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Ask HN: Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit?

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Re: Ask HN: Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit?

#131

Post by noodle »

pg wrote: post #3

You have to consider the number of users. HN now gets 60k unique visitors on weekdays. That's a decent sized stadium full of people. Of course they seem overwhelming collectively, but most individuals are only experts in a few areas. If it makes you feel any better, my biggest worry about this site is the opposite: that the median awesomeness is decreasing as the number of users increases. If you want to feel less ov…

how about hacker news gold, with a special restricted-access area only? ;)

a bit more seriously, are there any plans to increase the number of karma-locked features? if people knew that there were more benefits to contributing high quality content/submissions/comments, they might put a bit more time and effort into contributing them.

Re: Ask HN: Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit?

#132

Post by acangiano »

You are comparing yourself to the entire HN community: a young man against thousands of years of collective experience.

I suspect the reason why you do this is because you give your "talent" more value than you should.

You wrote this:

> HN shows me all these people and ideas that are succeeding. It used to be inspirational, but now it's frightening.

> I've always been told I'm a smart kid, and that I'll be a millionaire some day, and all of that shit.

You can snap out of it, but you need to change your mindset about intelligence, learning, and mastering a trade.

Please consider reading this essay of mine. I think it may be helpful: http://programmingzen.com/2010/07/04/the-pursuit-of-excellen...

Re: Ask HN: Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit?

#133

Post by spudlyo »

Alex3917 wrote: post #121
pg wrote: post #3

You have to consider the number of users. HN now gets 60k unique visitors on weekdays. That's a decent sized stadium full of people. Of course they seem overwhelming collectively, but most individuals are only experts in a few areas. If it makes you feel any better, my biggest worry about this site is the opposite: that the median awesomeness is decreasing as the number of users increases. If you want to feel less ov…

"If it makes you feel any better, my biggest worry about this site is the opposite: that the median awesomeness is decreasing as the number of users increases." I'd rather trade ten smart people for one person who ships.

Amen. I know a guy who is an extremely talented programmer, but for a number of reasons currently has a very poor work ethic. While he is able to be considerably more productive than a number of his lesser clued co-workers, he isn't.

Re: Ask HN: Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit?

#134

Post by GBond »

photon_off wrote: post #42
galois wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think you're talented? You say people have always told you you were a smart kid. Do you have any actual achievements to back this up? I come on here and find that the vast majority of people are well below my intelligence level. I find that this site is basically a bunch of talentless wantrepreneurial pundits. I come on here to test my patience with idiotic circlejerks - praise Apple, bash Facebook, on…

I cannot know whether or not you would qualify my abilities as "talent". The way you've constructed your response leads me to believe that if I told you I won the Nobel Prize in Javascript, you'd list stupid things that Nobel Prize winners have done. Even if this site is mostly "talentless wantrepreneurial pundits," which has some truth to it, you're not the slightest bit overwhelmed at the amount of high quality inf…

spotting trolls should be an intelligence test

Re: Ask HN: Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit?

#135

Post by dkersten »

cwilson wrote: post #115
galois wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think you're talented? You say people have always told you you were a smart kid. Do you have any actual achievements to back this up? I come on here and find that the vast majority of people are well below my intelligence level. I find that this site is basically a bunch of talentless wantrepreneurial pundits. I come on here to test my patience with idiotic circlejerks - praise Apple, bash Facebook, on…

Judging by the rest of your comments on this site you're far too intelligent to be commenting here in the first place, so why keep at it? My hunch is that you find enjoyment in talking about how intelligent you are and making others feel less intelligent then you. That or you have something to prove as a result of being inadequate your entire life, but internally, you just know how brilliant you are and have to shout…

Judging by the rest of your comments on this site you're far too intelligent

What comments are you talking about? The ones I see are either retarded, extremely arrogant (but not intelligent), or about average (relative to other comments on this site). From his previous comments, I would guess hes of average intelligence, for this site, but EXTREMELY arrogant. Not really a desirable combination, if you ask me.

Re: Ask HN: Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit?

#136

Post by chc »

You make claims like "I am not even a tiny drop in the giant ocean of talent" and "I will never be as good," but that's just pure mental melodrama. The actual, real-world observation you've made is this: "There are people here who have done things that I haven't."

That's all. It's just about doing things. In many of these cases, you've chosen not to do these things. So you only really know three languages? Has somebody threatened to shoot you if you learn Ruby?

Most of your supposed "inferiority" is just the fact that they've chosen to do some work and you haven't.

Re: Ask HN: Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit?

#137

Post by patrickk »

noodle wrote: post #131
pg wrote: post #3

You have to consider the number of users. HN now gets 60k unique visitors on weekdays. That's a decent sized stadium full of people. Of course they seem overwhelming collectively, but most individuals are only experts in a few areas. If it makes you feel any better, my biggest worry about this site is the opposite: that the median awesomeness is decreasing as the number of users increases. If you want to feel less ov…

how about hacker news gold, with a special restricted-access area only? ;) a bit more seriously, are there any plans to increase the number of karma-locked features? if people knew that there were more benefits to contributing high quality content/submissions/comments, they might put a bit more time and effort into contributing them.

"if people knew that there were more benefits to contributing high quality content/submissions/comments, they might put a bit more time and effort into contributing them."

I find that I carefully word what I write on HN by default. That is the 'culture' of the site. I don't think the median HN reader needs further encouragement to write well. Of course, there are raging dicks everywhere, and people being people will sometimes go off on a tangent. If there was a 'quality of comments' scale, YouTube would probably be near the bottom (just go onto some sorry excuse for a music video and read some spam and inspired fan comments), and HN near the top.

Re: Ask HN: Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit?

#138

Post by dkersten »

noodle wrote: post #131
pg wrote: post #3

You have to consider the number of users. HN now gets 60k unique visitors on weekdays. That's a decent sized stadium full of people. Of course they seem overwhelming collectively, but most individuals are only experts in a few areas. If it makes you feel any better, my biggest worry about this site is the opposite: that the median awesomeness is decreasing as the number of users increases. If you want to feel less ov…

how about hacker news gold, with a special restricted-access area only? ;) a bit more seriously, are there any plans to increase the number of karma-locked features? if people knew that there were more benefits to contributing high quality content/submissions/comments, they might put a bit more time and effort into contributing them.

More likely they would just spam submissions and vote-bait comments in the hope of gaining enough karma.

I like not having to worry about karma because it means I can speak my mind, instead of simply commenting the popular responses in hope of karma.

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