Comment by simorley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simorley | Hacker News Reader

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This comment is so antithetical to the "spirit of the internet" and hacking in general that I'm in shock.

> 77% of the Youtube audience in the US are 17-25 years old, it's not some niche forum for engineers and the notion that they can read scientific papers and weed out legitimate science created at home from misinformation is absurd.

Only PhDs or engineers are allowed to be interested? You think only people with CS degrees should learn about programming/hacking? Only people with electric engineering degrees should learn about circuits?

Also 17-25 is mostly adults. Also, wouldn't the people who watch his videos be self-selecting? I'm guessing 99% of the demographic you mentioned wouldn't be searching for his video.

> The author has a company that sells genetic engineering kits to people and by banning him from Youtube that impacts him financially.

Probably. But so what?

> I personally think Biohacking and eccentric science is cool

But people in the 17-25 year old demographics are not allowed to find it cool and enjoy it?

Your argument is that it could be harmful and therefore everyone 17-25 should be barred from it. That's the argument I heard in the 90s to prevent young people from learning to code/hack/etc. I don't understand how the culture of censorship and patronizing paternalism snuck into the "hacking"/tech environment.

>that I'm in shock

You're in shock of the attitude that hackers should stay off mainstream commercial platforms and avoid pandering to a generic audience? You do realize why we're having this conversation on HN and not on Facebook right?

The 2% of the young adults who are genuinely interested in science and tech and DIY maker culture will find him regardless where he is. That's how it always works when people actually care, it's a good filter.

I'm not paternalistic, I'm opposed to grifters and attention-seeking. There has always been a barrier to entry in hacker culture because getting past it signals that you have some commitment and degree of willingness to learn, which is particularly important when we're talking about gene-editing yourself

> You're in shock of the attitude that hackers should stay off mainstream commercial platforms and avoid pandering to a generic audience?

I'm in shock because you believe 17-25 year olds should be barred from knowledge.

> You do realize why we're having this conversation on HN and not on Facebook right?

You seem to have a sense of superiority. Is HN better than facebook? I'm not so sure. You aren't better than anyone because you post here. I'm certainly not better than anyone because I post here. Certainly wasn't given any test or provided any credentials to post here.

> The 2% of the young adults who are genuinely interested in science and tech and DIY maker culture will find him regardless where he is.

This argument is even more shocking. What about the percentage of people who might have become interested if they were exposed to it? Do you know how many people developed interest in something because they were introduced to it? There are millions of minorities/women/men who didn't go into computer science because they simply weren't introduced to it.

> That's how it always works when people actually care, it's a good filter.

Because the hackers ethos is to make knowledge as difficult and impossible to reach?

> I'm not paternalistic, I'm opposed to grifters and attention-seeking.

Why didn't you say so. Why did you write so much about "17-25 year olds", PhDs/engineers, niche forums, etc? Grifters and attention-seeking isn't my cup of tea either. But they don't deserved to be banned. Also is grifting and attention seeking to under-17s and over 25s okay?

Your logic and thinking is what paternalists in the past did to women and minorities. It's why people prevented women and minorities from reading, writing and gaining knowledge because it would be too harmful to them. Nothing more anti-hacker than that.

Your parent did not say any of the things you say they did.

> The 2% of the young adults who are genuinely interested in science and tech and DIY maker culture will find him regardless where he is.

Oh, maybe you're right if you mean 2% of 2% for those who will manage to find his videos elsewhere

The thing you're ignoring is that available information shapes people. Would I be a programmer if I didn't know computers existed? Definitely not. It's not like one day people wake up and think "biohacking is cool, I'll go looking for 'underground' platforms that host content about it". People's interests are shaped by the content they are offered, ubiquitous monopoly platforms like YouTube have way more power than you might think if you view them as simple hosting platforms. Discovery is the real deal.

> The 2% of the young adults who are genuinely interested in science and tech and DIY maker culture will find him regardless where he is.

This isnt true. Finding these kinds of things is nontrivial.

For instance, I hadn't heard of him and neither have, for instance, my friend with a PhD in molecular biology who found this pretty interesting.

> This comment is so antithetical to the "spirit of the internet" and hacking in general that I'm in shock

There is no such thing as spirit of the internet and hacking in general.

And never ever was. It was always range of attitudes and approaches. From the get go, with massive assholes thrown into mix seeking to damage for luls, with elitists, with gatekeepers and what not.

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