[Irregardless]

Oh, you're so awesome it hurts? Sorry to hear about your rich people problems.

> the greatest motor race in the world: 24 hours of Le Mans

The entire southern half of the U.S. begs to differ. Personally, I'd go with the Monaco Grand Prix if we're talking cars. If we're talking about "motor races" in general, it'd definitely be the Isle of Man TT. Hell, any one of the 18 yearly Moto GP races is probably better than Le Mans.

[pg]

It's mortifying that this mixture of insult and irrelevance has so many upvotes. I know everyone's been worried about the amount of politics on the frontpage lately, but I'm much more worried about this comment. Political storms pass eventually, but comments like this rising to the top of HN threads is a sign of real decay.

Whatever you think of DHH, there is an important point in this article, and thanks to the people who upvoted this comment, the people talking about it are relegated to the bottom of the thread.

[vl]

Well, a lot of discussions in the last few months have top comment which a) was made early and b) disputes some minor technical point in the original article, while not being relevant to discussion.

Maybe making younger low scored/recently upvoted comments sink even slower could fix that?

In the meantime I use Chrome extension to fold those.

[pg]

Yeah, I know. The underlying problem is the same. I've spent a good deal of time thinking about how to fix it. I wonder if it would work to normalize votes based on how far down the page a comment is. God would that complicate the code though.

[porker]

Could we also have a communal "hide posts by this user" feature? Over time the aggregate data would be useful to detect who is like this - especially if we can select a reason for hiding a user.

[lotharbot]

One of my suggestions to solve the mean-dumb-upvoted comment problem:

if a comment is truly so mean or dumb that the moderators choose to kill it, allow them the option of applying a karma penalty to anyone who upvoted it (which should come with an automated warning message so people know why their karma suddenly dropped). It's, in a sense, a way of voting on votes.

People might still upvote such comments, but at least then they'll know they're taking a risk by violating HN standards.

[chris_l]

Why don't you weight votes by age of the account? That would make the "old HN" more influential in the current one.

[pg]

Interestingly enough, in this case that would have worked. If you only counted the votes of the oldest accounts, the comment in question would have had negative points.

[jamesaguilar]

You should name the feature the anti-bike shed.

[clarky07]

The talk about the race is irrelevant, but I think the insult is relevant, if not nice. Perhaps you're still right that this comment shouldn't be at the top, but I have no problem with the sentiment it espouses being at the top. The story reeked of "humble brag" and "first world problems" and there are a lot of comments on this page saying as much. Clearly it was an impression that a lot of people agreed with.

[tptacek]

You seem not to understand what the word "relevant" means. To be relevant, the insult should have attacked the point DHH was making. Charitably: you believe the insult was trenchant, and you've confused that for relevance.

The reality is that DHH's material success has little to do with whether setting overly ambitious goals sets people up for psychologically painful failures. If anything, it accentuates his point; you'd think that having DHH's resources would cushion the blow of not winning the 24 Hours Of Le Mans.

[clarky07]

The insult doesn't have to attack the point he was making to be relevant to the discussion about the article. The insult was directed at the overall quality of the article and how it was written. That makes it relevant to the discussion about the article. The article came off as whiny with little redeeming qualities, and that is reasonable to discuss whether you agree with his point or not.

[dustingetz]

comment is likely at the top because user has high average karma, not due to upvotes, so in this case the problem is likely in software

[corin_]

Is it not possible that he would have ended at the bottom of the page not the top, and if so wouldn't it have been better for you to stay away to find out, since your comment likely adds many more downvotes to your parent comment?

[Blockhead]

Please, don't act like this is anything more than feigned humility poorly disguised as a tidbit of wisdom. Even calling it that is generous since he doesn't offer any real insight or solution.

The fact that you fail to understand why so many people agreed with that comment is equally mortifying. Is your blind sympathy for "rich guy problems" overpowering your ability to read between the lines?

[kristiandupont]

So DHH is about to enter an extremely competitive race and he has good odds. I think it's fair to imagine that this has been the only thing on his mind for weeks. He then finishes second which is admirable by any standard and yet he is not happy. Frustrated with this, he analyses his own thinking and writes a blog post about it.

Do you really think that he thought "I'm going to brag, I just need an angle!"? Or, should he simply avoid writing because his situation is more privileged than most people?

[mberning]

24 Hours of Le Mans is generally regarded as one of the greatest motor races in the world. It is considered part of the 'triple crown' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Crown_of_Motorsport).

If you think Le Mans is not one of the most competitive and prestigious races in the world you are sorely mistaken. To say it is any more or less prestigious than winning Monaco is a purely subjective manner. The idea that the opinion of motorsport fans in the southern US has any weight is laughable. They are generally the most ignorant of other forms of motorsport and least well informed motorsport fans.

It is worth pointing out however that DHH does not compete at the highest level in Le Mans. He is one class below.

