Hacker News Reader

> No longer can you just throw something out there, no matter how stupid.

Back in real world, I could never do it. If you could, that just means you lived in a bubble of like minded people.

There have always been some dimwits who do not see that good ideas come from iteration on dumb ideas, but what is different now is that the societal norm, adopted from forums like Reddit, is an expectation for you to prove that you are a dimwit, incapable of any original thought, only able to repeat ("source", as the kids like to say) what others have said in the past.

This is certainly not the only anti-intellectualism, anti-education movement we've ever experienced as humans, but we had progressed forward. This regression leaves a lot of people in bad places.

Arguably that’s the meta force behind social media. The platforms are designed to make people think in collectivist terms, which coincidentally (or not) makes things easier for more tyrannical forms of government. Indeed Facebook and old twitter are arguably quasi-federal entities.

In the online world there are a lot of places where you can throw out stupid thoughts and be applauded, although for applause they have to be in line with the particular bubble. "dumbcoin to the moon!" "other party is evil" etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com