Crazy New Ideas • Hacker News Board

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#571

Post by jasode » Thu, May 06, 2021, 8:44 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #564

jasode wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>, but the truth is that people aren't reading that comment accurately and there's a huge dose of hindsight fallacy here. I appreciate your defense of that comment as it made me re-read it as charitably as possible. That said, I think you're still overlooking some of the reasons that cause the eyerolling of it that's separate from hindsight bias. First was the "quite trivially" phrase in the comment. That type of ver…

Even with all of that, it's not a great example of what pg used to call a middlebrow dismissal, especially when there are so many millions of worse examples. "Quite trivially" sounds terrible out of context, but (a) he scoped it to Linux users, (b) it's clear from the downstream reply that he was speaking from experience, and (c) he immediately agreed with Drew that even that solution had drawbacks and thanked him fo…

> That's the behavior of _someone_ making good conversation, not someone being haughty.

I meant to focus on the text's tone sounding haughty rather than accuse the person being haughty.

Let me try to explain another way to emphasize the text aspect: that particular sentence in isolation is what is quoted on the internet outside of HN:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22you+can+already+build+suc...

https://www.bing.com/search?q=%22you+can+already+build+such+...

The "quite trivially" may only be scoped to one bullet point and may be unfairly weighted when looking at his followup thoughtful conversation -- but it also elevated it legendary HN lore.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#572

Post by dang » Thu, May 06, 2021, 8:50 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #571

dang wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with all of that, it's not a great example of what pg used to call a middlebrow dismissal, especially when there are so many millions of worse examples. "Quite trivially" sounds terrible out of context, but (a) he scoped it to Linux users, (b) it's clear from the downstream reply that he was speaking from experience, and (c) he immediately agreed with Drew that even that solution had drawbacks and thanked him fo…

> That's the behavior of _someone_ making good conversation, not someone being haughty. I meant to focus on the text's tone sounding haughty rather than accuse the person being haughty . Let me try to explain another way to emphasize the text aspect: that particular sentence in isolation is what is quoted on the internet outside of HN: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22you+can+already+build+suc... https://www.bing.c…

Ok, but if you read the text as a whole, it's not true that it's haughty. That it sounds haughty when quoted selectively is the internet's fault, not the commenter's. At most he can be accused of (a) not pre-emptively bulletproofing his text against selective quotation, and (b) not knowing the future. And (a) reduces to (b).

I take your point about lore, and on that level it's just good fun.

p.s. Also, nice use of the word 'haughty'. We need those good English words.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#573

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, May 06, 2021, 8:50 PM UTC

tutfbhuf wrote: post #548

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People ask for the same thing for politics, and for various subjects. So how many different "hide" filters should we create? Then there's the classification problem. Is post X really about politics? It's not binary. The only solution that would even approximately work would be to add a block list of domains to peoples' profiles. That way, if you don't want to see anything from paulgraham.com, and I don't want to see…

It could be very easy. Just hide all posts from that specific website, a very easy filter, not classification problem. > It's really easy to just move your eyes to the next line. Well if it's that easy, then why is there an hide button on HN in the first place?

It really is that easy. And, I don't know why there's a hide button. I have never used it that I recall; I had forgotten that it existed.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#574

Post by galaxyLogic » Thu, May 06, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

tjs8rj wrote: post #557

geebee wrote: post #388

Lots of comments already, but I'll chime on in. I realized this very late in life, but I have a test for when it's time to pay attention to a new technology. It's when technical people look at what seems like a groundbreaking idea, seem unimpressed, and say "couldn't you just _____", were the blank is filled with something a nontechnical person doesn't understand or considers very cumbersome. The web: couldn't you ju…

I’m not convinced that’s a good rule of thumb at all, because there’s so many examples where it applies and is wrong, and many where it doesn’t apply but the tech was revolutionary. Not to mention the greater point: Im not even that convinced tech is ever really revolutionary (at least at the same time it gets mainstream adoption). Usually the big improvement it made existed years earlier or in competitors but the ti…

I think the big thing about these innovations was that the nay-sayers didn't expect how big a demand there would be for specific implementations of them after the network effect kicks in. Social media? Technically it is very simple. But now everyone is on it so the dominant platforms are making billions with advertising.

We didn't need a social media platform. We needed a social media platform where most of the interesting people (including our friends) are on.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#575

Post by dang » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

deadite wrote: post #299

gman83 wrote: post #80

I guess because I think that Hyperloop is a really dumb idea I must be extremely envious. This smells like a way to justify ignoring difficult criticism. The critics are envious, they're trying to look sophisticated, they're not real domain experts, etc.

Not the first time, not the last time. We were misogynists when we were criticizing Elizabeth Holmes. It comes with the territory.

