The anti-intellectualism runs deep with HN. Anything not posted on facebook.github.io/react, twitter or bitcoin-daily-earn-money-fast.suckers is deemed worthless. Technical measures to get this useless drivel are, however, deeply sought after and their use, even when illegal/morally gray is advocated.
As longs as it's not a car manufacturer not sharing the GPL-licensed code they did not use. Then it's top posts three days in a row. I mean, a CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, what's a book, any book, in comparison? Even Gödel, Escher Bach doesn't compile.
I think our experiences may differ. Just looking through stories I've seen on the front page recently, there's the following:
* A slave in Scotland
* They knew it was round, damn it
* Two hundred terabyte proof is largest ever (granted, the 200 TB is not what's really interesting here)
* How the ArXiv decides what's science
* Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison
* Hiroshima (1946)
This seems like a healthy mix of topics, and they don't seem to have been deemed worthless.
I have noted a certain amount of hostility to philosophical topics, but I would venture a guess that there's been hostility to philosophy in general at all periods in history.
I expect to see a certain percentage of comments in an HN thread about how the topic is presented. Everybody's got to let off some steam sometimes. I made my initial comment because I was surprised at how many comments addressed only how the topic was presented rather than that and the actual content.
Yeah, that comment was over-the-top. It's indeed sometimes excellent to see articles out-of-left-field here, because the perspective is different, somewhat deep and, well, new.
If it's a non-IT topic that comes up more often, it feels like a group identity has the ability to form that's a bit agressive towards anything considered different. I notice it with non-technical approaches, people, groups, institutions, customs, or media, such as social sciences, the UN, Politics, The New Yorker (just made up, don't go searching), Religion (and I even agree on the facts), Teacher, Art (expt. DeepDream), Women (in comment-, not voting power, see early vs. late threats).
But even in these, if people didn't have a chance to form a group opinion because it's rare, the discussion is excellent, and your examples are excellent!
I'll just read the threads a day later after everything has settled and stuff like my comment's been sunk to the graveyard :)
It's not anti-intellectual to complain about the presentation of an article. Shallow criticism, maybe, but it shows people were interested in reading it. If HN truly didn't care for this topic, it wouldn't have even surfaced from /newest.
As longs as it's not a car manufacturer not sharing the GPL-licensed code they did not use. Then it's top posts three days in a row. I mean, a CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, what's a book, any book, in comparison? Even Gödel, Escher Bach doesn't compile.