Ask HN: Pros and cons of thinking in public vs. in private?
Dear HNers who engage in any form of "thinking in public" (whether that's blogging, posting notes online, or maybe even participating in HN/Twitter/forum discussions): What are some of the pros and cons of thinking in public vs thinking in private?
Since it's relatively easy to find the benefits of blogging and other ways of thinking in public, I'm especially curious to hear about some of the potential cons of thinking in public / the benefits of thinking in private?
And with that in mind, how does one effectively manage both to make the best out of both approaches?
175 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 208 ms ] threadConversely, others have no obligation to respect your opinions.
In fact, explaining things is often a great way to lose credibility to large swaths of people, as you'll have become boring and confusing.
I posit this is okay, as I wouldn’t trust your citation selection anyway!
Most of the internet makes a lot more sense if you stop thinking of it as a place to argue, and start thinking of it as a place to exchange ideas.
You give me an idea, and I’ll mull it over myself, research it myself, and confirm/adopt it or refute it myself.
None of this requires an argument or evidence, just the idea, and that’s how most people use the Internet.
> explaining things is often a great way to lose credibility
> I wouldn’t trust your citation selection anyway!
One popular earth reason is people like teaching and learning. We call it knowledge. I'm sure you're fun at parties.
If your systems can’t prevent you from falling for QAnon, flat eartherism, or the time cube, you are exploitable and are likely already actively exploited.
Believing what you read in an HN comment is a terrible idea.
Monologues can easily be boring. They are hard to put together for most people and you have to have implied consent from the crowd to be monologued. People don't like to be forced to be polite to listen to anyone for more than 30 seconds.
But there are certain ways of conversing where you have time to explore deeper. Unfortunately, not everyone is open to conversation for the sake of argument.
If you are in those circles, speak of ideas, not people.
A good example could be that Googler from a few years ago who seemed amazed at the blowback he got from publicly posting that he thought women were genetically inferior as software engineers. Had he been as smart as he thought he was, that could have been a great opportunity for self reflection that would not have been available without that public airing of his thoughts.
Saying "women make bad engineers" is inflammatory and incorrect. That's the sentiment people quickly parse because basically "tl;dr". Saying "the educational system and society in general sets the stage for women on average to not succeed in science fields as well as men" is far more correct, most women in science would agree, and not exactly flashy as "we don't employ women because women are bad at science and math". If the reader gets even that far, a lot of people are going to write off anything further.
Damore said that women biologically were inferior at science, that's what I am reading second-hand so might _also_ be filtered through a lens already. That sentiment is pretty insane and ignores the huge effect of socialization on who we become. There have been no conclusive studies that female and male brains are structurally different. What that leaves, in my opinion, is a difference in socialization and what women tend to be told they are good at or pushed towards.
Sorry, not trying to start an argument at all. I am always a little baffled by science-y types ignoring that most people aren't interested in reading dissertations randomly handed off to them. People, in my opinion, are going to read 3 sentences then make up their minds whether they agree with your premise.
Looking in the mirror, I don't like people's livelihoods getting ruined, but I'm not interested in extending much sympathy for someone who stuck his neck out in the name of sexism (regardless of how vehemently he denies doing so, while yanno, saying a bunch of sexist stuff). Pretty clear from the document he knew how inflammatory it was. He made up his mind to die on some hill, whatchagunnuhdo. It's healthier for the industry that people like that aren't in senior roles where they can gatekeep women's careers, anyhow.
At a micro scale, when I say something on HN I know people aren't going to like, I don't clutch my pearls when it gets downvoted. If I think something is true but unpopular, I'll say it and accept the obvious consequences.
> Damore said that women biologically were inferior at science, that's what I am reading second-hand so might _also_ be filtered through a lens already.
That's a confession, or totally misleading.
He stuck out his neck only to those who appeared to welcome his supported and honest interpretation of the truth, only for the standards of discussion to change. He didn't post it on the open internet. If reality has asymmetries, don't blame him for reminding us of that. For example, barely after childbirth there are group differences in interest in people vs things.
Apologies, I didn't clarify I am a different person.
> He didn't post it on the open internet.
I think that's one of the reasons for the strong reaction - he said this stuff in a professional context, which is pretty inappropriate.
Also could you quote where "Damore said that women biologically were inferior at science"?
Is that what he posted? Do you have some quotes?
