CipherThrowaway

Bit of an arrogant and directionless rant with no concrete detail and many false dichotomies. "Just build the right product" is like saying "just don't write bugs" or "just have money." It feels like DeHaan is reacting to the idea of exploration because he thinks you should just know everything to begin with.

Knowing everything upfront is definitely better than exploring your domain, product and market incrementally. The problem is that this rarely happens in practice. Founders who adopt DeHaan's attitude and think they can leapfrog the exploratory phase of their startup usually end up failing.

> 14. Use pagination

Generally agree with everything else but strongly disagree with pagination envelopes and offset pagination. Allow keyset pagination using ordering and limiting query parameters.

> you will find that the interface will become increasingly muddled.

Will I? For example The Stripe API uses expand parameters and I prefer that approach to "atomic" REST or being forced to use GraphQL. There is a missed standardization opportunity for incremental graph APIs built on REST.

> Quite possible, but IMO we shouldn't let popular misunderstandings of science detract from the actual scientific inquiry taking place.

The idea that articles like this are science is a popular misunderstanding of science. The article is not a scientific work. It's a pop science piece where an individual scientist promotes her personal philosophies on love to a public audience. Her beliefs may integrate individual scientific facts but that does not make them scientific in themselves.

> Why are some romantic experiences (e.g. an unreasonable crush on a specific person that fades over time) so common in the general population, and why do these experiences happen and play out in these common ways?

Let's say you're feeling anxious before an important exam. Someone notices your anxiety and asks you why you're feeling that way. So you provide a detailed explanation of the neurochemical signalling cascade involved in an acute anxiety response and say that is why you are feeling anxious. Does this answer the question? In a very literal way it does. But it's a useless and incomplete answer. "I'm feeling anxious because I have an important exam coming up" is in many senses more useful and accurate.

Our biology is shaped and acted on by our environment which includes many psychosocial factors. Culture and individual experience are biopsychosocial. Biology is to human behavior what electromagnetism is to computing. You can't build an understanding by considering only the lowest level details.

The reductionism is the attempt to generalize incomplete biological understandings to the high level systems of which biology is the basis. This ignores the complex interactions and properties that emerge at various points between the two domains. It's as misguided as saying that computers aren't digital because the underlying electromagnetism is analog.

The article would be fine if it recognized that it was speaking in trends and generalities. But the information is presented as universal and individually applicable. For example:

> But a lot of women, in particular, find it hard to accept that they are still looking for a protector and a provider.

No doubt women find it hard to accept someone lecturing them on their preferences without allowing them any individuality.

The idea that searching for a protector is adaptive seems reasonable enough. The fallacy is thinking it must therefore apply unconditionally to every individual person and culture. Individual behavior does not always adhere to what is adaptive and there is no reason to think there aren't other adaptations that may interact with, override or invert this "provider seeking" behavior on an individual basis.

The diverse spectrum of human sexuality and romantic disposition is completely at odds with the simplistic view presented in the article. The system is too complex to understand in a few generalities.

> Part of understanding higher level cultural phenomena is understanding our biological interactions

I think It's more often part of an anti-understanding of higher level cultural phenomenon. My observation is that people who strongly believe in reducing love to chemicals or atoms are intellectualizing an area of their life where they do not feel capable, confident or in control. These beliefs then inhibit personal growth and an understanding of others. In the last couple of decades I have seen dozens of men and a handful of women grow out of reductionist beliefs.

It's quite the opposite. Culture is mentioned three times in the article and each mention is to point out that culture doesn't make a difference to the supposed immutable evolutionary truths.

You are 100% right. The OP is textbook biological reductionism. This "love scientist" is not promoting science but instead passing off her pet theories as the final word on a nearly universal human experience that takes dramatically different forms across time and culture.

Honestly I do not find it surprising. I've seen it called "engineer's disease": the tendency of engineers to believe that expertise in their technical field gives them a superior insight into other technical fields. Or that their research and systematization habits transfer to other fields where they readily yield greater insight than direct experience.

