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Comment by TheLogothete | Hacker News Reader

Many people are so desperate to convince themselves that they are very special snowflakes that they will use every opportunity to renounce the status quo. It doesn't matter if the status quo is very sensible and sound. They need, crave to be unique. So every crazy, poorly concocted conspiracy theory gets thousands, millions of devout followers. Convinced beyond belief in the most absurd of things. The funniest thing is that they all think everybody else is delusional and they got to the very special, elevated place, reserved only for the very enlightened.

It is very annoying, tbh.

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The status quo isn't sensible and sound. It also isn't insensible or unsound. It is simply the current state of things, the result of thousands of years of humans interacting with each other and their environments.

Smart people can often identify things that seem strange or sub-optimal (under some framework of thought) about the current state of things. They might be not be able to fully articulate what they are instinctually sensing, or have any idea about the best way to improve the situation. However, often they will express their ideas.

Yes, of course, some people will say anything for attention. But it would be quite a rash overreaction to assume that all or most seemingly unusual statements are simply cries for attention, or that they don't contain some sliver of wisdom or insight. The complexity of the universe results in no one having even a slice of the whole picture, and we will continue struggling to get by with incredibly rough, imperfect heuristics for centuries to come.

"Different" does not mean "better" and "equal" does not mean "the same". I don't believe that I am any better than anyone else, but I am unique. Find me another identical copy of me and you can prove me wrong. And then you can go ahead and force me to conform to whatever it is you think is sensible and sound.

No evidence - merely a rant.

You are absolutely right.

This is my opinion, not a rebuttal. I don't need to collect formal evidence to leave my comment. This is the Internet, not an academic panel.

This is not an academic panel, this is hacker news! I think on average the culture here tries to avoid wholly opinion based discussion. You don't need to collect formal evidence to leave your comment, but substantiated claims sure will be more popular than unsubstantiated ones.

Experience is evidence. Foot-stomping demands of evidence for things that are obvious from those without experience is tiring. It's like those kids whom start working at cafés as their first job, do everything by the book and are embarrassingly uncool.

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