this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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[–] [email protected] 123 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I learned so much over the years abusing Cunningham's.

Could have a presentation for the C-suite for a major company, post some tenuous claim related to what I intended to present on, and have people with PhDs in the subject citing papers correcting me with nuances that would make it into the final presentation.

It's one of the key things I miss about Reddit. The scale of Lemmy just doesn't have the same rate and quality of expertise jumping in to correct random things as a site with 100x the users.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The major problem with reddit is that you could never really trust the credentials of the person you were talking to. They might have been PhDs or they might have been 13 year olds who just learned to Google. It amazes me how many times I saw a highly upvoted comment posted about a subject that I knew a lot about, but was just so blatantly wrong.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah voting on content has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with feelings.

People just vote for their side of any discussion, regardless of validity.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Only if it's something controversial. If it's something technical with no political affiliation, people vote for answers that sound right. Thankfully Cunningham's usually comes to the rescue on time.

[–] Feyter 12 points 1 year ago

To be fair this is not a Reddit thing and it can be found in the fediverse too. I can remember some of such situations where a person just posted wrong stuff but in a very confident way. I was able to prove him wrong later but nobody cared anymore.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

cunningham's law is intended to be used recursively

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I know what you're trying to do, but that is not the case /hj

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As long as they provide appropriate sources then it doesn't really matter who they are

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There's no clear winner between a 13yo who can use a search engine and a crusty old PhD who can't keep up with changing times.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Especially if you move 0.1% away from that PhD's particular specialty.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I mean, unironically exactly why people think LLMs are smart.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Unless the thing falls under non-commercial electronics or computing. The community on here is skewed towards that for obvious reasons.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I always kind of felt like those voices began to be drowned out the more and more popular reddit became. You're correct about Lemmy's scale, but there is certainly a sweet spot. I'm happy knowing Lemmy hasn't yet reached its own, and reddit's is long gone. I'm happier here and it's likely only going to get better.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Errmmmmh achstually.., lol