Hackers vs. suits: Why nerds become leakers

That's very key. Kind of ironically, in my case, the reason I'm not nearly as worried about NSA overreach is because we have people like Sen. Wyden and the EFF and ACLU to strenuously push back against government overstepping their boundaries.

Even where I disagree on a given particular issue I know that they are doing good work, and that enables me to trust the government more.

My impression is that "hacker" is a word that used to have a fairly specific meaning that has become more general over time, to the point that the differentiation between "software engineer" and "hacker" is more a question of how you self-designate rather than what you do. That said, "Hacker" is a bit counter-cultural. "Engineer" implies that you think of what you do as an extension of engineering. "Developer" is not particularly specific.

Re: over-generalizing, I described what I think is a trend. You might argue that it is less pronounced than I seemed to indicate, but you can't legitimately say I'm over-generalizing (i.e. all trends are ipso facto "generalizations" of some sort)

I'm not talking about "doing good" in the abstract sense of making a net positive contribution to the world. Lots of traders on Wall Street can sleep at night because they believe that creating liquidity is a net benefit to society.[1] I'm talking about "doing good" in the narrow sense--tackling specific issues that hackers as a group care about, but issues that won't be solved through the market.

Creating a technology startup might provide employment for people, and might be a net positive good, but it's not going to expand privacy protections, reform plea bargaining, end the drug war, end de-facto segregation, save the environment, etc. Think of the issues that have raised HN's ire over the last year. These are social justice issues that aren't going to be fixed simply by founding a startup to create some cool website.

[1] I think it's true, but at the same time the (small) subset of those people who go from there to claiming that working on Wall Street == saving the world are (rightly) criticized for being arrogantly delusional.

I think that the article is misleading.

The question is not "Who these pesky hackers think they are that they can dismiss social niceties, establish law, and office smoothness". This misleads because it assumes that normal people should just accept authority, and questioning authority is dysfunctional.

The real question is "What makes people recognize authority?", and for this question there is a spectrum of answers that goes from Pure Label to Pure Proof.

Pure label would be the people that recognize authority because there is a piece of paper that say that you are authority, and you can inflict pain, so I should obey you, if not by recognition, then by fear. (The lion is not scary if it doesn't have teeth)

Pure proof would be the people that put others to test before acknowledging labels. You are authority because you ACTUALLY know the domain where you claim authority, you are authority because you care about the consequences of your decisions on the all people affected by them. I obey because I saw that you actually are better than me in the context, and pain has nothing to do with it.

Pure label people look at pure proof people as disorderly, rebellious, dis adjusted, and they don't comply but hack their way around. The sense of comfort for pure label people comes from a well known establish order, and they feel that without authority society will spiral into chaos. Order is more important than people. I think they are correct.

Pure Proof people look at pure label people as sheep, drones, overly compliant people that are too lazy to try understand what actually works. The sense of comfort for pure proof people comes from objectively understanding the context, see how it is supposed to work regardless of the current implementation, and once an appropriate solution is found, then passionately support it. They feel that with excessive authority society will be for a few, hence just another form of chaos. People is more important than Order). I think they are correct.

(I know that for a dualistic mind agreeing with both is non sense... you will have to stretch your brain if you want to understand how this is possible and is OK)

This is an spectrum, so most people is in neither pole, but somewhere in between.

I believe that the truth in this case, is in the balance. And society to progress needs both. Our current society implementation massively favors Pure label people for historically or manipulative reasons, and to the point of almost looking at pure proof people as pathological.

Since the situation is out of balance, our current implementation of society 3.0 is faulty. But this is not a hackers problem, actually, more hackers would be the solution to restore the balance.

> There are so many problems whose solutions are dead simple for hackers, but hackers aren't working on them!

Do you have any specific examples?

Perhaps the issue is that hackers are not good at perceiving social issues that their skill sets make them particularly well-suited to tackle.