HN Explorer

Ask HN: How come HN folks are so well-versed in social sciences and humanities?

34 points by samh748 ↗ HN
Maybe my world is just small, but I'm consistently surprised at how many folks at HN are so well-versed at both technology and social sciences & humanities.

Was it your academic background / career path? Or was it just out of interest?

What kind of things (books, magazines, forums, etc) helped you to become so knowledgeable and/or engaged in these world/cultural issues?

I myself only recently got interested in these fields (my background is in the sciences) so I would love to know what everyone's "stories" are. :)

75 comments

[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] thread
Kaze404
From my perspective a decent amount of people in this website are great at sounding knowledgeable on a topic while only having a shallow understanding of it.
dotancohen
I don't deny being one of them. I'll comment on something that I'm familiar with, but often the part I'm commenting on is the only part I'm familiar with. That happens as we often try to solve the same problems. That said, I never try to come off as an expert, rather I'm just trying to help those who also help me.
exseminary
In my case, I have currently 3 degrees. One of them is theology. The latest one was computer science.

I couldn’t find a job with my theology degree so I changed career path to programming, and ended up taking comp sci degree.

I suppose a lot of programmers here came from different backgrounds like arts, music, law, etc for financial related purposes.

pogimabus
Be careful how much credit you give them, I find they often speak with great confidence about things they clearly know nothing about.
burnoutgal
Glad to see this perspective. I find the industry in general is full of very confident people who will try to bowl you over with their cursory understanding of topics.
relativeadv
I find that in tech you run across more people than usual where because they are very intelligent and successful within various tech domains they think this also sets them up to uniquely be an expert at other domains. Politics, law, public health, economics, etc. This is not true.
spacemanmatt
Yeah, I took freshman sociology, and I don't even see that level of experience expressed often here.
zozbot234
Sociology is not really a social science. It deals in just-so stories, platitudes and bizarre musings. Science (of the non-experimental sort) is about making precise, rigorous arguments that can be checked for their soundness and assessed together with any available evidence.
yunohn
Yeah, I think this is exactly what the commenter meant - are you seriously beating the “social science is not a science” horse in this unrelated thread?
j4yav
Yes exactly, they sound just like that. And worse sometimes too, but that’s not a bad parody.
karpierz
I can't tell if this is trying to demonstrate how HN users don't have a solid grasp of social sciences via parody, or a genuine post.
Kye
I think you've confused popular attempts to over-fit the findings of sociology to social ills with sociology itself.
spacemanmatt
For reference, sociology is a statistical science. Like physics. It does seem like you are strictly unfamiliar with the practice of sociology.
matsemann
But also, it's not necessarily the same people being knowledgeable of everything. Reading HN it's easy to think everyone else is intimately familiar with the fine details of a microchip, is the CTO of a big business, is at the frontier of machine learning applications, contributes to the Linux kernel, has run medical trials, etc.

Because for every topic here, there will be someone knowledgeable commenting. But it's different people for different subjects. So don't get impostor syndrome thinking everyone is so good at everything.

That's one of the nice things about HN, though, that subject matter experts show up and discuss things.

CoastalCoder
I'm glad you mentioned this, because I'm looking for a related term.

Sometimes in discussions (often political ones), I see this pattern:

1. Person A and person B are both members of group G.

2. Person A advocates view P.

3. Person B advocates view Q, which is logically incompatible with P.

4. An outsider concludes that some persons in G are logically inconsistent, because "G has members who believe both P and Q".

Is there a name for the fallacy in step 4? It reminds me a little of kettle logic[0], or the association fallacy [1], but it's clearly different.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle_logic

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy

ginnungagap
Definitely this, everyone sounds like an expert to me in the programming/engineering/humanities threads until I see a one about mathematics (I am a mathematician) and I remember that it is just my ignorance of the other topics preventing me from being able to tell whether people actually know what they are talking about!
Jensson
This isn't a site for mathematicians though. HN is extremely naive about math, not about programming, I am experienced enough in both fields to tell the difference.
Kye
I remember when I made my first HN account in 2010 or so. I felt so overwhelmed by how smart everyone seemed. Sometimes someone on HN still surprises me, but wow was I easily impressed back then.
otterley
Especially about the law. I really wish HNers would refrain from giving legal advice because it’s often wrong, sometimes dangerously so.
gunshowmo
The more time you spend on this site the more you realize that it is not immune to the same problem that other sites have of people acting as if they have something insightful to say when they're just regurgitating common talking points.

