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isn't online learning more a problem than a solution? A lot of research shows that we learn better on paper than on screens, that screens have a negative correlation on academic results, etc.

I think the downvotes are coming in because you are carrying out a fundamentally different argument.

The article argues that people used to be more intellecutally capable when they were younger and it diminished with age.

You are arguing that each generation used to be more intellectually capable than the one before, and that that is diminishing.

I’m not trying to accuse you of anything, but it seems like you didn’t actually read the article you were commenting on. Is that possible?

Yes, it is possible. This is a good criticism :)

I somehow think the downvotes may be related to something else, though.

Yeah, the shameless self promotion without providing any value yourself.

On the contrary. I provide a ton of value, for free, in the form of:

Identifying the actual roots of the problems people post passionately about, and clearly explaining the underlying mechanisms that lead not just to this problem but many others they might not realize are related

Researching for years the best ways to fix it, going out of my way to have substantive discussions with some of the top problem solvers across multiple fields, and publish the videos up publicly

Spending over a decade on actually writing the open source software, hiring people, creating jobs, without asking anything from any of you

And making it freely available as open source, with documentation, all without taking on VC funding or any of the actual profit-taking and extracting rents that goes on here with “software a service”

In literally every way I can, I try to contribute value without taking in return.

So you could not be more wrong, and if you’d click the links you’d see that. But you’d rather not even look, because in your capitalist mind, sharing the result of decades of work and over $1 million spent on free open source platforms for the world is “self-promotion”. You’d rather see another startup extract rents for a simple product built around tiny feature, funded by venture capitalists who want to have an exit by selling shares to the public, who will demand more rent extraction and wait for even further enshittification of platforms and society. It’s pretty amusing to me.

I currently enjoy staying relatively almost completely unknown, and seeing the reaction people have to the most straightforward application of the above solutions to their own problems. Because I think that even on HN, many people are acting very irrationally and groupthink dominates, and while millions of people actually use my software, 99.99% have no idea who I am, and I get to see how human groups react to form instead of substance. This is btw why we often can’t have nice things, at least not unless the solutions, like bitter medicines, are presented wrapped in candy for organizations. We are a generation of children living on an ecological credit card, one of the most spoiled in history, but think we know better than everyone else. So I kind of enjoy seeing the irrationality as a form of entertainment although on a global ecological scale, it’s sadly quite scary.

I downvoted you. Your whole post is a thinly veiled marketing post that is only tangentially related to the topic at hand, as others have noted. Beyond that, your tone is annoying and your additional posts only serve to justify my initial impression.

Fair enough!

At least I appreciate the explanation !

Yes, solving Bloom's 2 sigma problem would be huge.

> But the education system still sucks, especially in many of the more underfunded public schools

The problems depend on where you live. (And also whether schools are underfunded or not, and what that even means.)

> PS: gotta love the massive wave of silent downvotes. Why? Not enough substance? Not enough effort spent solving a problem or documenting it? Something you don’t like? Speak up! Ahh nevermind.

It's best to ignore those.

>PS: gotta love the massive wave of silent downvotes. Why?

Thinly veiled sales pitch.

Excuse me but what is HN about if not sharing your work that you worked on?

Oh, it's also about startups. And about funding them. And building stuff people want.

I don't know man. Every time I put in a lot of work (a decade, say) and build something major and substantial to improve the world, and document it, linking to third party reputable sources for everything I'm claiming and saying, and give it away for free... if I share the link on HN, I often get downvoted. It's almost as if talking out of your ass and NOT doing anything to solve the problem, is far more appreciated.

Like how people regularly complain about everything related to extreme centralization of control, surveillance capitalism, etc, and I built open source and free software give you an alternative, attracted millions of people in over 100 countries, and give it away for free to you here if you only look::

Web2: https://github.com/Qbix/Platform

Web2 Documentation: https://community.qbix.com

Web3: https://github.com/Intercoin

Web3 Documentation: https://intercoin.org/applications

But it gets downvoted because "hey I saw the word web3!" or "hey you're selling me... um... something". This is the "TLDR" generation.

Don't like it? Don't use it. Or use the part you like. But how about the 99% of the useful, substantive information which doesn't involve selling anything at all?

I didn't downvote you myself (I don't care much about the topic), just my hunch as to why you got downvoted.

Sales pitches based on shitting on the main article get downvoted.

Complaining about downvotes gets downvoted.

