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Comment by zitterbewegung | Hacker News Reader

If I am going to model systems that are finite state transducers instead of making me draw a circle why not have a click create the state and drag from one state to another to have an output.

When I am modeling a system its helpful to see what an increase or a decrease will propagate to the system but what is actually useful is some kind of chart that tells me cumulative results and also another chart possibly what is happening at this given second.

On your landing page your copy seems off. The first sentence implies that the system may or may not help.

I see this as an interesting toy but I don't see how this would be useful for modeling systems.

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Sometimes I wish engineers in general would pay more attention to their "energy", and not the kind measured as the square of momentum but rather of the emotional kind. Is it really too much to ask that, in addition to requiring accuracy and precision, that you take time to consider the wisdom of your actions? I don't think so. If there is no joy in what you are saying (and I don't mean the joy of pointing out someone else's mistakes), why are you saying it?

Your comment is swimming in bad energy, but also in a kind of willful ignorance. What kind of ignorance? Of two kinds: first, you seemed to have missed the point of this project. It's goal is NOT to give you a way to model finite state transducers. It's goal is fundamentally pedagogical, and to give a wide-range of humans some experience with feedback loops, self-reinforcing behavior. This phenomena is abstract, and not widely appreciated. Second, you have misinterpreted the word "system" to mean "the specific production systems I am engineering right now", when in fact it was clearly meant more generally, as the demo systems show.

The damage you do with this sort of comment can be substantial. It is not easy to envision a thing and then make it and share it with the world, not least in part because bad energy comments, willfully ignorant and harsh, leave a mark. Creation is an act of vulnerability, and creators deserve our respect and all the positive energy we can muster.

The point of my criticism is not to project negative energy to the creator or taking joy in my comment but to provide the creator ways that they could improve the project. Under your line of thinking everyone should just go and project good energy and never offer ways for projects that they show to other people how that they can improve. I have posted my work on HN and the comments are very insightful for what I should improve or what I have done wrong.

If constructive criticism was your intent, it would have been constructive to make that intent explicit.

Especially in written communication, if one wants to provide constructive criticism (as opposed to criticism which is indifferent or just being critical to be critical), then it is important to signal that somehow. Possibly with words ;)

Of course not signaling that doesn't preclude the receiver of said criticism from using your critique constructively, but, imho, considering the minimal time needed to say something like "This is intended to be constructive criticism," and that doing so is not some sort of "happy-good-energy-no problems" use of language at all (your critique can still be as vigorous as desired), imho, there is no good reason not to and many good reasons (never knowing where the other person on the internet is coming from, improving one's own communication skills, increased explicitness, etc) to do so.

You offered a list of negativities that all ignore the author's intent, then capped them off with a statement that patronizingly declares that his project is so worthless as to not deserve existence. That is not constructive criticism. I cannot judge your intent - perhaps you meant well. At the very least I hope you meditate on the difference between destructive and constructive criticism, the key difference being respect of the author's goals, rather than your own.

> If there is no joy in what you are saying [...] why are you saying it?

In addition to my other comment, I think the "only say positive things to someone" attitude is dangerous.

I think it can be really damaging to someone if they grow up always only hearing positive things about themselves. It can lead them to be very egotistical and somewhat delusional -- they're great! they've always been told so! -- and unable to handle any form of criticism. And because they haven't received criticism they haven't been able to grow and develop as much as they could have, which can lead to incompetence.

> If there is no joy in what you are saying (and I don't mean the joy of pointing out someone else's mistakes), why are you saying it?

What about constructive criticism?

"Constructive criticism" has as it's prerequisite an understanding, respect and emphasis of the creator's goals, and an active deemphasis of your personal goals. This criticism had the opposite.

Using "personal goals" maybe be helpful feedback for the creator to understand things they had not considered from their own perspective. In this case, it might point to the goal of the project not being as obvious as it might be (I don't know if that's the case, just an example of what could possibly be constructive in this scenario).

A little nitpick - energy is not momentum squared: Momentum = mv and kinetic energy = 1/2 mv^2 So energy is proportional to mv^2 rather than (mv)^2

Hey, thanks for that. However, at the end of the day, mass is a constant. A constant squared is still a constant. To wit, for any given system, we can always pick units that make m=1.

his comment is effectively constructive criticism. stop marking him out to be such a terrible person for criticizing something that someone has authored. no work is immune to that, and creators don't deserve our "positive energy" if their creations, in our eyes, leave something to be desired. you don't get praise just because you created something, nor do you deserve it.

please don't defend thin-skinned creators, and also please don't speak for them when you don't know or understand their intensions.

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