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Comment by skullgrid | Hacker News Reader

TBH this post should probably be taken down, or at least explicitly stated as an April Fools joke in the title. I almost didn't come to the comments section, and I didn't read all the way to the bottom date. I definitely would have taken this as fact.

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Sounds like you learned a valuable lesson about believing things you read on the internet today :)

Taking it down means others won't be able to learn this lesson.

I agree that it's important to learn these lessons, but if recent history has taught us anything it's that reach and amplification will drown out most voices of reason.

I think Vimes might have had an aphorism about this...

EDIT: aphorism, not proverb

Sure, it is generally wise to keep your guard up when reading things on the internet (or any source). That's fair enough. But at the same time, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect HN posts to adhere to a higher standard. IMO HN is not the appropriate forum for pseudo-intellectual gotchas.

True, but at the same time, it is difficult to overlook the weight of Yale, the fact that this was published there, had I not found it so intriguing that I wanted to see what others were saying about it I would not have fact checked it.

"A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.”—Mark Twain

This is a glorious example of that.

This a very well known April Fools joke (especially in academia). Maybe the date should be added, but taking it down is a bit much.

My skeptic-radar was pinging at a rate that it sounded like a continuous tone.

While I enthusiastically retweeted it with a little nostrum on how funny people's interests are. Then read the comments, and then deleted the tweet.

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