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> Not only that, but I found myself censoring my own private thought processes, in the silent comfort of my own home, because of the public opinion of people I

> Not only that, but I found myself censoring my own private thought processes, in the silent comfort of my own home, because of the public opinion of people I follow on Twitter. I deleted my Twitter account because of this. I realized it was an empty echo chamber of inaction. If anything you say can be interpreted in a way that the hivemind can destroy you over, they will do it, even with incomplete information and little to no proof. I've determined that the key for me is to limit the inputs. My inputs now are a few cultivated social sites (this one, one or two tech sites), books, and podcasts. In my opinion, feeding my mind properly has lessened my feelings of burnout. If you have the choice to feed your brain digital junk food, don't be too alarmed when it starts taking of too much space, like fat.

sotojuan 10y ago
I've been much happier since quitting the Twitter/Medium bubble. I've limited my HN time as well.
- wmccullough 10y ago
  I find myself doing the same thing with HN. Most of the time I love it, but it seems once in awhile the contrarians come out to play, and meaningful discussions drop to zero.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    As someone who is feeling more and more contrarian lately in my comments here and regretting it, I think it's because after a decade of HN, everything starts to the look the same. Everybody is trying to sell a framework, a startup, a language, or their own personal brand and it turns into a big circlejerk of everyone patting themselves on the back because they've got some secret knowledge. Sometimes it doesn't seem like any real learning is going on as nothing is scientific or rigorous or anything more than an anecdote. You start to wonder how different some of this stuff is than hundreds of religions that have long since died. This is a larger issue with developer burnout I suspect. You master one thing and there's someone standing on the corner saying..."well, actually, I've got something better" and there's a very real anxiety in that evaluation process. Does object-oriented programming suck? Are functional languages the future? Do you really want an SPA? Should you replace your C codebase with Rust... or Go? Is Bitcoin worth getting in on? etc etc You will interact with some of the most brilliant people on HN, and most of them are friendly and mean well, but without actual disagreement nothing interesting gets said. ...that wasn't intentionally contrarian.
    - ekidd 10y ago
      > Should you replace your C codebase with Rust... or Go? Handy sanity tip: If your question begins "Should you replace your ____ codebase?", you can automatically answer "No." If you're really starting to hate your codebase, you're allowed to rewrite one module using a new tech stack, but only if that tech stack seems uniquely well suited to the task at hand. Maybe it will suck. Maybe it won't. If it doesn't suck, you can use a bit more of the new technology in other places. This will lower your stress and give you an opportunity to futz around with something promising every now and then. As a strategy, it will probably work best if you occasionally enjoy new technologies, but you're conservative about what you're willing to use in production. It also helps if you have occasional throwaway open source projects for trying out stuff that looks too new for professional use.
      - tuxxy 10y ago
        That's a really good measure. Thanks!
    - lacampbell 10y ago
      I've enjoyed arguing (debating?) who with people about OO and FP here. I don't get the downvoting backlash despite going a bit against current fashions (I still like objects and think they make a great foundation for computing in general). The only time I get heavily downvoted for being critical is when I mention a certain programming language - which I happen to like.
      - mikekchar 10y ago
