Ask HN: Similar communities to HN that are less cynical? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Similar communities to HN that are less cynical?

41 pointsthrowaway247420 comments

This post was on the front page a few days and really resonated with me [1]. I love HN, because there is nowhere else on the internet with the same concentration of intelligence, deep knowledge and mature perspective on things.

However like the author I’ve noticed myself becoming increasingly cynical about tech, and the world. This is a very bad attitude to have for any startup ambitions, where optimism (bordering on irrationality) is necessary to succeed. So I want to start reading other things more often.

What other communities are there that are more optimistic, but still have a similar level of intelligence, experience etc?

1. https://kg.dev/thoughts/i-love-you-hn-but-youre-toxic

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I noticed that when I discovered the wonderful world of !!Con. It's a fun, joyous conference where the 10-minute talks can be about anything programming-related, they just have to have at least one exclamation mark in the title! Programmers doing all kinds of cool things, and being unashamedly enthusiastic about them. It's lot more hacker-y than HN mostly too. It's not the least of Julia Evans' gifts to the world.

https://bangbangcon.com/

The talk videos are on youtube. There's also since recently a !!Con West, and possibly others. !!Con encourages people to start their own !!Con, wherever in the world they live.

https://bangbangcon.com/west/

I always go back to the Dwarf Fortress forums from time to time [1]. It has the downsides of old school forums including no mobile support and limited threading. But it's often worth it.

Other complex gaming forums are great too - Paradox, Aurora 4X. Lots of hobbyist forums are great too, as long as they're not too 'normie', but discovering them has become more difficult with Reddit dominating search results.

The diversity in these places are a lot better too. It's not just tech bros, there are those who work blue collar jobs and those who work different fields, come from different countries.

[1] http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/

I do not know the answer to your question and I can see why you feel this way.

If I were going to start up a new company I would want a significant team of cynical people and think-tanks to pick apart my ideas and plans. Having said that I would take all the input with a grain of salt being the worst case scenario but I would not waste that information and would have my board members debate each and every point that members of HN brought up. We would risk rank each item and assign a score based on whatever metrics we can get and integrate that into our business plans and SEC paperwork.

Why would I want to subject myself and others to this? I have lived through the dot-bomb era of investors and business leaders wearing rose tinted glasses then making off with money leaving a pile of dust in their wake and putting many people out of work and holding worthless stock certificates. This is still a thing to a lesser degree. I believe this uncomfortable exercise could lend itself to showing an attempt at due diligence of fiduciary responsibility.

All of that said I can see how a product developer could find this exercise disheartening.

Perhaps tags would help. If each post had one or two tags, we could filter what we see by the presence or absence of certain tags.

Even so, as others have noted, simply ignoring the comment section on most posts will keep the mood less negative. Then when you see a post about something you’re really interested in, dive into the comments after reading the main content.

Cynicism is good for building a startup. You really have to understand how the world works in order to deliver something of value which people will accept and you can’t ride on optimism alone. Most of the tech startups you see have one happy consumer facing side and then a messy and sometimes ugly underbelly where they really make their money.

That is the story of every comment board on the internet, that's why most online newspapers remove comments. Comments turn negative on both sides of the argument very quickly

People will feel much more compelled to comment a negative experiences, because if the experience is positive that is just what was expected by default from the "brochure"

Example: if I go travel a week to an 5* hotel and all goes well, I won't even think of it, but if something is not pleasant, I'll sure go online google map reviews, yelp, trip advisor, and tell others that product/service is a scam

Although I do ask myself every time I go to find a movie or TV series to watch, why most choices main theme is based on negative things like: Murder, drugs, crime, sex abuse, detectives, horror, shooting... Maybe society has a stronger negative feedback loop

I notice dedicated communities around PARTICULAR TECHNOLOGIES. If you want fun fun fun and tech, get into the zillions of hobbyist communities centered around things like: those little dev boards (teensy, arduino, rpi, espressuino, whatever...) or digital audio, or 3D modelling, or whatever floats your boat.

