Ask HN: The older you are, the more you want to see non-tech on HN? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: The older you are, the more you want to see non-tech on HN?

18 pointsamichail32 comments

I suspect that the older you are, the more interests you have that have accumulated as a result of life experience.

Tech starts to look the same after you have seen so much of it. In fact, I think that the older you are, the less likely you are to browse through technical books in a bookstore/library.

Moreover, you would be more interested in topics such as consciousness partly out of intellectual curiosity and partly out of consideration of your own mortality.

Finally, I suspect that older readers are more tolerant of others expressing various theories that they have about all sorts of things -- even without citations. And this probably has something to do with placing greater value on life experience.

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I am a counter-example to your musings. I'm 50 and have virtually no interest in non-tech on HN. That's not why I'm here. I'm interested in programming, science, math, and technology, and interested in topics such as psychology only insofar as they impact on usability.

I do have very broad interests outside of technical topics, but regard as pointless and irrelevant here postings on consciousness, etc.

Including this one.

I've noticed in the past that whenever you try posting on topics outside of technical matters you are repeatedly ignored or flagged. Perhaps an alternative hypothesis is that while these things are of interest in general, they don't really belong here. The evidence seems to be against your hypothesis. Try applying some science and changing it.

I completely agree. If you don't want to tech related material there are many great websites for that (just not HN).

Perhaps it's more of an industry vs academia distinction then?

A post on consciousness is of interest in theoretical computer science for example:

http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/is-there-a-test-for...

This helps me clarify my thinking on your posted question. It seems that what I like about this community is that it is started by and run by and for Makers.

I have little interest in building a machine or spending effort talking about a machine that acts like a human. I am more interested in building a machine that is a tool that enhances human abilities. For example, we used to keep track of our resources with pen and paper. We have built machines that make that easier. We used to walk to school, now we have cars and busses to drive us there. We used to dream about flying, now it is routine.

The classic AI approach (speaking of Minsky and others there) seems to be aimed at replicating a human.

Conversation about consciousness strike me as ill-informed and are not of any interest to me. But perhaps I am a simple country boy after all.

42 year old here who has just rediscovered this site as a welcome source of focussed news. i can find more general stuff elsewhere.

I'm a 57-year old guy and whole-heartedly agree.

I'm also less tolerant of those who bring up old ideas as if they were newly discovered except if they happen to have been before their time. However, "stupid ideas" really get me.

Nope, sorry, I think you're totally off-base.

I'm 36, and have been on the interwebs long enough to know where to find the other non-tech bits of interest.

I prefer just the facts here.

I'm 36, and my interests vary so much that I find having a community of smart people discussing multiple topics nice in and of itself. Most communities are either full of not-smart people or much more specialized. Of course, I still read both other types of communities, so perhaps I just have too much free time these days.

Disagree completely. I am ~ 50 and really enjoy the tech stuff. for fluff I can always go do digg.

And to complete the anecdotal refutation, I'm 21 and I'm perfectly happy to see non-tech articles on HN, as long as it's pepper over the techy meat & potatoes.

Good question, but for me Tech starts to look the same after you have seen so much of it. In fact, I think that the older you are, the less likely you are to browse through technical books in a bookstore/library. is really not true at all. I won't say my age, but I have been programming professionally since 1965 and always hit the computer section of bookstores first. (Sadly in apparent decline. My favorite was Borders, mainly because of their first store in Ann Arbor. It was more like a seriously overstuffed library with lots of big soft chairs and tables.) My technical curiousity is as great as it was when I was 12.

Yes, my interests are quite varied and wide, and I have places to go on the net and elsewhere to explore them. I come to hn because i look for the serious technical discussions you find here and the startup and business focus.

I am not interested in topics such as consciousness as I find them particularly undisciplined or worse. And not sure how that is influenced by our consideration of mortality.

It's the opposite for me. As I get older I become more interested in tech stuff, and less interested in the general stuff. I used to spend almost all my time considering the meaning of life and all that.

One of the best things about HN is precisely that there is a core focus to it, but that it touches on many related topics. Some of the most valuable areas for exploration are where one field of knowledge meets another. Each sheds some light on areas of the other that haven't yet been explored.

At 44, I'm backing up your argument. But honestly, I had already accumulated most of my eclectic intellectual curiosity a quarter century ago. Even so, I still browse the technical books at bookstores. Libraries are hopelessly out-of-date on anything technical that would interest me. I don't need the latest power users' guide to anything. I'm interested in new insights into building something that has never been done before.

