There's a problem that's increasingly relevant here on HN. It's commentors who only read the headline and leave a comment that is irrelevant and inadequate more often than not. I do wish we as a community would respond more to this.

To respond to this particular comment, which hardly deserves a response: this isn't a study, none one of the listed assertions are made. This is a short, free-form article that presents an interpretation or examination of some aspects of our intellect.

I did read the article. And it is based on a scientific study. And it was discussed previously on HN.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-walking-throu...

Your comment convinced me to actually read the link: you made it sound small enough to read with the time I’ve got now and that it wasn’t going to be hard to understand. Thank you.

At a certain point I realised that I had to update my understanding of the term "prove" to mean "it's now more likely that x the case" rather than "they've found out that x is the case".

Of course, the medium you're reading something in can give you extra reasons to be suspicious. An article about how some diet can give you magic powers is more likely to be there just to draw clicks and hence just based on a study that p-hacked its way into a correlation than an article about a new discovery on the LHC or something.

great point. btw: is there a list of experiments that have become mainstream beliefs and have proven to be wrong?

I definitely know of the power posture and the fertile women wearing red dresses crap.

Stanford Prison Experiment.

Modern science is largely fiction derived based on the results or propaganda piece sought by the funding party.

Would you care to stand-up that ludicrous statement?

Take for example most "scientific" research into anything related to health and nutrition. Most of what we think we know about health, proper food consumption and exercise is science fiction and speaks to the ultimate agenda of the funding or otherwise affiliated organizations behind a particular study or institution under which it takes place.

But you said “modern science”, so I assume you can back up your claims in physics and chemistry as well?

My take on the fake modern science is based on decades of knowledge and experience in various fields, so yes, I can certainly back it up, but I'm not going to spend my afternoon doing this on an HN thread that ultimately gets me flagged and my content gets removed, as has been the case recently.

HN loves nothing more than a contrarian statement backed with substance. If comments have been flagged, it’s usually due to a lack of effort.

The effort is worthwhile.

That has not been my experience. I have often written lengthy comments that simply explained my view on certain topics, and within a few minutes those got flagged which rendered them invisible to others. This place is like Reddit in that regard, when it comes to silencing non mainstream opposing views. I've been here 10 years now, and it's gotten progressively worse in that aspect.

I read through your comment history to try to find some examples.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16928482

There’s a recurring pattern: people ask you to back up what you say, and then you respond with “I won’t do that.”

And my comment there stands. It's gotten worse since then, instead of downvotes I simply get flagged and my content disappears. No point.

There's also no point in posting that you wont post because of getting downvoted and flagged, because that post will also get downvoted and flagged.

If you make a controversial claim backed up by sources, you will get negative reactions from people who doubt the validity of those sources. If you make a controversial claim and refuse to provide sources because people would doubt their validity, you'll get negative reactions even from someone who might have agreed with you, because that's just rude.

Save your important points in a blog post or at least a local text file and c+p them where appropriate. I'd be interested in understanding your point if view but as it stands I have nothing to work with.

The contrarian is the one responsible for successfully communicating any legitimate insight they have to the mainstream, however difficult that may be.

One potential strategy might be to slowly ease your way towards your controversial conclusions, building up your argument carefully along the way, in a way that will make sense to your audience.

And yet you still may get downvotes. Such is life.

Lastly, it's very valuable to always be open to the idea that you are the one who is actually mistaken in some critical way.

It seems a bit hand wavvy to say all science (the thing we use to help society come to unbiased conclusions) is a lie because a food company paid a scientist to write a biased paper.

I can see where this is going though.

Hard to change the mind of a person who believes science is used to direct society towards unbiased conclusions. You are putting a lot of faith in many powerful organizations that work tirelessly to control your state of mind and lifestyle habits.

so you don't have knowledge and experience. Good to know.

breakfast most important meal of the day, they say.

The only science you're allowed to be skeptical of (on HN) is science other people are also skeptical of, like (say) astrology. Anything else sees you downvoted and/or shadowbanned into oblivion.

Groupthink is stronk on HN. (Intentional typo, I just like the word "stronk" for some reason. /grin)

Yeah, no. You should bring a bit more substance to your skepticism though than "All scientists are corrupt and serving some powerful interest" (presumably trying to sell one-room flats in this case?). Individual articles are criticized here all the time, especially if they are from the "softer" sciences.