Do you tell that to everyone, as soon as they open their mouth with a thought, or only the folks who suggest we should ease the lockdown sooner?

It would be interesting on HN if we developed a habit of interrogating everyone for their credentials and shouting them down immediately if they're just another software engineer.

>It would be interesting on HN if we developed a habit of interrogating everyone for their credentials and shouting them down immediately if they're just another software engineer.

That would be horrible but anyone who is a specialist in a field knows how consistently wrong the HN hivemind is on any subject outside the realm of software. This place is perhaps the biggest community of people who overestimate their knowledge on any subject when in reality they have little knowledge/expertise in said subject.

The encouraging thing about HN is that much of the community seems aware of the propensity for software engineers to think they have the answer to all the problems of the world. IMO, acknowledging that and not taking ourselves too seriously helps keep this forum from completely degenerating into another Reddit.

>IMO, acknowledging that and not taking ourselves too seriously helps keep this forum from completely degenerating into another Reddit.

Ironic, because many people here seem to believe not taking ourselves too seriously will lead to this forum degenerating into another Reddit.

Touché. I guess I'm describing my wishes more than reality.

I think your parent commenter literally said “yes” to your question.

It didn’t sound like an interrogation, it sounded more like a brick wall of “this conversation is over.”

There are definitely diplomatic ways to say this to people or change the subject.

People get the polite one the first time, and the undiplomatic “I’m not interested in your opinion” the second time.

When people ask me, I usually say “I have no idea, we’re all stuck on this ride until the end”.

> It would be interesting on HN if we developed a habit of interrogating everyone for their credentials and shouting them down immediately if they're just another software engineer.

HN is a rich source of ironic behavior indeed.

This is an extremely bad faith response.

Nobody suggested that experts are infallible or should be followed blindly, that’s just an obvious straw man. Experts disagree and make mistakes, and other experts regularly help point that out and make corrections.

What does not follow is the idea that expertise doesn’t matter, and that I have to listen to everyone single person’s hot take on a subject that they just started studying last month.

You are right! And it also doesn't follow that one should discard a piece of information just because it comes from some dude's blog.

I'm also very frustrated about people sharing horrible lies and fakes from blogs or Facebook posts.

But I think we should judge the article by its content rather than by whether it's by a programmer or a doctor.

This is why I like anonymous or nearly-anonymous forums like this one: it forces you to think about the content without being influenced by the author's attractive photo, their fame or credentials, or the letters "MD" next to their name.

> it also doesn’t follow that one should discard a piece of information just because it comes from some dude’s blog.

It doesn’t follow that I have to give every speaker equal weight; this would result in me having to listen to millions of amateurs before hearing an actual expert. The simple reality is that due to the limitations of time and preferential attention given to those with experience and expertise, it’s perfectly reasonable to ignore random blogs.

> horrible lies and fakes from blogs or Facebook posts.

You can’t take the ultra-rational “listen to everyone on the merits” approach and dismiss things as “lies” without a shred of specificity or evidence in the same breath.