[jsprink_banned]

Although jsprinkles got slowbanned and hellbanned (still unsure why but cannot be bothered; more on that later), I had to create another account just to respond to this. This comment encapsulates, in amazingly succinct fashion, everything that is wrong with Hacker News and the people that participate in this community.

I can translate "[n]early everybody who matters" in this context, and it means a subset of Silicon Valley that thinks it is the entire universe. Hacker News these days is TMZ for Silicon Valley, with the occasional dash of Lisp thrown in. Conversations are usually way off-base and are wildly misrepresentative of reality in many cases. Half the discussions are folks opining on how poorly someone is running a business after digesting several years of Hacker News articles during their work hours at someone else's company, with no actual experience at the helm. I went after one guy for proclaiming that Tim Cook hasn't done shit for Apple in his entire career there, and I couldn't help but imagine the kind of person behind such a comment and it wasn't a pretty picture.

The other day's thread about the sale of Sortfolio is a great example of this. The entire thread was arguing with DHH and Jason Fried about their own company's transaction. No, really[1].

There are exceptions. There is the occasional absolutely phenomenal and industry-affecting discussion here. There are people that use their "Hacker News reputation" for good. However, standing atop a pillar of arrogance as tall as "everybody who matters is here" just screams a complete disconnect with how our industry actually works.

In the grand scheme of information technology, startups are tiny little mosquitoes that are, with few exceptions, swatted to death quickly and quietly. The occasional mosquito that kills a human, though, is the one that gets press and pays off its investors mightily. That's the golden mosquito, and a whole tribe of mosquito farmers has popped up in pursuit of their payoff. However, simply because a couple mosquitoes have succeeded at killing a human does not, I repeat does not, indicate that the entire world of disease revolves around mosquitoes, nor that a forum discussing mosquitoes is representative of epidemiology as a whole. The average startup employs what, a dozen people? IBM employs more than four hundred thousand[2]. And before you turn around and mock IBM, they've made enough money to research and do great things[3] while your startup is still struggling to come to terms with burn rate in search of that ever-elusive revenue.

Please dig yourself out of the hole of narcissism and reconnect with reality. Hacker News is not the entire world, and more than half of the movers and shakers in the industry have probably never even glanced at a comment thread. I will ever remain relieved if that fact does not change.

An aside which reinforces that point:

After getting hellbanned, I stopped worrying about combating stupidity in Hacker News threads. I stopped reading most of them, to be quite honest. I relaunched my blog and wrote a long essay I've been meaning to write about how Python decorators work[4] which before, I could never seem to find the time for. I adopted an ethos of using my time for sharing knowledge instead of arguing about pointless shit, like Sortfolio's acquisition price or what the meaning of Steve Jobs parking in a handicap space is or what some UI designer named Dustin Curtis thinks about Quora's latest funding round. I'm learning to listen to what people have to say rather than waiting for my turn to speak, just to refute my conversational opponent's take on Microsoft as if it matters or has any bearing on my life whatsoever.

The effect that removing frequent Hacker News contribution has had on me as a person is nothing short of extraordinary, so if "everybody that matters" is here, God help our industry.

[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4191233

[2]: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/perfo...

[3]: http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/index.html

[4]: http://jedsmith.org/post/python-decorators.html

[josteink]

Although jsprinkles got slowbanned and hellbanned (still unsure why but cannot be bothered; more on that later), I had to create another account just to respond to this

In my experience, just talking against the hivemind here seems to be enough. Especially if you walk on pg's toes, except your account to be of reduced value in the close future.

I've had my account slowbanned and hellbanned. For what? For arguing against people here on HN who insist that Apple is the only company in the entire world who actually innovates and that everyone else is copying Apple in everything they do. Because seemingly only inside the walls of one very special corperation in the USA can innovation happen.

So I got slowbanned for arguing against that super-rational point of view. Nice.

When I told some people how utterly pathetic they sounded when they claimed here (prior to his death) that "Steve Jobs had touched their lives in a deep and personal way", for buying Apple products, I got hellbanned. With pg himself sending me an email saying how that was not cool.

