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by edbaskerville
1075 days ago
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It's not just the ones at the top, it's a strong subculture within the industry, built perhaps on valuing certain personality traits that to some extent may correlate with certain kinds of effectiveness. I immediately think of HN comments from the recent news about this week being off-the-charts hot, the way a disturbing number of people people seized on technical errors in the popular reporting (the Earth was obviously hotter at points in the distant past; the estimates were "just a computer model"), and jumped straight to, as Krugman puts it, reflexive contrarianism, the notion that the climate scientists must be wrong or corrupt and my gut-instinct priors are correct because I see myself as very smart. |
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On so many topics all it takes is two or three seeds of chaos & the core points are all missed, amid endless debate on absurd distantly related topics. Injecting false debates can quite effectively smokescreen the topic at hand.
Online especially there's also a lot of people with agendas, either hidden or proudly worn. Give how transactional exchanges are, how little reputation really follow one around, the ability for either crazy or just-incredibly-slanted-agenda-keeping to inject itself in & distort the conversation is very high.
There's also the silent majority factor online. Most people don't comment in to say, "that was great, thanks, seemed spot on". The people most likely to comment are squeaky wheels, are people who make noise & they are more likely to have Very Serious Opinions.
Trying to just show up and spread some positivity &highlight good points is enormously appreciated. But alas also makes you a target for those whose behavior pattern is reflexive contrarianism. What a term!