I'll admit that being silenced through down votes simply for presenting alternative points of view does not sit well with me and this might lead to less constructive conversations from time to time.

The huge difference I see on HN between someone like me and the HN "crowd" boils down to: life and business experience. I too was an idealist at 22 years of age. And I too thought and said a ton of dumb things for most of my twenties.

I was VERY lucky in that my first job in technology had me working within a team of engineers that were at least 10 years older than me. I was 19 years old when I got hired as a junior engineer. I hadn't finished college yet but I was able to convince the VP of Engineering that I had what it took. And I did. Not being arrogant at all. By 19 I had already designed and built (from raw chips) at least two computers and had presented a paper at an ACM conference.

Anyhow, the education I got from the "elders" was priceless. I am not talking about technology. Yes that was invaluable. No, I am talking about how to be a man rather than a child. How to think instead of reacting. How to question what amounted to indoctrination being dished out by some of the professors at school. How not to come of as a 20-something ignorant moron.

We often had pretty deep discussions about business, politics, ethics and all manner of subjects. I stayed at that job for ten years. It was an education I didn't know I needed. Over the ten years I was there I noticed how my mental process was growing apart from that of my friends. They were growing through their 20's without the benefit of a team of "elders" applying corrections and providing advice on a daily basis. I was in an environment where I had to behave like an adult and think like an adult in a serious organization. To this day I run into circumstances where some of those lessons come back to the forefront.

Surveys set the bulk of the HN audience somewhere in the mid 20's in terms of age. It has been my experience through hiring dozens of engineers and engineering students that kids today are not benefiting from the same level of interaction with adults. Yes, a 20-something man is still a kid. Women tend to grow up a lot faster than we do. Unless the kids have a strong family social group to guide them they can get to their mid twenties and still be complete juvenile morons. I've seen it in more than one occasion.

Culturally the US presents a case where kids are "kicked out of the house" at 18 or thereabouts and go off into the wild to become men and women. In other cultures the family unit stays far more connected and provides a regulating mechanism. For example, the drunken orgies around Spring Break are a uniquely American phenomenon. In other parts of the world no 20-something would even think of behaving like that and then have to answer to their family for the failed moral choices made during that time.

Kids who behave like that have no common sense or manners yet if you spoke to them at any other time (or here on HN) they'd probably tell you that they are perfectly sensible people. Kids like that go to school on their own and suck in all the crap dished out by an educational system permeated with far left extremists in some cases. It isn't my intent to turn this into a political discussion. It is a well known fact that some of our universities have, perhaps by accident, turned themselves into left wing indoctrination centers. And the kids take this shit and make it their own belief system without even making an attempt to question any of it because, well, "lord of the flies" is their environment, self regulation is hard at that age.

Long way to say that if you are an older engineer with more life and business experience posting on HN it is almost assured that the kids are going to pummel you with down votes because, well, they think they know better and are not open to considering any other ideas. On matters of technology they do well because it is often very clear cut. On matters involving life or business experience they just don't have a clue yet they think they do. Instead of taking the opportunity to learn they engage in confirming each other's biases and push back hard on anyone who is not drinking from their koolaid.