Expertise Debates on HN

This is a discussion forum. It’s not “obvious” to everyone, including people who correctly identify their non-expertise.(This comment continues the trend of abusing the “appeal to authority.” Humanity collects and specializes knowledge because we recognize the general impossibility of knowing everything ourselves.)

I think it's good to qualify your opinion with your level of expertise. There's no rule that says HN should only be for discussion by experts (hopefully there never will be), and if you don't know something for sure it's best to say so that others don't take your word as gospel. That said, I'm no expert ;).

People who don't know better, who's expertise is in other fields?

I'm sorry - no text on Hacker News will convince me the person typing it is an expert in anything. Especially when they present inaccuracies and opinions as facts.

Can you tell us a little bit about your scientific background which would help us understand your qualifications to make that statement?I'm really tired of non-subject-matter experts on HN coming in and declaring things that require very specific expertise bullshit because they didn't immediately understand or agree with them on a first pass.I'm not saying you're doing that, but that's an awful lot like what it seems like given how argumentative your comment is.

You neither have expertise nor insight on this topic. Please stop wasting everyone's time.

I think this is a common reaction. We're built with fraud detection as social animals.People who talk as experts about areas their experience and accomplishments haven't aligned with always raise this. In this case, don't tell me how to learn when I question how much learning you've done.The opposite of this is Adrian Colyer's the morning paper [1], where I'd love to learn Adrian's process of ingesting so much technical information.As an aside, there a

Don't worry. It's impossible that everybody in an expert in every topic.The good part of HN is that if the article is interesting you can probably get an expert here to add more insight, and if the article is wrong you can probably get an expert here to explain the errors.

The credentials don't matter to experts in the field, but this forum is filled with laypeople. No layperson should accept such an article without expert vetting.

What I was really interested in talking about was how you're displaying a lack of humility in a field that you aren't an expert in - https://xkcd.com/793/ to quote a previous poster. Time will tell whether you are right or not, not us arguing on HN.