I noticed that when the 'laws of stupidity' article [1] came up here. I'm very familiar with it as I read it when I was young and impressionable, almost all the comments had nothing to do with the substance of the article.
What makes it more poignant is that I typically go straight to the comments myself, assuming that intelligent commentary on an article will convey what the article was about faster than the article itself. Which would probably be a good assumption - if I was the only member of the commentariate to make it.
There’s a tragedy of the commons going on here. The best outcome as a group is if everyone reads the article. The best outcome individually is if you’re the only one that doesn’t read the article, then you get all the informed comments without spending the time to read it personally. The actual outcome is that very few people read the article, and the entire discussion is about the title and how people interpreted it.
I don't think it is true that the best outcome individually is if you're the only one to read the comments. In the wisdom of the crowds formulation the average is closest, but on Hacker News and similar websites there is a popularity contest which biases the responses. The average over a biased sample doesn't have the same mathematical reasoning suggesting it is better than any individuals estimate.
To use a specific example there was once a claim about a board seat for Tesla going to someone that people tend to dislike. The comments were largely in agreement that this would happen and it would happen basically because it was outraging and seemed evil which agreed with the commenters preconceptions. Anyone who posted contrary to this - which I did, quoting a primary source which disagreed with the claim, got downvoted. Ultimately I was right and the board seat didn't go to the 'evil' person.
This isn't intended to be a critique of me getting downvoted. Instead I'm trying to point out that if you read all the comments the consensus in the comments doesn't approximate the correct answer. So what do you have to do? You have to go primary sources in order to be able to get an unbiased estimator. Maybe the comments link to one, which is nice, but notice: you can't rely on the comments alone. Which means it was the people who read the primary sources, not the people who read the comments, which get the best outcome individually.
Unfortunately, the people who are doing this aren't becoming popular for doing this when it helps them. Quite the opposite. When this is effective, it is effective entirely because it is not in line with the popular opinion.
What makes it more poignant is that I typically go straight to the comments myself, assuming that intelligent commentary on an article will convey what the article was about faster than the article itself. Which would probably be a good assumption - if I was the only member of the commentariate to make it.
[1]http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidit...