Hacker News Disease
I’ve been seeing more and more lately of what I call "Hacker News Disease". It’s a pervasive mental illness that has caused me to severely reduce my participation there and remove some of the major tech blogs from my list of daily "must reads".
In fairness, this particular problem isn’t by any means endemic to Hacker News. It occurs at the crossroads where a bunch of smart people meet general tech industry discussion. I’m sure there are plenty of places that suffer from Hacker News Disease (and they probably had it first, have a terminal case of it, and are much less civil about it too) but HN is just the only one I’ve participated in, so they have the misfortune of being the community I’ve named it after.
The disease has two primary symptoms:
1. Repeatedly mistaking intelligence for knowledge.
2. The belief that anybody not in the tech industry is stupid.
The first part is endemic to all smart people (but no brilliant ones). People tend to overvalue the skills they have, and undervalue the ones they don’t. Even the most knowledgeable, intelligent people around are rarely experts in more than one or maybe two unrelated subject areas. The sum of human knowledge is vast, and while smart people often believe they could become an expert in any of them individually if they only had the time and inclination, the relatively short number of years we have on this planet precludes them from mastering more than a very small portion of them. So smart people have a lot of intelligence, but still only a tiny amount of knowledge, which causes them to overvalue the former at the expense of the latter.
The tech industry, however, overlaps with just about every subject area known to man on a daily basis. Follow a handful of the better tech publications and topics such as law, politics, entertainment, economics, biology, real estate, sales, design, and psychology are just a few that pop up every time you open your RSS reader. It’s hard to find a sizable industry that hasn’t been drastically altered by the technological advances of the last twenty years, or won’t be by the next twenty either, so it’s not at all surprising that the people in the industry like to talk about those changes as they progress.
The problem comes when people don’t know what they don’t know. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen someone post a legal question on Hacker News, and get dozens of replies from people who aren’t attorneys. They feel qualified to have an opinion because they’re smart, and lots of the tech articles they read have a legal slant to them, and I guess it’s easy to mistake TechCrunch for education. The fact that they’ve never taken even an introductory law class doesn’t stop them from assuming they’ve got it figured out enough to offer advice.
The same happens in every field imaginable, to the point where I almost wish the site made everyone post verified credentials just so that if anyone with actual knowledge ever responded to a question, you’d be able to filter that signal out from the overpowering noise. Generally what happens though is I click on the commenters’ profiles a few times just to find they’re some 20 year-old programmer working on a new website for people to share music and then I give up.
"The wise man knows he doesn’t know. The fool doesn’t know he doesn’t know."
-(Lao Tzu)
In and of itself this wouldn’t be insidious, because at least the fools are well-meaning, and usually polite too. People mostly don’t offer psychological or legal or health advice over the internet in an attempt to do harm. They mean to help, and they simply don’t realize that harm (and little good) could come of it.
The problem is where it intersects with the second symptom, which is the belief that everyone not in the tech industry is stupid. This is pervasive in the tech media, and in the industry as a whole. A hundred times each day you come across someone saying that "These record label execs are suing people! They’re idiots and they just don’t get it." Or "These newspaper editors are trying to charge for online content! They’re idiots and they just don’t get it." Or "These clowns from Fox and NBC who run Hulu don’t want their videos showing up on Boxee! They’re idiots and they just don’t get it". Or "Warner is picking a fight with Lawrence Lessig? What are they, idiots?"
It never seems to occur to anyone that perhaps the people they think are stupid really aren’t, and perhaps (in reality, almost for certain) the people being commented about are just as smart as and know far more about the situation than the ones doing the commenting.
You can see an example of the last one if you click the link above. While I’ve been thinking of this post for months, it took me staying home sick for a bit to actually use the site enough to inspire me, and then give me the time to write it. In the thread, people who aren’t IP lawyers argue the finer points of fair use, and assert that Warner is nuts for messing with Lessig. The following scenario never seems to occur to any of them, and they even balk at it when it’s mentioned:
1. Warner has an army of highly paid, very smart and very knowledgeable IP attorneys, who all know way more about the situation than anyone who has ever even seen Hacker News, because while the people on Hacker News were studying programming, the equally smart Warner attorneys were studying intellectual property law and working on high-profile IP law cases.
2. Said attorneys (all of whom know exactly who Lawrence Lessig is, and are more familiar with his work than anyone on Hacker News) carefully examined the case, and decided for whatever reason to issue a DMCA take down notice which, by the way, is not a lawsuit, or even remotely close to one, and was issued to YouTube rather than Lessig, though you’d quickly lose sight of those facts when reading anything written about the whole affair.
3. It occurred to the attorneys that Lessig would fight this, because anyone who has ever read anything by Lessig would know that, and as I mentioned before, the attorneys in question are not retarded. Thus they issued the takedown notice because they wanted him to fight it, or at least don’t really care if he does.
