this really changes much with competency due to Dunning Krugerand competency being a near limitless spectrum.

How many times have you come in to hacker news and read someone's complaint about x where "someone" is an expert with a decade of experience in the field only to have someone else chime in with the "well actually, I'm the creator of that project and..."

[whoisburbansky]

Unrelated, but the missing space between Kruger and "and" had me go down the rabbit hole of trying to piece together what your comment had to do with Bitcoin. Dunning-Krugerrand is used in certain circles to refer to the crypto coin, in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek fashion.

[User23]

That plus GP’s username made me laugh

[austincheney]

That’s why I deleted my Reddit account.