119 karma · joined January 29, 2020
i don't know about fantasy but for sci-fi i think it's obvious: it's because a technocracy inevitably becomes a fascist dictatorship. that's why the nazis were heavy on industry and eugenics ("science" is the ultimate moral authority and all that). it's also for example why the mcguffin in Captain America: The Winter Soldier is so plausible (it was hydra whose aim was to use an ai to a-priori adjudicate who was guilty etc).
why writers in particular? not sure. probably having something to do with feeling confident in their ability to create fictional worlds and translating that into some kind of presumption of ability to govern real worlds.
Edit: lol no responses only downvotes. Don't point out flaws in technology ideology or else people will get bad. Lol
Below I linked to a published literary essay and I got downvoted.
Further down in this comment chain I posted a link to a literary essay that enders game is about fascism. I got heavy downvotes. I'm sure that by quoting this paragraph from wiki I will get more downvotes. People are in denial about their heroes.
the book is literally about a kid committing genocide and the reasons why he should feel okay about it (ie a pretext). or did you not read it through to the end?
https://web.archive.org/web/20070206121131/http://www4.ncsu....
tldr; orson scott card is a bigot and ender's game is nazi apologia. if you don't want to read the above it's been written about in numerous places (google "ender's game book fascism").
I'm gonna repeat what I've said many times: by enforcing a strict decorum what you actually accomplish, and I mean exactly you dang, is give the air/pretense of intellectualism without any of the substance. Hence the constant barrage of hypercritical (but superficial) disparaging comments. It's like any other system that privileges one type of language - those that can deploy it effectivity feel empowered and emboldened because they feel they are the defacto ethical/just/concordant.
If you wanted proscribe things for the betterment of the community you should proscribe content (e.g. hate speech) rather than language.
edit:
this comment is the exemplar par excellence of what your rules produce:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17034295
for many hours it was the highest ranking comment on that post. it is pure invective cloaked in "constructive criticism". it took me pointing outing how absolutely rude it was for it to start bubbling down. i'm not a hero. i'm simply pointing out that it is absolutely necessary to point out when someone is being rude.
you can't because i fundamentally disagree with you and i have zero incentive to abide
why is it that the tech subs at reddit don't have the same kind of policing you practice here and are just as productive? i wonder if it's because community policing is more effective than whatever brand of dictatorial policing you practice here hmmmmmm. the only difference between the moderation here and at reddit that i see is your self-importance and the effect it has on anyone who feels they're part of the same self-important rarefied club.
i don't take swipes at people who don't post vile things to begin with. i will never understand the whole "you have to tolerate the intolerant" ethos. you can peruse my comments (as you have) - i never incite but censure is a public service.
you seem to be oblivious to the fact that i don't care (hence the throwaway).
who is we? are you a tt prof at literally the number 1 cs school in the US? are you a reviewer for any distributed journals? the author of this book is a wildly successful researcher. why should i trust literally almost anyone's here opinion over their opinion?
man what a bastion of intelligent discussion this place is.
this has gotta be the answer. I have the exact same experiences and feelings as you. I always look for basically the cheapest Airbnb and it ends up cheaper by 2-3x than local hotels and I've never had an uncomfortable stay. What I have had are completely normal rooms in working class homes - which is fine because who the hell cares about enjoying the hotel room when you travel!
>Chapel is a modern programming language that is...
>parallel: contains first-class concepts for concurrent and parallel computation
>productive: designed with programmability and performance in mind
>portable: runs on laptops, clusters, the cloud, and HPC systems
>scalable: supports locality-oriented features for distributed memory systems
are you such a literalist you need literally "why? because ..."
i have a question for you: why do so many hners jump on the same silly meme over and over again even when it's not accurate?
what I've seen hn (and startup culture in general) distort is people's confidence in their own opinions. this is probably because it is repeated ad nauseum that you cannot start a successful startup without being an iconoclastic innovator.
what isn't repeated ad nauseum is that you should save that kind of arrogance for your vc pitch rather than take it on as a mantle.
suppose this were true and this legislation set that precedent? let me ask you: how often do we have a need for a "bailout"? do a really quick cost/benefit analysis and you'll see that you're implying we should let these people struggle today to save some money in ~10 years. does that make sense to you?
you should go ask a miller.
but the prompt isn't "list some books you like" but "how should I learn" so there's obviously intent in picking those books.