
Opinion vs. Skill on Hacker News - richardw
https://richardwatson.co/opinion-vs.-skill-on-hacker-news.html
======
jarboot
While HN is also one of my most visited websites, I agree about the "opinion"
articles. I have enough of an intuition now to spot them and not click through
them, focusing more on news, technical articles, and releases of software.

For most of these comments, it just comes down to "why are you right? What's
your experience?" There's so many armchair speculators that get upvoted. If I
can't go through your post history or look at your cred, why should I trust
you to be correct about complicated topics that I might not understand? Do you
even write code? Humans judge this stuff based on accomplishments and
reputation in real life so why not on the internet?

I only realized this after coming across these kinds of comments about fields
I specialize in or have a lot of experience with, and seeing blatantly wrong
comments being upvoted and affirmed by other comments. If it's like this for
exporting I have experience with, it's probably the same for stuff I don't
know. Upvotes and affirmed comments should not be taken as truth.

And in the end opinion doesn't really matter unless you have influence in a
community. Otherwise nobody that matters will really listen. Write a longform
blog or something more captivating rather than some sneaky comment on HN that
people will forget about after a week. Same goes for this comment I guess ;)

~~~
coldtea
> _For most of these comments, it just comes down to "why are you right?
> What's your experience?" There's so many armchair speculators that get
> upvoted. If I can't go through your post history or look at your cred, why
> should I trust you to be correct about complicated topics that I might not
> understand?_

It's a discussion, you're supposed to evaluate the other's arguments and
exchange ideas, knowledge and opinions about the subject, not a lecture where
you're supposed to trust the other to educate you.

~~~
btrask
I would go farther and say that when credentialism creeps into a community,
it's done.

That said I very much appreciate the genuine experts who post here, and hate
seeing them driven away by disrespectful people.

HN walks the line between experience and openness better than any other
community I know of. It's not perfect but it's still amazing.

------
wgerard
Maybe I've spent too much time on the other parts of the internet, but I kinda
disagree with this:

> Very often, useful comments are crowded out by one-uppy point scorers and
> the top half of a reasonable thread can be filled by long side-discussions
> that can’t be scrolled past fast enough. Vitriol abounds.

Compared to other discussion boards, I usually find HN threads are far more
thoughtful and less antagonistic.

I mean, from the author's own example, compare the Brexit threads on HN[1] and
Reddit[2]. The top comment on the HN thread is a thoughtful comment on why the
EU is important and what the EU should aspire to be - whether you agree with
the author or not, it's not overly charitable to say the author wasn't simply
making a "one-uppy point scorer". The top comment on the Reddit thread is a
joke about making a bet on Brexit.

There absolutely are HN threads full of vitriol and "one-uppy point scorers",
but they're more rare - compared to, again, other parts of the internet. And
yes, there are other online discussion boards that are even more thoughtful.
Still, I don't think the characterization is entirely fair.

I guess my point is that the opinion threads can also often be very
illuminative. The top thread on that HN Brexit post is actually a pretty
interesting discussion about 18th century revolutions. Perhaps a bit basic to
someone well-versed in modern western history, and certainly needs to be taken
with a healthy dose of skepticism, but still interesting nonetheless.

1:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966167](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966167)

2:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4pkt3k/bbc_forec...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4pkt3k/bbc_forecasts_uk_votes_to_leave_the_european_union/)

~~~
tensor
Perhaps if you are a developer. If you are anyone else, the comments can be
pretty toxic. The amount of "managers are useless", "phds are useless",
"designers are useless", and so on that I see here is extremely off putting.
For some careers, like academia/phd, there are almost monthly slam fests with
tons of toxic comments about how developers are so much smarter and better.

~~~
geezerjay
> For some careers, like academia/phd, there are almost monthly slam fests
> with tons of toxic comments about how developers are so much smarter and
> better.

That's quite the mischaracterization. Some of us happen to have research
background and know very well how the phd daily grind goes. It's due to our
personal experience and first-hand accounts of the whole academia/phd life and
hardship that we do have and present negative opinion on the whole industry.

Just because opinions don't cast academia in a good light it doesn't mean they
aren't accurate accounts of what academia life actually is.