4. Because they’re smart lawyers, who are experts on IP law (because that’s their job) and who issued a takedown notice to Lawrence Lessig that they wanted and expected him to fight, there’s a strong chance Warner has something serious to gain from it.
Now I’m not saying any of that is the case. For all I know, this was all just done by some automated software or a low-level grunt whose job it is to find Warner IP on YouTube and issue takedown notices, in which case it will likely blow over and isn’t worth discussing in the first place. Lessig might appeal the takedown, at which point an actual attorney might review it and decide whether or not it’s important enough for them to worry about. I really have no idea there.
But it’s also possible they’re looking for a fight, and if they are, you can be 100% sure it’s because they understand what they’re getting into and think they can win it. And if they think they can win it, there’s a good chance they’re right because they aren’t stupid. In fact they’re probably very bright, and they are very knowledgeable about and experienced in the subject area. If I had to bet on one side or the other, I’d bet on them.
That never occurred to a single person in the entire tech industry though, because they think anyone who can’t code an iPhone app, or doesn’t at least have the common sense to work mostly with people who can, is an idiot. So they go off spouting about how "Not Smart" Warner is, or how they’re in danger of setting some sort of shooting themselves in the foot "if they lose, which I think they will despite my not being a lawyer". It never occurs to them that the people who are a lawyer might be a little better at making that judgment, or even that not being a lawyer might make you a fool for even having an opinion on intricate legal matters such as who would win a case about Fair Use.
In some cases, I think the belief in the stupidity of people in other industries comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of the way in which people are compensated and therefore motivated. Take, for instance, the most flagrant example of this in recent years: the music industry. Over the last decade, they’ve fought technology tooth and nail, despite the fact that any teenager in 1999 could tell you it was a losing battle. It’s easy to look at what appears to be people tilting at windmills and see stupidity, but what you realize if you dig a little deeper is that they’re largely just intelligent people reacting in a rational manner to their own incentives.
Suppose you’re the CEO of a publicly traded record label circa 2000 and Napster is taking off. You realize that P2P file sharing is going to make a big dent in your sales increasingly over the next decade. What do you do?
You have two options. Behind door number one is fundamentally restructuring your entire company. Remember, this is still years before the iPod achieved the sort of ubiquity that led to the iTunes store and eventual copycats, so at this point, there doesn’t seem to be any real hope of long-term music sales. The CD is plainly marked for extinction, to be replaced by digital downloads, most of which will be traded from one person to another for free. You can see right away that revenues are going to have to come from something else down the line, like product placement in music videos, live performances, etc. You don’t know what you’ll be making money off of in 10 or 20 years, or how much, or even if you’ll be able to make any at all, because really you’re nothing but a middleman between the artist and the fans and maybe, just maybe, the internet is going to cut you out the way it did to computer retailers when Dell took over that industry.
Or you can sue every corporation that tries to get in on the P2P game, which won’t save you the end, but will definitely disorganize the community enough to staunch the bleeding for awhile, possibly a long while. (It’s actually done far better than most of us ever would have guessed.) You’re not stupid; you know that every time you obliterate one Napster another Kazaa will just pop up in its place, but between suing each one out of business and scaring customers by suing a few of them too, you’ll at least be able to hang on to something for a while.
And hell, the average tenure of an executive at a large corporation is only 5 or 6 years and you’ve already been on the job for two. You’re getting paid a huge salary with tons of stock options that vest over a relatively short period (such as 2 or 3 years) with a strike price low enough that your shares can slowly sink and you’ll still make millions for as long as you keep your board happy enough to not fire you, which you’ll do by pointing out that despite millions more people stealing your product daily, you’re still bringing in almost as much money as you did last year, and if you can just have a little more time you’ll sue your way back to revenue growth.
So what do you do? Do you destroy your major source of revenue, that’s brining in hundreds of millions of dollars annually, because you realize it’s going to die one way or another in the next 10-20 years and you might as well get on with it, and then start giving away the music for free and scrounging for ways to monetize in the hopes that some time, long after you’ve moved on to run a car company or a retail chain, your record label will be the one left standing? Or do you use your legal muscle to keep revenues as high as you can for as long as you can and keep collecting your multi-million-dollar salary and options package while doing lines off of naked starlets on the weekends before you move on to run a car company or a retail chain?
When you look at it from that perspective, it’s a no-brainer. You sue everyone and everything you can. If a 65 year old woman’s grandson downloads a CD of songs from Sesame Street on her computer, you sue her, sue the kid who spawned the little bastard, take the grandkid to juvenile court, and sue everyone on their block just for being within a reasonable proximity. Then you have your PR department spread the word that file sharing is illegal and if you do it, or ever even shake hands with anyone who did, we’re going to take your retirement, your house, your car, and even your $3 Timex wristwatch just like we did to this little old lady, and you’ll be spending your golden years working a second job at McDonald’s just to pay off what you owe us, all because you just had to have that Britney Spears CD but couldn’t pay $9.99 for it like a good law-abiding citizen.
