[d26900]

> But the most interesting thing to me is the cognitive dissonance, ego, obstinacy, and single-mindedness of the discussions.

Can you illustrate your points of complaint with examples, please?

> It’s just as funny to me as browsing /r/SubredditDrama or any other hobby forum.

I think no community should take themselves too seriously. People are people at the end of the day. :)

IMHO: Stack Overflow was (and perhaps still is) a toxic place, and I am not alone with this sentiment:

https://insights.dice.com/2019/10/17/stack-overflow-moderato...

I find HN way better in that regard (friendliness).

[paulcole]

> Can you illustrate your points of complaint with examples, please?

No.

Start with any discussion about one of these topics: nutrition, James Damore, exercise, marketing, health, equality, racism.

[ploika]

With the greatest of respect, a response of "illustrate your points of complaint [about us] with examples" is kind of case in point. You phrased it very politely and I promise I'm assuming good intent, but it is kind of funny. I don't think anyone needs convincing that there's plenty of egotism and single-mindedness here.

Personally I would point to, very broadly, any discussion at all on finance or multilateralism.

The top comments on HN tend to have a very poor understanding of what the EU even is, how it works, what value it provides, and what it can and (especially) can't or shouldn't do.

Similarly, there isn't a huge amount of sophisticated discussion around banking and finance. I actually detect a hint of sulking some of the time, that there's this other difficult and well-paid field that the average HN commenter just does not understand. This was a bit more obvious a few years ago when Quantitative Easing and Bitcoin were in the news more often, but it still occasionally bubbles up under Matt Levine articles too.

[d26900]

My apologies. Yes that was perhaps a little weird from me. (But I am a socially awkward person anyway. :))

My intention was to inquire why person X came to that conclusion. Many people have different experiences throughout their lives. Some rich people wouldn't be perhaps able to empathize with poor people (making less than 10k a year). Some of them don't know (most of the time) what it is like to live with 10k a year and trying to make ends meet.

Louis CK expressed that sentiment in a clever manner: https://youtu.be/P3jLufZx3IM

So why did I come up with the "rich people example"? Well, I am trying to illustrate that we all have our blind spots somewhere. Different people, different experiences (and with that different levels of empathy/understanding).

Anyway, thanks for your input, paulcole & ploika! I think, I can see your point/sentiment better now.

[yesenadam]

> The top comments on HN tend to have a very poor understanding of what the EU even is, how it works, what value it provides, and what it can and (especially) can't or shouldn't do. ... similarly, there isn't a huge amount of sophisticated discussion around banking and finance

Are these subjects you're particularly knowledgeable about? I find also for certain subjects I know a lot more about than most subjects (e.g. for me, music, philosophy, chess) each time I read a page of HN comments on the subject I swear it will be the last. The page is filled with misinformation, people who know nothing about the subject miscorrecting others, people just guessing aloud at length etc. I didn't want to be that guy who brings up the Gell-Mann amnesia effect yet again, having seen it mentioned on here so many times in the last few days! – but I then wonder if discussions that are opaque to me, because I know nothing about the subject, are as low-quality as those where I can judge the quality. Mostly I just trust they are far better. I'm sure on tech-related subjects the quality is higher.. But maybe every page seems woefully bad, to an expert in that subject, I don't know.

I have the feeling this comment has been written thousands of times before on HN.