Comment by antitrust
12 years ago
> The same thing happened to Reddit: success leads to growth leads to lower average user IQ.
Are you sure it's IQ, or as another user suggested, some kind of mass hysteria?
The mainstream news exploded with the whole NSA thing, and then HN did too.
Is that a function of IQ?
>Are you sure it's IQ, or as another user suggested, some kind of mass hysteria?
What's sort of mass hysteria has been suggested?
>The mainstream news exploded with the whole NSA thing, and then HN did too. Is that a function of IQ?
My IQ reference was about the general decline in HN/Reddit comment quality, not about concern with the NSA on HN/Redditm which I think is a healthy thing. Being interested in the fact that someone is collecting one's private communication is a rational security concern.
I wouldn't use the term IQ, it can be a bit misleading. High IQ individuals can squander their time arguing about frivolous nonsense (I went to school with a couple of guys like that). Average IQ folk can be thoughtful and engaging.
What's happening is a kind of evaporative-cooling effect- specifically, the very natural rise of cheap wit and sensationalism. These things trigger upvotes more easily. Pithy answers and responses get rewarded quicker by larger crowds, and this discourages the carefully-evaluated-and-reasoned answer.
We don't have to bring IQ into the picture when making sense of this phenomenon, so let's not do that.
True, IQ wasn't the word to use.