Your sentence Tech starts to look the same after you have seen so much of it. resonates with me a bit (I'm 43 and have made my living as a developer for over 20 years). What happens a lot is some old idea is dusted off and becomes a current fad. Sometimes this is because the old idea was a good one, but sometime it's because a younger generation is ignorant of history and why that idea didn't work the last time it was tried.

So sometimes there a feeling of "What! That again??" when some topic such as "NoSQL" comes up, but that doesn't, to me, make tech in general less interesting.

Not the case with me. I'm 24 and I like reading all sorts of news on HN. The community here provides a level of commentary that you don't get at more general interest sites like reddit and digg.

More non-tech on HN: No, for the same reasons others have said. That's what I'm here for. In fact, since I'm not planning to found a company, I'm more interested in the technical articles than the business stories (though I read both).

More interests with age: true.

Tech starts to look the same: sometimes, but there is more groundbreaking stuff going on than ever before.

Bookstores: yes, but is that because of my interests changing, because the books available are getting more superficial? Would you believe that in the early 1980s, the bookstore at the mall stocked comp sci texts? I bought one volume of Knuth there.

Consciousness: If I'm interested it's because it looks like we're on the verge of being able to program it.

Tolerance of others' theories: only if they're genuinely new.

Life experience: absolutely not. In fact, the one thing I've learned from joining Facebook this year is that most people spend their time doing stuff that would bore me to death.

My age: 50, and gratified to see so many others of my generation speaking up here. (I can't call us old, because we're not.)

I like the tech and industry related business posts only. There are other forums for other things. Case in point, the one or two posts linked to stories from the New York Times that seems to show up every day. While I’m sure there is a subset of us who enjoy reading the articles in the New York Times those who do are probably already reading it natively and don’t re-read them in this forum.

I realize the NYT is linked on the main page of the YC main site, but the two posts that seem to show up every day strikes me as being spam in a tech forum. They are not on topic. Same with the climate change conundrum posts, there are other forums that discuss that on a daily basis such as http://www.abovetopsecret.com/ .

If this is a vote type of thing I would vote for tech and industry related business posts only. That is what makes us special and unique as a forum.

You can always go to another website. I'd prefer websites to be focused. I'd want HN to be mainly about how to realize your dream in creating a successful startup. If I want hilarious stuff I'd go to YouTube, TMZ, etc.

I don't know if it has anything to do with age, but I am more interested in the business aspect of HN than the tech stuff. Meaningful changes to technology are slow and I can find that information all over the net.But people talking about startups, their problems and the solutions are fascinating. That stuff is much harder to find elsewhere.

I am over 50 and you don't speak for me. I want tech and startup news and nothing else. There are many other places I can go for poltics, arts and culture on the web.

I value the HN community as a chance to network with like minded people. I sometimes feel isolated living in a rust belt state where coders and startups aren't understood and barely even tolerated.

I'm 54 and come here first for the tech articles. But after lurking around for many months I've come to respect many HNers a great deal. So I also appreciate reading their thoughts and opinions on topics of the day. (healthcare reform, net neutrality etc.)

Some of the best ideas come from intersections of knowledge. I typically enjoy and learn something from articles that are not tech related but are still voted up by the HN community.

I appreciate a wide range of topics on HN so long as the discourse is civil. I'm 40.

Just curious, how old are you?

Here's a hint: http://cbm.csbruce.com/~csbruce/cbm/transactor/v8/i3/p006.ht...

I'm fine with non-tech geek substance here, as long as it's not politics!

I'm 21 and open to all things hackish and interesting, tech or not. So... nope.

"You are a product of your environment." --Clement Stone

38 and prefer HN focused on tech and the business of it.

I would suggest that age can bring focus. You may have various interests, but you get better and sorting one from another at deciding which gets attention when and where. You've seen more, and you've learned how to choose what gets attention. To be selective.

This is different from the absorption of youth. It may actually get a bit harder to be so fully absorbed. But a bit easier to set aside an intriguing novelty that does not pertain to your current endeavors.

Non tech on HN is called 'Reddit', you may have heard of it.

This isn't Reddit, or Digg, and it's one of the reasons why we don't like comments like the above. Please refrain from snarky one liners. See: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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