        The only time I've ever been heavily down voted here is when I've been blatantly wrong (although it sometimes takes me a while to figure out what was wrong about what I said). I often enjoy your posts, which I find quite insightful at times. I was actually surprised that you found yourself downvoted, so I had a quick peek. In reviewing the posts which appear to have been downvoted recently I have to say that they seem to be unnecessarily inflamatory. Possibly some frustration you feel is escaping. I'm sure when you look at it, it doesn't seem so because your view is filtered by the context of what you meant rather than specifically what you said. Others don't have the ability to distinguish that as easily. Experimenting with other ways of expressing that frustration will probably help. My own personal experience has been that when I consciously tackled this issue, it really helped my professional life as well. I had a pretty bad reputation as being negative early in my career.
  - user837387 10y ago
    HN is full of contrarians. Say anything blunt, not rude but blunt, and you will get down-voted to oblivion. And not even that, say something in a polite way that people cannot discredit but still not like and you will get down-voted. I feel like you have to mold yourself to the hive mind if you want your stuff to be up-voted. Not sure if this is really how it is or if it is just me. On the other hand, a lot of times when I say some feel good one liner BS I get dozens of up-votes.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - logfromblammo 10y ago
      No, it isn't. That may seem like a flippant joke, but I assure you that my intent is that it only be about 60% that. I am not gratuitously disagreeing here, as it is my sincere opinion that when people here argue for the opposite of what a parent post says, it is more often than not because they genuinely believe that it contains an error of fact or because they wish to express their own, different opinion on the matter. As for up-votes and down-votes, that's a measure of popularity, not correctness. You can be right about everything and still be unpopular.
    - metaphorm 10y ago
      the easiest way to collect upvotes is effluvient praise for whichever silicon valley company is currently the "great golden hope". the easiest way to collect downvotes is to contradict any of PG's implicit or explicit biases. the weight of mass down-voting seems to have improved since sama has taken over and PG is blogging less.
      - willstrafach 10y ago
        interestingly, posts such as yours (calling out hivemind / mass up/down-voting) seem to easily get a large amount of upvotes as well.
        dasil003 10y ago
treehau5 10y ago
It takes 10x the amount of energy to refute bs than to create it
- jamescostian 10y ago
  It took me the same (1x) amount of energy to refute your comment as it did for you to create it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - treehau5 10y ago
    Here's my source, where's yours? ;-) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294584001_The_unbearable_asymmetry_of_bullshit https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294584001_The_unbea...
  - grive 10y ago
    Your comment however contains very little in the way of actual refutation, as you missed the point and did not engage it in the least. It is easy (1x) to create meaningless content, it is harder however to address it and to explain properly why the point was missed. Building a sound argument, clearly and in a straightforward manner is hard. Understanding the non-sequitur of your interlocutor is hard. Extirping the salient part of the inconsistency will force you to shave off the useless fluff around it. Adding that fluff is easier, as it only takes intellectual laziness.
- jwtadvice 10y ago
  Not only this but when the BS is an orthodox position it takes 10x the amount of energy per person who believed the bullshit. The number of conversations I've had to have with friends and family about, let's say, the "Russian hacking of the election" or "the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" or "the bulk collection NOT mass surveillance by US intelligence" is greater than even the amount of time I've had to spend speaking to each of them.
- NumberCruncher 10y ago
  Fortunately you do not have to refute all the BS in life. Just ignore it!
lobotryas 10y ago
This is one of the reasons I will never get a personal Twitter unless it was for a project or other business. I've read too many times of a person harassed and suffered real-life consequences for a fairly innocuous comment. The rest of the posted article is excellent. Going to re-read it from time to time to see if I'm falling into the ruts described there.
- nodamage 10y ago
