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Comment by christophilus | Hacker News Reader

I find that the average HN thread demonstrates a broader diversity of thought, and generally deeper, more critical, more scientific thought than the average Twitter feed. So it’s not surprising that Twitter would be near unanimous and HN would be more nuanced.

This is one of the reasons I prefer HN to just about any other online forum.

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Deeper and more critical sure (likely due to the platform, not necessarily the users).

On Twitter I can choose to follow POC, women, experts inside/outside this field and hear their opinion—-which I’d argue provides a more diverse representation than anonymous posts by a largely white male message board.

I also trust the opinion of someone willing to share their identity, it forces you to think more carefully about the stand you’re taking when your reputation is on the line.

What makes someone's opinion particularly valuable when that someone's a woman or not white? They might have different life experiences and perspectives on day to day life compared to a white male, but sex or race has zero relevance to knowledge-based fields.

The opinion of someone anonymous is probably very close to their true opinion. The opinion of non-anonymous users on Twitter is almost certainly censored.

HN is the new /.

Oh I haven't thought about that site in a long time. I used to be obsessed with it back in the day.

I agree that there is a broader diversity of a thought, but there’s also a dominant, conservative streak when it comes to deferring to corporate authority. This is unsurprising since many people on this site get paid a lot of money by the same people being critiqued, but does represent a kind of self-selection toward servility.

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