If I didn't know better, I would think the owner of this site has 99% of his pension invested in Apple shares and cannot afford anyone ruining the image of the shiny Apple-corporation.

Implying that anyone is better, original or first: Start gradual slow-ban, until they wont bother coming back ruining the nice cozy Apple-cuddle we have here.

I think your comment is spot on. HN represents a very marginal part of the world, and there are clear limits to what you are allowed to do within those margins. Deviate too much and you are not welcome.

[jsprink_banned]

I would never go so far as to accuse Paul of malice or subterfuge, as the special treatment Y Combinator companies get in posting (i.e., jobs) should make it fairly evident why Paul and YC have invested so much time in Hacker News and curated a community. I also don't believe that purpose, which I honestly understand, factors much into how Paul runs the community. Realistically speaking, I don't think Paul's net worth or the value that Y Combinator produces is threatened or realistically swayed by what goes on here in this forum.

I am unwilling to speculate or suggest that Paul and the unknown moderators act on content or people in the name of financial benefit or positive press for the benefit of the Y Combinator portfolio, because what I do think Paul acts on is his idea of what an ideal Internet community looks like. Paul has definitely been around the block and knows the Internet is chock full of stupid people. Seriously, it is absolutely mind-boggling how the Internet can be so overwhelmingly populated with outright stupidity. (He just shares that opinion with far more elegance than I do.)

Based on many of his actions and comments I have observed that Paul has a very particular idea of what shapes a "good comment", and wandering outside that grassy knoll can open you up to his action. I think jsprinkles was a little too aggressive and that might have caught his eye, but that's a complete guess, as only Paul knows what makes a comment good aside from generalities like "teaching something" and "being civil". Is hellbanning jsprinkles a little overzealous? That isn't for me to say, frankly, and Paul is certainly entitled to run his community the way that he likes. He doesn't owe me anything. Over a year ago, Paul theorized in a discussion with me[1] (under my real name, when I was much younger and much more arrogant) that Hacker News is just reverting to the mean for Internet forums, and based upon knowing HN then and now, he's only been proven correct.

There's always the possibility that jsprinkles tripped something automated, and I never populated an e-mail address so I wouldn't know.

[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2440679

[josteink]

I am unwilling to speculate or suggest that Paul and the unknown moderators act on content or people in the name of financial benefit

Hence why I qualified that statement with "if I didn't know better". :)

I guess the cult of Apple is just particularly strong here. Arguing against current Apple cult is sort of like arguing for Microsoft in Linux IRC-channels back in the days. You just cannot expect fair treatment of your opinions.

[wilfra]

One way to look at it is that arguing against the 'hivemind' is not tolerated.

Having run several communities myself, I offer the counterpoint:

People arguing against the crowd, even when the crowd is wrong, usually manifests itself as what appears to moderators to be trolling. When action is taken it is far less often about whether or not the content is accurate and far more often (i.e. nearly always) about whether removing one poster will end the disturbance - even when that poster may be factually correct.

When one poster often finds themself arguing against the crowd, again regardless of whether or not they are right, that poster is nearly always going to appear identical to a garden variety troll. So they are usually going to end up banned.

There is really no other way you can do it, at least that I've found, if you value keeping things civil.

[loup-vaillant]

Are you saying that group-think is definitely unavoidable? If whatever opinion a given community forms cannot be challenged ever, then it's bound to be plagued by affective death spirals[1], evaporative cooling[2], and, well, significant errors in its vision of the world.

I'm not saying your counterpoint is wrong. I'm saying I want it to be wrong. Because if you're right, even LessWrong and RationalWiki are hopeless.

[1]: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Affective_death_spiral

[2]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lr/evaporative_cooling_of_group_beli...

[drostie]

If LessWrong is our touchstone then indeed some forms of group-think are presumably unavoidable. I mean, I'm working on a new religion; given only that knowledge and no actual content, can you guess how I'd be received by Less Wrongers? What if a postmodernist came by? An eugenicist? It is often easier to laugh with our community than to really try to see the world from the alternate perspective and really work out all the consequences from the different point of view, much less to find a genuine contradiction that would shake this speculative start.

