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Comment by synu | Hacker News Reader

I used to think this, but I am almost certain I was wrong. It really just didn't matter at all what I did or didn't do, and there are already so many people grandstanding to each other all the time that it's just more noise on the noise pile. Now I try to avoid it and focus on more interesting things.

Anyway, I think people who say dumb things on the internet suffer much more for not getting attention than being corrected.

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>and there are already so many people grandstanding to each other all the time that it's just more noise on the noise pile.

This is true to an extent. If you're in a 500 comment thread, and the point you want to make has already been made by a few other people, there's little point in dogpiling in yourself. However, this isn't always true. If you're adding new information/perspectives, I don't see how that's "just more noise on the noise pile".

To me it just seems like everybody talking past each other, that this supposed silent majority of people passively observing and waiting to be convinced by the most reasonable argument simply doesn't exist, or barely does.

Your mileage may vary, but this has been my experience.

How would you be able to tell whether the silent population is there or not? I can understand how this could be your “theory,” but not your “experience.”

My experience is nobody from the massive silent population has ever jumped in to introduce themselves and say they were convinced, and I've never met anyone in real life who says they use forums but don't post just to be convinced by arguments on the internet to choose one worldview or another. From that experience I developed the theory that they don't actually exist.

But anyway, debating the semantic difference between theory and experience seems to be missing the point.

Not trying to debate semantics. I was hoping you had some data that showed the proportion of lurkers or something. Or maybe some survey where people answered whether they’d been convinced by reading others’ debates online. I’ve personally sought out online debates to help make my own judgments (without commenting), so I’m curious whether that’s really so uncommon.

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