This way of thinking really feels rampant in our field. I've seen developers read a Wikipedia page or blog post and suddenly think they know better than mathematicians, lawyers, doctors, research scientists, economists, ethicists etc. No topic is too niche or trivial to be safe from this effect. A little while ago the topic of Geometric Algebra swept through HN and engineers with no math theory background were posting sensationalist takes about how GA was destined to supersede the orthodoxy.

Might have made the results less convincing to a peer review. Simple bucketing creates large exposure to confounders in a retrospective analysis which is why researchers turn to more complex models to adjust for e.g. vaccination status in this case.

Assuming you are a software engineer. You know how sometimes a manager, layperson or junior says something like "Why are you making things so complicated by using git. We can just share the code on Dropbox?" Or maybe a student says "Why do arrays start at 0? It's so much simpler to start at 1." Well other professions have their own version of that situation. As a non-researcher it is not always going to be obvious why research methodology seems more complicated or specific than it needs to be.

> More than anything, this is what I generally promote - focus on the actual claims

Is it? Because your reply is again filled with pathos, tribalism and narrativization.

The Malone controversy really has little to do with heroes, villains and victims. It's a very straightforward matter: he used his profile to share wildly unscientific claims, hoax videos and delusional "mass formation psychosis" theories to the public. Because this contributes to an existing public health crisis it has invited scrutiny of his person and of platforms that host his content. Cause and effect. Simple stuff.

Your comment and the one you linked exhibit a pattern I have noticed among people who mistake infotainment for science. There is no attention paid to the actual claims, their veracity or scientific validity. Instead there is an exclusive focus on individual personalities, appeals to authority and storytelling. It's the brave mRNA pioneer-cum-renegade standing up to the establishment like a modern Galileo. He could be saying the Earth is flat and it wouldn't matter.

But the distinguishing feature of great scientific figures who challenged the establishment and overturned accepted wisdom is that they were actually right. Semmelweis was right about hand washing. Galileo and Copernicus were right about heliocentrism. So is Malone right that athletes are dropping dead in droves from vaccination? That vaccines might actually make COVID-19 infections worse? That vaccine safety research is false and that the spike protein is highly toxic? Do you personally believe these things?

Yes - sorry. Subject matter experts and expert communities do exist, and they evaluate issues in a way that laypeople can not.

That's not by definition at all. A view that is fringe in a scientific or medical context can still have strong appeal to a non-scientific and non-medical audience. In Joe's case, platforming fringe views in addition to his regular guests creates a compelling sense among his listeners that they are being given a fair and balanced presentation and the freedom to make up their own minds.

Large numbers of laypeople mistaking Joe Rogan for a researcher and JRE as a venue for scientific discussion is not a sign of healthy public discourse. It is a sign of low levels of scientific engagement and scientific literacy among the public. Neil Postman warned us about this risk back in the 80s. He saw that the repackaging of serious subjects to fit the audiovisual medium would erode the boundaries between information and entertainment and create a dangerously misinformed public.

Joe Rogan is an entertainer. He is not a researcher, and the JRE is not a forum for scientific discussion. Mistaking entertainment for science is a strong sign that you need to deepen your engagement with scientific material outside of the audiovisual entertainment medium.

All the technologies you mentioned do undergo large component rewrites and refactoring very often. It's true that e.g. the JVM is sometimes hemmed in by decisions from the past. But it is a decades old project and it is not clear that more up front design and deliberation would have future proofed the project for the language and VM conventions of the 2020s.

I have applied incremental design to concurrent applications and a compiler + stack VM project that runs in embedded environments. You don't go in blind. You do need domain experience and broad strokes knowledge of the conventions. You make some major architectural decisions up front but these don't involve much planning or design. Contrary to your point about CRUD apps, API design is harder to achieve incrementally since it is an interface and requires cross-team (sometimes cross-organizational) iteration. It's still possible, but your organization needs to be equipped for incremental/agile work.

I think this is the kind of thing you learn at uni and then potentially unlearn later on. Over the years I became better at using code to explore problem spaces and as a design tool. Nowadays I feel that incremental design delivers better results in less time than upfront design.

> Keep in mind that the medical classification of overweight and obese don't line up with what most people think of when they hear those terms.

I think it goes the other way round. Carrying excess fat has been normalized so most people don't notice they are overweight. Unless you are lean enough to have some clear abdominal definition I wouldn't be so quick to attribute overweight BMI to excess muscle.

