News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Hacker News Disease.

Re:Hacker News Disease by nobody9999 on Monday September 13, 2021 @06:03AM (#28509532)
TFA quotes Lao Tzu:

   "The wise man knows he doesn’t know. The fool 
   doesn’t know he doesn’t know."
I'd add the wisdom of Bokonon[0] to that sentiment:

   "Beware of the man who works hard to learn 
   something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser 
   than before. He is full of murderous resentment 
   of people who are ignorant without having come 
   by their ignorance the hard way. "
I'd point out that "Hacker News Disease" as defined by the author is most certainly not limited to, nor did it begin with, tech discussion sites like HN.

It's becoming more widespread and the author wants to paint this as essentially the arrogance of the tech elites.

But that doesn't comport with all non-tech, non-elites who also engage in this sort of thing.

In fact, it's pretty much the same thing discussed by Tom Nichols in his 2017 book[1], The Death of Expertise. I recommend it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat's_Cradle

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise

Edit: Removed extraneous article.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Hacker News Disease by grassmudhorse on Monday September 13, 2021 @06:08AM (#28509555)
> the author wants to paint this as essentially the arrogance of the tech elites.

Clearly you didn't read the second paragraph of the article:

> In fairness, this particular problem isn’t by any means endemic to Hacker News. It occurs at the crossroads where a bunch of smart people meet general tech industry discussion. I’m sure there are plenty of places that suffer from Hacker News Disease (and they probably had it first, have a terminal case of it, and are much less civil about it too) but HN is just the only one I’ve participated in, so they have the misfortune of being the community I’ve named it after.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Hacker News Disease by nobody9999 on Monday September 13, 2021 @06:16AM (#28509603)
>Clearly you didn't read the second paragraph of the article

Actually, I did. In fact, your quote is specifically referring to tech discussion websites, as it explicitly says:

   It occurs at the crossroads where a bunch of 
   smart people meet general tech industry 
   discussion.
What do you think the author means by "smart people meet general tech industry discussion?"
[ Parent | on HN ]