Hacker News Reader

> 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?

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com