Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech • Hacker News Board

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#31

Post by jpxxx » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 6:20 PM UTC

ThePherocity wrote: post #28

dr42 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's so bad about replacing the phone every couple years? I'd rather these phone manufacturers moved things forward than worry too much about what the non early adopter crowd think. You don't have to update to ios6, nothing's forcing you too. You write as though your phone came with some kind of guarantee it would support future software. Just because you can't upgrade to iosX doesn't make what you have shite.

Well, besides an environment impact, and the fact that we're running out of resources and should be trying to get the most out of these devices? No, I don't. I'm listing the three competitor OS's and explaining that they all suck. Yes, it does. Because there is nothing wrong with the device from a technological standpoint, and it most certainly can handle the tasks. There are a few new things in iOS 6 that are going…

Up voted you elsewhere, but you're claiming that flagship 2012 software features could or should fit into a device sporting a single core ARM processor with 256MB of RAM and a GPU that is verging on obsolescence. We're an order of magnitude further out in performance AND userbase, and a trillion dollar market is up for grabs. This is the new life cycle.

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#32

Post by robomartin » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 6:30 PM UTC

lotharbot wrote: post #22

robomartin wrote: post #14

Not one person likes to be wrong about the choices we make. That's human nature. Some individuals have a need to defend these choices to death, even when faced with greater realities that negate anything they could possibly say about their choice. I remember one guy who would show-up at these professional meetings around the time the iPhone came out. He would make it a point to go around the room and tell everyone th…

I think it's more basic than not wanting to be wrong. It's not wanting to be disagreed with , even if right/wrong doesn't apply. If I decide product X is the best because of features Y and Z, and someone else decides product Q is better than X because they don't care about Y and Z, we may have both made completely correct choices based on our preferences/goals. It's not as though I was wrong about features Y and Z, o…

Sure. Of course. That's a more fundamental feeling. Interesting takes on this in Dale Carnegie's book. A very interesting read but not necessarily the easiest concepts to apply due to our aforementioned mental programming.

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#33

Post by jcr » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 6:49 PM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #10

I'd cut it right back to people merely being weird and antagonistic for no reason. It's easier to realize sometimes you're just the latest random target of a touchy, unstable human animal and drive away as if in a safari park. We had a woman come up to us on vacation and say our 2 year old daughter was an "evil little thing" merely for chattering away while eating lunch. I said nothing and just grinned at her until s…

First off, what happened to you and your daughter is just disturbing. It's a great example of offensively manipulative and disagreeable people, as well as how to deal with them effectively. People like that actually do exist, and knowing how to deal with them is beneficial.

The less obvious but much larger problem is simply miscommunication. It happens all the time, and the limitations of written text only compound the problem. When you think about the tiny fraction of a percent of the human population that qualifies as "great writers" over history, and the fact that they often rewrote their best works multiple times before publication, it's easy to see how our quick text writing (like this discussion forum) is pretty much doomed to constant miscommunication and increased hostility until things spiral out of control.

I don't claim to know you, but for years I've read the thing you've posted here on HN, and you've always seem like a good and reasonable person to me. None the less, I can think of a time when you and I interacted, and some strange miscommunication took place. It was regarding the decor of the Madonna Inn in San Louis Obispo. If you and I had been discussing it over a beer, I'm sure the miscommunication would have never taken place. I'm certain topic doesn't matter that much to either of us, and in person, we'd mostly agree on it, or at worse, agree to disagree in a friendly manner. That exchange of ours has stayed with me; it's a personal reminder to try being more clear in the things I write.

None the less, I see the same sort of thing constantly on HN and everywhere else. A poorly worded statement, misinterpreted out of context, spiraling the discussion out of control in some pointless, heated, and in some ways harmful direction.

Miscommunication happens to all of us, even when we're good people with good intentions. For the record, I'm sorry we disagreed about the decor of some hotel, but looking back at it, it's hilarious and it's a good lesson in how one poorly worded statement can make a pointless mess.

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#34

Post by jlgreco » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 6:51 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #30

Ygg2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a casual PC user, some of the stereotypes are not unfounded. In my experience I know of quite a few pro-Apple and anti-Apple extremists. Just looking at them quarrel makes me wonder what do they put in those products?

The mistake is selling them to Homo sapiens . Root of all evil there.

Hey now, lets be fair. Chimpanzees are pretty evil too!

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#35

Post by petercooper » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 7:16 PM UTC

jcr wrote: post #33

petercooper wrote: post #10

I'd cut it right back to people merely being weird and antagonistic for no reason. It's easier to realize sometimes you're just the latest random target of a touchy, unstable human animal and drive away as if in a safari park. We had a woman come up to us on vacation and say our 2 year old daughter was an "evil little thing" merely for chattering away while eating lunch. I said nothing and just grinned at her until s…

First off, what happened to you and your daughter is just disturbing. It's a great example of offensively manipulative and disagreeable people, as well as how to deal with them effectively. People like that actually do exist, and knowing how to deal with them is beneficial. The less obvious but much larger problem is simply miscommunication. It happens all the time, and the limitations of written text only compound t…

None the less, I can think of a time when you and I interacted, and some strange miscommunication took place. It was regarding the decor of the Madonna Inn in San Louis Obispo. If you and I had been discussing it over a beer, I'm sure the miscommunication would have never taken place.