  I've stopped using my real name when posting online for this exact reason. Less worrying about getting harassed because you said something that might offend someone, or that someone might look up something you wrote in the past and use it against you in the future. There's a certain freedom in anonymity in not having to police your own thoughts all the time. Of course, if you're trying to build an audience/brand then being anonymous might not be an option, but I've discovered I'd rather avoid such things and just work on my own stuff.
jwtadvice 10y ago
> If anything you say can be interpreted in a way that the hivemind can destroy you over, they will do it, even with incomplete information and little to no proof. I've found this to be true on Reddit, increasingly true on HN (if you look at my comment history you will see people trolling me and accusing me of being a foreign shill), and writ large in American politics. Psychologically, people are anxious, they have little time, and they have a lot of information to filter. They have an idea that because you are anonymous you very well may be a US information agent from the Fort Bragg propaganda center or a a propaganda agent from another country. They think that you may be from a different political party or from a group of people that you think are culturally a threat to their type of existence (cis white male, LBGTQ or urban, rural). And so when they filter, they filter out the imagined adversary and anything that increased their level of anxiety. If they don't filter, they often attack it.
eliasbagley 10y ago
> I realized it was an empty echo chamber of inaction. If anything you say can be interpreted in a way that the hivemind can destroy you over, they will do it, even with incomplete information and little to no proof. A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
- syngrog66 10y ago
  "I actually got that reference!" - Cap
- NumberCruncher 10y ago
  Seneca said that if you publish something you have to bear the critics. This should be clear to everyone before posting online. I think Kenneth is one of the people who should be a bit more ignorant and arrogant. [1] [1] https://m.signalvnoise.com/a-cocktail-for-putting-dents-in-the-universe-41121186cb6b https://m.signalvnoise.com/a-cocktail-for-putting-dents-in-t...
mattbettinson 10y ago
I love the term digital junk food. Something I'd never considered until now.
wapz 10y ago
Can anyone suggest one or two good podcasts? (I'm particularly interested in programming-specific but any good tech podcasts would do fine)
borplk 10y ago
I resisted Twitter (and most social media including Facebook) for various reasons. There is a very real cost to this choice (especially depending on your lifestyle). For me as a huge introvert I could tolerate the cost of not having Facebook. For Twitter I'm feeling the professional cost of not having an online identity or an outlet or following to once in a while be able to announce or promote something. So I've been considering joining Twitter again after many many years. Does anyone want to comment on that? I have noticed all the time I'm hearing about people talking about deleting Facebook and Twitter and blah blah but I never ever see someone in real life who actually sticks to that. I feel like I'm the only fool who has gone through and stuck with it and has paid the price.
- taurath 10y ago
  Can you not delegate for those functions? If the point of promoting things is to get people to pay attention to it, maybe get a few people who have influence on board.
  - borplk 10y ago
    Not really as they are not that specific. It just seems having a large follower base gives you a bit of influence and leverage and a voice that you can use when the time comes. I have avoided having an online presence for a variety of reasons mostly revolving around the negative aspects of social media but I'm feeling like the cost is becoming too high. At the same time I hear a lot of talking about how good it is quit it and how bad it is for you and all of that but very little real action. It just seems like everyone's suggesting it to others but not doing it themselves.
rak00n 10y ago
I'm having similar thoughts about my social interactions. Since I moved to Silicon Valley it's like having junk food continuously comparing to my prior relationships. Now I can either keep eating junk food or choose isolation and try not to lose my mind. This is tough.