However, even if a forum devoid of groupthink is unavoidable, I think an open forum is possible, though difficult. The key lesson which needs to be understood is that you are whole. In other words, most communication is about relaying some sort of point, transmitting some sort of information, making some sort of argument. But points don't matter -- you and I talking is what matters: true and authentic conversation. If people feel whole, then they can stop trying to show how awesome they are to others, and then we can keep a forum open to people who wildly disagree with us. I don't have to prove anything to anyone, thus I am free to respect others as human beings.

As you probably have guessed, this begins to overlap strongly with the aforementioned religious issues and I don't want to be preachy, so I will leave it at that rather than adding more exposition.

[wilfra]

Certainly not. There are issues where there are large groups of people on both sides of an issue, even here on HN. That is where the best discussion takes place.

What I'm saying is that wandering into a bar frequented by Dodger fans decked out in Giants gear and getting into a heated debate with the entire bar about which team has the best pitching staff, is not going to end well for you. Even though in this instance, you'd clearly be right (Giants staff > Dodgers staff).

The same applies to the internet.

[asciilifeform]

My experience with this:

http://www.loper-os.org/wp-content/killed.png

http://www.loper-os.org/?p=91

Anyone who sets the sheeple a-bleating is labeled a "troll."

[fbailey]

Sorry, totally wrong. I'm in Germany I know at least 20 people who read HN. I know a lot more who have heard of Dustin Curtis and the AA redesign. You don't understand the global impact of HN and a networked society.

[jsprink_banned]

The alternative and far more logical explanation, of course, is that you surround yourself with and network with the kind of people who read HN. I do understand the global impact of a forum such as this, and I certainly understand the ramifications of a networked society. I suggest, however, that the network in this case is far smaller than supposed.

The next example is dangerous to pull off as the topic is polarizing: there is another forum called Stormfront which is the site to be a part of if you are a white supremacist (don't Google if you're at work). There are millions of posts and, I'm sure, millions of eyeballs consuming that site. If I were to ask a supporting member of Stormfront how Stormfront affects the world, they'd probably spend hours telling me about the epic discussions and hundreds of people that they know worldwide, and give me a similar answer as you -- you don't understand the global impact of what we're doing nor the network of people that Stormfront has built.

However, you and I, rational people who think that sort of shit is outer space bananas, can quickly trivialize that community because we're detached from it. Does it matter to the (much larger) community of non-white-supremacists if someone has a name in that community? Not really. So it is with Hacker News; those who think the discussions here are outer space bananas don't care about Dustin Curtis, or the flavor of the week in startups. Within a community, it is easy to start thinking that community is all-consuming and, I am here to tell you, it isn't. I think being inside Hacker News distorts views on what it actually does in the world, and what its reach is.

(Stop. Before you say what you're thinking, I'm not comparing Hacker News to Stormfront beyond that they're both forums with audiences.)

Since you qualified with familiarity with Dustin Curtis:

Before some of his posts began making the front page, I had no idea who Dustin Curtis is. I still don't, really, and my gut says he's just some UI designer slash neuroscientist who got lucky with a Hacker News audience from the AA thing, and is now considered some kind of influential voice on startups and business. If I'm wrong, I'm sorry, but I dug deep in his site looking for a clue about his career or qualifications to be a pundit on modern startups and came up pretty much dry. So I hold his opinions in the same regard as most pundits, that of immediate suspicion. That isn't a reflection on him as a person, either.

[pyre]

I think that people can get a sense of 'touching greatness' because there are a lot of people that show up on HN that are 'movers and shakers' in the tech world. It can really be a thrill to see a posting about some really popular site/webapp/software, and have the original creator of the software pop on and resolve issues on the spot.

That being said, the effect is not as great as some people presume that it is.

[mattdeboard]

You're really upset about being banned, aren't you?

[jsprink_banned]

Quietly ignoring the final two paragraphs of my original comment since you have nothing to contribute, and are instead attempting to undermine my contribution with a pithy, underhanded dose of snark, aren't you? (The irony is that you unintentionally reinforced my point, so, thanks!)

