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Comment by squaresmile | Hacker News Reader

I mean, that's every non-IT topic in an IT forum. It's to be expected from all forums really. Everyone has blind spots about other professions.

I think the key is to treat off-topic threads like watercooler talk, friends shooting the shit with each other and enjoy the drama.

I'm sorry but I gotta laugh at "despite the majority being some form of an intellectual", as if that is worth something. If you don't have the experience and the domain knowledge, can you call yourself an intellectual in that domain?

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The thing is the IT community should know better. You know what goes in airplanes and missiles? Computers.

Not understanding how high 60,000 feet (roughly 18km) is is embarassing when you're an engineer of some description.

This phenomenon is something I've noticed with other subjects too; like a lot of the IT community not understanding how life works outside of cities when we talk about transport and infrastructure.

IT professionals affect the world in very significant ways with their engineering, but they also seem like some of the most naive/ignorant people I know of. I'm greatly interested in why this seems so.

> but they also seem like some of the most naive/ignorant people I know of. I'm greatly interested in why this seems so.

It’s the arrogance associated with it. A kind of “I understand this complicated thing (computers) so everything else is trivial to me”. To learn something, you need the humility to say “I don’t understand”.

There is likely a selection bias at work here. Anyone who correctly identifies that they lack the domain knowledge to leave a well informed comment will not post. So most posts will naturally be by the uninformed or arrogant, but we have no idea what the ratio between these two groups is because people who dont post are impossible to count.

Dunning Kruger?

> but they also seem like some of the most naive/ignorant people I know of. I'm greatly interested in why this seems so.

Combination of poor social skills and arrogance.

> "despite the majority being some form of an intellectual", as if that is worth something.

I think I would phrase that as "despite the majority thinking of themselves some form of an intellectual, outside of their domain, they are out often out their depth and unaware of it".

> If you don't have the experience and the domain knowledge, can you call yourself an intellectual in that domain?

Yeah, that's the thing. You can assume that "in that domain" is irrelevant, and call yourself an intellectual, period. You can and you'd be wrong, very wrong, but you wouldn't be alone. It's common.

When I call myself an intellectual, it is mostly a form of pride or vanity.

As a boy, I read Ender's Game and Zhuge Liang's commentaries on The Art of War. As a man, I like to imagine that I now know enough to keep the whole world safe from catastrophic war. It is a comforting illusion.

It's not uncommon to find people on HN who are "in the room" when top-level decisions are being made in healthcare, defense, finance, etc

That's different from when an Oncologist forum is discussing SEC actions or an Accounting forum is discussing laser-guided munitions... or at least it might be different: you rarely know on HN who is speaking from direct knowledge.

And if it's about defense or proprietary information then HNers with knowledge will lurk but not participate.

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