The purpose of HN is to be interesting, and to gratify intellectual curiosity.
That's it. There's no need for any secret corporate or political agenda. HN is most valuable and useful to YC if it just attracts an audience of people who are intellectually curious, because those are the kinds of people who are interested in learning about new things, including new technologies and companies.
Given that, the most counterproductive thing we could do is alienate more than half our potential audience by promoting/tolerating views that they find abhorrent.
It also means our audience isn't easily deceived, because the most intellectually curious people are hard to bullshit, pretty much by definition. And this is the thing you learn quickly as a moderator here: even if you ever wanted to get away with any kind of deception of the audience, you soon find you wouldn't be able to, because people are so quick to notice and point it out if anything seems a bit off.
My greatest hope for HN is that if we could somehow keep raising the bar of intellectual curiosity, maybe we could yield new ideas that might help to break the world out of the stupid politics that seems to prevail these days. Hopelessly idealistic perhaps, but we all need something to dream about.
Repetition of the same old rhetoric, day after day, year after year, doesn't get us anywhere, other than making this place boring and miserable. By all means, criticise powerful figures and institutions. Sure, let's talk about the ways "current trends really suck for most groups" – we talk about that a lot here. But an argument only really belongs on HN if it gives us something new to think about.
That's it. There's no need for any secret corporate or political agenda. HN is most valuable and useful to YC if it just attracts an audience of people who are intellectually curious, because those are the kinds of people who are interested in learning about new things, including new technologies and companies.
Given that, the most counterproductive thing we could do is alienate more than half our potential audience by promoting/tolerating views that they find abhorrent.
It also means our audience isn't easily deceived, because the most intellectually curious people are hard to bullshit, pretty much by definition. And this is the thing you learn quickly as a moderator here: even if you ever wanted to get away with any kind of deception of the audience, you soon find you wouldn't be able to, because people are so quick to notice and point it out if anything seems a bit off.
My greatest hope for HN is that if we could somehow keep raising the bar of intellectual curiosity, maybe we could yield new ideas that might help to break the world out of the stupid politics that seems to prevail these days. Hopelessly idealistic perhaps, but we all need something to dream about.
Repetition of the same old rhetoric, day after day, year after year, doesn't get us anywhere, other than making this place boring and miserable. By all means, criticise powerful figures and institutions. Sure, let's talk about the ways "current trends really suck for most groups" – we talk about that a lot here. But an argument only really belongs on HN if it gives us something new to think about.