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Comment by mjamesaustin | Hacker News Reader

Went to the Leaderboard and Hitler is currently in 10th place. So yeah, that happened quickly. :/

Aaand now he's in first, with over 2000 ELO, far above the Earth, oxygen, or sex, which each have barely 1500.

I don't think higher rating is an endorsement. The question is only: which do you rank higher? I think Adolf Hitler ranks quite highly on notoriety, especially if the comparison is inherently notorious (ie. Hitler vs. Jeffrey Epstein.) So I'm not sure Hitler ranking highly is in bad faith.

> So I'm not sure Hitler ranking highly is in bad faith.

I think they may be ranking Hitler the artist or Hitler the leader surely. It can't possibly be the more simple explanation of the internet being full of trolls who think anonymous graffiti is funny.

Why is it only on HN that this sort of contortion happens?

ELO in most contexts is a sort of "strength" rating so I decided when doing a few dozen that I would choose whichever had more impact on history. Or to put it another way, I was choosing the thing that would cause the most differences if it didn't exist. In my case I got Hitler vs Electricity so the latter is the obvious choice but anyone else using the same criteria as me has perfectly good reason to choose Hitler over some random sport team or most other individuals.

Though yes it's the internet, so it's probably mostly people doing it for the funny.

Maybe the site needs a quick explainer of what Elo ranking is. Perhaps people should have to pass a multiple choice question about it before they can start ranking.

Conflating Elo ranking with goodness is shockingly dimwitted - I'd think it much below Hacker News commentators, but apparently that's not the case. Of course Hitler would have a high Elo ranking; he's objectively one of the most powerful and influential humans of all time.

I think a more likely answer is that people are not taking it very seriously, and are just picking Hitler as a troll answer.

Yea. Now the leader is Rupert Murdoch.

Currently in first now

It's moving around a lot, because Hitler was in first place about 90 seconds before you posted this.

Its at 2031 elo now, while the closest to it is 1500 elo. Lot of catching up to do but I think there is still good chance to catch it before it becomes much harder.

I could see this as real-life version of The Office episode where they stop working to decide if Hilary Swank is hot or not. Busy Monday, I guess.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Family_Paper

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