But also, it's not necessarily the same people being knowledgeable of everything. Reading HN it's easy to think everyone else is intimately familiar with the fine details of a microchip, is the CTO of a big business, is at the frontier of machine learning applications, contributes to the Linux kernel, has run medical trials, etc.

Because for every topic here, there will be someone knowledgeable commenting. But it's different people for different subjects. So don't get impostor syndrome thinking everyone is so good at everything.

That's one of the nice things about HN, though, that subject matter experts show up and discuss things.

I'm glad you mentioned this, because I'm looking for a related term.

Sometimes in discussions (often political ones), I see this pattern:

1. Person A and person B are both members of group G.

2. Person A advocates view P.

3. Person B advocates view Q, which is logically incompatible with P.

4. An outsider concludes that some persons in G are logically inconsistent, because "G has members who believe both P and Q".

Is there a name for the fallacy in step 4? It reminds me a little of kettle logic[0], or the association fallacy [1], but it's clearly different.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle_logic

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

Definitely this, everyone sounds like an expert to me in the programming/engineering/humanities threads until I see a one about mathematics (I am a mathematician) and I remember that it is just my ignorance of the other topics preventing me from being able to tell whether people actually know what they are talking about!

This isn't a site for mathematicians though. HN is extremely naive about math, not about programming, I am experienced enough in both fields to tell the difference.

Gell-Mann amnesia effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...

I wasn't aware this is a named phenomenon, thanks!

Aka the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect:

https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

Glad to see this perspective. I find the industry in general is full of very confident people who will try to bowl you over with their cursory understanding of topics.

I find that in tech you run across more people than usual where because they are very intelligent and successful within various tech domains they think this also sets them up to uniquely be an expert at other domains. Politics, law, public health, economics, etc. This is not true.

Yeah, I took freshman sociology, and I don't even see that level of experience expressed often here.

Sociology is not really a social science. It deals in just-so stories, platitudes and bizarre musings. Science (of the non-experimental sort) is about making precise, rigorous arguments that can be checked for their soundness and assessed together with any available evidence.

I can't tell if this is trying to demonstrate how HN users don't have a solid grasp of social sciences via parody, or a genuine post.

Yes exactly, they sound just like that. And worse sometimes too, but that’s not a bad parody.

I think you've confused popular attempts to over-fit the findings of sociology to social ills with sociology itself.

Yeah, I think this is exactly what the commenter meant - are you seriously beating the “social science is not a science” horse in this unrelated thread?

For reference, sociology is a statistical science. Like physics. It does seem like you are strictly unfamiliar with the practice of sociology.

I remember when I made my first HN account in 2010 or so. I felt so overwhelmed by how smart everyone seemed. Sometimes someone on HN still surprises me, but wow was I easily impressed back then.

Especially about the law. I really wish HNers would refrain from giving legal advice because it’s often wrong, sometimes dangerously so.

100% this!