sotojuan 10y ago

I've been much happier since quitting the Twitter/Medium bubble. I've limited my HN time as well.

wmccullough 10y ago
I find myself doing the same thing with HN. Most of the time I love it, but it seems once in awhile the contrarians come out to play, and meaningful discussions drop to zero.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  As someone who is feeling more and more contrarian lately in my comments here and regretting it, I think it's because after a decade of HN, everything starts to the look the same. Everybody is trying to sell a framework, a startup, a language, or their own personal brand and it turns into a big circlejerk of everyone patting themselves on the back because they've got some secret knowledge. Sometimes it doesn't seem like any real learning is going on as nothing is scientific or rigorous or anything more than an anecdote. You start to wonder how different some of this stuff is than hundreds of religions that have long since died. This is a larger issue with developer burnout I suspect. You master one thing and there's someone standing on the corner saying..."well, actually, I've got something better" and there's a very real anxiety in that evaluation process. Does object-oriented programming suck? Are functional languages the future? Do you really want an SPA? Should you replace your C codebase with Rust... or Go? Is Bitcoin worth getting in on? etc etc You will interact with some of the most brilliant people on HN, and most of them are friendly and mean well, but without actual disagreement nothing interesting gets said. ...that wasn't intentionally contrarian.
  - ekidd 10y ago
    > Should you replace your C codebase with Rust... or Go? Handy sanity tip: If your question begins "Should you replace your ____ codebase?", you can automatically answer "No." If you're really starting to hate your codebase, you're allowed to rewrite one module using a new tech stack, but only if that tech stack seems uniquely well suited to the task at hand. Maybe it will suck. Maybe it won't. If it doesn't suck, you can use a bit more of the new technology in other places. This will lower your stress and give you an opportunity to futz around with something promising every now and then. As a strategy, it will probably work best if you occasionally enjoy new technologies, but you're conservative about what you're willing to use in production. It also helps if you have occasional throwaway open source projects for trying out stuff that looks too new for professional use.
    - tuxxy 10y ago
      That's a really good measure. Thanks!
  - lacampbell 10y ago
    I've enjoyed arguing (debating?) who with people about OO and FP here. I don't get the downvoting backlash despite going a bit against current fashions (I still like objects and think they make a great foundation for computing in general). The only time I get heavily downvoted for being critical is when I mention a certain programming language - which I happen to like.
    - mikekchar 10y ago
      The only time I've ever been heavily down voted here is when I've been blatantly wrong (although it sometimes takes me a while to figure out what was wrong about what I said). I often enjoy your posts, which I find quite insightful at times. I was actually surprised that you found yourself downvoted, so I had a quick peek. In reviewing the posts which appear to have been downvoted recently I have to say that they seem to be unnecessarily inflamatory. Possibly some frustration you feel is escaping. I'm sure when you look at it, it doesn't seem so because your view is filtered by the context of what you meant rather than specifically what you said. Others don't have the ability to distinguish that as easily. Experimenting with other ways of expressing that frustration will probably help. My own personal experience has been that when I consciously tackled this issue, it really helped my professional life as well. I had a pretty bad reputation as being negative early in my career.
- user837387 10y ago
  HN is full of contrarians. Say anything blunt, not rude but blunt, and you will get down-voted to oblivion. And not even that, say something in a polite way that people cannot discredit but still not like and you will get down-voted. I feel like you have to mold yourself to the hive mind if you want your stuff to be up-voted. Not sure if this is really how it is or if it is just me. On the other hand, a lot of times when I say some feel good one liner BS I get dozens of up-votes.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    No, it isn't. That may seem like a flippant joke, but I assure you that my intent is that it only be about 60% that. I am not gratuitously disagreeing here, as it is my sincere opinion that when people here argue for the opposite of what a parent post says, it is more often than not because they genuinely believe that it contains an error of fact or because they wish to express their own, different opinion on the matter. As for up-votes and down-votes, that's a measure of popularity, not correctness. You can be right about everything and still be unpopular.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    the easiest way to collect upvotes is effluvient praise for whichever silicon valley company is currently the "great golden hope". the easiest way to collect downvotes is to contradict any of PG's implicit or explicit biases. the weight of mass down-voting seems to have improved since sama has taken over and PG is blogging less.
    - willstrafach 10y ago
      interestingly, posts such as yours (calling out hivemind / mass up/down-voting) seem to easily get a large amount of upvotes as well.
      - dasil003 10y ago

treehau5 10y ago

It takes 10x the amount of energy to refute bs than to create it

jamescostian 10y ago
It took me the same (1x) amount of energy to refute your comment as it did for you to create it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- treehau5 10y ago
  Here's my source, where's yours? ;-) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294584001_The_unbearable_asymmetry_of_bullshit https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294584001_The_unbea...
- grive 10y ago
  Your comment however contains very little in the way of actual refutation, as you missed the point and did not engage it in the least. It is easy (1x) to create meaningless content, it is harder however to address it and to explain properly why the point was missed. Building a sound argument, clearly and in a straightforward manner is hard. Understanding the non-sequitur of your interlocutor is hard. Extirping the salient part of the inconsistency will force you to shave off the useless fluff around it. Adding that fluff is easier, as it only takes intellectual laziness.
jwtadvice 10y ago
Not only this but when the BS is an orthodox position it takes 10x the amount of energy per person who believed the bullshit. The number of conversations I've had to have with friends and family about, let's say, the "Russian hacking of the election" or "the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" or "the bulk collection NOT mass surveillance by US intelligence" is greater than even the amount of time I've had to spend speaking to each of them.
NumberCruncher 10y ago
Fortunately you do not have to refute all the BS in life. Just ignore it!

