<story><title>Novelty and Heresy</title><url>http://paulgraham.com/nov.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>classified</author><text>Just look at HN comment threads: Any truth that&amp;#x27;s inconvenient for the majority in the respective thread will be brainlessly downvoted. Killing the messenger is just as popular here (where all the smartest know-it-alls convene) as it is there (where all the ignoramuses reside).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dang</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s true of any large public community, almost by definition. It bothers me too, and I have to remind myself not to fret too much over things on HN that are true of humans in general: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;hn.algolia.com&amp;#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;amp;page=0&amp;amp;prefix=false&amp;amp;query=by%3Adang%20%22humans%20in%20general%22&amp;amp;sort=byDate&amp;amp;type=comment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;hn.algolia.com&amp;#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;amp;page=0&amp;amp;prefix=false&amp;amp;qu...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The only way you could get different phenomena is with a small, closed community that would therefore be able to have locally different properties. Just like you need a closed system if you want different entropy.&lt;p&gt;Actually, this has an interesting consequence along the lines of PG&amp;#x27;s essay: when a novel&amp;#x2F;heretical idea does begin to be seen as true, this will probably happen first in small communities, not large ones. Moreover the small community probably needs to be elite somehow, or it won&amp;#x27;t have the standing to deliver the bit flip (heretical -&amp;gt; serious) to the larger community.</text></comment>
<story><title>Novelty and Heresy</title><url>http://paulgraham.com/nov.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>classified</author><text>Just look at HN comment threads: Any truth that&amp;#x27;s inconvenient for the majority in the respective thread will be brainlessly downvoted. Killing the messenger is just as popular here (where all the smartest know-it-alls convene) as it is there (where all the ignoramuses reside).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Ma8ee</author><text>Could you give me some examples?</text></comment>