Edit: if this is not in fact an accurate representation of what happened, it makes a good example of one of the cons of thinking in public: you may be misinterpreted and/or misrepresented forever after if you reach a large enough audience.
If you're looking for a single "gotcha" quote you don't really find it because the document is a fortress of wordy CYA. I think the only thing to say is normative statements like "women like people and men like things because women are wired to raise children" is post-hoc justification of the roles society prescribe for men and women, not some kind of truth bomb that's too hot to handle. People use similar arguments to the ones in this document to justify differences in pay and representation between races as well. It's a well worn path in sophistry to justify the status quo.
In the interests of fairness, I'll highlight a part of the document I thought was fairly insightful.
> Feminism has made great progress in freeing women from the female gender role, but men are still very much tied to the male gender role. If we, as a society, allow men to be more “feminine,” then the gender gap will shrink[.]
I think framing this as "men becoming feminine" is patronizing and prefer instead "allowing people a greater range of self expression, with men and women able to take on roles and personality traits traditionally reserved for another gender if they choose to (eg, there's no reason to highlight men becoming more feminine and not women becoming more masculine), as well as being afforded the opportunity to adopt non-binary genders previously considered to be invalid." I think it's underappreciated how men's gender role can be stifling and how men and women should both support the cause of feminism to achieve better outcomes for everyone.
I'm looking for any quotes. One thing that confuses the issue is that the gizmodo piece removed citations, which makes it look like this was all his original thoughts. Of course, one response to this is to then attack the cited pieces, but that's a different argument.
Anyways, I'm not here to pick up his banner and run with it. I believe that people did honestly interpret what he wrote as you have here. But I also believe that other people honestly interpreted it as not that.
Which, back to the topic of this thread, is a perfect example of the pitfalls of thinking in public. If people perceive you to be thinking the wrong things about topics that are very sensitive for them, they will react very strongly (understandably).
It's sort of like a variation on murphys law: anything you say publically that could possibly be interepreted negatively will be. And then it needs to be attacked because it might actually move the needle on some issue, whether or not the author intended it to.
I recall that it was mostly about predisposition and preference, not ability. It was certainly spun in the way you describe, but I'm surprised to see that take here. The memo was thoroughly dissected on HN.
The truth is not a popularity contest.
Some truths need to be handled with care, and indelicate handling will cause unwanted angry attention, not the truth itself.
Funny though, how so many people confuse this point. It's easier to feel indignancy over attracting vitriol over "a truth" than it is to play victim for brutish behavior.
Makes it less of a waste of time somehow…
My blog is in archive mode now. (BTW: Not linking to it here for privacy reasons).
I am thinking of blogging again, only this time I might use a pseudonym so my ideas are not forever tied to my legal name.
I will also be very careful about what I publish. I am thinking of having a delay of 6 months before I publish so I can edit parts that will inevitably annoy me.
For some reason, after hitting 'Publish' that's when I see the mistakes, even after previewing the draft several times and deemed it 'perfect'.
Things will go wrong.
I also partially rewrite my old blog articles where I made a mistake, the status quo has evolved, or I want more SEO keyword hits. More authors probably do it, but it is not publicly spoken about - perhaps it is a little taboo. Some of my articles go viral after a rewrite. It saves time and allows me to refine the content over time.
Recently I've started putting notes about article edits at the end as news sites do. I firmly believe that news media used to do it in the past, but it was too taboo to admit to editing old articles. Things are changing now.
I think that is the beauty of thinking publicly. You actually realize that you are an idiot. If you only think privately you never get any feedback, chance to reflect and cognitive biases are kicking hard. That robs you of the chance to ever improve.
Sometimes you can use information asymmetry to your advantage; thinking in public may work against that.
For sure thinking in public can be a form of marketing, especially if you are self-employed, like I am.
Having said all that, I've been writing a public blog since 2006, and have 39 repositories in GitHub, most of which are public, and that is a form of thinking in public as well. So I guess I cast my vote on the issue a while ago. I try to be authentic, honest, true to my values, open to change, and be the best person I can be, when I share my opinions.
I feel like I'm much less likely to get attached to an opinion if it's wedded only to an ephemeral identity that I will probably forget about entirely within a short timeframe.
I also much prefer the dynamic of having anonymous conversations with strangers.
