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Not having a sense of humor about something like political beliefs is a good sign that someone is accepting dogma on the subject. This could make them more like
by gregwebs 16y ago
Not having a sense of humor about something like political beliefs is a good sign that someone is accepting dogma on the subject. This could make them more likely to accept dogma for things important to work also.
I also wonder if people think it is hacker-like to have strong political beliefs. Maybe I am way of base, but I always thought of hackers as being more apolitical, or at least not enjoying (pointless) political arguments. It is one thing to be adamantly against software patents, or to focus on a few issues that you can do something about, but another to spend a lot of time on something as unproductive as politics.
- MichaelSalib 16y agobut another to spend a lot of time on something as unproductive as politics I disagree strongly. Some hackers like politics, others don't. Neither choice is more hacker-like. I find politics interesting because I like seeing how institutional structure leads to outcomes; as a corollary, I find 95% of political reporting to be garbage, so my perspective on politics might be unusual. But that seems like a very hacker-like perspective: political outcomes are emergent properties of institutional structures that resulted from random compromise and contingent events. Tweak the structure here and look what changes.... In terms of unproductivity, I feel the same way about C++. I mean, the language is so obviously fundamentally broken that I weep when considering how much time has been wasted fixing problems that only arise because of C++'s brokenness. That doesn't mean that I think it is always the wrong choice, but I am astounded when I encounter people who C++ is a well designed language. It feels like talking to someone who claims the government is controlling their thoughts with an implant in their tooth.