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by 1attice 1192 days ago
Ironic that on a post about groupthink, the one post that did not properly celebrate and idolize tech got downvoted.

So, I'll add to the OP's asked-for list: Hacker News.

Hacker News is the home of groupthink, because it's where smart people go to appear smart to other smart people. Its tendency towards homogenous opinion isn't a side-effect, it's the point -- because the nicer way of saying 'groupthink' is 'synthesis', in the dialectic sense. (Thesis + antithesis.)

I will go out on a limb and say that groupthink is what happens when the signal-to-noise ratio gets too good. When everyone hears exactly what they want to hear, because annoyances have been downvoted and greytexted.

Parent's tone is admittedly jagged, but, in a year where the ML thought products of my industry now routinely threaten to disrupt not just other industries, but whole social and political order, I cannot disagree.

Regulation is not fun, but we have it coming. Adolescence ends when you discover your fallibility.

1 comments

Thank you for your comment even though you disagree with my tone. It is admittedly a little jagged, but I really hope people think about the extraordinary (in the literal sense of that word) measures that have been taken here.
HN is willing to call out any consensus other than its own as groupthink, policing its voices and members all the while. Willing to champion free speech, but not those who dare to speak freely.

In a just & perspecacious universe, this would be the source of derision.

But, you know, Elon does it, so it must be ok, right?