Though for the first point, personally, I view being “attached” to a particular idea as more of an external problem than internal. An alias lets me consider other ideas or play devil’s advocate or perhaps more importantly, write with less revision than I might require of my public persona, which can be the difference between making a post or deleting another imperfect draft.
I can understand the appeal for a forum operator to lock functionality behind reputation-based systems which dissuade temporary aliases to reduce spam, but I think it is vitally important to have anonymous spaces for conversation.
The difference between publicizing your thoughts or keeping them private is what discourse is attracted - the ability to gather other people's thoughts and views on the topic... hopefully constructive ones - which you may then think about.
It's possible to come across these other thoughts without going public with varying degrees of difficulty, but anticipating that you are going public can influence how you present your own thoughts in various ways.
The above sentences are my thoughts which I've shared publicly. I tend to weaken my claims when thinking publicly with words like think, believe, probably, etc. to invite alternate ideas if someone would disagree or reinforcement if one agrees. Does it work? I have no clue.
In general, I only think publicly when I'm interested to know what other people think of a topic (usually things more opinion based); otherwise I stay private. I also try to avoid anything that invites non-constructive discussions.
The best way to manage that is to show people in private before you publish. That can be as simple as having a friend or partner check your spelling. Or it can be as complex as getting several people to sense-check your ideas and give you robust feedback.
The other big issue is that people can (deliberately?) misinterpret what you've written. Humans don't write in a formal, logical manner. So everything you write is open to a bad-faith actor trying to undermine you. So you have to make peace with the fact that you're not writing a thesis to be examined and that some people are just arseholes.
Life's too short to spend it worrying about what might go wrong. Take some sensible precautions and learn to live with the occasional public goof.
Instead, everything has to feel well rehearsed. It is exhausting to try and emulate. :(
Comedians bomb in small clubs so they shine on the big stage. Writers like me publish blog posts and articles so the ideas that make it into books are battle tested. The podcast episode that goes viral is usually the 10th+ time that podcaster has said the same thing in slight variations.
TV and radio hosts keep saying the same things and having similar conversations over and over daily for decades.
Note, edited and redone is fine. Rehearsed is also fine. I just don't think all things should have to be. Which is why I say I wish it were more allowed.
It’s just super unlikely that any of us will get to see the early versions. When something is repeated hundreds of times, being there for the first one is pretty rare.
Especially when you consider that the versions that didn’t work get killed quickly whereas the things that worked get repeated lots.
And then there are plays and such. I ridiculed power rangers back in my adolescence, but I have grown to appreciate the unpolished nature. And I think I miss it.
At the same time though, I do find myself often times at work qualifying things with "I think" or similar phrasing, and I'm still not sure if I do it to avoid embarrassment or if it's to not come off as too arrogant. Maybe it's both.
You need to know the conversational minefield very well.
The rest of us pick up on this and sense the plastic shell. Worse, by never risking, they never excel in the way they could.
These are all off the top of my head. I may add more later.
PROS: improving communication and marketing skills, social interactions, receiving feedback, building an audience, finding like-minded peers, testing ideas outside of your own mind.
CONS:
You might have ideas that others deem incorrect or morally wrong. This could make your personal and professional life much more difficult.
Getting caught in the self-promotion and metrics rat race. Writing for yourself is good, but you can get lost in trying to grow.
Finding out that nobody wants to read what you have to say.
Too much outside influence.
Managing:
As far as managing it goes, most people have different systems. The one thing I would add is that you need to generate AND curate your thoughts. Remove posts you no longer believe. Remove content that is bad. Refresh older content. You can be transparent or not. Don't just pump out new stuff alone.
Does it? I've gone back and reviewed some of the things I've written in my journal and found them to sound like crazy talk or what was obviously an emotion-fueled rant at the time.
But now I’m curious. Do baristas get upset if people are spending a lot of time there? I’m not a coffee drinker, so I never partake in coffee shop work. But as someone who has worked in the service industry, I can honestly say I would not have had the slightest care if people are spending all day in the shop. As long as they aren’t causing a scene or holding back from closing down.
Blogging and the like is more publishing than "public" in my opinion.
If you don't account for this you'll come away with the impression that nobody gets value from the thoughts you've put out, when the reality may be the opposite.
Sites like HN with upvotes help a bit with balancing this signal, but it's still a bit disheartening at times. You have to consciously think about it and convince yourself it's the case, probably before even publishing, certainly before reading the comments!