That’s what they did, and it’s what I’d do too, and I have standardized tests to prove that I’m at least not an idiot. But everyone in the tech industry just assumes they’re stupid and they don’t get it. They’re not, and they do. It’s just that they don’t get paid to get it. Getting it isn’t what pays the mortgage on a $20 million mansion in Beverly Hills and the lease on a yacht. The job of getting it and actually doing something about it will fall to the next guy.
And now, a decade later, the next guys are taking over the record labels, TV networks, and movie studios, and we’re seeing things like Last.fm and Hulu and 360 degree music contracts which I said were going to be the future of that industry a year before anyone else. They’re adapting to the changing situation because the new guys, unlike the old ones, get paid for that. Their market caps are sinking faster than their boards can reprice the executives’ options, and the investors finally realize that all of the king’s lawyers can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again, so they have to be patient and plan for the long term. And that restructuring is what we’re seeing now.
Everyone on both sides of the coin wants to work this out, because there’s enough gold there for all of us. But for those of us in the tech industry, if we’re going to get there we’re going to have to realize that they’re smart too, and they know things we don’t, just as we know things they don’t. We have to work together, and leverage their knowledge of how to produce quality content, which they do better than anyone in the world, with our knowledge of how to package it up and deliver it to consumers in the most appealing manner.
And when Hulu says they don’t want their content appearing on Boxee, or Warner issues a take down notice, or the RIAA sues our favorite music startup, instead of calling them idiots and assuming they’re out of touch with their customers and the changing world they live in, we should realize they have smart, knowledgeable people who know much that we don’t putting a lot of thought into what they’re doing, ask why, and see if we can find a workable compromise.
It’s going to be a long, bumpy road, and some of the industries (like music) that are struggling to keep up with the times will probably fare much better than others (like newspapers) in the end. We in the tech industry will do our best to step up and fill the gap, and try to make it work for everyone, but to do it well we’re going to have to stop assuming that everyone else is stupid and doesn’t get it. We’re going to have to inoculate ourselves against Hacker News Disease and work on meaningful solutions together.
May 1, 2009 at 10:09 am
One of my favorite quotes that I've read in any article is from Peter Drucker (http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail….), because it pertains so much to the HND phenomenon you've described:
“…discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and overcome it. Far too many people – especially people with great expertise in one area – are contemptuous of knowledge in other areas or believe that being bright is a substitute for knowledge.”
It's 100% true.
And if HN folks rolled their eyes because I linked to an article from Harvard Business Review, they should probably read that line over again.
May 1, 2009 at 10:19 am
That’s a great quote, thanks.
May 1, 2009 at 10:41 am
Great post, Matt.
I know I've been the guy overvaluing my intelligence a time or two in the past (or more), and I think part of it could be due to the age at which you're able to “break into” the tech field. You don't need much education or credentials to be a good software guy, if you're pretty bright. But that skill doesn't translate into knowledge, and it sometimes takes a few years to learn that about yourself.
Like you said, these guys handing out advice outside their scope of knowledge aren't malicious, but they may cause more damage than they realize.
May 1, 2009 at 10:56 am
Hi there,
If you keep writing posts like these, I might actually subscribe. I'm not sure yet where I stand on your post, but it's a good read.
p.s. I submitted your post to Techdirt for response.
May 1, 2009 at 10:57 am
I don't know if this phenomenon can be exclusively attributed to “intelligent” people; I find that people have a tendency to accept their own gut judgements as correct, regardless of what the topic is and how much they actually know about it (given that the topic is sufficiently simple to understand on a basic level and that it incurs some form of emotion on people).
I guess the main thing is that non-experts are not capable of determining whether their sources (techcrunch, ny times, whatever) are correct in their conclusions. It's a form of collective Dunning Kruger effect.
May 1, 2009 at 11:00 am
Ha, thanks… I think.
May 1, 2009 at 11:27 am
The thing you are missing about the Warner lawyers is that yes, they may be bright, but may very likely be acting in bad faith, which I think is the real reason why people are cynical about the action.
May 1, 2009 at 11:35 am
So… the music people aren't stupid but instead, greedy, dishonest or plain evil?
May 1, 2009 at 11:46 am
I've been meaning to write a very similar blog post for quite a while now. I briefly tried to get a startup going around music, and one of the biggest takeaways was “Hey, these record execs really are not stupid”. Thinking otherwise is a dangerous mistake if you want to somehow change the face of the music industry. These guys are going to be players in the new industry just as they are in the old, it's just way more profitable to keep the old industry around a little bit longer.
May 1, 2009 at 12:01 pm
They're rationally (and usually legally) responding to their incentives. I'd personally not define that as evil. Greedy sure, but every executive is that, that's their job.
May 1, 2009 at 12:08 pm
A very good post, and some very interesting points.
