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Without being too reductive, Stallman and others apply extreme cynicism (assume the worst case scenario will happen), and they are "always right" because the na
by TAForObvReasons 8y ago
Without being too reductive, Stallman and others apply extreme cynicism (assume the worst case scenario will happen), and they are "always right" because the naysayers seem to apply undeserved optimism. Companies like Slack initially try to appeal to the freedom crowd (IRC gateway), until they decide it impedes their business model. Stallman can see it coming from a mile away because he correctly views people and entities from a cynical perspective that many others aren't used to doing.
- fwdpropaganda 8y agoThis chronic downvoting on HN is getting boring. This is an excellent comment because it explains Stallman's accuracy (vs his opponents) not in terms of the fundamentals of their reasoning but in terms of their heuristics for judging motivations.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoNot only that - respected HN citizens need to create new throwaway accounts on order to speak their mind. It's becoming a new normal. That's ridiculous.
- andrewmcwatters 8y agoYou shouldn't even have to be respected: it's tiring to express your opinion here and contribute to a conversation only to have it downvoted because it wasn't the right contribution.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoI stopped caring about these things at all. When you need to speak up, you just do it without thinking about downvoting. Otherwise HN will just become another echo chamber, and that would be really bad for everyone. By the way, it always seemed to me that by civilized discussion once can learn the opponent's point of view and maybe even reach a compromise, but it seems HN works in a different way, hiding downvoted posts. When I expand them, I'm often surprised to see they're not spam nor offensive content, but just statements many people don't agree with.