If you're interested I wrote a blog post [0] covering aspects of this that you may enjoy (which went to the HN front page, so you can see the comments Vs upvotes on that post itself -- yep this is getting meta rather quickly :-)
[0] https://davnicwil.com/tips-for-making-writing-more-fun/
Examples of vocal minorities abound.
You would have never guessed just how wrong and loud comments can be.
The Socratic method requires a good-faith, cooperative approach in the participants, and that just doesn't happen on modern fora without strong moderation, which is a full-time job in and of itself. Otherwise the hecklers win.
In real life you make all kinds of judgement calls before engaging in a conversation. For example: Do they actually have an informed opinion on the subject? Do you value their opinion on the subject? Can they remain level-headed in a conversation about sensitive topics?
Additionally during the conversation, you're analyzing their responses. For example you may know them to be very sarcastic or pessimistic, and parse their responses accordingly.
In an online context, everyone is going in blind, so conversations are not usually productive. You might have a well thought-out comment, but it will be rejected because you didn't know you were dealing with teenage edgelords, old racists, bots, or whatever.
Pros:
- Inbound Marketing: You not only are able to bring part of your work with you between jobs, but your thinking and learning in public demonstrates your interest, expertise, and growth over time such that it tends to attract jobs and other opportunities to you (including opps that are not formally open to everyone yet)
- Bloom's Taxonomy: Retain more of what you learn by writing it down in your own words rather than simply holding it in your head
- The 1% Rule: 99% of people lurk, less than 1% make content, you stand out in your field simply by saying something
- Cunningham's Law: “The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.” Being publicly wrong attracts teachers, as long as you don’t do it in such high quantity that people give up on you altogether. Conversely, once you’ve gotten something wrong in public, you never forget it.
- Positive Reinforcement: Building in a social feedback mechanism to your learning encourages more learning. As you build a track record and embark on more ambitious projects with implicit future promise, your public activity becomes a Commitment Device.
- Productizing Yourself: well, Naval said it best so I'll just drop a link https://nav.al/productize-yourself
Cons:
- It takes extra effort to write down something you're already thinking. E.g. it can feel like pure overhead to write down notes on a conversation you just had or talk you just saw. However if you agree that you shouldnt be optimizing for quantity of content consumed, rather the quantity and quality of what you *retain*, then the optimal write-read ratio is higher than 0 (I think 10-20% is a good range).
- You may get things wrong, sometimes embarrassingly so. Separate your (past) thinking and writing from your identity. http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
- You may hurt people's feelings by omitting their contributions, saying something you didn't mean, or saying something you regret. A bad enough case can lose you friendships and opportunities forever. So you'll have to learn how to filter what you say through the lens of other people's egos and your own fog of ignorance. Especially be careful about thinking in public about confidential work stuff or other private secrets, and err on the side of caution when it involves other people.
- Some people might see your mistakes and judge you harshly since they know better. This can be mitigated by demonstrating both intent and ability to learn quickly over time and respond well to criticism.
Source: I've written a popular essay (https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public/), book (https://learninpublic.org/v1-principles-learn-in-public.pdf), and done some talks and podcasts (https://www.swyx.io/ideas?filter=learn%20in%20public) about this. You can check my post history for how I do it.
The benefit of doing so is that I have to keep myself in check and really think before I write - yes, there are edits and deletions - and overall the effect has been very positive for me.
Being active on the chemistry SE site has actually proven to be of value in getting jobs related to chemistry - at least 3 employers have said it was useful to see some of my answers - so that is also good.
On the negative side? As far as I know, there is only one other person on the planet who shares my first and last name combination (different middle initial, and turns out to be a distant relative) so there might come a day when I have to do some reputation control should someone impersonate me: but that's not something with a lot of upside :)
It hasn't caused an issue that I know about yet, but it does kind of make me worry. Some SEO has made search results better, though.
This name is pseudo-anonymous. I use it everywhere and am still careful not to 'pop off' too much on it. I also own the username for my real name both here and other places. If someone wanted to track down my real identity, it wouldn't be hard. On Reddit, for instance, I use multiple anonymous usernames alongside my pseudo-anonymous and real name accounts.
How honest and close to my instinctual response depends on my level of anonymity. I think there is some value to saying quick & honest ideas so you can be checked rather than having to worry you will look dumb on your real name and never have those ideas checked. Using anonymous usernames also cuts down on potential stalking or doxxing if someone disagrees.