That said, isn't your argument about the music industry simply moving the “stupidity” and general long-term incompetence to the board/shareholders rather than to the executive? Ok, so the executive team optimises to get the best returns in 3-5 years. Surely the board and long-term shareholders care more about the long-term performance of the business.
So if they're letting the executive pull the wool over their eyes like this, they're the foolish ones, aren't they?
May 1, 2009 at 12:12 pm
May 1, 2009 at 12:14 pm
“I know I've been the guy overvaluing my intelligence a time or two in the past (or more), and I think part of it could be due to the age at which you're able to “break into” the tech field. You don't need much education or credentials to be a good software guy, if you're pretty bright. But that skill doesn't translate into knowledge, and it sometimes takes a few years to learn that about yourself.”
This is a fantastic, highly relevant point.
May 1, 2009 at 12:45 pm
“I almost wish the site made everyone post verified credentials just so that if anyone with actual knowledge ever responded to a question, you’d be able to filter that signal out from the overpowering noise”
Wouldn't help. I'm more knowledgeable in some fields than those I'm credentialed in, and I know the same is true of many others.
May 1, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Repeatedly mistaking intelligence for knowledge.
I present this: http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~det/phy2060/heavyboots…
Intelligent people know more stuff and knowledgeable people are smarter than non-knowledgeable
The belief that anybody not in the tech industry is stupid.
False. Structural engineers, doctors, master carpenters, all intelligent and skillful people. Music execs and their lawyers, not so much.
May 1, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Hi Matt,
Don't take Hacker news comments so seriously. I don't read them, as I don't read Reddit comments because of this reason. E.g Reddit is full of atheist people that hate religion and don't respect the people that believe (people that believe is stupid, believing in fairly tales…we know the real answers, we are smart…)
I remember a friend that was atheist and was considered very different from the majority that believe and could understand the hatred they feel, but now that they are majority(on internet) do the same to others they complied about.
Same as religion with any topic, if you believe in what we believe you smart, other way you are BS.
But I give my opinion over some topics I don't have career because are common sense, like economy. My father had some money as a lot of years savings, he let economists to advice him over it because they “knew better”, it took him some years to realize that reading books and managing their own money was far better for his money. Majority of economist are not brilliant, those that are very good go for advising people with a lot of money, or had their interest(not my fathers) in mind.
I think there is a need for people giving their opinion, because as you said, a lot of people don't know, but they should not mute because they are not stupid either. E.g When government economist do something, they Know, the problem is that they are using their knowledge for taking our money, in our goods name, considering we are idiots, so they can enrich themselves with other people money and so.
May 1, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Hi Matt,
Don't take Hacker news comments so seriously. I don't read them, as I don't read Reddit comments because of this reason. E.g Reddit is full of atheist people that hate religion and don't respect the people that believe (people that believe is stupid, believing in fairly tales…we know the real answers, we are smart…)
I remember a friend that was atheist and was considered very different from the majority that believe and could understand the hatred they feel, but now that they are majority(on internet) do the same to others they complied about.
Same as religion with any topic, if you believe in what we believe you smart, other way you are BS.
But I give my opinion over some topics I don't have career because are common sense, like economy. My father had some money as a lot of years savings, he let economists to advice him over it because they “knew better”, it took him some years to realize that reading books and managing their own money was far better for his money. Majority of economist are not brilliant, those that are very good go for advising people with a lot of money, or had their interest(not my fathers) in mind.
I think there is a need for people giving their opinion, because as you said, a lot of people don't know, but they should not mute because they are not stupid either. E.g When government economist do something, they Know, the problem is that they are using their knowledge for taking our money, in our goods name, considering we are idiots, so they can enrich themselves with other people money and so.
May 1, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Hi Matt,
Don't take Hacker news comments so seriously. I don't read them, as I don't read Reddit comments because of this reason. E.g Reddit is full of atheist people that hate religion and don't respect the people that believe (people that believe is stupid, believing in fairly tales…we know the real answers, we are smart…)
I remember a friend that was atheist and was considered very different from the majority that believe and could understand the hatred they feel, but now that they are majority(on internet) do the same to others they complied about.
Same as religion with any topic, if you believe in what we believe you smart, other way you are BS.
But I give my opinion over some topics I don't have career because are common sense, like economy. My father had some money as a lot of years savings, he let economists to advice him over it because they “knew better”, it took him some years to realize that reading books and managing their own money was far better for his money. Majority of economist are not brilliant, those that are very good go for advising people with a lot of money, or had their interest(not my fathers) in mind.
I think there is a need for people giving their opinion, because as you said, a lot of people don't know, but they should not mute because they are not stupid either. E.g When government economist do something, they Know, the problem is that they are using their knowledge for taking our money, in our goods name, considering we are idiots, so they can enrich themselves with other people money and so.
May 1, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I reserve my right to call greedy people “evil”, and call evil geniuses “stupid”.
