Comment by Ultimatt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ultimatt | Hacker News Reader

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> This just seems to be heavily misguided elitism.

Not really. There is a bit too much meet you at the bottom communism in the modern ethos of computer science. When you can have measured difficulty and time to skill in a field isn't it a little odd that we don't have a lot more measured elitism in computer science? The reality is the hardest most complex stuff is literally solved and produced by an elite few. All of which could be taught or learnt but no one gives a shit. Its a bit like magic is slowly dying from the universe, and the wizzards keep suggesting it might be worth holding onto. But they then get called out as an elite minority only interested in furthering their arcane agenda. Whilst everyone else is using the accessible modern "technology" built from the original magic and cannot fathom why anyone should give a shit about magic anymore. Wizzards only appeared special to get a cushy job next to the king in their own tower right? Technology is just as good as magic, because it was built from magic!!!! So elitist. The problem comes when the technology fails, or doesn't do something thats needed and cannot be changed without changing the base magic that the technology started from. If there are no more wizzards and no more magic, you're never going to be able to create new base technologies. The only hope is the magic making technology everyone is currently working on called Machine Learning. Then all the wizzards can be virtualised and controlled like slaves, even if its provable ML isn't actually magic, its close enough... we hope.

> The reality is the hardest most complex stuff is literally solved and produced by an elite few. All of which could be taught or learnt but no one gives a shit.

The elite few don't really want anyone joining them, so nobody does. Look at the state of academia and look at lack of training in jobs. Nobody wants anyone to be elite, so people don't bother, there's no benefit in it. Your problem is that you think you're important, that you think the most useful contribution from a person is what they do personally, but all that does is just advance, you, personally.

The thing is, the elite are often much more worried about being elite than about what they're actually doing. Once you see that, you know the incentive is corrupt. It's a status thing for them. And how dare anyone challenge their status. That's really all this is. It's hardly about the advancement of technology, because if it was, those people would be out there teaching, or trying to address the informational overload, and not looking smug. It's elitist because it's utterly disregarding most of human experience and presenting yours as superior, and your entire argument will ultimately derive from that view and pretty much everything you say after that could be really anything as long as it supports your idea that you're superior. That's why elitism is bad, it's destructive to conception of reality.

I know plenty of people who don't look at things as magic but who also don't consider themselves as some "wizards". Maybe you should try getting off your high horse and talking to people some and figuring out what it is that they are doing all day and you'll understand how silly everything you're saying here is. But as with everything else, it's easier to sit on top than to try to understand.

Snobbery is all this is, and likely unearned, can't say the association between perceiving yourself as elite and actually being so is very good at all.

I, for one, am really looking forward to seeing the projektirSolver in next year's SAT competition and the projektirNET in next year's ILSVRC!

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