Hacker News Reader

Comment by glogla | Hacker News Reader

Based on what gets up and downvoted, most of people on HN are ancap or fascists.

I guess it makes sense - startups are gold rush, VC's are the ones giving away shovels for portion of gold should there be any, and founders are people who either found gold or believe they will.

I wonder if most of people have political outlook like this. If they do, it is both sad and comforting, because then the humanity is doomed to kill ourselves via climate change, but we would deserve it.

View on HN

> most of people on HN are ancap or fascists

This sort of generalization is notoriously unreliable and subject to cognitive bias. People are far more likely to notice what they dislike, and to weight it more heavily. This produces false feelings of generality:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

That's why users with opposing views to yours make the opposite generalization [1]. It's not that HN is any different—they simply dislike different things. This is one of the most reliable phenomena I've seen on HN. It's so reliable that one can accurately predict people's politics (or other preferences) simply by flipping a bit on the generalizations they make.

[1] A few are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26368875.

Edit: it looks like we've had this conversation before:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20343865 (July 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14200623 (April 2017)

Since we are here, Daniel, and also with reference to something I wrote nearby: I think the guidelines should be augmented, in terms of "downvoting without justification should be frowned upon". Otherwise, some would be tempted to just downvote something because they "feel differently": posts are not polls ("how many like strawberry, how many dislike it"). In general, downvoting should be accompanied by posting the underlying reasons - it should take posts evidently inconsistent with the purpose (cheap cheer, cheap joke etc.) to be exceptionally downvoted silently.

I understand HN is pretty conservative in terms of structure and rules, but I believe this should be a general norm that would be consistent with the spirit of the site (intellectuality and promotion of meaningful posts), and beneficial if made explicit.

It is a common suggestion but I think it would be a mistake to require people to post reasons for their downvotes. It would produce a ton of noise (because people would just make shit up) and dramatically increase meta-bickering about downvotes, which we already have too much of.

Edit: here's a partial list of past explanations about this, in case anyone is interested in seeing how it has come up over the years: https://news.ycombinator.com/downvote-reasons

There are probably quite a few ancaps, and I've seen a fair few communists, but I have yet to see a genuine fascist. That suggests to me your using the term more as a slur than as a word that actually means something.

I really hope dang sees this. It's a nice candidate for inclusion in his list of

   [f"most people on HN are {x}" for x in ridiculous_ideologies]

Upvote and downvote do not work that way at HN and should not be interpreted that way without analysis. Here it is not about how you feel: it is about whether you make sense. Experience mostly reflects the principle (some noise must be expected).

Your claim is fallacious. It is not rooted in any formal study of HN voters or voting outcomes. It is just a story HN members tell themselves to feel special. Reality is, HN is like every other social media platform, and feelings deeply influence voting around here. IMO it is obvious.

There is little need for formal studies. HN is very surely different from «other social media platform[s]»: you must have never been on Reddit or YT, to provide examples of diametrically opposite places. A quick look at information density and "where the uttering came from" (say, above the neck, below the hips or other guts) should clearly show a massive, radical difference. That feelings influence voting, in terms of "hear, hear" or "thank you", is not undesirable: it is still agreement on reasoning. Expression of disagreement through downvoting is limited already through a technical limitation, which also contributes to indicate the form. Some foolish snipers (hitting without leaving any justification) are around: bad apples are not curbed, also because it apparently is not a mission for HN to create an optimal system of moderation and debate.

In fact, there are several shortcomings to adopt HN as a model for moderation and debate - it was evidently not the objective. But civilization wise, there is no comparison with many other places.

By the way:

> a story HN members tell themselves to feel special

Please. Accusing others to have unclean grounds in their evaluations, gratuitously? And, when one is "special", it is not out of some free membership that confirmation comes.

I think you may have a mistaken impression of how downvotes work on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

Reply on news.ycombinator.com