May 1, 2009 at 1:44 pm
I'm an open source software developer and an IT guy, and I never thought that music industry or newspaper (or whatever) execs were stupid. That's not the point… I think you yourself don't get it either.
Am I supposed to be impressed by a 20 million dollar mansion and a yacht? Every day thousands of people die of hunger and I must give a damn about some greedy exec and his “intelligence”? What about morality, decency or humanity?
I write open source code and release everything under the GPL because I would like to contribute to society, even if it's only in a small way. Open source, sharing, open society, open governance and freedom of information is the future, and it cannot come soon enough. It's morally indefensible that people are so fixated on materialism while billions are living in abject poverty and starving.
May 1, 2009 at 1:44 pm
I'm an open source software developer and an IT guy, and I never thought that music industry or newspaper (or whatever) execs were stupid. That's not the point… I think you yourself don't get it either.
Am I supposed to be impressed by a 20 million dollar mansion and a yacht? Every day thousands of people die of hunger and I must give a damn about some greedy exec and his “intelligence”? What about morality, decency or humanity?
I write open source code and release everything under the GPL because I would like to contribute to society, even if it's only in a small way. Open source, sharing, open society, open governance and freedom of information is the future, and it cannot come soon enough. It's morally indefensible that people are so fixated on materialism while billions are living in abject poverty and starving.
May 1, 2009 at 1:54 pm
“Calling it your job don't make it right, Boss” (Cool Hand Luke)
May 1, 2009 at 1:59 pm
that's capitalism
May 1, 2009 at 3:35 pm
While working on open source software and making an effort to contribute to society are certainly both admirable endeavors, I think that you are missing the point of IP Law. IP Law, when not abused, is simply intended to allow people to profit from their own ideas in a market that does not deal in material goods and is as such significantly more difficult to regulate. For the majority of the people who use IP Law in their careers (professional photographers, Writers, Free Lance Programmers, etc.) it is not a means to becoming filthy rich, but a means to making any money at all.
May 1, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Matt,
Have you considered that such arrogance on display at sites like HN are deliberate to keep those who are not like-minded away? Did you not see Paul Graham ask the community to post boring Erlang content on the site to prevent it from gaining too many new readers after the last major spike in readership?
It's pretty standard behavior for any tribe to show unfriendliness or outright hostility to outsiders. Once someone is accepted into the group, it's a different story altogether.
Making a statement that an industry or group of individuals is stupid for fighting against the changes wrought by technology is more a statement about tech than it is about any other intersecting domain (be it law or what have you). Your rant against such pronouncements implies that you would probably be happier in another community besides Hacker News.
May 1, 2009 at 4:33 pm
If you would license your code and sell it for a profit, you could take the money and then donate it to the people who are dying daily.
I don't think a starving man gives a damn about what your karma is on HN.
May 1, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Nice quote Eric.
I wonder if Republicans, FOX, and their hate mongers upset Matt as much as some opinionated techs that don't share his precise views. The damage create is magnitudes greater. Some think those shills for fascism are the very source of the effluent that so many are forced to swim upstream against.
May 1, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Ditto. He missed that point.
This is the most irrelevant post that I ever read in HN – I certainly don't feel more knowledgeable after reading this.
I find that, more and more, the really smart people are the ones able to achieve their goals without stepping over anyone in the process. The case of the Demigod game comes to mind.
May 1, 2009 at 8:02 pm
I disagree with the media industry, and will use whatever tools are available to me as a consumer, to get the content I want, when I want, how I want, on the devices I want. Everytime I skip a commercial, or skim a video, this will amortize into years added onto my life in the long term.
I don't call the media industry stupid or ignorant. However, I increasing feel that they are out of touch and irrelevant with my needs & wants.
May 1, 2009 at 10:55 pm
I think Matt's point is still valid in the face of this objection. Do you (or any of the other people throwing around the bad faith accusation) even have the expertise to know what bad faith is as it specifically relates to the legal profession?
May 2, 2009 at 1:12 am
That's an awesome quote by Lao Tzu. This is very similar to a quote by Socrates: “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” The bridge between western and eastern philosophy might not be so big
Another by Lao Tzu:
He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.
May 2, 2009 at 1:29 am
I never comment on HN and don't care about HN karma.
I would rather share tools and knowledge than money….Teach a man to fish, so to speak. Hence my reference to openness.
Of course I am only a small cog in the giant machine. I just wish more people would wake up from their consumerism slumber and stop feeling sorry (or try to emulate) for rich bankers and music execs.
Artists routinely gets screwed over by the big music labels. I just don't buy the line that the aggressive behaviour of the labels is realy for the “artists” best interests.
I rather support emusic.com, where I know the artists are better compensated.
May 2, 2009 at 1:35 am
No, the point is that IP law is continuously abused. Of course any reasonable man would want to allow someone to benefit from his creations.