------
hyperpape
It's true that there's some distinction between opinion based topics and skill
based ones. However, I think the more important issue is that there are topics
where people are more or less aware of their own ignorance, and topics where
they are not.

Politics is a great example. Politics threads are typically uninformed.
However, it's not that there are no facts involved, it's that people who don't
know the facts won't let that stop them from aggressively commenting.[0] Of
course, by facts, I don't mean things like "Democrats/Republicans are evil",
but basic facts about what laws have been passed, how the supreme court works,
etc.

This isn't a distinction that's about the topics, it's a distinction about
people's attitude towards those topics. After all, questions about Java's GCs
compared to Go's GC, or Android vs. iOS security are equally grounded in
facts, but attract almost as much uninformed commentary.

[0] I don't want to be an elitist. There's plenty of good ways to comment on a
subject you don't know about, to ask good questions, etc. It's the certainty
of the uninformed that's a problem.

~~~
enraged_camel
[http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html)

~~~
hyperpape
I have mixed feelings about that essay. One point is exactly what I was trying
to say, but I suspect the observation about identity is wrong. Many great
discoveries have come from people who were powerfully attached to an ideal: to
take an odd assortment, consider Hilbert, Keynes and Milton Friedman.

I suspect there's an availability bias. Consider a table:

    
    
        |                | Has Identity | No Identity |
        |----------------+--------------+-------------|
        | Thoughtful     | Insightful   | Insightful  |
        | Not Thoughtful | Obnoxious    | Silent      |
    

We confuse having an identity with being thoughtless because we see so many
people who combine the two, not because their identity actually makes them
less thoughtful.

Flat Earthers are an interesting example in this case. There wasn't an
identity attached to it, it doesn't support some political or religious cause
(maybe it's not become an identity, but it didn't start as one). It's just
catnip for people who think they're skeptical and free-thinkers, but are
actually just bad at reasoning.

------
danso
> _Look for high vote-to-comment ratios._

This is a pretty good metric for finding high quality threads (isn’t a low
ratio something the HN algorithm uses in weighting front page rank?). The only
problem is that sometimes a great comment will, understandably, generate a lot
of responses.

I wish there were a variant of the /bestcomments endpoint [0] that surfaced
highly-voted comments within the last 12 hours. Not that days-old threads
aren’t worthwhile to read, it’s just that they no longer have active
participation.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments](https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments)

------
newscracker
> We don’t want to be educated with every post or thread.

I completely disagree with this article. It sounds really elitist. Opinions
are how we understand the world and the changing situations, complexities and
nuances. They (may) help us refine our views and develop newer and/or better
mental models that we can relate to and use elsewhere.

To state that topics/threads high on opinions are essentially worthless is a
generalization taken too far.

------
DoreenMichele
Ironically: Sounds like an opinion piece about how best to use HN if you are
this specific person.

That's not snark. There's nothing wrong with writing something like this. But
use of HN is not a scientific thesis and there are experts in the field of HN
participation.

Cool if people want to use it as a jumping off point for talking about stuff,
but ironic nonetheless.

~~~
richardw
Correct! Both on opinion and it being for me. I'm not optimising for "HN
participation", rather my own enjoyment of the site. The participation experts
are exactly who I'm (sometimes) trying to avoid, since their motivation is to
participate optimally, often for their own benefit.

There's no rule - some post daily and that's great for them. They also often
drive the discussions and the "feel". Awesome, it's their watercooler. But
there's another way to maximise enjoyment of HN, and my post is for those who
might benefit from better signal/noise.

I still miss PG.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I actually meant to say there are _no_ experts in the field of HN
participation. I accidentally dropped the _no_ and didn't notice it before the
edit window closed.

On a different forum, the lead moderator retired, but then stuck around and de
facto retained a small unpaid staff role. I think it has had a poisonous
effect on the site.

It would be wonderful if pg could continue participation as just a member
without it going weird and problematic places. But I don't think that's very
realistic and I feel he did the right thing for the health of the forum.

Though I certainly understand why some people miss him.

------
xfitm3
Opinion vs. Skill isn't limited to HN. It happens in the workplace, too. My
opinion is that it might be impossible to avoid the echo chamber fallacy.
Perhaps opinions are reinforced by social proof. My mind really starts to warp
when I read back this comment. I'm calling out echo chambers by participating
in my own. Trippy.

------
qwerty456127
Opinions are hugely undervalued nowadays.

