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Ask HN: What is a HN unpopular opinion that you hold?

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Re: Ask HN: What is a HN unpopular opinion that you hold?

#41

Post by gnz11 »

kypro wrote: post #25
simonblack wrote: post #15

The biggie, of course, is that US exceptionalism is pushing the US down the wrong track. That will be the economic and probably military downfall of the US and will likely occur within the next 5-10 years. (You may call me 'Cassandra'.)

As a European it makes me sad to read this. The US is exceptional in almost every way – morally, technologically, economically, politically. While the US makes mistakes, and when it does its power means the consequences of those mistakes can be extreme, it's still overwhelmingly a force for good in a world that's becoming increasingly autocratic. Don't let critics put you down. The world needs you, and I for one am g…

What makes you think the US is morally exceptional?

Re: Ask HN: What is a HN unpopular opinion that you hold?

#42

Post by red-iron-pine »

jryan49 wrote: post #29
mindwok wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. Although I see much more opposition to this idea on Reddit than on HN, the feeling I get is that people are desperately trying to undermine the idea of AI performing development tasks because they're afraid of it taking their livelihood away. This is unfortunate, because whether people resist or not in the end the pragmatism and economics will win out, so developers should be embracing this.

I'll believe it when I see it. Using any of the AI tools so far to help me program are worse than garbage. They produce code that looks like it works but has subtle hard-to-find bugs it in. Also, AI researchers have been saying we will all be out of a job for 75 years now.

I can get good, but not great code out of it. It mostly works, but then I have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what it does and why... and what it doesn't do.

for example i'm dangerous with node.js and mongo, but don't know enough to easily slap out some code. so if i want to do some linked-lists / mongo documents in documents, i can get there with a little bit of searching and sanity checking.

when i asked ChatGPT for the answer it put out something that looked mostly right, but 1) didn't work, and 2) wasn't clear why it made these choices.

i spent more time trying to un-fuck that code than if i had just stumbled through it from scratch -- and i would have had a better understanding of what was happening from the jump.

Re: Ask HN: What is a HN unpopular opinion that you hold?

#44

Post by red-iron-pine »

Rury wrote: post #31
bediger4000 wrote: post #8

Everyone really should be using Linux. It's not that hard.

Go tell that to my mother who's now in her 70s, who barely knows how to open her email (and thats assuming nothing out of the ordinary happens like her account gets locked). Yeah, linux isn't for everybody... Understanding this, is why Apple grew to become one of the most valuable companies on the planet.

my grandma cannot deal with changes on her laptop. comcast pop-ups throw her for a loop, and she gets hustled by indian scam callers.

so i gave her an ubuntu desktop, changed it up to be comfortable to her, and then setup some reverse DNS so I could troubleshoot for her if needed.

no issues so far.

Re: Ask HN: What is a HN unpopular opinion that you hold?

#47

Post by red-iron-pine »

HN is absolutely rife with shills -- by design to some degree, it's a startup-focused site, and that means talking about and pushing your org.

but now it's owned hard by other bots, and for a site that discussed GPT before it was cool it has little protection from the bots.

and, in general, agit-prop bot, esp. here, reddit, slashdot, etc. is through the roof

Re: Ask HN: What is a HN unpopular opinion that you hold?

#48

Post by latexr »

mindwok wrote: post #28
atleastoptimal wrote: post #27

AI will largely replace software developers very soon, along with most professions.

Agree. Although I see much more opposition to this idea on Reddit than on HN, the feeling I get is that people are desperately trying to undermine the idea of AI performing development tasks because they're afraid of it taking their livelihood away. This is unfortunate, because whether people resist or not in the end the pragmatism and economics will win out, so developers should be embracing this.

> the feeling I get is that people are desperately trying to undermine the idea of AI performing development tasks because they're afraid of it taking their livelihood away.

Your blind spot¹ is having preconceived of a negative reason for why people have a certain opinion and then judging them for the thing you disagree with in your head instead of their real reason.

It’s the same rhetoric applied by the cryptocurrency shills who can’t get past the notion that people who are opposed to cryptocurrencies do it exclusively because they “missed their chance”. Those people are utterly incapable of (and utterly uninterested in) understanding another human being. The notion that not every person in the world is a greedy bastard whose only interest in life is to get ahead at the expense of others is alien bananas to them.

Those AI discussions on HN are rife with reasonings both pro and against. Next time you see an argument against, really read the reason the person gave and try to understand why that different person has a different point of view. Ask a question if you need to. Don’t assume they have some hidden reason they’re not telling you.

¹ I suspect this has phenomenon has another name, but I don’t know what it is. It’s not a straw man because I don’t think you’re doing it on purpose.

Re: Ask HN: What is a HN unpopular opinion that you hold?

#49

Post by petercooper »

Advertising is a significant participant in modern Western culture, it (mostly) works, and the majority of people are susceptible to it with both good and bad outcomes. (I don't think this is a controversial statement, but I frequently see HNers making "well, I never look at ads" arguments to universally invalidate the effectiveness of advertising).

Re: Ask HN: What is a HN unpopular opinion that you hold?

#50

Post by latexr »

kypro wrote: post #25
simonblack wrote: post #15

The biggie, of course, is that US exceptionalism is pushing the US down the wrong track. That will be the economic and probably military downfall of the US and will likely occur within the next 5-10 years. (You may call me 'Cassandra'.)

As a European it makes me sad to read this. The US is exceptional in almost every way – morally, technologically, economically, politically. While the US makes mistakes, and when it does its power means the consequences of those mistakes can be extreme, it's still overwhelmingly a force for good in a world that's becoming increasingly autocratic. Don't let critics put you down. The world needs you, and I for one am g…

> it's still overwhelmingly a force for good in a world that's becoming increasingly autocratic.

The two people who hold the record for most votes received in a US presidential election¹ are Joe Biden in first and Donald Trump in second. They set those records in the same election, which was the last one.

Donald Trump has said he wants to be a dictator, and plenty of his supporters have said on tape that they want that outcome.

Did you also miss the worldwide ripple effect after Trump won the first time where the autocrats came out of the woodwork and start winning elections and gaining more power in government in several countries?

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...

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