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Opt Out of Cynicism

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Re: Opt Out of Cynicism

#21

Post by evrydayhustling »

Another good quote for the OP is Miguel De Cervantes, author if Don Quixote: "there is madness in too much sanity, and the greatest madness of all is to see things as they are instead of as they should be".

He would know: Cervantes killed a rival on a duel at 17 and fled to sea. They were attacked by pirates and he fought well before getting his hand blown off and taken prisoner. He lived in captivity but befriended his captor, who taught him chess and literacy. Then he was "rescued" by monks who bought his freedom but placed him on indentured servitude through debt, which he finally escaped by writing one of the early great novels.

The point of this story is not that cynics were wrong but that one never would have survived his ordeal. In a world fit for cynics, you have to be ready for things to go right if you want to escape.

Re: Opt Out of Cynicism

#23

Post by [deleted] »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #11

> By realizing that the world is always changing, and by stopping to complain, we opt out of seeing the world through cynical glasses ... When we realize that our life can change, we can change it. Well said.

[deleted]

Re: Opt Out of Cynicism

#24

Post by zwkrt »

rektide wrote: post #8

Steve Yeggie's Note from the Magic Bus[1] is a decade old, & rambles through the particulars of the day, but it's still the canonical read on how you predispose yourself, on whether you opt into belief or disbelief. It's lessons have stuck with me for a long time. There's a lot of concern & fear & doubt, skepticism about the corporate environment, about other engineers, and the skepticism is all so due; there's a res…

This is strange to me. I feel like I am very cynical about the business, but I have almost no ill will toward other programmers or their approaches at all. For me the issue is looking up the managemet chain, or outside at the effects of my changes.

I can safely say that I have never as a programmer implemented a feature that I thought made anyone's life better. My software has consistently turned the screws in on people's lives, either in their work life by making monotonous internal tools or in their personal life by removing autonomy and choice. I take magicians and turn them into mechanical Turks. I take people and turn them into consumers/users/addicts.

This isn't supposed to be a diatribe, just contributing my N=1 that Notes from the Magic Bus seems cute and superficial to me, defending the culture of office politics by elevating it to the importance of actual politics.

Re: Opt Out of Cynicism

#25

Post by mitko »

jacknews wrote: post #12

I don't think cynicism is just about stasis, but about spotting when optimistic messages are hiding a power-grabbing scheme of some kind. Or just being willing to 'follow the money', and look behind the curtain, etc. Plenty of new things are important developments, even when there are selfish actors behind them. But also plenty of new things are just scams.

OP here, if you're able to separate the act of "look behind the curtain" from the visceral feeling that things can change and you can be the one improving them - then I'm very happy for you.

I personally found it hard to separate the two for many year, and fell in the pattern of unifying them. Cynical outlook has been a helpful protecting mechanism, though no longer as useful, as I'm trying to find and play more win-win games.

Re: Opt Out of Cynicism

#26

Post by koilke »

Another part of the word cynic:

For the Cynics, the purpose of life is to live in virtue, in agreement with nature. As reasoning creatures, people can gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which is natural for themselves, rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, and fame, and even flouting conventions openly and derisively in public. Instead, they were to lead a simple life free from all possessions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism_(philosophy)

Re: Opt Out of Cynicism

#27

Post by Karrot_Kream »

rektide wrote: post #18
jacknews wrote: post #12

I don't think cynicism is just about stasis, but about spotting when optimistic messages are hiding a power-grabbing scheme of some kind. Or just being willing to 'follow the money', and look behind the curtain, etc. Plenty of new things are important developments, even when there are selfish actors behind them. But also plenty of new things are just scams.

Ultra-agree, that a lot of cynicism- against from those in power & who need others to enlist in the message- is due. But I think there's a general level of mistrust, of wanting to pick easy/simple/dependable paths, of resisting good/bold/better, that's just a personal "pragmatism" which is really cynicism in disguise. I don't think most engineering departments & product-development-organizations give anywhere near a…

The internet (well, just worldwide connectivity IMO) has turned cynicism into a social signaling mechanism, it's not just HN. Cynical "dunks" burnish your qualifications to your in-group: make a "hot take" against US democrats, CRT, cryptocurrencies, management, VCs, capitalism, pastafarianism, you name it, and you'll get all your fellow in-group folks upvoting/retweeting/liking your "hot take". IMO this is the greatest threat of all; once group-identity politics are tied to takedowns, there's a huge incentive for dunking on ideas, which makes folks with new/weird ideas defensive about their own and therefore damages novel discourse. I'm not going to say I haven't been drawn into this myself at times but I try to think above it.

Re: Opt Out of Cynicism

#28

Post by mitko »

Havoc wrote: post #16

Thanks for posting. Made me realise I’m more cynical (aggressively so) than I realised Edit: Think there is an element of fatalism to it (nothing changes) that the article doesn’t touch in though

Thanks for sharing. I briefly mentioned that "never changing" world in the article but didn't expand on it there. But it was a super strong emotion which motivated this essay and shift in outlook.

Re: Opt Out of Cynicism

#29

Post by jean_valje4n »

evrydayhustling wrote: post #21

Another good quote for the OP is Miguel De Cervantes, author if Don Quixote: "there is madness in too much sanity, and the greatest madness of all is to see things as they are instead of as they should be". He would know: Cervantes killed a rival on a duel at 17 and fled to sea. They were attacked by pirates and he fought well before getting his hand blown off and taken prisoner. He lived in captivity but befriended…

And then there was Caesar who promised the pirates who captured him that he would be back. And he did come back for them.

I suppose his ending wasn't the greatest, but Dante placed his betrayers into a special place in literary hell.

Re: Opt Out of Cynicism

#30

Post by chrisweekly »

jacknews wrote: post #12

I don't think cynicism is just about stasis, but about spotting when optimistic messages are hiding a power-grabbing scheme of some kind. Or just being willing to 'follow the money', and look behind the curtain, etc. Plenty of new things are important developments, even when there are selfish actors behind them. But also plenty of new things are just scams.

There's a big difference between the ancient philosophy practiced by Cynics, and our modern concept of "cynicism".
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