8 ms·

90% of Everything Is Crap

154 points by mcrittenden 6y ago

rabuse 6y ago
Doesn't this also relate to the Pareto principle?
grenoire 6y ago
This seems like... a bunch of very loosely connected ideas in a blog post.
- CharlesW 6y ago
  To be fair, 90% of blog post ideas are crap too.
HenryKissinger 6y ago
I enjoy discovering new music a lot. I'm also extremely selective in picking the songs that go into my personal music library. Maybe 5% of the songs I listen to, _within the subgenres I already prefer_, make it. I don't disagree with the author, based on my narrow personal experience.
polka_haunts_us 6y ago
Eh. I like the phrase but I disagree with the premise you apply to it. If I were defining a few things about myself I would say "I like Anime" and "I hate EDM". I keep ratings for every anime I've ever watched, the average score is about 7.48/10. Objectively, a lot of it was crap that I would never recommend to anyone, but it's crap I enjoy. On the other hand, there are EDM songs I like that are on my playlist on Spotify. Even though I'll happily listen to them, they don't make me think "Wow, I really need to test my view that I don't like EDM". I already know I don't like it. The fact there are exceptions doesn't make it not a useful rule for me to follow when choosing music. IMO the healthier attitude, rather than seeking out things you don't like, is to leave yourself open to things you don't like, particularly in a group setting. It's very annoying lately, my group of friends wants to play video games after work, but everybody has some kind of game type they don't like that makes it hard to reach consensus. Rather than being in constant pursuit of optimized personal pleasure, it's important that I sometimes just play the games I don't like so in the future they'll play the games they don't like with me. And then maybe by chance one of us actually will end up liking it despite ourselves. There's another layer here as well as to the scale of things. "I don't like EDM" is a very differently scaled statement than "I don't like Music". When confronting your own preferences, I think it's important to compartmentalize them appropriately. I identify myself as someone that likes anime, but I will never watch another shonen sports anime again willingly.
- dmcginty 6y ago
  To expand on what you're saying, there's a big difference between "I don't like X" and "X is bad". I've never been much of a wine person. It's not without trying. I've had everything from cheap boxed Franzia to a several hundred dollar bordeaux (that was totally wasted on me). I took a wine class where I was given samples and explicitly told "this is what good wine tastes like". I don't dislike wine and I don't think wine is bad, but the 10% of wine that is good doesn't appeal to me that much.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    The wine example is a tricky one because there's another metric aside from like/dislike or good/bad that wine falls into. Maybe class related status bullshit? I enjoy wine, but I also recognize a lot of the snobbiness about it (particularly at the high end) is a mixture of snake oil and rich people looking for a place to buy more status. I remember some interview on NPR with a wine expert. The host was asking why in all the double blind trials people aren't able to consistently rate wines or even have consistent preferences. The wine expert complained that it's the fault of doing it double blind and 'when they're present with the people' (and likely giving them obvious clues about what's supposed to be good or not) 'they can tell the difference'. There's good/bad, like/dislike, but there's also true and fraud, high status and low status. Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference, sometimes there isn't a difference.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      The middle-class version of this is craft beers. Oh god, the grief I was getting from my friends once almost everyone got infected by the "I only buy expensive craft beers, and I care for taste" showmanship. To each their own, but I really do think that a particular brand of cheap, mass-market beer that I like tastes better, and it's also cheap. I have other things that I like to pay premium for.
  - smogcutter 6y ago
    Yeah, I think where the trouble starts is when people take preferences as a declaration of some kind of Kantian universal imperative. So someone else’s taste becomes a judgment on you as a person. This drives people bananas on the internet, where you don’t have to treat other people like, you know, people. In particular, I think this accounts for the frothing rage that video game reviews can generate. For my part, I’m just glad I grew out of giving a shit what kind of music other people like.
rightbyte 6y ago
These unfounded aphorisms are quite tiring. I went to the store today and bought tomatoes. 100% was red and fine.
- WJW 6y ago
  Presumably the 90% of tomatoes that were not red and fine were made into ketchup or something like that. Of course if you select for an attribute first then that attribute is going to be over-represented.
  - rightbyte 6y ago
    I giggled a bit, but the nice red tomatoe yield is quite high in my small garden experience.
    - ska 6y ago
      Otoh the seeds you got for your small garden were already heavily filtered... so maybe still applies?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Of the remaining 10% that reached the shop, 90% were probably not perfect photo-like quality, and you can find them dumped in the trash can at the end of the day (if you can grab them before local freegans do, that is).