Reading often doesn't save you from gotchas. Usually it just makes you think "oh, right! I remember this bullshit from the spec" after you've been stung.

>But, noooo, you're a dinosaur, you don't understand anything

Honestly.. Yeah.

Modern tools operating at higher levels of abstraction allow teams to create large amounts of functionality very quickly for more platforms. This changes the economics of software supply.

It's a fallacy to look at an app and say "I'd like this more if it were native instead of written in Electron" because Electron is part of how that app was delivered with that functionality at that price point. It's like ordering a $20 pub steak and saying "I'd prefer this steak if it were A5 Wagyu."

Getting enough sleep is important. But some nights you will not achieve the ideal of 8 hours. Once this has happened it is a sunk cost and you need to get on with your day.

Psychorigid and neurotic attitudes towards sleep do not promote good sleep. You can not "catch up" on lost sleep by napping. Instead, you risk throwing off your sleep for that night and perpetuating a pattern of sleeplessness. Afternoon naps are bad sleep hygiene. They are something you unlearn in treatment for insomnia and many other sleep disorders.

This site reminds me of every person I knew that never got better. Self-care is about long term health promotion. Not short term comfort maximization and pain avoidance. The first question alone tells me that an obese person wrote this.

I also had 6 hours last night. Here's why I'm not taking a nap.

1. I have things to do.

2. Naps throw off my sleep cycle

3. 6 hours isn't the end of the world.

The self-care advice on this website is bullshit.

That was my first cynical thought. It is a good rule regardless.

The issue is broader than one or two specific criticisms. It's the attitude and worldview behind the text is the problem. The author leans heavily into stereotypes and treats autistic people as a separate species with uniform deficiencies rather than individual people.

This comment does a good job of explaining it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29359903

Re: your coworker. Diagnosing someone with autism and trying to fit them into a stereotype you have in your head is not a real understanding of anything. Autistic people have complex individual preferences just like non-autistic people. The best way to understand people is to approach them as individuals rather than reaching for cheap generalizations.

IMO this is what makes it dangerous. Content like this gains currency by providing simplistic but "useful" models for common situations. But it packages them up with a worldview or ontology that isn't so great.

OP I know you have put effort into organizing and collating this content but I need to be frank with you. This guy is a crackpot passing off his personal speculation and extrapolation as fact and the content here is on the same level as autism mommy blogs. The content perpetuates many stereotypes and was clearly not written with any level of empathy for autistic people.

A better model for autistic people to understand their interpersonal problems is Milton's "double empathy problem." You can read more here: https://doi.org/10.1044/leader.FTR2.25042020.58

If there was neurochemistry that was uniquely and consistently associated with depression it still would not follow that "direct physical intervention" is the best treatment approach. Lifestyle modifications and behavioral interventions also change the brain. It is standard to combine both approaches.

No one really disagrees that depression has physical causes. What other causes are there? I am guessing you are not a Cartesian dualist.

>Really turn-it-off-and-turn-it-back-on-again thinking.

Unfortunate analogy since the article you linked talks about "resetting" the brain with psilocybin.

If you have a team of decent developers then I think the article has a point. But imagine you're in a situation where 90% of the developers on your team are outsource contractors with below junior level of aptitude who have been up-marketed by talent agencies as "senior architects" and "technical leads." Now 10x makes a bit more sense.

Organizations with poor technical leadership fail to quality control hires and accumulate imposters. In this setting the lucky hire of a merely average developer creates the appearance of a 10x (or 100x) unicorn.

When OP's approach is implemented effectively code review does not disappear but becomes more of a continuous process. Developers review each others changes and become proactive about seeking review of their own code. Teams that take this approach will typically review all code changes between releases before code makes it into production.

I don't think the article says that requiring code reviews is never good process. Consider this last paragraph:

> It's up to you and your colleagues to set the rules for your team. Don't adopt best practices in a dogmatic fashion. Rather, ask yourself if the circumstances of others apply to you. There is a high chance that they won't, and you find a more suited way to do things.

As OP scales his org he may find that the trust based approach no longer works and mandatory code reviews become the better approach. At that point it would make sense to introduce them.