>> I've had the same experience, but I guess it's not cool to make comments based on your own experience on hackernews (and hence the downvotes).

Some people here think your own experience is just an anecdote. They're wrong of course. Ones own experience is a data point (or even a collection of them).

As the saying goes "the plural of anecdote is not data". Unless you are collecting the anecdotes in a methodical way then it doesn't tell you anything, since you can't know what biases your data is affected by

I cured my X by doing Y.

Is that an anecdote or a data point? What if 150 people tell you the same thing? Having done exactly that, I don't really care how anyone else classifies it, it is my reality.

It's an anecdote. It doesn't matter if you hear it 150 times, obviously. If you hear 150 people tell you that vaccines gave their child autism, is that your reality?