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Comment by javierga | Hacker News Reader

That’s going to take a while to process for me. Have tried to be an active user since 2014 and whenever I have something of value, it’s already been expressed better by someone else.

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Marc Twain had a technique to create text of value.

If you hear some news, notice your immediate reaction. Everyone thinks the same thing, so dump that thought in the litter. Same for your second immediate reaction. The third or fourth reaction are maybe different enough to merit writing down.

I almost didn't reply to this to say, "This is the same for me as well," because, well, it's the same! Someone already expressed, in better phrasing, what I would otherwise say.

But given the subject matter, I feel a reply is in order.

I've deleted many comments before submission because I decided I wasn't in the mood for a debate on the topics.

I don't think ive ever read a reply to one of my comments. I use Materialistic for Android and it doesn't really provide all the controls the desktop does. Particularly, I cannot edit comments, and I have no inbox or way to see replies to my comments. I remember when I realized that was even a thing when browsing on the desktop once, I had all these thoughtful and interesting replies and rebuttals but in the end it just gave me anxiety. So I just don't worry about it anymore, I comment what I think without the need to see if someone wants to debate, it's very freeing as I only comment rarely and on things which i feel strongly about.

Maybe im missing out on being schooled on all my 'infantile, toxic' opinions but I like it better this was. Reddit, has a much stronger echo chamber as there's no way to not see constantly delayed prominently, blinking and screaming for your attention, that someone replied to you. Likely a mob here to attack your self worth just for the sake of hurting your feelings, usually provoked by any opinion that's even slightly outside/opposed to the subreddit-approved thought patterns. It trains you to be afraid to challenge the status quo (there are many people who seem to use reddit only to attack). I know HN is better than that but I cannot help feeling some anxiety after a couple specific comments from which I futilely attempted to defend myself with reason and caring conversation.

I learned my lesson

Get in the habit of submitting interesting articles you read! It takes 15 seconds and adds a lot to the community to take a handful of shots at a submission each month.

But all the articles I read only come from HN in the first place :-/

That's probably not healthy. HN is a very niche subculture whose interests aren't at all representative of what's happening in the world.

I stopped when I eventually empirically learned you all disagreed with me about what we interesting.

Well, it wasn't so slow for me, but it did feel slow.

What I found most disappointing is that while I am here most for software development topics I got my karma on economic, political, geographic, Europe vs. US etc. topics.

Me too. Your comment is one such example.

Even two hundred valueless comments will get you there though.

Question is if you want to make those.

No, a comment with a score of 1 (i.e. that isn't voted down at all, or equally up and down) contributes 0 to the author's karma.

Today I learned that all my beautiful, insightful 1 karma posts are just for my own vanity.

That seems counterintuitive. Shouldn’t the score be zero in that case?

It is a bit to me too yes, I don't make the rules! I can make sense of it though: 0 is neutral, as expected; comments start at 1, because everybody votes for their own comment; 1 point of comment score doesn't move user karma, because increasing karma just by commenting is undesirable.

While counterintuitive it does make sense. IMO psychological perception of difference between score 0 and 1 is far greater than difference between 1 and nigher scores.

Yeah your 1 score of post / comment doesn't give your karma, but it's still show your contribution as valuable.

Upvotes are what contribute to karma, not comment scores. A comment with a score of 1 hasn't received any upvotes (okay, maybe an equal number of upvotes and downvotes).

Counterintuitive for normal mortals. Maybe not for hackers who have learned that the first element is indexed by 0. Doesn't work in fully equivalent way. But hackers use more than languages and concepts are often somewhat different between them. It's been a long time I wrote FORTRAN IV :)

I always viewed it as 0 is neutral but your comments start at plus 1 because 'we' trust that it will be interesting/ engaging.

We begin @dang, the HN collective, the illuminati that run the internet...

Don’t worry too much. Go find an Apple thread and post about CSAM or proprietary walled gardens, find any random CVE thread and post about how “heads must roll” or some shit, go find a meta thread and post about how repetitive the comments can be.

> go find a meta thread and post about how repetitive the comments can be

Nice.

Easy, just start a "AWS is down again" thread. The chances are 50/50 that you're right :P

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