Pity parties get downvoted.

It’s not a mystery.

Shitting how? Many popular comments on HN delight in picking on the posted article, especially vehemently if it is something they don’t like (eg web3)

To me the cause seems simple: actively enforced groupthink

Ah yes, you are the messiah in this case, telling us lowly plebian group-thinking mouthbreathers how to think. Thanks!

More like the guy in Plato’s cave metaphor. Or Socrates maybe.

But do carry on!

https://psychcentral.com/quizzes/narcissistic-personality-qu...

That’s what the guy in Plato’s cave had too.

Where’s your hemlock?

> Intercoin develops much-needed Web 5.0 solutions

Rough start

TLDR generation, as I said.

Oh and groupthink against Web>2.

(A bit remiscent of bitcoin maximalists who claim nothing will ever improve upon Bitcoin and nothing is needed since an old 2009 technology solves it all).

> Take me seriously, you fools!

That’s what’s I’m hearing from you. And my answer is no.

It’s not that, honestly

I prefer to see how far irrationality can go, on even the best forums. Because a lot of times this is exactly what people have to go through who have “built a better mousetrap” but the world doesn’t “beat a path to their door”, not even their peers care, depending entirely on how it is presented

So what I’m hearing is:

> People who have done something successfully often had others disagree with them, ergo if others disagree with me it’s probably a sign that I’m on the right path. And also that they’re “irrational”.

Airtight my man

My point is that many people reject very rational solutions, and don't even want to look at them, because of groupthink, and yes that's irrational.

Ask yourself, for instance, what chance does a real Web3 solution have on HN? Even Jack Dorsey's bluesky, for instance, instantly lost HNers when Jack started branding it as "Web5". IPFS no longer generates much interest because of FileCoin. Just one example, of the "halo effect".

> Ask yourself, for instance, what chance does a real Web3 solution have on HN?

Perhaps this is because they’re near universally bad ideas. Web3 is a strong leading indicator of poorly thought out garbage.

Maybe you can find a way to make it work for something useful. But if your pitch starts out with “Web3!” Or worse “Web5!” It sure sounds like you’ve just tried to jam tech into something rather than solving an actual problem that happened to leverage the tech.

Or perhaps that's not the reason, but you're just extremely biased by the groupthink. Consider that! I am currently at a conference called Government Blockchain Association. We built the app for it. There are lots of people here gathered in DC, including the US top money manager, people from the World Bank, IMF, academia, regulators. They understand things like zero-knowledge proofs and see how blockchains are useful. Yet you are sure that they're all just wasting their time?

Wow these guys seem really credible and dedicated to rationale exploration of blockchain uses in government.

I hope you enjoy their upcoming session called Space, featuring a picture of a flying saucer

https://gbaglobal.org/events/space/#post_content

> Embark on a journey beyond the bounds of Earth’s atmosphere and delve into the mysteries of space and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) or Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).

Is this what you do? Go through a website ignoring 99% of it, ignoring all the members including current politicians, technologists, reaearchers, bureaucrats of major institutions, and searching for the one thing that might — if presented in a weird light and without context - dishonstly paint the entire organization and its members as a bunch of quacks to be disregarded?

You really think the Government Blockchain Association is primarily concerned with space and UFOs? If not, why highlight it? One word: strawman! A dishonest way to argue. I know HN members are biased against blockchains but I am always surprised more and more by the methods employed in argument. For a long time I thought HN members would avoid such tactics merely because they disagreed with something.

Well the first thing I did was go to the about page to see who started it, but they don’t list anyone in the section titled “who are we”. I sort of found loose evidence of who might actually involved and not just some random email signup, but it was not helpful.

A straw man is an attacking a different argument, not focusing on one particularly noteworthy piece of evidence. Asserting that I’m saying space is their primary concern is, ironically, a straw man argument. Because I’m not saying that. I’m saying that it’s a red flag.

An organization focused on financial technology has no reason to be hosting a talk on UFOs. I don’t think their thing is UFOs. But I do think maybe their thing is trying to attract complete fucking morons that think they know better than the rest of society in the vein that “UFOs are aliens” is markedly compatible with “blockchain is the solution society needs”.

I actually feel very comfortable writing off any organization as idiots, crazies, or predatory snake oil salesmen for hosting a single event on the presence of aliens among us. I don’t require that to be their whole thing. That’s just a hilariously bright red flag.