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Comment by vmurthy | Hacker News Reader

>Am I supposed to be mad at him?

Families of the victims should be mad , yes. He preyed on their need for solace and made money out of it :-(

I took away a lesson (which is closer to the ethos of HN)

If something has gathered momentum (someone doing something unbelievable or something that other people are harping about), dig a bit deeper. Either you'll discover something nice or you can debunk the hype. Either way, you would have learned something.

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> which is closer to the ethos of HN

HN has an ethos? I thought there were just a set of guidelines.

The HN ethos has one rule: Each level of comments shall disagree with the level before it, with the article counting as level 0.

First-tier comments shall disagree with the article. Second-tier comments shall disagree with first-tier comments and agree with the article if necessary (but only when necessary). Third-tier comments shall disagree with second-tier comments and may or may not be related to the article, and so on.

that's very good, but there are some exceptions. If the article is about any health related topics, terminal illnesses, diet studies, etc., no matter how interesting, all comments shall be tangentially related personal anecdotes.

And any article along the lines of "I had a terrible work experience" is viewed as an open invitation to participate in Story Time.

Which I actually love - best part of HN is the pub talk

I click them more often than not.

My favorite part of HN is that the comments are usually collectively better than the article.

Now this comment can neither agree nor disagree. Barber shaving their own head and such. EDIT: now I realize not really since the above being false doesn't force me to agree.

All articles are true in some sense, false in some some sense, and meaningless in some sense.

All comments are true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, true in some sense, false in some some sense, and meaningless in some sense.

It’s turtles all the way down.

I agree with you

and by doing so you disagree, thus proving their point.

Soo .. did I disagree with the OP of this thread? ;-)

My comment disagrees with itself

Of course, this is not the ethos, and whatshisface is completely wrong on account of also of having a forgettable name. I'll often see someone chime in to agree as well as to disagree, to clarify. It's all just a bit.

I thought the rule was to inject a personal connection to everything.

As a frequent reader of HN, this has been my experience.

> The HN ethos has one rule: Each level of comments shall disagree with the level before it, with the article counting as level 0.

this doesn't sound right.

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