Jokes aside, I find that this sentence makes much sense, especially in the context of online forums such as HN or Reddit:
In fact, only people with no better use for their time will spend their time teaching you. This means you're being taught only by people whose time is worthless or for whom it is useful for you to believe in something.
Because there are plenty of people who just enjoy explaining things or helping others understand, and to say the only two reasons for that behavior is that their time is worthless or they have an agenda is myopic.
Not only is it inaccurate, it is insulting to the person teaching you. Have you never been on a popular HN thread where a known expert in the field, someone who’s more productive and knowledgeable than you, provides context? But somehow because they did you feel it justified to call their time worthless? Well, certainly I’d regret wasting my time on someone like that and I’d hope the other readers were more appreciative.
What the OP is calling a “better use of time” I’m reading “more selfish use of time”. Maybe, just maybe, the person spending their time teaching others doesn’t consider their time worthless, but they manage it better and thus have some moments to share their knowledge. Or maybe they enjoy doing so. This is not a hard concept for those not affected by such a superiority complex they claim there are others “beneath [them] in understanding”.
I will agree that it is big yikes. But I will, at least kind of, agree that you are more likely to meet more arm chair scientists than you are scientists and actual field experts online in this fashion. Though, obviously, there are actual scientists and field experts around. The issue, as always, is how to differenciate them from the not-so-obviously fake ones as a layman.
