[slibhb]

It's hard to get more ironic than farming upvotes on the internet talking about how you transcended ego or whatever.

[uoaei]

Moreso than riding a moral high horse while violating etiquette and explicit guidelines?

[hshshshshsh]

Spiritual awakening ego is a real thing :)

I don't think anyone go fully egoless. Maybe with exceptions of people like Ramana Maharishi.

It's just the ego is diluted. There are varying levels of ego one can experience. I think a reduction in ego makes you more present and do things with less judgments. And be more open to new ideas.

[slibhb]

I haven't transcended my ego!

[lazide]

One of the biggest and hardest lessons in Buddhist (monk) practice is that self deception is as fundamental, and as hard to avoid, as breathing.

[hshshshshsh]

I get the idea but I would also be skeptical of Buddhists acting like they have it all figured out.

[lazide]

For sure. Though at least monks nominally figured out the only winning move is not to play. Depending on your definition of ‘winning’ anyway.

Depending on one’s perspective, it could be the ultimate loser religion, or the ultimate winner.

Pretty clear why China loves to kick Nepal in the sensitive bits, either way.

[hackable_sand]

I maintain that competition is a human construction.

Eat and be eaten, but accept both for what they are.

[lazide]

Since most species appear to have some variant of competition, why do you think it is a human construction?

[hackable_sand]

I disagree.

Not to say that keeping score is immoral, just artificial.

[masspro]

Or maybe they just wanted to share something connected to the article

[MichaelZuo]

It’s a signalling problem, a 31 day old pseudonymous account is pretty always going to enjoy vastly less credibility than say a 10 year old account with hundreds of thousand of karma.

If the latter wrote the above comment, nobody would question if the real intention was farming for this or that, since it would make practically no difference for the account holder or the passing reader.

[DoingIsLearning]

Stupid/naïve question is there even a business model for karma farming in HN?

I get that twitter/reddit/YT/insta/TT is relevant for product placement, stealth marketing, political PR, propaganda etc. But is there economic value in HN accounts?

Other than the occasional YC startup pitch most of the content here is for the purpose of sharing info/tech discussion.

Am I missing something? Or are people just online 'community' jaded?

[Gud]

Wouldn’t it make more sense to suspect the account with hundreds of thousands of karma points to be the karma farmer?

[hshshshshsh]

You should always be suspicious of anything that you have not experienced yourself.

I used to care about HN karma a lot before spiritual awakening. Had 2 accounts with 2000+ karma before. It was one of those things that helped in building a grand ego for myself.

Now I just prefer to post from randomly created HN accounts.

You can probably come back a few months later and see this account to be no longer active.

[hshshshshsh]

Ahh. I think I misread what you wrote. Ignore the above comment.

[MichaelZuo]

No, because the top 99.99+ percentile of accounts will attract much greater scrutiny from the mods.

[hshshshshsh]

Never claimed I transcended ego. I said my ego was diluted. Of course I have ego. It's just much more less than I used to have.