~~~
sidstling
I think they are highly overrated and underrated at the same time. I think
that useful opinions based on the practical experience of making stuff work,
are extremely undervalued.

A lot of opinions aren’t bought by experience though. Opinions on the best x,
are largely useless in my eyes, and easy to come by. You’ll see it in almost
any HN discussion on a specific tech these days. I mean, when is the last time
you saw a HN thread about JavaScript where half of it wasn’t a debate on why
JS is good/shit and how WASM is the next Jesus?

I wouldn’t call all of those opinions undervalued, because they have no real
use and serve no purpose. X is typically terrible and unproductive, but it’s
also lovable and very productive. With almost everything there are pros and
cons, and the only truly valuable opinions on anything are from people who
make it work or crashed trying and then succeeded by doing something else.

I think this world needs a whole lot of “talk is cheap, show me the code”, but
once someone actually does the work, I think we should learn from their
experience. I think HN has been great at sharing the useful opinions, at least
so far.

This was a semi-useless opinion by the way.

~~~
qwerty456127
> useful opinions based on the practical experience of making stuff work

A kind of opinions from people who are far from being established experts in a
particular area are called "a fresh look" and may occasionally happen to be
useful too as well as opinions of people who are more of generalists and
theorists than specialists and practics. Opinions from skilled experts may
occasionally happen to be a way too biased.

> Opinions on the best x are largely useless... half of it wasn’t a debate on
> why JS is good/shit and how WASM is the next Jesus?

If they uncover a lot about _why_ and do it concisely I would not consider
them useless.

That's my opinion :-)

~~~
mmt
> "a fresh look" and may occasionally happen to be useful

The use of three words to hedge the usefulness aspect, somewhat contradicts
the original assertion of opinions being undervalued.

I happen to agree that a fresh look, in the form of an opinion from a non-
expert, can be extremely valuable, especially since I'm acutely aware that I'm
certain to be biased on any topic where I have expertise from experience.
However, that value seems to be proportional to how well-informed it is.

That is, if the opinion is based on insufficient knowledge (that can be
obtained other than by experience, such as with a Web search), it can easily
result in a subtle form of talking past each other that doesn't reveal itself
until after a long back-and-forth. Sadly, that mostly just reveals fundamental
gaps in knowledge, rather than any fresh perspective.

------
exodust
After clicking the "Richard Watson" site logo to see his homepage and getting
a broken link, I've formed a negative opinion about his HTML skills.

Apart from that, people with skills have opinions, and vice versa. There's
cross-over, noise, debate, and sparks. If all that causes someone to think
about the problem, and get informed before firing back a response, then that's
a good thing for discussion and learning.

~~~
richardw
Thanks for the bug report! I was testing Jekyll and then Hugo as static site
generators after moving from Ghost, and there might be a few issues in
translation.

------
MichaelMoser123
I think it is more politics vs technical stuff. Political stuff is recognized
by headlines 'bigcorp does X' kind of story, political news, huge number of
comments, and lots of downvotes for me :-) technical content is usually very
relevant, but lately the noise tends to drown out the techies, very sad
development - if you ask me.

I would love some filter that just makes the political stories disappear.

------
CoolGuySteve
I'm finding there are a lot fewer articles on the stuff i am an expert onto
which I can contribute these days. Very little about low level systems
programming, HFT, or Apple's software stack.

But even when I do write sonething technical here, it's only a matter of time
until I get "corrected" by some pedantic try-hard trying to score internet
points. Half the time they're wrong, half the time they miss the point of what
I'm saying or trying to derail the conversation .

About 80% of the time these people have a username that's 'first initial-last
name', so maybe they're trying to build some kind of name cred?

Anyways these days, the only time I comment is when I get baited into one of
these opinion articles. Hnews is becoming more like Reddit to me.

Edit: why not comment instead of censoring with your down votes.

