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HN drew me in years ago because it had a higher signal-to-noise ratio, and deeper conversations than you'd find in other places popular with tech nerds. There w

HN drew me in years ago because it had a higher signal-to-noise ratio, and deeper conversations than you'd find in other places popular with tech nerds. There was an overall culture of technical optimism, which I like to sum up as: Learn cool technology, build cool things, meet cool people. Now, HN is one of the more pessimistic communities I frequent. Most posts are berating or belittling the author, the technology, someone's politics, other commenters, capitalism in general, and so on. It's all so tiresome to read and the amount of time and energy wasted doesn't hold a candle to whatever the AI companies are doing. It's gotten to the point that I pretty much never scroll past halfway down the comments page, because that is almost always about where the useless and most whiney comments tend to start. It used to be lower, like 10-20%. It may be creeping up even higher. I would love to find an online community where the pessimists don't rule the roost. Haven't found it yet, but if anyone wants to drop me a hint, my contact info is in my profile.

jader201 8d ago
> HN drew me in years ago because it had a higher signal-to-noise ratio, and deeper conversations than you'd find in other places popular with tech nerds. There was an overall culture of technical optimism I feel like people are much more pessimistic towards technology in general, vs. the days you're referring to. Big Tech was still "cool" then, the wealth divide wasn't as big as it is now, social media wasn't (as) toxic, and AI wasn't actively making everything worse. Nowadays, it's hard to be optimistic for how technology is progressing. People do hack away and share interesting, fun, and (often) useless projects, and those still draw less pessimistic discussion. But these are the exception, among other news of how technology is getting worse, or making things worse. So I guess my point is, it not so much that HN or the community has gotten worse, but there's just less to be excited about in tech these days.
- modemNoises 8d ago
  I think it's less pessimistic and more aware of its limits now and thus not as impressed When we were all younger it seemed the sky was the limit But we've gotten wiser and realize the ceiling with tech like iPhones and PS5 Hedonic treadmill just goes in a loop of experience. Consumer tech is just attention seeking codependency on the part of corporate The real cool stuff going on with tech is in domains like regenerative and longevity medicine; see Michael Levin at Tufts for truly sci fi Wolverine healing type mind blowing ideas
  - imthatsteve 7d ago
    I personally still feel like the sky could be the limit, i have so many insane scifi fantasy type ideas for the future of tech but honestly i dont really want to see any of them become a reality because i know that with our current political socioeconomic system that tech would be used to abuse a large amount of people. The way i see it society is headed towards techno feudalism and the better the tech the more difficult it will be for the serfs to escape. Ive got so many crazy tech fantasies though, im actually afraid to describe them for fear of giving the ruling class more ideas.
zlokki 7d ago
> HN drew me in years ago because it had a higher signal-to-noise ratio. > Now, HN is one of the more pessimistic communities I frequent. It doesn't mean the signal has disappeared from places like HN. It just means the noise has become much noisier, and now it's much harder to find the signal. And it's true not only for HN, but for all forums/communities I've used over the last ~15 years. Kind of a natural process, I think: more people on the internet, more people in tech -> less quality in discussions on average. I'm still trying to find interesting discussions and useful information, but taking more conscious approach: not reading every article from frontpage or using some kind of ranking system to select content for me. I built a small tool for this and use it myself (e.g., I found your comment using it :) ). If you're interested, you can try it: https://knoless.app https://knoless.app
imthatsteve 7d ago
I just found HN not too long ago and i really like the insightful discussions, it reminds me of reddit before they started banning and censoring everyone for any disagreement with extreme left politics. I remember i was banned from every single front page subreddit for asking a question about mask policy during covid. I think one week they said masks provided very little protection and they were in limited supply so individuals should stay home and save the masks for healthcare workers and then the next week they said everyone should wear a mask even if you have to reuse an old one for a week straight and even if your entirely alone. So i asked why the sudden change from one week to the next and might have said something like the previous advice made more sense to me and got banned from basically all of reddit. And that was when i finally managed to kick my reddit addiction. So now i stumble across HN and it seems just like an early reddit except with one main community instead of a bunch of smaller ones. But i see a very similar trend already in the few months ive been lurking and the few weeks ive been commenting, ive seen what looks like political based moderation rather than conduct based. Im all for keeping discussions civil and engaging but when you try to control which arguments are allowed to be made or block anyone from making a decent argument to favor one side over another then i lose all interest in anything discussed there because you cant have a discussion when one side cant speak. Thats why reddit is so empty today. You can have empty memes and pointless joking around but you cant talk about anything real unless your just a ranting raving lunatic because thats what you become when you dont have anyone to push back against your crazy ideas. Echo chambers are full of lunatics because echo chambers create lunatics. So if you want to keep this space full of actual discussion then dont allow it to become an echo chamber which means you have to defend the right for people you disagree with to have a voice in this space even if its just so that others can explain to them where they may have overlooked something when forming their argument. Politically i find myself in the center because i tend to disagree with democrats about as often as i disagree with republicans but i can understand where they are coming from and often agree with the idea but i disagree with the implementation. But in my experience the only people who try to stop me from speaking are democrats. The only sites which have a censorship problem are run with a clear democrat bias. Personally id rather have a hate filled platform where people are free to discuss and associate than a locked down platform with no disagreement or hate or mean words where people arent allowed to talk freely. I value civility but i value the freedom to discuss and thus the freedom to think about and articulate ideas far more.

