> comments (laypeople in general) tend to make very confident and very wrong comments on market structure

Former equity derivatives trader here. The Levine article linked to is one of the denser accessible discussions on the topic I’ve seen. Also, as a current English speaker, the “truth searching” the comment you’re responding to cites refers to the general process of learning, and nothing specific to market structure.

He original poster was using "truth searching" euphemistically. In other words, it was a more polite way of saying that many, or even nearly all, comments on such matters on HN are misguided.

> The Levine article linked to is one of the denser accessible discussions on the topic I’ve seen

That's the point, just read the Levine article instead of going through half-correct HN comments.

Also, I'm a native english speaker (and lived in 2.5 english speaking countries) and have never heard the phrase truth searching

You, I like.

> HN comments (laypeople in general) tend to make very confident and very wrong comments on {X}

Yes, it's annoying. From conspiracy theorists to supposedly smart people with PhD's, I'll catch them in a fiction. "You just made all of that up," I'll say, to which they reply with handwaving and equivocation. Why are we so reticent to be comfortable with our own ignorance and hold our tongue?

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to offer an opinion borne out of reasonable ignorance, but the critical part missing most of the time is that you have to be open to actually being corrected without becoming combative.

Too many people have their ego and sense of self worth wrapped up in being correct on the internet, regardless of the topic.

HN, specifically, is a doomed social network for the tech worker sewing circle that embraces the falsehood that we are all Very Knowledgeable about Everything just because we know about computers.

This is a property of human beings in general. We're all wrong about almost everything, and "wrong and confident" probably just means the same thing as "wrong".

Which is fine! But as community we do have a somewhat annoying tic of fixating on a small set of axioms and trying to extrapolate everything else from them, when a lot of things you can just look up the answers. Even competing authorities, if our cites conflict, is usually a more interesting (and curious!) conversation than a bunch of nerds making it up as they go along.

When nobody has a cite, we're just going to noodle and be wrong about stuff and that's fine, even salutary. But sometimes the truth-seeking we do is kind of superfluous.

(I'm just writing this so it doesn't sound like I was just snarking about HN.)