I surely wasn't implying I have a total lack of crazy ;-)

Crucially, it was a brief disagreement and not one either of us wanted to spur on. You're right, miscommunication happens. Backing away from trivial misunderstandings, as we did, is the smart move IMHO. Sometimes explaining one's motivations or responses can cause a cascade of miscommunications that makes things worse.

The sad part comes when this natural bump and grind of discourse spirals, as you say, into lengthy, heated grudge matches that result in lasting antagonism (although without this, I doubt Usenet would have lasted so long ;-)). That is what's really worth avoiding. The natural bump and grind of textual discourse? It keeps things interesting, if we let it.

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#36

Post by javajosh » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 7:19 PM UTC

ilamont wrote: post #12

One thing that wasn't addressed in the article: Unlike the 80s or early 90s, online anonymous discourse is now a mainstream activity. The standards for discourse on practically everything -- politics, local news, technology, style, health, etc. -- tend toward rudeness, hyperbole and ad hominem attacks. Another trend: Writers are no longer seen as a protected class. Magazines, newspapers and broadcasters and other pro…

This is a very insightful comment. I'd go further and argue that this kind of media-directed hate mail scales with a general unraveling of our faith in our institutions - the media being an important category. Although the OP has made a really good suggestion about how people take gadget reviews personally, he failed to bring up how a general lack of trust also creates a lot of fear and animosity.

Ah, and I'll add a possible contributing factor: envy. There may be a quite a lot of envy of the author's voice and audience, and acting out because the person feels powerless to influence their peers, like the author does.

The lack of trust and influence that contribute to the generation of such vitriol are actually very tightly linked. As standards for intellectual integrity go down, on a personal and societal level, trust decreases proportionally, and "influence" starts to depend more on emotion than reason. Seeing well-reasoned arguments lose again and again, people (quite reasonably) start adapting, start using the "effective" strategies for influence like invective, emotionally effective fallacies, and general buffoonery.

This is why Fox News is so corrosive. Whatever your politics, the people at Fox are all liars. A clearly biased news channel that bills themselves as "Fair & Balanced" - and yet they have a huge audience, and are extremely successful. People learn from this. This is also why people like Blagojevich are so corrosive: even though he (eventually) went to prison, his months of shameless pandering gave people the sense that shame and responsibility are truly outre. The Republican party in the US has been particularly bad about not accepting responsibility for mistakes, wrong-doings, or inconsistencies: they present a disciplined, consistent defense of any accusation of impropriety. And it works, and people see that it works, and it destroys us.

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#37

Post by neutronicus » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 7:34 PM UTC

I always thought this kind of thing was catharsis like yelling at people while driving.

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#38

Post by cosmez » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 7:52 PM UTC

planetguy wrote: post #3

Good article. I'm trying to think of other products which inspire this sort of pointless religious war. Cars are the big one; try reading the comments section on autoblog one of these days. Typical Ford POS. Glad to see they haven't changed at all...same irrelevant company with the same irrelevant, mediocre products. Gm is just not good at making decent cars.i cannot think of a single GM car that i would ever conside…

"I'm trying to think of other products which inspire this sort of pointless religious war"

almost anything will cause it, i have seen ladies doing this for furniture companies and shoes.

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#39

Post by aiscott » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 7:59 PM UTC

ThePherocity wrote: post #20

silvestrov wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhone 3GS will be 3 years old when iOS 6 is released. iPhone 4 will be 2 years old. It will only lack Siri, FaceTime over cellular network and support for 'Made for iPhone' hearing aids. I wouldn't call that 'most features'.

iPad 1 released in 2010 (two years old) lacks all features. iPhone 4 lacks turn by turn navigation, 3D maps, Siri, and Facetime over cellular. So I get what with an iPhone 4? Passbook, Facebook, and a maps app that no longer tells me what train I can take? Im going to have to stick to the most features.

I agree, if we stick to "most new features", which I think was the unstated meaning.

However, I like my iphone 4 post-keynote as much as I did pre-keynote. Which is to say, quite a lot.

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#40

Post by flomo » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 8:07 PM UTC

planetguy wrote: post #3

Good article. I'm trying to think of other products which inspire this sort of pointless religious war. Cars are the big one; try reading the comments section on autoblog one of these days. Typical Ford POS. Glad to see they haven't changed at all...same irrelevant company with the same irrelevant, mediocre products. Gm is just not good at making decent cars.i cannot think of a single GM car that i would ever conside…

Video game consoles are possibly the worst, as it is extremely important that one's fourteenth birthday present be the correct one.

Meanwhile, phones are relatively cheap and disposable, so I agree the holy war is a mystery to me to. Perhaps its the same 14 year olds as with the consoles.