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Comment by witty_username | Hacker News Reader

> blind optimism on all things technology or new. Often older ways have merit too.

I've seen plenty of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" in the comments and complaints about engineers always trying to use the newest technology.

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Yes, using any tool or language that came out after the commenter started programming is "hipster".

And you see a lot of xkcd 927 and "I can't help thinking effort would have been better spent on an existing project" when someone writes any program of any type where other examples exist.

>Yes, using any tool or language that came out after the commenter started programming is "hipster".

I see this a lot, and I don't think it's a valid criticism of the issue.

It assumes either that all periods in IT are equally good, or that there's monotonic progress (both of which are wrong), and that there's no such thing as a fad, so anybody pointing one is clearly a "get off my lawn" person.

I'm with Alan Kay on this: computer science is a pop culture.

It's not a "criticism" of an "issue", it's a description of a behavior that may in some cases and out of some mouths have a point, but is not necessarily rooted in anything worthwhile.

The behavior is frequently ad hominem in use and often seems to express insecurity of some form, mixed with the conservative bias towards freaking out about flaws in new things while brushing them off in existing things.

I only post a 927 when there are >6 different standards in the field, and there's no way a new one will catch on. As for the effort better spent posts, those are awful. Never post those. Instead post about how great emacs is compared to vim: you're more likely to spawn useful discussion.

And if you post the xkcd link to a discussion about a piece of software and not a new standard for which many already exist, (and I see that post,) I will proudly downvote you no matter how many examples exist.

Just be glad I don't have the magic ability to force anyone to use QED to program their next project in Fortran on a CTSS box.

Yeah, just don't post 927 on software: that's dumb.

Note I said when a new one won't catch on, or is unlikely to do so, particularly of it doesn't have any significant benefits over what's already there.

> As for the effort better spent posts, those are awful. Never post those.

Except, the issue is when there’s already dozens of standards in the field, and someone decides to make yet another one, and publish factually wrong articles about existing standards to get an advantage.

I think that it's interesting that there is an etiquette developing on when which XKCD is appropriate.

XKCD is always appropriate when it's relevant, pretty much. There's only etiquette for 927.

Well, here. It's still popular on Reddit to be the first to post an "obligatory" link to a vaguely relevant xkcd. Here, that usually gets downvoted fast.

I do it sometimes, but only if the XKCD is actually highly relevant. As a result, I've actually never gotten downed for it.

It depends on the subject. Take Mars colonization or self-driving cars. There's recently been a few posts (with a large number of upvotes) that were more or less press releases from companies, with the majority of the comments being very positive and the most up-voted comment in each post complaining about the existence of a few comments that were skeptical.

Yep it seems anything by Elon is sacrosanct with much of the HN crew.

I'm pretty critical of technology and modernity in general, and this Cult of Elon is a large part of the reason I dislike the man and his endeavors.

It has nothing to do with his intelligence or person. He's clearly intelligent, and I'm not quite sure he's a person (ha) but I don't know the dude.

It's just that he has revived so much technological optimism in a time when skepticism is pretty important, at least imo. He seems to bandy about these technical solutions that are dazzling, for sure --- and extremely interesting --- but just don't cut it, or come with a slew of potentially unintended consequences, or simply aren't putting the focus in the right place.

For example, his talk of Mars colonization as an escape hatch to our degradation of biodiversity / carbon emissions / etc. is just awful. What kind of idea is that?

It's infuriating because when I say things like, "I'm not convinced that collapse or technical decline would be a bad thing," people can immediately see the criticisms, chief among them being "Won't a lot of people die?" Which is fair.

But there is little to no skepticism when Musk presents his idea, when there certainly should be. How many people do you think will make it on those spaceships, and who do you think those people will be? At least in a case of economic or technical decline, many people will have a fighting chance at it not being totally awful.

> For example, his talk of Mars colonization as an escape hatch to our degradation of biodiversity / carbon emissions / etc. is just awful. What kind of idea is that?

To be fair, that's not a good characterization of why he's into Mars colonization. He's not advocating colonization so we can disregard life on Earth. He seems very much into preserving life on Earth. Mars colonization is a backup plan (or the initial stage of a backup plan) for the inevitable moment when Earth will have to be abandoned regardless of how well we behave.

Regarding “a lot of people dying” angle: the difference is in magnitude of “a lot of people”, and choice. However many people die on SpaceX spaceships, the number can never reach millions or even billions that would result from the collapse or technical decline. People also, in general, will choose to get on a spaceship and dwell on Mars, but they neither choose to be involved in dying from civilization collapsing, nor to have to fight for survival in such a situation — it would be completely forced upon them.

Thanks for clarifying his position. I didn't mean to suggest that he intended it to be anything other than a backup plan, but my wording might have been ambiguous because others, like Martin Rees, have suggested similar things and tend to regard them as one of the more likely outcomes of humanity's future, if the species is to survive.

> However many people die on SpaceX spaceships,

Maybe you misunderstood me. I mean that the people who don't go on SpaceX spaceships would die in a situation where that is critical to the survival of civilization.

Your choice thing doesn't convince me, but I do understand and think it is an interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing.

I did say tendency!

I still get surprised the way opinion goes for some posts. I won't be betting on the likely sentiment any time soon! Whichever way opinion leans it rarely stifles discussion.

I've also seen a fair amount of people actually cognizant of the dangers our technological society poses. It's not the majority, but there are far more people here than most discussion-centered places on the internet.

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