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I don't know what Michael O. Church did on Quora, but when he was (hyper) active here he ruined this site for a while. His post volume was too high, and it was always the same open allocation/stack ranking rant, over and over and over and over.

Take a look into his ban from Wikipedia and what he did there.




I recall him commenting for a good while before his comments went "downhill" [0]. The pattern seemed like some event knocked him out of the bubble, causing him to lose faith in some aspect of groupthink and then become frustrated and combative over time. This would jive with his above narrative, but many other stories could explain as well.

[0] Even these had some good truths in them, but yes they got repetitive.


Are you talking about HN or Quora?

What's "the bubble"?

> This would jive with his above narrative, but many other stories could explain as well.

Are you saying you don't assign a high probability to your story being correct?


HN.

By bubble, I mean the memetic assumptions that any culture takes for granted. They generally only get questioned when some event happens that causes an individual to doubt a prevailing narrative. Usually, that individual then seems crazy to everybody who is comfortable leaving said narrative unquestioned.

I definitely saw insightful comments from him, so I'm not not going to speak up. I was merely hedging my assessment because it's impossible to discern justified from unjustified paranoia [0], especially merely observing via a forum.

[0] I hate when this word is used as a pejorative, but I don't intend it as such. Much paranoia is justified.


> HN.

I can't speak to that. My quote was about Quora.

> By bubble, I mean the memetic assumptions that any culture takes for granted.

Oh, I see. Like slavery, religion, or when people talk about morality without knowing there are different moralities, or the unquestioning love of the state. AKA mass ignorance. Or more benignly: tradition/mores. And on the positive side: protocols.


Yeah although in this case I meant smaller scale. Something seems to have forcibly woken him up from the standard Silicon Valley dream.


So you're not rebutting the quote?

Presumably, if Quora offered him money to come back they found his contribution valuable.


>So you're not rebutting the quote?

Nope; I have no idea what went on on Quora with him. I haven't heard his name in a long time. I just know that he ruined this whole site for years. If we had had the [-] button at the time it wouldn't have been so bad.


Alternative view on what you said: It seems like there's a plausible motive behind the YC move (via-a-vis Quora) then.




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