99% of social science or political topics and 50% of technical topics here do not… read as smart, and you’d be much better off spending the same time reading the first chapter of a relevant 101-level college textbook.
It's entirely possible that this is the smartest place on the internet, but also often dumb. In fact, it seems likely. More of an indictment of the rest of the places on the internet.
> It's entirely possible that this is the smartest place on the internet,
i cant find the link, but there was a post about how to "be nice" and it was a revelation to a worrying amount of "geniuses" on here. bare in mind the sum total of the advice was "be nice, dont be rude"
> It's entirely possible that this is the smartest place on the internet, but also often dumb. In fact, it seems likely. More of an indictment of the rest of the places on the internet.
Almost every (non-troll) online community that is relatively peaceful and has some semblance of moderation to remove flamewars thinks of itself as "the best community". Usually as compared to reddit, though if it's on reddit they will compare themselves to some other (hated) sub.
It's a fact of the internet. Every online community thinks of itself as the smartest, more thoughtful, more civilized. HN is no exception.
It goes without saying HN is not the smartest or more thoughtful online community. It's just... ok. Not the worst, not the best. Certainly NOT the place with the smartest people, though some smart people frequent it. As a regular, you can soon figure out HN's unspoken rules, blindspots, and areas where the group opinion is more likely to be accurate.
No need, because whether an online community is more thoughtful or smarter than another is very subjective. Almost by definition, HN is not it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all that. Of course, by internet law, HN (or a subset of its members) considers itself to be the smartest, more thoughtful online community.
There are communities I like better, which are smarter and more thoughtful, but I've no desire to argue with you.
It's really not 'the smartest people.' It's people interested in tech, and often in making-a-lot-of-money-in-tech. It does have a lot of people with significant industry experience, which is cool.
There's a reason why HN of all places has such a terrible record of handling actual sarcasm and telling it apart from genuine belief and that reason is NOT that "HN is really smart" lol