Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How will the miracle happen today?

kk.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 285 posts

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#231

Post by arjie »

rconti wrote: post #218
arjie wrote: post #183

Before I quit riding my motorcycle, I recalled one important thing: all the way from the Oakland Hills to downtown San Francisco, many (I dare say 'most') drivers would step their cars to the edges of their lanes to make room for me to lane-split. I know there are lots of people who use their phones will driving, but this was clearly intentional, and a large number of people would do it. I was riding a Ducati but in…

I used to ride as well, and I had the same reaction. The sheer number of people who moved over for me (in California) blew me away every time I rode. They'd never hear me coming; they SAW me and made the choice to move over. I constantly felt that I was underestimating how many people were truly paying attention while they were driving, despite how much "we" like to complain that everyone's in their own world and nob…

Haha, I feel the same way. I like to pay attention when driving. But then sometimes a motorcycle splits past me and I didn't see him coming. It feels like such an indictment. All these guys used to see me coming. I should definitely strive for that at least.

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#234

Post by nicbou »

Aromasin wrote: post #125
nicbou wrote: post #115

Does anyone else feel a sort of anxiety in those situations? I've been on such trips and I would rather not sleep at all than ask a stranger for help. When I'm in a position to help, I am delighted to do so, but also scared of offering. How does one get over that fear?

Like all skills; practice. Push through the fear enough times that you learn to love it. When I was in the military, we once had an exercise which consisted of our troop leaders dropping 60 of us in Edinburgh (Scotland) with nothing on our person except for a cheap film camera. We had to complete a list of challenges with different scores, that varied from "eat a free meal" to "play a hole at St Andrews golf course".…

I have been thinking about your comment a lot today and yesterday. Thanks for sharing.

At the exact same time last year I went on a short trip without a phone. I was forced to talk to people and it was a good exercise, even though I wasn’t very good at it. It led to conversations I would not have had otherwise.

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#235

Post by phtrivier »

I was waiting for the moment when the author finds occasion to reciprocate, but then he explicitly says he does not thing he would do this.

That's brutally honest, but really, isn't the lesson from his whole trip that either :

- yes, he would reciprocate, because that's human nature, and it is why the "miracle" keep happening

- no, he would not reciprocate, and how can he not be ashamed of that, or his upbringing, or his society, etc... ? And what is different in the life's of the people who did help him ?

"Elle est a toi cette chanson, toi l'auvergnat qui sans façon..."

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#236

Post by qmr »

dheera wrote: post #37
Fiveplus wrote: post #32

I couldn't help but focus on the vicarious adventure aspect Kelly mentions which was the "payment" he offered drivers in exchange for the ride. This is a mechanism that has largely been deprecated by the modern attention economy. In the era of hitchhiking, the bandwidth for novelty was low. A driver on a long commute had no podcasts, no Spotify or audiobooks. A stranger with a story was high value. The transaction wa…

> replaced it with currency and star ratings In addition, the socioeconomic gaps are wider. So much so that the software engineer rushing to their 10am meeting doesn't want your $50. The Uber driver does, though.

There is no such thing as a "software engineer ".

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#237

Post by eternauta3k »

Tempatio wrote: post #216

Beautiful article. This is kind of the antidote to the more cynical side of things that you see in posts such as, say, Meditations On Moloch (neither is wrong, I think, but there is more to humanity than either alone).

I don't think Moloch means there are no random acts of kindness (not sure if that's what you meant).

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#238

Post by afro88 »

Fiveplus wrote: post #32

I couldn't help but focus on the vicarious adventure aspect Kelly mentions which was the "payment" he offered drivers in exchange for the ride. This is a mechanism that has largely been deprecated by the modern attention economy. In the era of hitchhiking, the bandwidth for novelty was low. A driver on a long commute had no podcasts, no Spotify or audiobooks. A stranger with a story was high value. The transaction wa…

I firmly believe that AI will disrupt this trend, because content will be overrun with predictable AI generated slop and we will appreciate genuine 100% human IRL stuff more.

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#239

Post by danparsonson »

I'm gonna diverge a bit from the overall mood here a bit, and say that I think the premise of this is trash.

His thesis seems broadly to be that by accepting gifts whenever they're offered, he is making the world a better place - opening himself up to kindness somehow encourages kindness in others. This is nonsense and totally backwards. What he's doing is just soaking up a whole world of goodwill and generosity, and giving basically nothing in return. "Paying it forward" is a chain - people do nice things for each other in the hope that the recipients of that goodwill will provide similar generosity to others in the future and together we make the world better for all of us. It's socialised good will - creating a rising tide that lifts all of our boats. The author of this piece has instead acted as a kind of capitalist, moving into a space with abundant resources (i.e. the generosity of others), and harvesting as much as he can, wondering at how much resource there is available for him to take, marvelling that others leave it there for him when he would likely not do the same, and patting himself on the back for taking it so that more can flow into the space.

It's somewhat akin to high frequency traders claiming that they benefit markets by providing liquidity.

Maybe we should all just follow his example, and then none of us would have anything left to give each other. Narcissistic nonsense.

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#240

Post by davely »

afro88 wrote: post #238
Fiveplus wrote: post #32

I couldn't help but focus on the vicarious adventure aspect Kelly mentions which was the "payment" he offered drivers in exchange for the ride. This is a mechanism that has largely been deprecated by the modern attention economy. In the era of hitchhiking, the bandwidth for novelty was low. A driver on a long commute had no podcasts, no Spotify or audiobooks. A stranger with a story was high value. The transaction wa…

I firmly believe that AI will disrupt this trend, because content will be overrun with predictable AI generated slop and we will appreciate genuine 100% human IRL stuff more.

I’ve long felt the same way. I think this will eventually happen but there’s going to be a lot more starving artists and other producers of emotionally meaningful works before we get there. The interesting problem down the line will be how to verify someone is human or something is human made.

I have nothing to base this on except anecdotal experience, but I really think this current generation (Gen Alpha?) is going to hate AI and anything related to it. One recent example: a friend’s kid’s third-grade class recently visited our local city hall and had a mock city council meeting with the mayor. One of the kids asked if we could “ban ChatGPT from the city.”

Post reply on HN