> faster and easier to click the HN comments link and infer the info I want from the comments

Or, youre confusing primordial desire to be aligned with perceived peers -- checking what others say, then effortlessly nodding along -- with forming your own judgment.

I absolutely do that because I got so bullied that my personality shifted from self-expression to emulation. I realized that just this week because I caught myself copying a coworker he's respected and has people laughing with his jokes, and wondered why I have the tendency to do it.

But I never expected that this would also link back to my tendency to skip an article and just stick to what the top comments of a section have, HN or Reddit.

I think this is a really good take. It was mean for sure but you’re right. Why do we do this? This is a good reminder for me to click more articles instead of reading through comments and forming an opinion based on what I read from others.

Or they know themselves better than you do and it's exactly what they claimed.

I think that's a mean and disingenuous.

I often click on the HN comments before reading the article because the article I very often nothing more than the headline and I'm more interested in the discussion.

Probably also because a trust in the content of the website and articles has dropped because of much Enshittification has happened and a more trustworthy signal has found its location in people's discussion.

I mean, not necessarily. If there’s more eyes on the article and people share their opinions, then problems or mistakes in it will become more obvious, much like how code bugs can become shallow.

At the same time, I have no issue disagreeing with whatever is the popular stance, there’s almost some catharsis in just speaking the truth along the lines of “What you say might be true in your circumstances and culture, but software isn’t built like that here.”

Regardless, I’d say that there’s nothing wrong with finding likeminded peers either, for example if everyone around you views something like SOLID and DRY as dogma and you think there must be a better, more nuanced way.

Either that, or everyone likes a good tl;dr summary.