That conflates different cases in a way that strikes me as misleading.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#576

Post by dang » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

antipauline wrote: post #57

gustavo-fring wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Graham has a tendency to use hindsight to show that, yes, indeed he is contrarian and genius. The Ethereum people do it, too. They use the example of old massively successful tech to prove that Eth too can catch on, but they don't cite all the failures.

Paul Graham is high on his own ego. Unfortunately, too many people take what he says at face value, like he's some sort of magical preacher of the Valley.

Please don't cross into personal attack on HN, for any meaning of $person. And please stop creating accounts to break HN's guidelines with. You're damaging the community you're part of by doing these things, and that is self-defeating behavior—especially if you consider how fragile this place is. I'm sure you're not the kind of person who would drop lit matches in a dry forest or even litter in a city park. Please stop doing the equivalents here.

The odds are high that the internet converges to suckage. We're spending a lot of energy trying to stave that off. Since you're such an active community participant, wouldn't it be in your interests to help that effort, rather than hurt it?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#577

Post by ta_ca » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

paulgb wrote: post #22

AussieWog93 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand of both the recent tweets and both of their fairly radical/extreme (and mostly correct) views about abstraction being a net negative, the criticism is less "Mighty doesn't work" and more "We shouldn't need to use an app like Mighty to get good performance on a basic website".

Sure, but the disconnect seems to be that Mighty is advertised for people who essentially use their browser as an OS (I see Figma mentioned a lot), rather than people who just want to do basic browsing. I think Mighty has unfairly taken the brunt of a lot of growing discontent with bloat on the web. I'm not ready to fork over $30+ for faster browsing, but I'm glad someone is working in this space, because I genuinely…

unfairly? privacy concerns aside they just added another huge abstraction on top of an already huge pile of shit we call modern web.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#578

Post by themdangrules » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #562

gustavo-fring wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but if you found out a quicker and more efficient way to stop people from reading HN, every business would want it because their workers would stop bloviating 4 hours a day for those who know what it is, and the rest of the world would continue on ignorant of it as it always has. But it's not worth anything. Sometimes you just can't clean up garbage. Graham has too many dishonest people in YC. They're like gollu…

[deleted]

I would login to my other account if I hadn't thrown the password away.

Persecuted? No. Pretty damn aware of the many times that people immediately downvoted every comment of mine they could? Yes. I'm a bog boy, I don't care about Internet points, but I also don't enjoy spending my days with people so petty and small. Grown, professional adults no less. If I feel persecuted, maybe it's because I like a lot of HNers know what bullying feels like. Feels like bullying. This applies to myself as well, but just because people have bullied you doesn't mean you aren't also a bully. You might even be more likely to be that because of learned behavior. HN is full of psuedointellectual high brow bullies. Not to smear all you fine people. It's not everyone, just an uncomfortable percentage.

What proof would you accept? I mean in the second one, you can literally see where dang has detached it, without a reason as to why. In a topic discussing politics and tribalism. There will be no proof of it, there's nothing to prove, but if that isn't evidence of moderator intervention (without transparency, no less), what is?

This is why even for all that I've learned form HN over the years (would love to not read it at all), I hate the discussion. It's so toxic. I'm getting probably rightly moderated but HN is full of people being ugly to each other on an hourly basis. I'm part of the demographic that should most appreciate HN, I can't imagine how people that aren't feel.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#579

Post by sirsinsalot » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

dvt wrote: post #440

geebee wrote: post #388

Lots of comments already, but I'll chime on in. I realized this very late in life, but I have a test for when it's time to pay attention to a new technology. It's when technical people look at what seems like a groundbreaking idea, seem unimpressed, and say "couldn't you just _____", were the blank is filled with something a nontechnical person doesn't understand or considers very cumbersome. The web: couldn't you ju…

> It's when technical people look at what seems like a groundbreaking idea, seem unimpressed, and say "couldn't you just _____", were the blank is filled with something a nontechnical person doesn't understand or considers very cumbersome. This is basically putting the cart before the horse and pretty much the definition of hindsight bias. We all know the BrandonM/Dropbox quip, but that's just a fun anecdote, not som…

> but if it succeeds, good on Suhail!

Well, not exactly. There's plenty of people who have been successful at, frankly horrible things.

I count this kind of "not your computer, ours" rent seeking change as "bad if successful".

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#580

Post by the_af » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

dataviz1000 wrote: post #460

Isn't this the issue Joseph Campbell addressed? The journey a person with a crazy new idea endures? And, how in all different cultures the redeemer, a person solving an issue that their society needs to address, have the same symbolic characteristics. You and your children experience this not in a philosophy or mythology class but at every moment someone mentions a Star Wars or Marvel reference[0]. Disney keeps telli…

I think Campbell's "journey" is about storytelling and the narrative journey, with a heavy dose of Jungian psychology, not about tech/science ideas. So I'd say it doesn't fit here.