Hacker News Reader

Comment by quotha | Hacker News Reader

Wow, was that a nerve he hit?

The nerve Umair Haque's writing touches in me is that it is handwavy ranting and raving. A lot of his arguments, when looked at closely, seem kind of hollow. They're ... intellectual junk food - they have some flavor when you're chewing them, but there's not much substance, and there are a lot of additives that aren't that good.

The thoughtful comments here by participants I trust prompted me to flag the article. That's about all I have to say about it.

That seem quite hypocritical since you write quite long rambling text yourself. At least show other people, who did upvote it, the respect of reading the article before you flag it.

Rambling? Perhaps. But I would hardly say that tokenadult is known for "handwaving". Quite the opposite actually, his long posts are typically the best researched and cited posts on this site.

It's not about "handwaving" per se, there are numerous reasons I don't enjoy tokenadults posts. All of which are irrelevant since many other people do. I simply ignore most of them and expect the same respect in return.

But if you're a five year member, I'm in the mood and you're breaking basic rules of HN like "don't comment that you flagged" I reserve the right to call you out. Even if I wasn't technically correct about not reading the article this time.

I DID read the article first, and then saw that other participants here had already identified the handwaving. So there is no hypocrisy here on my part.

I see about three participants making the argument of handwaving. One of them breaks one of the rules of HN in his opening sentence, the other is name calling and the third has made up his mind years back. I also see a couple of dozen decent comments discussing the article. Take from it what you will.

I'm always willing to change my mind if I see anything different, but Umair articles are pretty formulaic.

Also, if a bunch of us are pointing to a problem, maybe there is a problem.

Ideologically, I suspect that I have different ideas and opinions than tokenadult. Maybe I have some common ground with Umair. But I cannot stand the hand wavy, ranty approach.

Don't make this mistake of confusing "being irritating" for "having a point". It is easy to be both irritating and very wrong.

That something this mindless could clear not only the HBR, but race to the top of HN? You bet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com