Hacker News is far too full of comments such as these, and I can loosely translate them all:

I'm completely unprepared for this conversation and have nothing to contribute (or it blew over my head), and that makes me feel inferior, so I'll make myself feel better by culling some cheap upvotes from a few people who I got a rise out of at the expense of actual, interesting conversation.

[mattdeboard]

You do a great job of undermining your own point. "Hacker News is so full of bullshit! It sucks! Let me spend 4500 calories and six hours trying to convince you of this!"

Ok.

[tatsuke95]

Why criticize someone for putting time and effort into communicating a message on a forum that thrives on people putting time and effort into communicating messages?

[jfoutz]

No. There is no lisp. Maybe there's a link to a talk by a guy who wrote a book about lisp. Maybe there's a link to blog to a talk about clojure garbage collection. No lisp.

Also, no one links to postscript files. So, no original research, just a link to a blog about a guy who did a thing.

[Aethaeryn]

There's Lisp:

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3830867

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3151751

[3] http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=lis...

There's just not enough Lisp.

[wilfra]

Startups create the future, not companies like IBM.

In the context of my comment, people in the orbit of world-changing startups are the ones that matter.

You make some interesting points though. Good post.

[cdf]

I am obviously biased, but I am terrified, TERRIFIED, if a company with Microsoft's history has a say in delivering the future.

I dont want that future.

Microsoft has a very very long way to rehabilitate their image for their long history of bad behaviour.

[Spearchucker]

Not biased so much, maybe, but definitely subjective.

I have more faith in Microsoft than I do in any other big tech company. It's easy to forget that any commercial organisation's mission is to make money, which makes it inherently self-serving.

Microsoft, Red Hat, Google, Apple, Oracle, Facebook and so on all exist to make their shareholders rich. And yet we seem to think that they exist to make cool products, or to offer services we might find useful. Or to support us in any way. Not so.

[wilfra]

"...Facebook...exist to make their shareholders rich. And yet we seem to think that they exist to make cool products,"

Zuck specifically said this isn't true in his letter to shareholders. They make money so they can build, they don't build to make money.

If you simply observe his own lifestyle and the choices he's made with Facebook, it is pretty clear money means very little to him and that he absolutely loves running Facebook.

Given that he can veto anything anybody else ever says about the company for the rest of his life, I am inclined to believe him.

Wall Street seems to believe him too, thats why FB's stock is not doing so hot. They know FB's dictator despises them and doesn't care about making them money.

[brandoncapecci]

Interesting conjectures...

On the other hand since Zuckerberg's being an arrogant asshole preceded his wealth, one can argue that this sing and dance number that fools you is actually just history repeating itself.

I think I'll base my opinion on him from actions rather than what I read in a multi-billion dollar letter... as if he would realistically say anything else...

One thing is for certain though: his stock has underperformed because his company was considerably overvalued, not because he wasn't a kiss-ass to the street.

[genwin]

As long as they are forced to adhere to the laws of a democracy, including antitrust laws, I wouldn't be concerned. One could argue that they skated around antitrust in the US, which was concerning until they broke under their own weight.

[jahewson]

I'd love to see a startup create something like IBM Watson, we can all agree that's the future, right?

[jsprink_banned]

> Startups create the future, not companies like IBM.

There are so many examples to the contrary of this that it'd be exhausting to list them all. IBM had lived many lives of men and was long past being a startup when it helped create the PC industry; seriously, that company was pivoting before "pivoting" was even a term in usage. Apple was a long-toothed public company when it reinvented portable music and, later, smartphones. We're still observing the fallout from the iPad, but it's safe to say that was a game-changer in tablet computing, too.

I'm not saying that to kiss these companies' asses, either; these products genuinely redefined the marketplace. And both companies were public and had a checkered history already when they reshaped these markets. I remember cellular phones before the introduction of the iPhone. So do you.

Saying that the only innovation happens over lattes in SoMa is just so blatantly wrong that I wish I could persuade you otherwise for your own well-being. (Before I forget, thank you for the compliment regarding my comment; though I still disagree with you, I do appreciate the nod.)