Seeking good natured nerding on a venture-capital sponsored "tech news" site, however much "better than Reddit" the members depict it (I've found fun communities on sub-reddits, FWIW...) is a recipe for sadness... this place exists to kick tires and act skeptical. it's a sounding board where reactions to ideas react with each other, for better or worse. It's not to devalue what we have here, but to recognize what it is, and not seek to squeeze orange juice from bicycle locks.

Here goes my cynical take - maybe you are trying to use HN as a discussion forum? I think it is intended to be used for link aggregation. And cynical comments sometimes can be very helpful. You read some promotion of an app and the comment says "tried it, didn't work, you can achieve the same with notepad, would not recommend". What a useful reply! Hide the link and move on.

Look for a place with poorer, and/or dumber, people.

Consider it deeply before you flag it.

Ask not what HN can do for you, but what you can do for HN!

https://lobste.rs/about is smaller but very much alike. Not sure you can consider it less cynical, but the small community seems to result in less dynamic comment sections.

I'm so long on hn now I get more the feeling that I'm seeing less and less really new things.

Doesn't mean it's bad it's just less interesting than it was 5 years ago.

Another startup idea from a person who just want to have a startup/unicorn.

Another hack.

Another blog article about security deep dive.

Another retro post of someone doing something like running win95 somewhere or doom running on a pregnancy test.

There are articles which I accept that I will read them but understood the basics very fast but I will not retain all those details because either you would need to learn them like you do with vocabulary or something else long lasting.

So I have to accept that it becomes casual reading

News basically.

doom running on a pregnancy test

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24396780

Reddit is less cynical but the reality is that tech is being abused to a pretty extreme degree.

The world sucks, you can either ignore it or embrace it.

Respectfully, i think you maybe misframing the problem.

The problem is that your emotional state and your brain is literally under the control of shit you read on the internet. So now you're asking for different shit to read. It's basically a TV addict asking for a better channel. Maybe stop watching TV all day? Unplug, meditate, reclaim your brain.

You would like to find a community where cynicism is banned? I think your perspective is flawed. In tech, being correct or incorrect matters much more than optimism or cynicism. The best optimism is the kind that can withstand critical thinking.

When someone says "that's not possible" it's a challenge for you to prove otherwise not a discouragement to give up. Adversarial thinking is a fundamental component of critical thinking.

It's not others' sentiment that is toxic, it is your lack of perspective and willingness to subject your views and convictions to negative, critical and adversarial opposition and come out unscathed because not only is you optimism that strong, it is correct (hopefully).

It's like those people on sharktank that get wound up over Kevin O'Leary. I mean, he does lack tact and manners but that aside they should have anticipated his cynical and critical response and prepared a counter argument every single time. At worst their idea sounds better to other sharks and the tv audience, at best you can convince him by showing he can be wrong and you do know more than him and your confidence is not founded in wishful thinking but in facts, reason and reality.

In the end my friend, you can only have one priority and your success should be that priority. Thinking wishful thinking and unfounded and unquestioned optimism will get you there is a fool's errand in my opinion.

Sam Altman wrote a post on this and HN: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/new-hacker-news-guideline

"Critical thinking is good; shallow cynicism, on the other hand, adds nothing of value to the community. It is unpleasant to read and detracts from actual work. If you have something important but negative to say, that’s fine, but say it in a respectful way.

Negativity isn’t the problem–gratuitous negativity is. By that we mean negativity that adds nothing of substance to a comment. This includes all forms of meanness."

Well I don't see what part of my post disagrees with that. You don't need to lack manners or be unconstructive to offer critical or adversarial input. negativity without merit is hostility with extra steps. That said, if negative comments lack substance, I think it should be easy to call them out and discredit them.

You seem to be addressing a different type of cynicism. Sam's post appears to be talking about the exact same thing as OP, but articulated better.

The problem OP speaks of is probably more accurately stated as "gratituous negativity". Not simply being critical, adversarial, or negative, but indulging in it. When people find satisfaction is seeing others fail, it biases discussions towards false negatives.

HN tried to make gratituous negativity bannable. I don't know how that turned out but it's not in the guidelines anymore.

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