App School Live • Hacker News Board

Re: App School Live

#31

Post by vorpalhex » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #27

vorpalhex wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been documenting your findings? A sceptical followers perspective on Urbit would be interesting to read and probably something worth archiving.

If he thought Martian computing was actually about terraforming the literal planet mars he hasn’t been following it in any depth. My take is he has a personal history with the founder that’s influencing his judgement unfairly (it’s come up before in previous urbit threads iirc). Often this kind of thing can actually be a signal because it’ll cause a smart person to dismiss something for bad reasons rather than on the…

I appreciate you probably aren't a fan of a skeptic documenting your project, but the rest of us would appreciate it.

Re: App School Live

#32

Post by dang » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 4:45 PM UTC

This looks like an announcement for an event that hasn't happened yet and those are generally off topic on HN, since they aren't interesting in their own right.

Re: App School Live

#33

Post by dang » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 4:47 PM UTC

gaze wrote: post #2

Urbit is a weird libertarian/neofeudalist cult.

Maybe so, but could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? It looks like you've been doing it repeatedly and that's definitely not what this site is for.

Fortunately you've also posted substantive comments, so this should be easy to fix. If you'd stick to the latter and drop the former, we'd be grateful.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: App School Live

#34

Post by gonehome » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 4:48 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #31

gonehome wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he thought Martian computing was actually about terraforming the literal planet mars he hasn’t been following it in any depth. My take is he has a personal history with the founder that’s influencing his judgement unfairly (it’s come up before in previous urbit threads iirc). Often this kind of thing can actually be a signal because it’ll cause a smart person to dismiss something for bad reasons rather than on the…

I appreciate you probably aren't a fan of a skeptic documenting your project, but the rest of us would appreciate it.

I like healthy skepticism, disagreement, a high level of discourse etc. - just based on the comments here I don’t think that’s what you’re likely to get.

Re: App School Live

#35

Post by vorpalhex » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #7

For those that haven’t checked it out the ideas behind urbit are really interesting, it’s the first attempt I’ve seen to get us out of the local maximum of centralized web services we’re trapped in where success is among the potential outcomes (most attempts are destined to fail because they don’t tackle the underlying issues from first principles). I think it could really work and I’m convinced urbit or something li…

I would like to call out that parent here is not a neutral or random party and works on Urbit, and so may have a conflict of interest.

Re: App School Live

#36

Post by gonehome » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #35

gonehome wrote: post #7

For those that haven’t checked it out the ideas behind urbit are really interesting, it’s the first attempt I’ve seen to get us out of the local maximum of centralized web services we’re trapped in where success is among the potential outcomes (most attempts are destined to fail because they don’t tackle the underlying issues from first principles). I think it could really work and I’m convinced urbit or something li…

I would like to call out that parent here is not a neutral or random party and works on Urbit, and so may have a conflict of interest.

Yeah it’s not a secret (it’s in my bio), I left to join Tlon at the start of this year but found urbit a couple of years ago. The comments here are similar to ones I’ve made on HN before (prior to working on it full time).

Re: App School Live

#37

Post by jlehman » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 5:23 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #8

NealEDavis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pun on a longstanding joke of Urbit as Martian technology; it has nothing to do with the planet Mars.

OK, but that doesn't actually refute my central point, that Urbit is a cult. One of the hallmarks of cults is that they invent a private language that helps identify the in-group. Obviously I am not part of the in-group. Scientology is famous for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_terminology

Your central point is "A is a cult, because X is a characteristic of cults and A has X characteristic, therefore A is a cult." By that reasoning, all domains that have a need to use precise language to describe their concepts are cults. Like physics. Quark? Definitely a cult.

Re: App School Live

#38

Post by jlehman » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 5:26 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #18

arthyn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's a difference between cults and culture, both tend to generate their own language

That's true, but I stand by my characterization of Urbit as a cult rather than a culture because Urbit's terminology is intentionally misleading . Urbit is deliberately obfuscated down to its very core. And the reason for this is that it is designed to produce an in-group that is separated from the out-group. The founder of Urbit, Curtus Yarvin, is an extreme hard-core right-wing liberatarian. Go read up about him: h…

You've given zero justification for this assertion. Pointing to the years-absent founder's background and your personal speaking relationship with him (?), whom none of the people that worked on the content in the OP have EVER worked with, sounds like a straw man. At the very least it's lame reasoning.

Re: App School Live

#39

Post by jlehman » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 5:30 PM UTC

gaze wrote: post #14

NealEDavis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pun on a longstanding joke of Urbit as Martian technology; it has nothing to do with the planet Mars.

Oh great a bad in-group joke on a page used to onboard new people. Who is this even for? How is anyone supposed to know what they actually mean

As annoying and ill-formed as your takes usually are, the central point of this one seems correct to me. Using an in-group reference on a page designed to onboard new people is probably ineffective, so thanks. We've removed that.

Re: App School Live

#40

Post by lisper » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

0x732202 wrote: post #19

lisper wrote: post #4

Just in case you're wondering whether Urbit is worth looking into, let me save you the trouble: no. Just, no. Urbit is a cult. All of its artifacts are deliberately obfuscated in order to instill a sense of community into those who climb the learning curve. It has no actual technical merit whatsoever. Here is a clue: > We’re running a cohort class of App School to teach you how to terraform Mars. No, you are not goin…

Who's wasting time? I've memorized a number of text passages using one user's app for cloze completion. I've kept track of names and faces of users I've met IRL using the pals app. I've had an uncountable number of awesome and fulfilling conversations with other users of the platform, and no, I don't feel like I am in a cult because I can leave for weeks at a time and return at my leisure. It's called "calm computing…

Just because you've gotten value from Urbit doesn't mean it's not a cult. People get value from cults. The problem with cults is not that they don't produce any value. The problem is the cost of being a member is generally high, and this doesn't become evident until it's too late.

In the case of Urbit, that cost is, at the very least, dealing with Nock and Hoon.