lobotryas 10y ago

This is one of the reasons I will never get a personal Twitter unless it was for a project or other business. I've read too many times of a person harassed and suffered real-life consequences for a fairly innocuous comment. The rest of the posted article is excellent. Going to re-read it from time to time to see if I'm falling into the ruts described there.

nodamage 10y ago
I've stopped using my real name when posting online for this exact reason. Less worrying about getting harassed because you said something that might offend someone, or that someone might look up something you wrote in the past and use it against you in the future. There's a certain freedom in anonymity in not having to police your own thoughts all the time. Of course, if you're trying to build an audience/brand then being anonymous might not be an option, but I've discovered I'd rather avoid such things and just work on my own stuff.

jwtadvice 10y ago

> If anything you say can be interpreted in a way that the hivemind can destroy you over, they will do it, even with incomplete information and little to no proof. I've found this to be true on Reddit, increasingly true on HN (if you look at my comment history you will see people trolling me and accusing me of being a foreign shill), and writ large in American politics. Psychologically, people are anxious, they have little time, and they have a lot of information to filter. They have an idea that because you are anonymous you very well may be a US information agent from the Fort Bragg propaganda center or a a propaganda agent from another country. They think that you may be from a different political party or from a group of people that you think are culturally a threat to their type of existence (cis white male, LBGTQ or urban, rural). And so when they filter, they filter out the imagined adversary and anything that increased their level of anxiety. If they don't filter, they often attack it.

eliasbagley 10y ago

> I realized it was an empty echo chamber of inaction. If anything you say can be interpreted in a way that the hivemind can destroy you over, they will do it, even with incomplete information and little to no proof. A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

syngrog66 10y ago
"I actually got that reference!" - Cap
NumberCruncher 10y ago
Seneca said that if you publish something you have to bear the critics. This should be clear to everyone before posting online. I think Kenneth is one of the people who should be a bit more ignorant and arrogant. [1] [1] https://m.signalvnoise.com/a-cocktail-for-putting-dents-in-the-universe-41121186cb6b https://m.signalvnoise.com/a-cocktail-for-putting-dents-in-t...

mattbettinson 10y ago

I love the term digital junk food. Something I'd never considered until now.

wapz 10y ago

Can anyone suggest one or two good podcasts? (I'm particularly interested in programming-specific but any good tech podcasts would do fine)

borplk 10y ago

I resisted Twitter (and most social media including Facebook) for various reasons. There is a very real cost to this choice (especially depending on your lifestyle). For me as a huge introvert I could tolerate the cost of not having Facebook. For Twitter I'm feeling the professional cost of not having an online identity or an outlet or following to once in a while be able to announce or promote something. So I've been considering joining Twitter again after many many years. Does anyone want to comment on that? I have noticed all the time I'm hearing about people talking about deleting Facebook and Twitter and blah blah but I never ever see someone in real life who actually sticks to that. I feel like I'm the only fool who has gone through and stuck with it and has paid the price.

taurath 10y ago
Can you not delegate for those functions? If the point of promoting things is to get people to pay attention to it, maybe get a few people who have influence on board.
- borplk 10y ago
  Not really as they are not that specific. It just seems having a large follower base gives you a bit of influence and leverage and a voice that you can use when the time comes. I have avoided having an online presence for a variety of reasons mostly revolving around the negative aspects of social media but I'm feeling like the cost is becoming too high. At the same time I hear a lot of talking about how good it is quit it and how bad it is for you and all of that but very little real action. It just seems like everyone's suggesting it to others but not doing it themselves.

rak00n 10y ago

I'm having similar thoughts about my social interactions. Since I moved to Silicon Valley it's like having junk food continuously comparing to my prior relationships. Now I can either keep eating junk food or choose isolation and try not to lose my mind. This is tough.