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Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel that too many people are confusing arguments they agree with with logical arguments. Most of people, when they claim that something is rational or logical, actually mean that it's a position that they agree with. I have no reason to believe that back in the day when internet was only for nerds the situation was different.
It wasn't different.
Nothing, I'm here since the 70s and haven't moved.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It wasn't different.
Indeed. I remember Usenet in the 90s being 50% interesting conversations mostly about niche topics and 50% randomly devolving into flame wars in larger communities. Even "Eternal September" as a concept was something from around 1993/1994 right? Same for the 2000s era online-bulletin-board. I often go to thegearpage.net and am appalled at the amount of shilling, dismissals and disrespect, but then I remember that in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It wasn't different.
Indeed. I remember Usenet in the 90s being 50% interesting conversations mostly about niche topics and 50% randomly devolving into flame wars in larger communities. Even "Eternal September" as a concept was something from around 1993/1994 right? Same for the 2000s era online-bulletin-board. I often go to thegearpage.net and am appalled at the amount of shilling, dismissals and disrespect, but then I remember that in…
Nerds used to have a internet to discuss tech in, you were allowed to make an argument based on logic and reasoning. Then the ideologues and political commissars showed up, giving zero shit about tech or logical reasoning, this pulled the discourse down to the lowest common denominator and the rest is history. Why should I take the moral high ground and listen to an argument I dislike if I'm not offered the same cour…
You listen to the Radio Channel you picked. I understand the complaint, though it's like a complain that nerds featured in Cosmopolitan aren't as nerdy as they were. Musk for me was never a nerd. Many "founders" aren't nerds for me. In the end, I wouldn't classify anyone who is "money" first as a nerd - to me they are businessmen (and businesswomen) in their core. Want to see "the lost nerds"? Here, on HN there are m…
Hear me out: back in the day founding a company wasn't an identity, it was just an action, a verb. Stuff started going sideways when people started thinking of themselves as "founders". Suddenly the product wasn't the top priority anymore, instead it was second to defending their identity as a "founder". Seemingly stupid decisions followed, but seen from the perspective of a CEO who wants nothing more than to be a founder, they start to make sense.
We see something similar in politics, I think. Note that it doesn't apply to everyone, but it's interesting to compare people who are engaged in a social justice struggle, Vs people who identify as "activist". The latter will be very prone to doing things that are counter-productive to their started cause, because they don't really care about any cause, they're just defending their identity as activist.
I reckon the same idea holds elsewhere as well.
(Disclaimer: I'm not sure how common that last thing is in the US, but where I live, it definitely happens a fair bit. But even here it does not apply to everyone, it's just a very loud minority)
Second disclaimer: I use the word identity in a very specific way in this comment. It is not to be confused with other uses of the same word, for example in the phrase "gender identity". That is a completely different kind of identity and is completely orthogonal and irrelevant to what I'm trying to express in this comment