But this article defends the actions of the music industry (which are not reasonable) by implying that music execs are merely alpha males with mansions and yachts and that they are so smart and merely doing a “no-brainer” and that all of us would also do it., if we were sufficiently smart enough.
I beg to differ…
The writers, programmers and the like that you mention, don't go about suing people left right and center, lobbying for even longer copyright and generally try to inhibit the flow of information and the development of new ideas, paradigms and technologies, all the while watering down their product to appeal to the basest desires of human beings in a cynical attempt to increase sales as opposed to actually making a lasting contribution to society.
May 2, 2009 at 3:42 am
Matt,
I found your article compelling. I however am curious as to how you found the disease to have two primary “symptoms”. When the symptoms you describe are quite possibly each their own disease, and effect all the parties you bring up in your arguments.
1. Repeatedly mistaking intelligence for knowledge.
2. The belief that anybody not in [their field and/or] industry is stupid.
Seems that It would cut through a lot of the fat, to say all parties are capable of having said diseases. And I think you hit on it yourself in your third to last paragraph.
I'm not sure what to think about the portrait you are painting against HN, and that it carries a disease? It's a community. A community of like minded people. People who generally want to help, and advance the collective knowledge and intelligence of the group. Sure, their shared passion for a topic can boarder on the emotional and crude.
Perhaps a better argument would be to advocate an outreach to bring some new tools and perspectives to the community. To increase it's collective intelligence and knowledge, in order to fight the disease. Another argument would be to try and bring people back to a composure, that wasn't as emotionally filled or crude.
I guess what I'm trying to say is a better article would have been one that offered solutions. As you made a clear definition of the disease you where talking about, it would be nice to see that clarity in offering solutions.
Aaron
(I wish I had a good quote on wisdom)
May 2, 2009 at 6:52 am
Perhaps you're using “bad faith” as a legal term here, but if you look at laws as representing the morals of our society and not just texts of the laws, then you can be acting in bad faith but still be acting within the letter of the law. And that is recognizable to non-lawers.
May 2, 2009 at 7:49 am
The post being a good read, I can't really agree with you, mostly due to technical details. Perhaps I'm being very wrong there, I stand in hope of being corrected.
As for the execs of media companies, you are mistaking knowledge for intelligence. The former is never substitute for the later. Knowledge alone leads one to follow the `future is just like the past, only more so' fallacy with feeling of cozy comfort. Results is what we see: too little of change, and too late. It's only the fresh blood — without all the knowledge, but having smarts — that pushes companies in new direction.
A related item: time after time you see managers respond to accusation of using an obsolete business/operational/whatever model with financial metrics. Ones that only show the company still has momentum and loyal customer base, but saying nothing about innovation nor penetration of opening markets. Yet they feel safe, fed with metrics. Everything is under control, right?
As for the smart IP lawyers — sure, they are smart, educated and whatnot. They also bear little, if any, responsibility for results of those suits. In cases against individuals (as opposed to cases against competitors), they are the light cavalry a general gives free hand to harass the enemy. Should they succeed, they won't wipe the enemy out, just make it wary of the main force. Should they fail, nothing breaks, business as usual.
HN dwellers notice in such cases the possible financial gain is small, as the personal wealth of Lawrence Lessig is nowhere comparable to cash flow of media giants. The real expected result is a message to wide public, `don't you dare abuse our content'.
Anyway, my guess is the decision to sue Lessig wasn't a result of thorough consideration by the IP lawyers. It was most probably a result of company's process. Some low-to-midlevel employee, or perhaps an automated system noticed copyrighted material being used in a popular video, and message bubbled upward in corporate chain. Without anybody willing to risk making any decision, the outcome defaulted to `sue', and here we have the story.
May 2, 2009 at 8:27 am
The last part of your comment is the problem that occurs when a bunch of non-lawyers talk about legal stuff. Nobody is suing anybody at all. Warner issued a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube. That's it so far. That's not a lawsuit, nor even close to one. Lessig will probably “fight” it by appealing the takedown notice with YouTube. Again, no financial gain to be had by anyone.
If you think the heads of media companies aren't smart, you don't know enough about them. I'd never claim they're infallible, just that they aren't stupid.
May 2, 2009 at 11:08 am
Thanks for writing this. I'm sick of the attitude that anyone can be an expert in anything, but it isn't at all limited to the tech industry. You see it a lot during election season, everyone and their mom becomes an instant pro economist. Or when was the last time you hears someone say “I didn't come from monkeys, that's common sense!” ? And anyone in the tech industry who interacts with users/clients has found the same attitude there. It's human nature.
