Nothing wrong with learning and being influenced. However, many posters on HN are very confident that string theory is a dead end. It makes me question if they’ve done cutting edge string theory or it is just some random software engineers who watched Sabina on YouTube.

The degree of confidence matters here.

In the age of infinite bullshit generators, the even more useful skill is being able to say "I don't know." Or "I'm not qualified to have a useful opinion on this so I'm just not going to say anything." I could write a bunch of stuff about my personal opinions on string theory and waste everyone's time, or I could just shut up and not be a human stoichastic parrot.