> I personally think the majority of people are more interested in being right or sounding clever than arriving at truth or understanding.

there's a term-of-hate for this "poser" like in parent's username. regardless of whether HN or the internet at large has a poser problem, drawing attention to it is off topic at best and hateful at worst - otoh we could be happy that the zeitgeist holds theoretical physics in high enough regard as to draw posers (iow we could have worse problems!)