> Why do so many commenters on HN always sound so confident, yet none of them work in publishing?

I find this with almost any topic I am familiar with.

The absolute confidence with which certain things were stated on HN was completely different from my lived experience.

This made me start placing less value on HN comments, and going and reading up more when I found a topic interesting.

I also find comments related to a certain worldviews generally get voted up more. Probably it's because of the HN demographic.