May 2, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Let me just say that if all the legal advice you care to get is a comment on a message board, you’re probably in big trouble. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on when someone posts a question on HN. Let me explain what I mean using an example: suppose I’m at a dinner party at which I’m introduced to a friend of a friend. The two of us get to talking and this person mentions some problems she’s dealing with that have potential legal ramifications. When she tells me about her situation, I mention that it sounds a lot like a situation that I heard about involving one of my other friends. I tell her how my friend’s situation played out and offer to put her in touch with him. I tell her that I don’t know much about the details of the law as they would apply to her situation, but that it sounds like she might have a case, and that she should at the very least look into pursuing her legal options.
Now, in this hypothetical example, did I do anything wrong? I didn’t pretend to be an expert and I didn’t pretend to be able to solve her problem. All I did was note that similar things had happened before and point my friend-of-a-friend in the direction of someone who might be able to help her. This, in a nutshell, is what I believe is happening when someone posts a question on HN: somebody describes their problem to a bunch of friends-of-friends (at least, I’d like to believe that metaphor is valid on HN) and they all do basically what I just did in my example—contribute what little they know and offer directions for further study. People do this all the time in the real world—they ask their friends for advice, even if their friends aren’t authorities. I’m sure everyone knows someone whose opinions they value and respect, and who they turn to for advice even if the problem is outside their mentor’s area of expertise. In the real world it’s not a big deal; on the Internet it is for some reason. Maybe what you’re seeing is more strident than what I’m seeing, but to me this doesn’t seem like an issue.
There’s another point that’s related to this one, and I think it helps explain both why hackers feel qualified to opine on any subject and why we’re so distrustful of “official” advice. As PG himself has noted, credentials don’t go very far with hackers: “People hiring for a startup don't care whether you've even graduated from college, let alone which one. All they care about is what you can do. Which is in fact all that should matter, even in a large organization.” Hackers are highly sensitive to, and highly skeptical of, rhetorical appeals to authority, which is basically the appeal you’re making on behalf of the music industry lawyers; they went to college for this stuff and they’re experienced at it—they’re “authorities” on it—so therefore they must know better than everyone else. Hackers naturally revolt at this idea, and I’m not convinced that we shouldn’t: history is rife with examples of people with supposedly authoritative knowledge who did things that were short-sighted or ill-fated or just plain dumb. Even on an everyday level, the correlation between competence and positions of responsibility tends to break down all too often; we’ve all known too many people who were very good at looking competent but who didn’t really know anything. The appearance of expertise is not a guarantee of expertise. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that, but I think we sometimes take it too far and start viewing authority as evidence of incompetence. Often, in a hacker’s mind, if you have to appeal to some authority—be it a credential or an endorsement from some Big Important Person or a nice suit or whatever—then you obviously can’t stand on your work alone. That’s patently false—the existence of some incompetent “authorities” does not imply that all authorities are incompetent. If we’re guilty of anything it’s that mental shortcut.
Perhaps it’s more a simple case of hacker projection than anything else. Hackers get apoplectic at the sort of thinking you ascribe to the music industry executive you describe because no hacker would ever think that way. You write, “So what do you do? Do you destroy your major source of revenue…because you realize it’s going to die one way or another in the next 10-20 years and you might as well get on with it? Or do you use your legal muscle to keep revenues as high as you can for as long as you can?” Music industry executives would choose/have chosen the second option; a hacker would pick the first option every time. Remember, hackers are problem solvers and perfectionists by nature: when they see a problem, they throw all their energy into fixing it, often at the expense of personal comfort and status and even physical well-being. After all, these are the sort of people who will stay up for days on end fixing every last bug in a program they may or may not ever be able to sell for a profit. Why? I can’t say exactly, other than that finding a solution to a problem is important to a hacker on a deep, emotional level. The things that entice your music executive—money, status, sex, drugs—wouldn’t even show up on the hacker radar.
I’m not saying the hackers have it all figured out—in fact, I’m sure these sorts of cultural prejudices create blind spots in our thinking, and in that I agree with you (and I say this as someone who likes wearing nice suits). I guess what I’m saying is that these attitudes are highly ingrained in hacker/technical culture, and I’m not sure how much luck you’re going to have trying to fight them. When you say, “Don’t be so skeptical of authority and don’t be so sure of yourself,” you’re basically saying, “Don’t be hackers.”
May 2, 2009 at 7:51 pm
I think this comment illustrates how a lot of people missed the point. It wasn't that people with knowledge or experience are always correct or infallible. It's that people who seem to be incorrect are usually not incorrect because they are stupid. Smart people fail too. They're incorrect because they're human and fallible. Also, sometimes what seems incorrect is actually a correct response if you look at the situation empathetically, which the tech media never, ever does. They just assume stupidity and often malice too.
Also, much of what you mentioned is an observational bias. If an expert says 10 things and 9 of them turn out to be correct, you don't notice because he's an expert. That's what he's supposed to do. However the one time they say something like “nobody cares about search, we should just build a portal” it goes down in history.
