Hacker News Reader

Comment by lsh | Hacker News Reader

I apologize if I'm wrong. It seemed suspicious.

I know it seems that way; it's a common perception, which is why these posts are so common. But we've learned from long experience that in nearly all cases, it's an optical illusion coming from a cognitive bias, which we almost certainly all share (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...). The trouble is that the resulting accusations poison the community in their own right.

If you read back through some of the posts I linked to you'll see tons of commentary about that.

So if people disagree with you, they must have an agenda, is that how you think? OMG, you really have problems.

Please don't break the site guidelines by getting personal, even if another comment is wrong or broke the guidelines itself.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

People assuming that someone with opposing views must be disingenuous, astroturfing, a shill, or bad-faith actor, is so common on the internet, including HN, that it is probably a cognitive bias we all suffer from. I've written about this a ton, and we do everything we can to counteract the toxic effect this bias has on discussion. But that doesn't make it ok to lash back at someone.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com