Oh, I didn't mean to stick you with that—it was the pre-emptive inoculation aspect that I was talking about, which I recognized instantly and understand all too well. The sad fact is that a statement like "Hacker News changed my life" would get instantly mocked (or worse) in certain elite tech circles, and yet I've run into so many people who have told me that, and indeed HN changed my own life deeply years before I started working on HN. Happily, the majority of HN readers are outside said circles and so have no idea what vitriol they're missing. My comments upthread are part of my ongoing process, trying to figure out what it is that creates that strange effect.
By the way, the thing that most struck me in that quote of you was not that part. It was what you said about HN's potential for bringing people together in the real world. Those effects are little-known relative to how powerful they are, so I was impressed that you put your finger on that point. It's just the right point, in my view. I think it is by far the biggest unfulfilled potential of HN, I'm convinced that there is room for those effects to become much more powerful in a way that would be good for everybody, and have been dreaming for years about doing something serious about it.
By the way, the thing that most struck me in that quote of you was not that part. It was what you said about HN's potential for bringing people together in the real world. Those effects are little-known relative to how powerful they are, so I was impressed that you put your finger on that point. It's just the right point, in my view. I think it is by far the biggest unfulfilled potential of HN, I'm convinced that there is room for those effects to become much more powerful in a way that would be good for everybody, and have been dreaming for years about doing something serious about it.