
Anyone else noticed that the top comment is always trying to one up the poster? - nautilus12
For a while I thought that everyone on hacker news was just a contrarian, but now I realize that there is a culture of one-up manship that permeates every facet of the site.  Anyone else notice this?  Is this just how tech people are?  Why does it have to be that way?  It gets kind of annoying after a while.
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smt88
I actually love this about HN. It feels to me like experts who are vetting and
criticizing articles for me. They often save me clicks.

Sometimes the criticism is off-base, but you can usually count on someome
pointing that out just below it.

I can see why it might rub you the wrong way, but I just want to point out
that it's not objectively bad for everyone. For me, it's the point of coming
here.

~~~
nautilus12
Yeah, I can see what you mean now that I think of it I actually feel the same
way.

At the same time I will occasionally run across a post thats pretty much self
explanatory but nevertheless the top post will still be someone trying to
massage some angle to get a one up, which I find irritating. For some things I
think its just best to appreciate it for what it is and not try to find the
inner flaw. I find myself falling into this line of thinking (finding the
flaws in everything) and I find i'm happier when I'm not constantly like that.

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dual_basis
How does one even define contrarian? This is a vast oversimplification, and OP
has not provided any evidence to support their claim. This being Hacker News,
I would expect a simple sentiment analysis model trained and run against a
database of posts and top responses, and the data made available for
independent analysis. Even if that is the case, who's to say that this is
suboptimal? Current popular discourse is all too often an echo chamber of
self-aggrandizing charlatans patting each other on the back for every
meaningless...

... oh wait...

... you may have a point...

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craigdalton
Yep, think this is often the case. One interesting habit is to distort the
intention or cite an extreme example of the original post to something
ludicrous and then ridicule it as... ludicrous.

~~~
dang
There's a site guideline specifically against that:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone
says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
craigdalton
that is a great guideline that I forgot about. I wonder if this should be
reposted when appropriate.

~~~
jaredsohn
It often is.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Please%20respond%20to%20the%20...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Please%20respond%20to%20the%20strongest%20plausible%20interpretation&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=all)

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ggm
Another common mistake (I'm sure I make it) is to sidetrack and then get lost
in a critique of a side track. I often remind myself that first order effects
and second order effects do not have equal weight.

I do think many first comment are snark or one uppers but sometimes it's the
quick path to a bullshit detecting outcome. Any cryptos deserve a big
cluestick whack, many machine learning and AI more so!

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TheAceOfHearts
Can you provide some examples? It's hard to discuss this in general terms.

I think people just like to share their experiences because there's rarely a
"one size fits all" answer to most problems. One of the ways in which we grow
and develop our ideas is by discussing them with our peers. It also seems
likely that people who disagree with a post are more likely to comment and
write a rebuttal.

~~~
bjourne
Here is a snarky, one up comment the author got away with because no one else
bothered to read TFA (study in this case):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17178514](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17178514)