With that said, I try to be nice and not too inflammatory even on my anonymous accounts. I haven't always succeeded but try to avoid raising my blood pressure over internet arguments that gain nothing.
Why would anyone need to have the same name as you to impersonate you? They just have to say "I am toddm!", and the internet will generally accept it.
Hah. Similar situation. My name doppelganger is doing pretty well in sports going by my name alerts that catch him sometimes.
I wish him all the best of course, but there's a part of my mind that is concerned about the SEO impact of him making it big haha. My alerts already go mad whenever Lauren Cohan does anything newsworthy.
Likewise on the real name. I'm trying (honestly!) to be a better and kinder person and as part of that I've started attaching my real name to online comments.
The unexpected benefit of doing this is that I got a bit of freelance work through it. If you write about stuff you know and someone needs that knowledge, turns out it's really handy for them if they can figure out who you are and get in touch :)
Thinking in private allows greater freedom in some ways, although you do exchange power for that freedom. There is a lot of power in public opinion.
I explore this theme very in-depth in my web serial, which I just recently launched on RoyalRoad! Torth by AbbyBabble.
You often have a lot of shared context with those close to you.
Thinking in public you have lost a tremendous amount of context.
You have to add a mountain of backstory, caveats, and exceptions to everything you say so the user can understand the actual meaning you are trying to convey instead of the lens of their own context they hear your comments through.
1. Mental health
My last job creatively fired me because HR got pissed at the increasing number of accommodations I needed due to new policies.
I really don't want to be thinking about it or discussing it at work anyway.
2. Fiction Writing
You know... some people don't really think about who writes the stories they read. It's always that amorphous someone, until they find out their coworker's favorite poison is strychnine.
As my friends say, you're not a writer until your search history has more red flags than a Chinese New Year. :)
3. What I think about my job
I've talked about places I've worked many times. Since all of it is from my perspective, I'm likely wrong about details or people's motivations. My memory isn't perfect. There's more than a fair amount of bitching. I do try to be accurate, but my opinions and perspectives change as I get older and look back.
Yesterday, I wrote about how if I hadn’t discovered weightlifting, I might not have gone to university. I reflected on myself at age 16 when I was mentally immature but interested in bodybuilding. Then I wrote about age 18, when the hard work started paying off, and my self-determination skyrocketed. Finally I wrote about age 20, when I made up my mind to study computer science, specifically because it was supposed to be challenging.
If I post these thoughts on social media, there’s a chance I’ll spark Socratic debates that I don’t particularly care about leading. When I do post the thoughts online, it’s usually because I hope my words land on the right person at the right time.
Why I Keep a Research Blog https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033792
(a great post from 2 years ago that I remembered)
- to make sure I really know something, rather than just being able to name it
- to calibrate myself -- there are always people more experienced, and it's useful to get feedback on whether you're making a mistake. Also to keep a sense of reality on a long project :)
Another great side effect is that a few skilled people have been reading my blog for YEARS and now want to help me finish the project! If it was just a random project with no writing/explanation, then that wouldn't have happened
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34221617
- I also do "documentation-driven development", where I write how something should work, and then implement it. If I can't "explain it with a straight face", then it's not the right design. Most of bash you CANNOT explain with a straight face :)
Personally I like writing on content-centric sites rather than person-centric sites (e.g. social media), because with social media your ego can get in the way. For example, some people mentioned here that there can be a tendency to "dig in" to positions attached to your identity, but I find that writing in public is a good way to do just the opposite -- adjust your positions based on the feedback of others
1. Intent is preserved. When you write something publicly, your output are words that you constructed from your ideas and your intent. As others read it, they will have wildly different interpretations of the text, even if you write well. Thus, your original intent does not translate perfectly. You don't have this problem with private thinking, because you own the additional context and intent.
2. No self-censorship. You don't have to cater to anybody's liking of whatever your thoughts are. You don't need to win anybody's approval, and this allows for the brewing of fresh and pure thoughts.
3. Exclusivity. Maybe one of your ideas is of high value. Could simply be a rare skill you mastered, a trick unknown to the world, a little software asset you produced. The norm in our industry is to share wide and far. Write that blog post, open that Github project, etc. Alternatively, you can also keep it to yourself and leverage its value. Quite literally as leverage.
