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Comment by overfeed | Hacker News Reader

> How can you comment as if you are knowledgeable enough about aviation to speak on this with authority, but you aren't aware that ...

This is par for the course for HN; smart people applying first-principle thinking on unfamiliar domains for about a minute, which confirms the biases of other outsiders who vote the plausible, but not-quite-right comments to the top.

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HN is particularly notorious for armchair aviation experts. I am an aerospace engineer having worked in airworthiness & certification as well as maintenance/repair/overhaul on multiple different aircraft types both fixed and rotary. I mention this only to establish my bona fides as someone who knows their shit:

The comments here during the 737 MAX MCAS thing were fucking wild. So many randoms spitting out confidently incorrect nonsense.

That’s all forums in a nut shell. Any time you read about something you’re not personally familiar with it’s “look at all these people who know what they’re talking about… “, as soon as it’s something you are personally familiar with it’s “wtf are these people on about?!”

“Gell-Mann Amnesia“ - usually applied to media when experts scoff at stories they know to be sometimes woefully inaccurate but still accept all the other pages as gospel.

Coined by Michael Crichton (the famous author).

HN is notorious for armchair <insert-topic> experts for <insert-topic> you actually know, outside of software, computing/computing-adjacent electronic hardware and startups. “Fucking wild” “confidently incorrect nonsense” is likely the norm on most fringe topics, judging by the few I know about.

The most ridiculous one was a poster who claimed that MCAS would run the trim at double the rate of the trim switches.

The trim motors only have 2 speeds - on and off.

> The comments here during the 737 MAX MCAS thing were fucking wild. So many randoms spitting out confidently incorrect nonsense.

Maybe that helps explain some of the fraction of HN that loves LLMs: they found their soulmates.

I've worked on several engine families engine certification, I can't read threads about aviation on HN because my brain hurts too much from people who know nothing posting like they are experts nonstop.

It actually causes me stress because a) I need to prevent myself from posting corrections and b) from knowing that these people are everywhere and are posting fud about trains or something

This is par for the course for HN; smart people failing to interpret a comment in a charitable light, preferring instead to author a condescending reply in an apparent effort to score imaginary points at the expense of intellectually stimulating conversation.

Turbofans being slow to spool up is jets 101.

So presumably OP never took jets 101. Neither have I. So what? The condescension remains unjustified and contrary to fruitful interaction. (See also the "lucky 10000" xkcd.)

Does any combustion engine, like the one in your car, have instant throttle response? When you hit the kickdown switch in your car there is still a delay before you start really accelerating. Now imagine a much bigger engine - it's not very difficult to guess one of those would take even longer without being familiar with the inner workings of turbine engines.

> OP never took jets 101. Neither have I. So what?

So you,me and OP will likely miss a lot of nuance when discussing jets - after all, reality has a lot of detail. Stating the existence of blindspots is not condescension, having blindspots does not make one inferior.

>This is par for the course for HN; smart people applying first-principle thinking on unfamiliar domains for about a minute, which confirms the biases of other outsiders who vote the plausible, but not-quite-right comments to the top.

You get what you incentivize. The point of the number in the top right is to incentivize. This kind of contribution is what this place is built for.

This sounds about right to me, so I upvoted.

Lots of armchair experts incorrecting each other

HN = A bunch of weirdly aggressive nerds who fail to explore nuance living in the same prison cell.

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