The few contrarian opionions typically get buried here, althougn not hidden or lost in a massive sea like Reddit for the most part.

This place is better to glean insight from the more technical threads or the ocassional debates that don't immediately devolve into emotional appeals.

VictorPath
Yes. Someone ran some ML algorithm on HN book threads once

https://hacker-recommended-books.vercel.app/category/0/all-t...

Putting aside books like the Pragmatic Programmer and Lean Startup, big authors in order were Richard Dawkins, Ayn Rand, Yuval Harari, David Foster Wallace, Malcolm Gladwell, Jonathan Haidt, Henry Hazlitt etc.

Kind of the typical middle-brow stuff you'd expect some white college educated FAANG L5 to be reading on the weekend at his house in Sunnyvale.

Steven Pinker wasn't high up on the list but someone like him would be typical. He has studied the brain and linguistics and visuo-spatial thinking and writes about that (actually I think he's wrong about adaptationism, but anyhow...) Then he writes some Hegelian type books about how human history is a series of progressive steps to our current state, the best of all possible worlds. He's in the same boat as his typical readers - he has some specific technical knowledge, and that plus the weltenschauung of a 67 year old son of a lawyer who got a doctorate at Harvard results in his books.

It's living in a bubble. It's good someone like Pinker rejects some irrational views, the problem is when he can't see his own prejudices and irrational views.

zozbot234
Come on, Hegel thought of social progress as the side-effect of a literal World-Spirit, an actual ghost trying to haunt the entire planet in increasingly "self-realized" forms. You can't be seriously criticizing Steven Pinker on that basis, he shares nothing of that basic worldview. There are books that try to tell an "inherent self-propelling progress" story along the lines of Hegel's basic intuition (I can think of "Non-Zero" as one) but even those try to make a better-phrased argument to hang that intuition on than just talking about a mysterious World Spirit.
reducesuffering
Are you expecting most to read Kant and Joyce? Curious about your definition of non-"middle brow." Imo, both Hegel and Pinker are routinely discussed and criticized here.
cpleppert
I can't agree with this enough. Certain threads are almost as bad as reddit. It isn't quite on the same level as having a current ukraine war thread and literally every comment is completely wrong about the weapon used. That doesn't happen on HN much but its clear a lot of the time the comments are just not what they used to be. I'm disappointed because it reduces any value in the comment section. I mostly only stick to technical threads at this point.
adenozine
Many commenters are just phonies. HN is for entertainment, not a reliable source of information.

It’s free to type here, that’s all.

swiftcoder
HN is pretty tech centric, and pretty US tech centric in particular. Those select heavily for folks who attended the American style of liberal arts university.

American liberal arts programs are design to provide a very broad education, so Computer Science majors will still take a bunch of courses in the humanities - or even double-major (my other degree is in Philosophy, and many of my classmates double majored in things like History or Political Science).

bacr
I’d agree with this assessment. The American liberal arts education can do a fantastic job at producing well rounded and well read students. At the very least exposing people to arts and humanities — or conversely to the sciences.
zozbot234
> The American liberal arts education can do a fantastic job

This kind of American exceptionalism is remarkably naïve and unwarranted. The American style of education is only unique in that most other places in the world do that in K-12 already. American public K-12 though is a complete dumpster fire so everyone has to catch up in college.

Agamus
Correct, but it wasn't always like that. I suspect many of us were raised in a time when K-12 was also structured in liberal arts, and was relatively decent, compared to today's standards. Am I alone in this, or are my suspicions correct?

That was my experience, at least. My own interests are spread broadly across almost every topic, though philosophy and computer science are my main loves.

muzani
Having applied all over the world, I think US has this focus on multiple intelligences. It's normal to know some literature, play an instrument well, be good at a physical hobby.

The attitude in a lot of Asia is "Why are you reading this if you're not going to work in this field?"

hprotagonist
Beware “the unearned certainty of the autodidact — a weird sort of know-it-all position taken by someone who mistakes their own experience for universal truth, especially when that experience is coupled with a personality that makes one certain of one’s own brilliance.“[0]

But, many intellectually curious people are broadly read.

I’ve had long formal academic training in the biosciences, but some early and very influential exposure to the relevance and merits of philosophy, theology, poetry, and literature have kept me open to and engaged in that side of the intellectual world too. I try to be up front about my relatively informal scope of knowledge, for good and ill.

I have family members who like to talk and who have advanced degrees in a wide range of disciplines, too, so that exposure sort of rubs off.