~~~
yesenadam
Ok, since you asked. You've explained why 100% of 'pedantic try-hards' who
reply to your technical posts, shouldn't. _Now_ you want comments? You even
have a conspiracy theory about their usernames. You were 'baited' into this
article, now people who (I assume) don't like to read your whiny, abusive tone
are 'censoring' you? I don't know why you ever comment on anything, since it
sounds like, according to you, it's worse than a total waste of time. Except
when you get to return the ill-feeling in a rant like that. Please do
something you enjoy instead! Life's too short.

~~~
CoolGuySteve
What makes you think the set is 100%? People can both be wrong and derail,
like you did just now.

~~~
yesenadam
Rhetorical question: Can you really not see the irony of complaining about
pedants who miss the point, then commenting like that on here?

Well, I've learnt my lesson about explaining downvotes - you just wanted
someone to attack.

~~~
dang
Please don't get personal in comments here.

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

------
ChrisSD
Since we're throwing ideas out there, how about weekends vs. weekdays? ;)

------
almostdeadguy
I can't stand this tendency among software engineers to think that their life
is made worse by contact with the judgements of others and that this kind of
thing muddies the purity of some kind of monastic, apolitical life of software
engineering. Everything is political and largely subjective and it's off-
putting to me to see people who think they have a duty to avoid contact with
this crucial part of life.

Most professions, hell most circumstances in life involve judgements. You can
have disagreements as to how those judgements are handled, or find the nature
of how conflict is handled to be overly contentious or disconnected from
seeking resolution or for it to be fought over low stakes, and that's fine I
don't disagree with any of that. But judgements are important, politics are
important, and frankly I find it disgusting that places like hacker news
foster this idea that our profession needs to be disconnected from these
things.

------
buboard
this one will count as an opinion thread

------
comesee
I find that lobste.rs has a higher rate of "skill" articles. They also don't
arbitrarily censor comments, which is nice.

~~~
pvg
They don't 'arbitrarily censor comments' on HN either. Whoever the 'they' are.

~~~
comesee
'they' here refers to the mods. Should have clarified, I thought it was clear
from the context.

~~~
pvg
The mods especially don't 'arbitrarily censor' comments.

~~~
comesee
Okay, I think they do. They've censored my comments many times.

~~~
yesenadam
You said 'arbitrarily censored'. Of course you don't think it was for a good
reason. My comments are _never_ downvoted for any good reason. :-) In my
limited experience, people develop that evil-conspiracy tone you have by
assuming it's _what_ they said that wasn't wanted here, not _how_ they said
it, which is usually the problem. I'd like to see examples of that. Well,
_like_ is too strong. But provide evidence for your claim please, if you can.
P.s. So _why_ on earth are you still here on a forum where your comments have
been censored many times?!

~~~
comesee
I'm respectful and polite in this forum. I've been blocked simply for saying
things with which some largish group of down voters don't agree. I am trying
to leave this site but boredom always pulls me back :) That and I really do
like to browse the posts and comment, engage with, and challenge people.
Here's one such arbitrarily blocked comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17517643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17517643)

You can't read it but I screenshotted it for you. Dang calls me a troll simply
for asking him to clarify and tells me to leave the site. "Legalistic Gambit
of the troll," as if I'm trying to win some game. All I want is to be treated
fairly on this site. It was very hurtful.

[https://ibb.co/hoSMHK](https://ibb.co/hoSMHK)

~~~
pvg
These comments were flagged by users and they can be seen. And you seem to
want to engage in a 'debate' that is offtopic for the site. The mods are
telling you you can't. Users, with their votes and flags, are telling you the
same thing.

~~~
comesee
Those comments cannot be seen, they are marked as "[flagged]" if you browse
with cookies off, at least. I disagree that it was off topic, it was directly
related to the post I was replying to. I understand that people might disagree
with the content of the post but that shouldn't be cause to censor it on a
forum for civil discussion, should it?

~~~
pvg
It's not civil if the rules are repeatedly pointed out to you and you choose
to disregard them. It's the opposite of civil.

The comments can be seen by logged-in users who have 'show dead' turned on.
But we started at 'moderators censor comments'. Which they generally don't and
haven't in your case. That's all.

~~~
comesee
Fair but they effectively did censor my comment if they didn't honor my
request to unflag it. In any case, do you think that comment should have been
censored? If so, why?

~~~
pvg
The flagging was done by users because the comment violates the site
guidelines. The moderators didn't 'unflag' it because they they agreed with
the users flagging the comment that it violates the site guidelines.

