Top all-time · #5230
Byrne Hobart
Personal blog · byrnehobart.com/blogeconomicsbusinesswriting
Byrne Hobart writes Byrne's Blog, a personal blog at byrnehobart.com about economics, business and writing. Since 2009, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 58 times, most often “Why Are Middlebrow Dismissals So Tempting?”. The last post was in 2015, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Byrne Hobart's post on "middlebrow dismissal" to name a dismissive style of reply that the site discourages. Most comments cite it as a source; two judge it good.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Why Are Middlebrow Dismissals So Tempting?10 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2015-07-17
- Facebook is Profitable. Again.2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-09-16
What Hacker News says?
> Wow, does the top comment always have to be cynical? Middlebrow dismissals are a hacker news staple. http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissal...
Comment linking /blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissals-so-tempting/
on “Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees”Submitted Why I Stopped Throwing Out Junk Mail as a story · 109 points
HN discussionIf that was your intention, simply saying "I didn't find this talk useful" would suffice. It's not necessary to say that "Rich Hickey doesn't understand type theory". I would say that "X doesn't understand type theory" is becoming a common form of "middlebrow dismissal" [1], which is discouraged on HN. And that's exactly the scenario you described in proto3 - now every field could be encoded as a Maybe. No, in proto…
Comment linking /blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissals-so-tempting/
on “Ask HN: Best talks of 2018?”Submitted Cash4Gold Competitor's Clever Adwords Hack as a story · 65 points
HN discussionNot true. A strong effect can be meaningful for small n. This is well known from power analysis: https://statisticsbyjim.com/hypothesis-testing/sample-size-p... I also think middlebrow dismissals are discouraged on HN: http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissal...
Comment linking /blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissals-so-tempting
on “Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study”Submitted Higher Education: The Next Big, Bad Bubble as a story · 58 points
HN discussionhttp://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissal...
Comment linking /blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissals-so-tempting/
on “Mitsubishi: We've been cheating on fuel tests for 25 years”Submitted How LinkedIn's Site Design Helps Them Rank Well on Searches for Names as a story · 33 points
HN discussion> Possibly for what HN calls "middlebrow dismissal" - wandering in and dismissing the article with blindingly obvious issues ("probably caused by the sedatives, immobilization" etc) as if professional medical researchers wouldn't have thought of them. They plainly need a clear-eyed HN reader on staff to help them. That term is very apt. I found this blog post about it, which I think really hits the nail on the head,…
Comment linking /blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissals-so-tempting/
on “Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19”Submitted Why Zynga Should Worry About the Laffer Curve as a story · 12 points
HN discussionIt sure is. It even originated here on Hacker news. http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissal...
Comment linking /blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissals-so-tempting/
on “NASA’s New Horizons Discovers Frozen Plains in the Heart of Pluto’s ‘Heart’”Submitted Index Funds Considered Harmful (Possibly Evil) as a story · 11 points
HN discussionAh yes, the ubiquitous middlebrow dismissal ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920 http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissal... ). "As a non-kernal guy" gives it away immediately.
Comment linking /blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissals-so-tempting/
on “Linux: Introduce restartable sequences system call”Submitted Wikipedia and Amazon Own (Most) Proper Nouns as a story · 7 points
HN discussionbc it sux On a related note, here's how to abuse the concept of URL shorteners in order to produce messages in which embedding a URL costs zero additional characters: http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/steganographic-typo-based-ur...
Comment linking /blog/steganographic-typo-based-url-shorteners-add-a-link-with-zero-new-characters/
on “The List of N Things”Submitted Index investors are evil freeloaders as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThis comment doesn't add anything to the discussion. You could say this about anything, like say parsing, which was also "known by the 60's". It's a "middlebrow dismissal": http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissal... It ignores the difference between theory and practice. Whether you do coroutines in C, Python, or another language matters. Language features interact, and those interactions affect…
Comment linking /blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissals-so-tempting/
on “Structured Concurrency in High-Level Languages”Submitted How to Short the Higher Education Bubble as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI think this link answers it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5072224 This is pretty good, too: http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissal...
Comment linking /blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissals-so-tempting/
on “The ABC's of Guiding the Child (1967) [pdf]”Submitted What Stock Option Pricing Models Tell You about Courting Controversy as a story · 3 points
HN discussionPart of this is just diplomacy. Don't say "No," just figure out what results they want, not just what actions they've asked you to take; http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/how-not-to-say-no-to-a-clien...
Comment linking /blog/how-not-to-say-no-to-a-client/
on “Saying "NO"”Submitted The Talent Acquisition “Put” Will Create More Startups and Better Startups as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis is just silly. I started reading this article with a couple biases in mind: I can't ever remember reading anything by Wadhwa and thinking anything other than "That is the conventional wisdom, yes," and Thiel is correct that college is a bubble ( http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/higher-education-the-next-bi... ) But Wadhwa's advice is just ludicrous. If it's 2005, and you claim that housing is a bubble, the prope…
Comment linking /blog/higher-education-the-next-big-bad-bubble/
on “An open letter to Peter Thiel”Submitted DuckDuckGo and Quora: Two Companies That Could Wreck Google Search as a story · 3 points
HN discussionMiddle brow dismissal. It’s like the people who dismiss productivity advice as all being the same when the reason it’s mostly the same is it works and the doing it is the hard part. > Paul Graham, News.YC’s moderator emeritus, says that “The defining quality of the middlebrow dismissal is that it’s a cache dump of the writer’s prejudices…” This probably explains why they’re so common. It’s natural to see any news st…
Comment linking /blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissals-so-tempting/
on “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant”Submitted What Happens When All Our Content Comes from Content Factories? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionOne potential reason for this: http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/a-clever-adwords-hack-how-to... When people run ads pointing to a site they don't own, it's often in an effort to get an implicit endorsement from that site. Note: I have no evidence that this is going on, but it is a risk with any site that has a recognizable URL and allows user-generated content. From what I can see, it looks like ads pointing to FB we…
Comment linking /blog/a-clever-adwords-hack-how-to-get-your-advertorial-on-marketwatch-com/
on “Google Bans Adwords use for Facebook”Submitted Stickiness or "Spikiness"? Rethinking Repeat Visitors as a story · 3 points
HN discussionPossible answer for #3: http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/facebook-is-profitable-again...
Comment linking /blog/facebook-is-profitable-again/
on “Twitter Closing New Venture Round At $1 Billion Valuation”Submitted Why the Greatest Advertiser of All Time Would Have Embraced Piracy as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