[Irregardless]

> To say it is any more or less prestigious than winning Monaco is a purely subjective manner.

Of course it's subjective, and anyone who would declare a particular race "the greatest in the world" is obviously full of it. Someone just couldn't resist stroking his own ego a little more. I know DHH has a reputation for being arrogant and opinionated, but this post was over the top.

> The idea that the opinion of motorsport fans in the southern US has any weight is laughable. They are generally the most ignorant of other forms of motorsport and least well informed motorsport fans.

I bet you couldn't walk 10 feet at a NASCAR event without tripping over someone who could fix your car. I'd be amazed if you could find a single person like that sitting in the stands of a Formula 1 Grand Prix event.

[phillmv]

Well… if you live or grew up in in Europe Le Mans is definitely crème de la crème. They cover that shit live on TV. No one's making that up.

[corin_]

> Of course it's subjective, and anyone who would declare a particular race "the greatest in the world" is obviously full of it.

Do people not have personal favourites that they might, even with self-realising bias, call "the greatest in the world"? And if you were then talking, or writing, about this awesome experience, wouldn't you easily use those words to describe your feelings, rather than to statistically analyse race rankings?

[mberning]

Considering that I race a modern, fuel injected, turbocharged, AWD vehicle I'd say that they have very little chance of fixing anything on my car. It doesn't have a big sloppy push rod v8.

[irreverentbits]

Modern pushrod designs aren't "sloppy" - when you don't need to rev as high to generate adequate power, you don't need the added valve stability that an overhead cam arrangement provides. Not to mention that a single camshaft actuating pushrods is more space and weight efficient than a set of overhead cams.

But then, that's just my opinion as someone who races a modern, fuel injected, naturally aspirated, RWD vehicle. A vehicle which has a pushrod V8.

[jamesaguilar]

I think you are missing the point of the article when you focus on who is having the problems, not the nature of the problems being addressed. Anyone who is trying to be the best can benefit from considering this advice.

Likewise, you are off base both on whether Le Mans is one of the greatest motorsport races, and in focusing in on that seriously non-central part of the article.

[alex_doom]

That article is weirdest humble brag I've seen in a while. Then again I'm not ultra competitive.

[socrates1998]

> Oh, you're so awesome it hurts? Sorry to hear about your rich people problems.

Haha, that's exactly what I was thinking.

It's the humble brag.

He talks about ambition like everyone thinks it's great.

I don't know him personally, but if all of his projects get in the way of being a decent father, then it ain't worth it, in my opinion.

[larrys]

What I like is that writing like dhh has done is a good example of how to brag without appearing to brag.

You wrap the bragging around a larger point which acts like the red herring to distract from the bragging. So you get to mention your "fastest and most reliable car, the best-prepared team, and two of the fastest team mates in the business" appearing almost sheepish and incidental.

Or here is another of the same, saying something like this while making a point about anything:

"This experience has been a painful realization of everything that Alfie Kohn wrote about in Punished by Rewards and a reminder of the wisdom of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow."

I have no clue who that is. But it sounds impressive which most things you have never heard of tend to do.

[sporkologist]

That's how I read it. "I and my millions of dollars and world class team only came in second in an extremely competitive race, and I want everyone to know how that was a wake up call for me to not be so ambitious, because ambition can be poisonous. So here are some other philosophical writings about how to be happy with what you have and not be ambitious."

[locusm]

Not trying to change your mind on what is the greatest race, but I came across this the other day and realised how little I personally knew about this race. Truth in 24 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27F26UA1i6M

[bitwize]

The entire southern half of the U.S. begs to differ.

The entire southern half of the U.S. also begs to differ with the rest of the world on when the Earth was formed, whether homosexuals deserve marriage rights, and other things. Hint: they're usually wrong.

[Xcelerate]

Wow! As someone who has lived in the southeast my whole life, I resent that. We have Georgia Tech, Oak Ridge National Labs, and plenty of intelligent people here. Some great innovations have come out of all parts of the south: from Atlanta, Chattanooga, Nashville, Ashville, etc... I can't believe you would make such a sweeping generalization.

[awj]

As someone who grew up in the southern half of the U.S.: a) you're wrong, b) you're really not helping.

Judging the entire region by the loudmouths just gives them an even louder voice than they had. There are plenty of great people in the south, maybe if you'd shut up with your generalizations and stereotypes they'd engage the rest of the world and drown out the bigots.

[heartbreak]

Another southerner here... Your comment is pretty narrow-minded, don't you think? Isn't that the same ineptitude you're accusing me of having?

[bitwize]

Yes, I do think, and I'm sorry.

[mehwoot]

Eh, each to their own. In terms of endurance racing, 24 hours of Le Mans is the race. Whether you think endurance racing is the greatest of the types of motor racing.. entirely subjective.

[rewind]

The irony of you posting this in a previous thread is almost too much to bear:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5900209