Hacker News Reader

Comment by ceilingcorner | Hacker News Reader

Sorry but no. While every community that portrays itself as “rational” would like to think that it is unbiased and skeptical toward everything, the same basic human social dynamics still apply. HN is aggressively anti-crypto to the point where I don’t even bother reading comments on related links. It’s become a Pavlovian 2 minutes hate, every. Single. Time.

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I don't understand. How have you determined the anti crypto sentiment is due to pavlovian hate and not rational disagreement?

Because literally every single topic is filled with puerile “Haha, Idiots!” comments immediately. Every single time.

I have not had the same experience. You admit that you don't read them anymore, maybe they have changed?

It was a figure of speech. I still click on the links and scan the comments. The recent links about Ethereum and the large hack were prime examples. There is an extreme undercurrent of skepticism that only gets somewhat masked by HN’s culture of writing critical comments in a roundabout intellectual way. There are also a huge number of low effort hostile ones that seem like Reddit overflow.

I should add that this is hilarious considering the name of this website.

I'm not sure what you mean about the Etherium news, without the specific post it's hard to discuss it.

Either way, I find crypto to be difficult to discuss online, in general. Mostly because there seems to be fanatics on both sides. You seem to notice more the ones on the "anti" side, I see plenty on the "pro" side. Not to mention the wrinkle where many people who were early adopters believed in it as an actual currency. Today, many of the "pro" comments I read seem to view it as an investment (i.e. phrases like "hodl").

Look at the comments on the topic of hack (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28151538) and you'll find comments like:

- this was not a hack

- nobody stole anything, it's code LOL

- it's just shitcoins

- nothing is backed with real money

- good riddance, it's all a scam

...

well if you think about it, there aren't very many people who are fully on-board with any given cryptocurrency, conceptually, who don't also have literally vested interests in said cryptocurrency. when you have literally vested interests in something, you're going to be defensive about your investment, possibly to the point of emotional irrationality. this makes conversation between the invested and the skeptics pretty useless most of the time—if a skeptic were to convince an investor that their cryptocurrency is bad, then they would pull out of investing in it. if an investor were to convince a skeptic that their cryptocurrency is good, then they would likely also become an investor.

put another way, there are broadly four possible types of people who would discuss cryptocurrencies on a website like this:

A) crypto fans who have invested in crypto

B) crypto fans who have not invested in crypto

C) crypto skeptics who have invested in crypto

D) crypto skeptics who have not invested in crypto

for obvious reasons, you aren't going to find many—if any—people in categories B and C, so that leaves categories A and D arguing with each other, and largely unlikely to change each others' minds—especially category A, because, again, they are literally invested in the thing they're a fan of.

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