jader201 8d ago

> HN drew me in years ago because it had a higher signal-to-noise ratio, and deeper conversations than you'd find in other places popular with tech nerds. There was an overall culture of technical optimism I feel like people are much more pessimistic towards technology in general, vs. the days you're referring to. Big Tech was still "cool" then, the wealth divide wasn't as big as it is now, social media wasn't (as) toxic, and AI wasn't actively making everything worse. Nowadays, it's hard to be optimistic for how technology is progressing. People do hack away and share interesting, fun, and (often) useless projects, and those still draw less pessimistic discussion. But these are the exception, among other news of how technology is getting worse, or making things worse. So I guess my point is, it not so much that HN or the community has gotten worse, but there's just less to be excited about in tech these days.

modemNoises 8d ago
I think it's less pessimistic and more aware of its limits now and thus not as impressed When we were all younger it seemed the sky was the limit But we've gotten wiser and realize the ceiling with tech like iPhones and PS5 Hedonic treadmill just goes in a loop of experience. Consumer tech is just attention seeking codependency on the part of corporate The real cool stuff going on with tech is in domains like regenerative and longevity medicine; see Michael Levin at Tufts for truly sci fi Wolverine healing type mind blowing ideas
- imthatsteve 7d ago
  I personally still feel like the sky could be the limit, i have so many insane scifi fantasy type ideas for the future of tech but honestly i dont really want to see any of them become a reality because i know that with our current political socioeconomic system that tech would be used to abuse a large amount of people. The way i see it society is headed towards techno feudalism and the better the tech the more difficult it will be for the serfs to escape. Ive got so many crazy tech fantasies though, im actually afraid to describe them for fear of giving the ruling class more ideas.

zlokki 7d ago

> HN drew me in years ago because it had a higher signal-to-noise ratio. > Now, HN is one of the more pessimistic communities I frequent. It doesn't mean the signal has disappeared from places like HN. It just means the noise has become much noisier, and now it's much harder to find the signal. And it's true not only for HN, but for all forums/communities I've used over the last ~15 years. Kind of a natural process, I think: more people on the internet, more people in tech -> less quality in discussions on average. I'm still trying to find interesting discussions and useful information, but taking more conscious approach: not reading every article from frontpage or using some kind of ranking system to select content for me. I built a small tool for this and use it myself (e.g., I found your comment using it :) ). If you're interested, you can try it: https://knoless.app https://knoless.app

imthatsteve 7d ago

I just found HN not too long ago and i really like the insightful discussions, it reminds me of reddit before they started banning and censoring everyone for any disagreement with extreme left politics. I remember i was banned from every single front page subreddit for asking a question about mask policy during covid. I think one week they said masks provided very little protection and they were in limited supply so individuals should stay home and save the masks for healthcare workers and then the next week they said everyone should wear a mask even if you have to reuse an old one for a week straight and even if your entirely alone. So i asked why the sudden change from one week to the next and might have said something like the previous advice made more sense to me and got banned from basically all of reddit. And that was when i finally managed to kick my reddit addiction. So now i stumble across HN and it seems just like an early reddit except with one main community instead of a bunch of smaller ones. But i see a very similar trend already in the few months ive been lurking and the few weeks ive been commenting, ive seen what looks like political based moderation rather than conduct based. Im all for keeping discussions civil and engaging but when you try to control which arguments are allowed to be made or block anyone from making a decent argument to favor one side over another then i lose all interest in anything discussed there because you cant have a discussion when one side cant speak. Thats why reddit is so empty today. You can have empty memes and pointless joking around but you cant talk about anything real unless your just a ranting raving lunatic because thats what you become when you dont have anyone to push back against your crazy ideas. Echo chambers are full of lunatics because echo chambers create lunatics. So if you want to keep this space full of actual discussion then dont allow it to become an echo chamber which means you have to defend the right for people you disagree with to have a voice in this space even if its just so that others can explain to them where they may have overlooked something when forming their argument. Politically i find myself in the center because i tend to disagree with democrats about as often as i disagree with republicans but i can understand where they are coming from and often agree with the idea but i disagree with the implementation. But in my experience the only people who try to stop me from speaking are democrats. The only sites which have a censorship problem are run with a clear democrat bias. Personally id rather have a hate filled platform where people are free to discuss and associate than a locked down platform with no disagreement or hate or mean words where people arent allowed to talk freely. I value civility but i value the freedom to discuss and thus the freedom to think about and articulate ideas far more.