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>The reality is that most people, EVEN technical people, don't actually understand the Internet.

Nothing gives me Gell-Mann amnesia quite like the comments that get upvoted on HN posts relevant to the particular area in which I work...

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Yeah, I actually find it really disconcerting. It's one thing when you read mainstream news stories and see that they're inaccurate; like, "OK, sure the writer is a journalist, obviously not a specialist in this area, and the intended audience is also comprised of non-specialists." But reading HN makes me feel very inadequate 99% of the time, in terms of my knowledge of the computing domain. Then every few months I see a thread about some specific thing that I feel quite comfortable with and it's like, "What on earth? I thought these people were all smarter than me, but look at these comments..."

I'm currently a PhD student doing research related to Tor, and there was a thread about Tor last month. I didn't even know where to start with the comments, so I didn't participate at all.

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