[0] http://mischeathen.com/?p=19198

Kye
You know how sometimes people outside a domain can make the most interesting comments specifically because they don't know enough to dismiss what they're saying out of hand? I find people who map out what they don't know while strolling into unknown territory tend to be the most interesting. They forge ahead knowing they don't know everything and don't waste time defending points that don't hold up to expert scrutiny.

It's a too-rare trait on HN, and I think the flip from OP's optimism to cynicism with more exposure leads a lot of people to dismiss the whole place.

hprotagonist
There is a particular delight in being The Scholar From Another Field Who Wound Up At Your Nice Conference. I get to ask all the stupid questions without any embarrassment, and often that slant perspective provokes fruitful conversations.

Just as long as you keep the physicist quotient low ;)

Kye
You never want a critical mass of physicists. I carry a screwdriver just in case.
spacemanmatt
A lot of what you may translate as sociology are the obvious conclusions of sociology, but the field is about well more than just stating the obvious.
miiiiiike
Most aren’t, but, it’s easy to repeat the words of others. And, some have an incentive to get others to repeat their words as if they were their own.

Notice how you’ll see a phrase on Twitter one day and a week or month later hundreds of people are using the exact words with an “ugh, doesn’t this idiot understand <received “wisdom”>. IT’S NOT THAT HARD!” tone.

It’s amazing to see how quickly groups are able to adopt talking points. My favorite HN example, while not about the humanities, is the conversation about Rust vs. Go before and after the Discord article.

Link: https://discord.com/blog/why-discord-is-switching-from-go-to...

detaro
> My favorite HN example, while not about the humanities, is the conversation about Rust vs. Go before and after the Discord article.

What differences did you notice? I can't really remember any.

kayodelycaon
Sorry to say, but many of the people here who talk like they know things, don’t.

I am guilty of this and I apologize for how many things I’ve gotten wrong.

As for the random knowledge I do have, most of it is due to being an author. The amount of research that go into tiny details of my stories is just silly. Did I need to spend 16 hours researching rail guns? Not really. Did I? …I decline to answer this question on the grounds it may incriminate me.

muzani
There's definitely a tech bro vibe here, where people feel the need to flex their intelligence. I get sucked into it sometimes too. It's not as bad as many places, I think it's actually in a sweet spot.
smitty1e
The more widely I read, the less apt I am to indulge sweeping pronouncements.

No one cares what I may think I know. Offer a link and let others engage.

[deleted]
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codingdave
I went to a liberal arts college, got a degree in fine arts, with the coursework spread all over the humanities and social sciences. I also did some grad school and some law school. I'm not claiming that any of my education makes me an expert on what I studied - education is just the beginning of the process after all, and my experience since then has taught me more. But sometimes the answer of where our knowledge comes from is that simple - school.
devoutsalsa
Sometimes I google a subject just I can reply and sound smart. Don’t tell anyone.
jzellis
Speaking for myself, I'm a writer and artist who learned to code so I could build the things I wanted to create and use, rather than starting from an innate love of logic, for example. I've always been fascinated by science and tech, but I'm very much what they used to call a "right brained" person.

So for me, the answer to your question is backwards: I discovered coding as a small kid first to write little text adventures in BASIC on the Commodore, and then to do fractal art and MIDI stuff in DOS, and then the Web as a medium of doing multimedia art, and coding when I ran into the limits of what I could do in HTML. I ended up for my entire life thus far getting paid to either write code/do web design or write journalism and nonfiction. So for me, the journey was learning math and logic, not the humanities.

sudden_dystopia
Curiosity and reading.

All these people talking about people only having shallow knowledge and pretending to be more authoritative, that is a problem. Especially the pretending to be knowledgeable, but I find the wide range of opinions and thoughts of intelligent people to be helpful in figuring out how to think about something.

mortbag
Well-developed intellectual curiosity looks in every direction.
nashashmi
We are quite technically inclined. But when we practice that same approach towards less technical fields likes art, each person is able to give a unique take coming from their own walk of life and perspective. Still I find it intriguing for so many here to be interested in some obscure singer or musician. And then I wonder where am I lacking.
contingencies
Perhaps good engineering and science require genuine curiosity and an open mind which in turn demands broad interest.
marginalia_nu
I got into the humanities the same way I got into programming. Something caught my interest and I started tugging on loose ends. I do think it makes you a far more well rounded person.

The thing is that you're steeped in the conclusions of philosophy and sociology whether you are aware of it or not. Actual study of these subjects pulls the wool from your eyes and allows you to confront what you've been taught to assume.