And you're wrong that smart hackers would respond that way to the music industry problem. They might never get in that situation in the first place, but if they did, they'd respond logically to their incentive structure just like all humans do. In fact, building the very disruptive systems that lead to that sort of conundrum is evidence of that. They don't give a shit that the P2P programs they build will put thousands of people out of work, greatly reduce the amount artists make from their work, etc. They just care that at the end of the day they built something grand, because that's how they get ego points and/or money.
And I think you're 100% wrong about the legal advice thing given the usual phrasing of the question and answers. People are usually posting the questions to save legal fees, which is a bad idea, and the vast majority of respondents don't say anything like “well, I saw a similar situation play out like this, but you should ask a lawyer.” Instead they give definitive advice (without any sort of disclaimer or statement of credentials) that is often obviously just an incorrect regurgitation of something they once saw on TechCrunch.
May 3, 2009 at 7:46 am
Of course the irony here is that there are no knowledge experts on behavioral or group psychology commenting… (including Matt…)
Speaking as layman, I see value in non-experts being involved in the conversation. Experts can fall foul of many different things which negatively affect good decision making and judgement. No shortage of theory or research to reference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_…). Sometimes those outside can see things more clearly, with less bias and baggage.
I do empathize with the general essence of the article. Everybody claims to be an expert on everything these days and shouts like we all should just listen to them. It strikes me as being incredibly ignorant to not understand your own limitations and assume others are inherently limited.
One of the most interesting things I observe is how people fail to relate what they comment on to their own lives. It's *obvious* when the President is doing something really stupid with Russia, for instance, yet day-to-day most of us balance constraints and make all kinds of compromises, deals and prioritization decisions to get things done through people – which without context can look like poor decisions. Yet we defend those and somehow fail to understand that all decisions have these attributes and go through these messy steps.
None of this is to defend bad decisions and we absolutely have to question and hold 'experts' accountable – just a little more wisdom in understanding the complexity of things would not go amiss.
May 3, 2009 at 1:32 pm
because of the length of your article, and the lack of patience that's inherent in me and the half glass of vodka that I have yet to drink off, I've not been able to read your article completely, but I totally get your point and I see this over and over again in real life, .. I think your point has to do with people thinking others are stupid just because they're smart. correct me if I'm wrong/drunk, there's this guy that thinks that he knows everything and boisterously gets his point across, he's like really loud and unpleasant to listen to, and he asserts his opinion (though he has no idea what he's talking about). And what hurts most is that though I know its almost completely crap that's coming out of his mouth, I can't contradict him because my voice is either lost in the background of his, or I get just fed up with the crap that I've to put up with.
what I say in my mind is
“if you don't know what you're talking about, please shut the fuck up!”
May 3, 2009 at 1:34 pm
also, the Dunning Kruger effect has to do a lot with what you're talking about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect.
May 3, 2009 at 1:39 pm
bravo. you rock
May 4, 2009 at 12:23 am
please delete
May 4, 2009 at 12:43 am
It seems strange that you've completely missed the even more obvious point.
Who the hell is asking for serious legal advice on hacker news? Why is our information feedback system so inefficient that people have had to resort to a site with a lack of specialists in a field and way too many egos?
It seems like the community doesn't suck, but the expectations of the community does.
Take away that and your post just turns into a rant about human behavior.
May 6, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Whenever I notice I'm getting full of myself or if I start getting frustrated with someone because of a perceived failure I just think to myself “auto shop, son…auto shop.”
That's because I know jack squat about cars. So every time I go to my mechanic, I'm at a huge knowledge disadvantage. Even being a 'responsible consumer' and finding out some basics doesn't help a ton because I don't fit in his culture–I've never watched a NASCAR race and I have no desire to.
So to this guy, if he were a jackass, I'd be a colossal idiot. He could easily think to himself, “What a tool. He spends a ton of time in his car, his economic livelihood depends on his car and thousands of others getting where they belong on a regular basis. If his car broke down, he's screwed. And he barely knows how to turn the thing on. Seriously, what a loser.”
Of course, he's not a colossal jackass, and that's part of why I go back to him. He knows I'm in a different domain than he is, and that both domains are useful and helpful. But his choice of cars and my choice of computers says almost nothing about our 'smarts' — and too often computer people think that, by virtue of being computer people, they're already in a league of their own.
No, you're just jackasses.
May 12, 2009 at 4:08 pm
I'd like to expand your analogy to the view that computer tech and car tech may be indistguishable to most people. Folks have a problem with their car they see a mechanic, they have a problem with their computer, they see Geek Squad. Which of these groups providing a solution do you think has the inflated sense of worth and view the general populous with distain for their lack of understanding about a specific category of knowledge. It's not mechanics. (they just overcharge, not belittle)
I think the HN syndrome is more a matter of maturity. Tech is a young industry, and those immersed in it are on the average yonger than those in other industries. They have not been exposed to the breadth of knowledge due to time and inclination, thus their mastery of tech minutia, and limited exposure to only that tech world colors their response to the world at large.