I imagine this last point to be somewhat controversial. By sharing far and wide, you'll be doing free labor for an industry that doesn't give a fuck about its volunteers. People will simply take your free shit and run with it, and often still complain about it. In light of such hostile and unrewarding environment, I have absolutely no moral problem with refusing to do free labor and keeping some things private and exclusive.
This is a very common belief, but I don't think it's strictly true. Sometimes people inadvertently speak what they're thinking, so an even surer way to prevent being punished for your ideas is to prevent yourself from even thinking them in the first place. It's a kind of defense-in-depth against wrongthink punishment and one I think most people understand intuitively.
> We can see this in dreams. Those disturbing dreams which wake us from sleep are purely graphic. No one speaks.
Either I'm misunderstanding something, or that's not what I have (ever?) experienced. My dreams (and nightmares) are stories; people talk to me and I talk to people there. I "hear" my thoughts forming into words as usual. Sometimes I may see myself from a third person perspective, or there may be some unspecified narrator, or perspective may suddenly change from one to another... but there sure is language, there are sounds, there are thoughts and it's definitely not "purely graphic".
Other people often describe their dreams as similar "stories", so why does the article seem to assume that no one speaks there? I never heard someone describing their nightmare as just "falling" or "snakes eating their tails", but rather something like "we were at this event together and you were very mean to me and my parents that somehow appeared there as well were even worse and then I suddenly found myself driving a car and crashed".
Movies also seem to depict dreams in this way, and there are common tropes such as "this was all just a dream" or dreams where you dream of waking up and starting your day as usual, so what's up with this paragraph? Does the author only have non-verbal dreams?
Another example:
> A picture can be recalled in its entirety whereas an essay cannot.
Can anyone really recall a picture "in its entirety"? I can recall a ghastly thing that has some overall characteristics of the whole picture. No details whatsoever except some specific things that somehow caught my attention. This is absolutely not unlike an essay, which I'm also able to recall in general ideas and maybe some single phrases that caught my attention. I may learn to remember and recall a specific highly-detailed picture if I put a lot of conscious effort into it, but I can also learn to recall an essay the very same way. Why does the article assume that one is obviously not like another?
Anyone else had this kind of cognitive dissonance while reading this article? (there's a working link in a sibling comment) It seems to somewhat undermine several of the points it makes, so I'm not sure what to think about it.
It seems many (most?) people can. I cannot, either. Look up "aphantasia".
Now, if I spent many days studying Mona Lisa with intention to memorize it, I would probably be able to recall it "in its entirety", maybe even sketch it pretty well - but the same would apply to an essay.
Maybe the author actually has hyperphantasia instead?
Never knew other people didn't have the same thing until very recently for me. It was eye-opening.
Genuinely intrigued: could you expand on this? I'll start by asking: is it possible to not think of something once you start thinking about it? And that realy is the best i can phrase the question at the moment.
I there could be milder versions as well: catching oneself getting into thoughts that lead to something you don't want to think about and consciously divert from that. I think I recognize that.
Your brain is feeding you lies or half-truths all the time. It's job isn't to find objective truth, it's to keep you alive.
I think this can work both ways.
I keep notes as I'm working (just plans for the day, typing up stuff that I'm doing for a vague timesheet, snippets of code so I can easily copy/paste them and thoughts I have as I'm working on stuff). And I've found that, often, when I revisit those ideas, in the intervening weeks and months they've morphed into something quite different from my original thoughts. Obviously my notes are private, but putting it out there in public means you have to acknowledge the divergence, rather than just sweeping it under the carpet.
This one is not true. There are internal mechanisms that filter thoughts, for example, what Freud called the Superego. People limit their inner thoughts in a variety of ways, for example, by developing morality, by which they judge their own thoughts too. They can dissociate, repress or project thoughts, both of which lead to some kind of self-censorship.
I frequent HN more than I should, and honestly, pretty much all comment trees follow the same pattern of moving goalposts or making pedantic arguments about how a statistical generalization is not true in all circumstances (duh). It’s all just people missing each other’s contexts (though admittedly some parent comments are really poorly expressed), which is why it’s funny when I come across the occasional “HN is superior and more intelligent than FB/reddit/Twitter” because, really, it isn’t. It’s the same garbage.
Edit: Regarding the quality of comments, I think what you find is that comments are written by people. Different entities, all working to their own goal. I personally value HN the most, Reddit for fun, and Facebook and such are just cesspools really, if you look at high traffic, public discussions.