A logical positivist, as you're probably likely to end up if you dive headlong into STEM and just absorbing assumptions from your professors and peers, might say something like 'the only meaningful things are the things that can be measured objectively' vaguely echoing the 'atoms and void' of Democritus, without even considering what what meaning is and where it comes from, or what a "thing" is, or what measurement is, or what objectivity is, or whether objective reality can even be assumed to exist. Why should we even pursue meaningful things? Can we measure what's meaningful? And so on.

I don't have good answers to any of these questions, the point is rather you could probably fill a shelf with books and dissertations on each of these subjects. But you wouldn't know that without at least dabbling in philosophy.

zozbot234
> I don't have good answers to any of these questions, the point is rather you could probably fill a shelf with books and dissertations on each of these subjects.

Ah yes, but are the books and dissertations meaningful? You're telling us that you have no way of knowing for sure, so why should we care? It's just paper filled with random scribbles.

marginalia_nu
Well look at science itself, is it not a long series of incomplete answers? Do we discard quantum theory and general relativity as base rubbish because they don't add up to one cohesive theory of physics? No, they are still useful. We even keep Newton in our bookshelves even though that theory is demonstrably incomplete.

You go looking for answers because you want to understand a thing better than you do, sometimes that results in dispelling notions you thought were correct but turn out to be wrong. It be extremely beneficial to know that you don't know.

Agamus
Agreed! Let's appeal to Feynman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkhBcLk_8f0

"I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing, than to have answers which might be wrong."

Parallels to Socrates. Natural philosophy (physics), is philosophy of nature. What should concern us in our age is the widening gulf between the two. Mind the gap!

DiggyJohnson
It’s funny that your comment uses the word “meaningful.”

What does that word mean to you?

Jaruzel
Because, relatively, we're smarter than the average bear.
rufius
My aunt, a history buff later turned history professor, was very into the Classics form of education. Granted hers idea was very St. Augustine centric as a devout Catholic.

None of her kids took an interest in academics at all. I’m her only nephew and she has no nieces. When I was little, she’d bring me books, teach me things from the classes she was giving, and took me to museums. I learned a lot from that time.

On top of that, my parents tended to not limit what I could read or even try to steer it. They just took me to the library and let me choose things.

I don’t think I’m much of an expert on those topics but I’ve read a lot across a lot of topics. I know enough to smell bullshit and enough to avoid spouting it.

pmyteh
Some of us are humanities scholars and social scientists, and aren't nearly so well-versed in technology as most of the others here. I'm personally consistently surprised/impressed by people who have taken CS/hacker routes and can show off deep and elegant reverse-engineering efforts or whatever.

FWIW, my background is a lifelong interest in computers, followed by a BA in politics, several years mostly in (non-IT) management in bureaucracies, a doctorate looking at government IT use (with increasing amounts of stats and coding), and currently a job as a computational social science academic.

There are surprisingly few people who are really good with both tech and the social sciences. Most of us are much better at one than the other (my code is typically academic standard) and I'm in awe of the few that are genuinely insightful in both fields.

throw0101a
> What kind of things (books, magazines, forums, etc) helped you to become so knowledgeable and/or engaged in these world/cultural issues?

Curiosity in general.

My local library system has a limit on the maximum number of holds you can have at any given time (100), and every since the the pandemic started I've continually been at that limit.

I read a book, and it has references/footnotes, which leads to more books. Or while I'm look at one book I look at other books on the same topic, e.g., reading about WW2 in general:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_World_War_(book)

I end up reading book specifically on Stalingrad, the taking of Berlin, and D-Day, Operation Market Garden, Operation Chowhound:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalingrad_(Beevor_book)

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin:_The_Downfall_1945

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Longest_Day_(book)

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bridge_Too_Far_(book)

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_Manna_and_Chowhound

On legal history:

* https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo562094...

* https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300116007/origins-reason...

* https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/perlman-ancient-greek-law-i...

All of the above books are available at my local library system (I'm in a major city) so I don't have to spend any money or take up space in my domicile.

Repeat going down the rabbit hole for the topics of science, philosophy, history (ancient, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment), etc.

kkfx
Maybe because people's here have a certain culture, and if you have culture you have to be well-versed in broad aspect of culture, not just one. Mere technicians know just their own field, people of culture know their field but also a bit of anything else in various proportions.

BTW there is a reason why in English doctorate of research is named "Philosophy Doctorate in $something" (PhD) and Japanese have shu-ha-ri concept.