Comments on Hacker News can be very well thought, I'm often impressed with the quality of discussion, although I don't participate much. I'm curious, what do you think was the most insightful comment of 2020?
Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?
#2Perhaps not the most insightful, but definitely my favourite:
> I'd rate the news as "vibing" on a scale of clickbait to party for the world - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25035508
Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?
#3This top level comment chain explaining quantum teleportation was great and insightful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25466836
Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?
#4From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22045384:
> I sometimes find myself thinking, "why would you do that!?" and that's when I realize that what that really means is I'm the one who's not understanding something. I should be asking myself, "why would they do that?"
This is my favorite because it’s simple, but so powerful. I’ve tried to stick to this advice since I saw that comment. And I think it has made me kinder and much more willing to empathize with others and give chances.
Every time I find myself judging or criticizing others, I keep reminding myself of this comment and almost always end up with a different perspective.
Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?
#5Can't remember the Headline, but it was something regarding Microkernel usage on constrained devices. In case the most stripped down version of linux does not fit.
Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?
#6> On the way home from last day of school before summer holidays I saw some bird chick on the ground, next to a closed wall of bricks, on the walkway, between one-way street with heavy traffic and a steep hill on the other side...
Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?
#7Great summary of all the things websites do wrong, which break accessibility and your general ability to build upon them with other tools:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324718
And a related, more recent comment from 2020 that identified a key failure mode:
> We need to actually coin a word to describe "company solved their use-case wonderfully and can't resist fiddling around with it for reasons that don't align with their user-base”
Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?
#8This anonymous comment on how to be a better sandbagger, minimizing the work you do at your job so you can maximize your salary to time spent ratio.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25300272
The ethics are obviously debatable, but its an elaborate application of the hacker ethos to the problem of feeling like you're wasting away 9 to 5, Monday to Friday on a job that in the grand scheme of things no one really cares about or makes any real difference.
Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?
#9This comment explaining that no, AlphaFold really is a breakthrough:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25306954
This comment on EUV fab processes sent me down a rabbit hole. I had no idea how much the state of the art has improved!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25131424
Another rabbit hole comment, this time on compact nuclear fusion and REBCO tape:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24632653
This comment that reined in the hyperbole around GPT-3, while still leaving space for fun and exploration, struck a nice balance:
Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?
#10“I don’t work for you”.