There's almost always a thread about a LLM on the front page.
Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?
41–50 of 157 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?
#42Culture is dead. Nothing is new anymore, everything is now just a variation or an amalgam of recent culture. Software and hardware history have an element of the new about them if you didn’t experience them yourself, hence their enduring popularity as topics and objects of fetishization.
(Why culture is dead is another topic…)
Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?
#43Its likely a combination of many factors. i) The demographics of the user base. Maybe "Young Hacker News" happens inside discord or whatever. ii) The fact that the past keeps growing . The body of interesting developments keeps growing and while some stuff is obsolete / nostalgic, other stuff is totally not. In fact revisiting the mindset and vision of past decades is many times very inspiring and educational. iii) T…
I hypothesize that a lot of interesting discussion also happens in smaller group chats, where people can be more candid while receiving reasonable responses. Public social media participants are often assholes or have ulterior motives.
It takes a lot of courage to discuss a new technology while in its baby form, which can easily be smothered by demands of perfection. A private group chat can do a better job at helping to cultivate an environment for growth.
Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?
#44[flagged]
Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?
#45Its likely a combination of many factors. i) The demographics of the user base. Maybe "Young Hacker News" happens inside discord or whatever. ii) The fact that the past keeps growing . The body of interesting developments keeps growing and while some stuff is obsolete / nostalgic, other stuff is totally not. In fact revisiting the mindset and vision of past decades is many times very inspiring and educational. iii) T…
ii) graph the integral of human population and this is exponentially true. There is exponentially more past every year.
iii) I’m convinced that the single worst social/cultural event of the previous 25 years (and maybe longer) was the invention by social media of algorithms that bias what you see toward what maximizes engagement. Think about what this does. I put it this way: one person passes you on street and smiles and says “hi,” then another punches you in the face or publicly urinates themselves. Which maximizes engagement?
I’m not totally pessimistic though. I see the above cultural trend peaking. I’m also weirdly optimistic about AI. I say weirdly because I feel contrarian about this. Even super intelligent AGI doesn’t frighten me that much.
Let me put it this way: I am less afraid of a superintelligence than I am of mobs of ignorant humans, and I think the superintelligence might have more to fear as well. Neanderthals may have been smarter than us, but I’m sure we had that genocidal mob thing down. Intelligence doesn’t always win.
Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speaking as someone who started working in the mid 90s, we're definitely well past The Internet's "Golden Hour". These days we can see first hand just how much societal degeneracy it has helped facilitate. All the latest Culture Wars, malice, scams, cancellations, filter bubbles, misinformation madness etc would not be possible without the Internet. This easily helps explain the point of looking backwards to when the…
> All the latest Culture Wars, malice, scams, cancellations, filter bubbles, misinformation madness etc would not be possible without the Internet. The latest , sure, by definition. But nah, people were plenty good at getting worked up much earlier than the internet.
Search for “satanic panic” for a TV era example.
Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
(i) definitely applies. I often see younger hackers talking about “the orange website”, never in positive tones. HN is seen as older, richer, and with various negative tendencies.
HN is quite money-oriented and economically liberal, although nothing beats Blind in this regard. Many FOSS developers don't like this. I think it has less to do with age.
I find various economic views are represented, but the economic discussions are quite a bit less sophisticated than the technical ones. That's a general pattern of techie discourse: see also, e.g., the absurd simplifications around human intelligence and AI.
Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?
#48Is there any analysis to back up that assertion?
Re: Ask HN: Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?
#49In a world full of so-called "progress" I appreciate that the people on this site are willing to regularly look back.