An aside: Why is it that most posts about a new product or project some people have put together is usually greeted with skepticism and negativity in HN comments? What is that all about? It is a pattern Ive continuously seen and it seems like only the true home runs receive any kind of praise.
Most replies are either about lack of evidence or someone’s alternative preference. I see that latter one a good deal.
- The comment structure favors the 'middlebrow contrarian' style of response. This phenomenon is particularly acute on Reddit but on here it's a more understated process that's proportional to HN's design differences to the former.
- Insecurity. Criticism is the most acute and well researched on here with child prodigies, more so than any other topic. Since people here get their sense of identity from their self-perception of intelligence, knowledge, and capacity to build certain things, there are many vulnerability points.
- Wide, industry ranging experience with bullshit technology claims for most users.
- Class and ethnographic differences. Criticism will vary depending on whether the product in question is inherently appealing to adult high-income nerds, no matter its overall utility
It is not just when there is a post about a new product or project. More broadly for ANY post here, the top comment and most comments will generally claim the opposite of what the original post presents is true (or some variation of that).
I would say mainly it is just the need for some people to feel good about themselves that they know better, or to try to show that they are smarter than the author of the post (so that again, they can feel better about themselves).
Don't take the comments too seriously. A lot of people think they are smarter than they actually are.
And next time notice, whatever the post is, when you click to view the comments expect the top one to have a contrarian view.
EDIT: As an example, as of right now, this post is the top post on HN. The second top post on HN?
Top Comment:
"Really bad advice! Hard work does not pay"
-
Upon further thought, looking at the bright side (less cynical), I guess this does help give a more balanced view of the topic as you get to quickly see both sides of a story. But it's still kind of funny that this consistently happens.
Because you are the easiest person to lie to, yourself. Just because you work in a field doesn't mean your assumptions are valid. The more people (or you yourself) consider you an expert in something, the more you should test your assumptions through studies etc. If you don't, then claiming you made a thing "for X" without any proof that X benefits from that means you've almost certainly lied to yourself, convinced yourself that lie was true, and are now perpetuating that lie by putting it on the internet. Especially when you do things based on your own experience, it's incredibly easy to forget that there are almost infinitely more people who are different and have different needs and experiences.
And of course, your things can be just fine, but without proof of that, claiming that they are just tells people you have no idea whether what you did was actually worth anything, and that undermines your effort.
The thing you made MIGHT actually be great! But it might also only be great for a super select few hyper-focussed people that you happened to ask for help (or not even, you might have purely relied on "your own past experiences"!), and be terrible in general.
Make tiny claims centered around tiny groups (e.g. "I/my customers needed something better so I made this"), not a problem. Make big claims involving "everyone" (e.g. "we made a typeface that improves legibility")? Back them up with proof. Show the studies where you've pitched it against a wide set of other typefaces, and have people of all visual impairment levels perform (also scientificially justified for this purpose) tasks that hinge on legibility.
(Because winning awards may be nice, but doesn't tell us anything. It just says "other people already liked this". It doesn't say anything about whether the thing you made is actually good)
>Why is it that most posts about a new product or project some people have put together is usually greeted with skepticism and negativity
Because most posts about a new product or project tend to make extravagant claims without anything to back it up. "The best", "the fastest", "the smallest", "the most legible", etc.
Because most of the time, the original post has enumerated all of the good things. There’s no reason to reiterate the points made in the post in the comments, and so the comments add an opposite view.
There is a healthy amount of skepticism that is required to produce good for the society. It can be adjusted based on supply/demand of such commodity or service. But, by large, skepticism is good. As a creator myself, it is important to equip yourself with the right mentality. I would never blame everyone else for being skeptical. After all, most people mean good and there is often a solid reason they're spending time writing about it.
>Why is it that most posts about a new product or project some people have put together is usually greeted with skepticism and negativity in HN comments? What is that all about?
It makes perfect sense why these things are greeted with skepticism. Because Most things in the world don't succeed. Most things fail. Thus when you see things treated with negativity and skepticism that is MORE likely to be inline with the actual reality. Thus if HN is actually more negative then normal, then that means HN users have a more realistic view of reality.
>Most replies are either about lack of evidence or someone’s alternative preference. I see that latter one a good deal.
Why is the latter a good deal if it isn't true? If 99.999% of the world doesn't have this alternative preference it's biased to even bring it up. There's no need to be personally insulting but if you think something is genuinely bad then i think it's perfectly ok to just say what you think.
When someone asks for praise, or when someone asks for positivity in a way they are by probability more likely to be asking for fake opinions and white lies. I don't come to HN for that kind of thing. But I will say that Dang (the moderator) loves this kind thing; and the moderation culture he promotes is more inline with your attitude. If you see a negative post, you can flag it, and he will take a side.
It does feel like sometimes we go beyond "healthy skepticism", and assume bad intent. I think there is good intent here. Perhaps their work is coming from more of a liberal arts angle, than an engineering angle.
probably the same reason new JS frameworks get a lot of criticism. adding another one expands an already daunting array of choices to make, most often without a clear benefit, as seems to be the case here.
Most replies are either about lack of evidence or someone’s alternative preference. I see that latter one a good deal.