- username90 6y ago
  When items have reliable quality we call them commodities and suddenly stop noticing their quality.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  In a random store most likely 100% of tomatoes are crap, as stores overwhelmingly pick the varieties of tomatoes which are optimized so that they can be transported and stored and transported without damage and spoilage (and since logistics takes time, they have to be picked before they're fully ripe), trading off flavor, taste and nutrients. There are many tomato varieties that objectively taste much better (you don't have to be a snob or supertaster, the difference is obvious), but they are hard or impossible to distribute through modern logistics, you would have to live very close to the grower (or grow them yourself) so that you can eat them the day they're picked without driving them around half the country. And, of course, you get them when they're in season, not year-round. That's impractical, so most of us rather choose to eat crap tomatoes most of time - and so 90% of tomatoes are crap. Even if they're red and we consider that crap as normal, they're still crap in comparison.
adamc 6y ago
90% of hacker news is crap, too.
- ecf 6y ago
  Why yes, everything would include Hacker News as well.
  - fny 6y ago
    Actually, 99% of HN is crap. 90% of the front page is crap.
    - maerF0x0 6y ago
      but does that 90% cluster on a particular user set, or is it 90% of each user's submissions are crap?
    - TrainedMonkey 6y ago
      I was going to say the same thing, there is insane amount of pre-filtering before we even see anything. So real proportion of crap things is somewhere above 99%.
    - nix23 6y ago
      Wow that's actually true, but our comment are too ;)
- mhh__ 6y ago
  I guestimate that the ratio to my eye is a bit better for HN on technology, but I'd also argue that anything outside business, science, and engineering the ratio is often worse - Political threads seem to really show off a lot of overstretching, both in issues of political economy and in often pretty blatantly tribal lack of due diligence that wouldn't fly if the thread were about (say) something just as easily google-able but technology (HN I love you, but you're bringing me down, and all that).
- kuroguro 6y ago
  And 90% of the comments too! :)
YarickR2 6y ago
90% of people are crap too ? That's mean
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  60% of people are water, 75% of feces are water.
  - goatcode 6y ago
    100% of cancer has water in it.
    - u678u 6y ago
      The nazis drank water.
- goatcode 6y ago
  >90% of everything is crap Perhaps to someone who considers them things.
erik_landerholm 6y ago
I didn't know this was a "law", but i've been triangulating on this same feeling for a long time now. I would say it's 1%-10% of anything is actually good. You can basically apply this to almost any category, but for most things it doesn't really matter. I would guess while no two people would agree if asked to pick their top 5% of any one thing, if you tallied up all the votes and had enough participation, you could probably put together a list that would generally include the best of whatever that category is.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  The story behind it is interesting; critics complained about the low-quality of typical sci-fi. Sturgeon observed that 90% of novels in any genre (or pieces of art in general) are garbage, so the observation that "90% of sci-fi is crap" does not speak to the quality of sci-fi as a genre.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
noncoml 6y ago
> 90% of Everything Is Crap I guess this applies to this blog entry as well. And my reply here I guess.
comfrey 6y ago
There is a corollary to Sturgeon’s law which states: This remains true for the remaining 10%
- username90 6y ago
  Which would mean that it is actually "The bottom 90% is significantly worse than the top 10%".
maerF0x0 6y ago
Plus one on accurately quoting/applying strong opinions, loosely held. Anecdotally, most of the time I see this applied people just want someone to be easy to convince. Easy to convince should be a function of the data/reasoning that lead to the currently held choice. Until an exceeding choice is found, why relinquish the currently held one for one with _less_ data/rationale?
mywittyname 6y ago
>Think you hate poetry? Roller coasters? Banjo music? Thai food? Maybe you haven’t discovered the good 10% yet. Keep looking. Maybe liking something means appreciating the average. I like steaks. I mean, I really like dry aged t-bones, but I also like a simply seasoned sirloin. I wouldn't even turn down an well done hockey puck if it came with a baked potato. I don't like movies. You would never find me indulging in the latest Sharknado nonsense. But I can enjoying myself while watching a critically-acclaimed film.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
busterarm 6y ago
Yes.
goatcode 6y ago
Neat.
avrionov 6y ago
Not a good piece. Total waste of time.
Taylor_OD 6y ago
Sure. Recently I tried an Indian dish that quickly made Indian food go from being my 10th favorite option to my 1st. Turns out I just hadnt found the Indian food I loved until that night. Now it makes me wonder if there is an Italian dish I would love that much.
- novaRom 6y ago
  What was it exactly? As for Italian one, did you try Sicilian Arancini?
  - Taylor_OD 6y ago
    Chickpea (Chana) Saag! Most of the chicken I've had in Indian food has not been very satisfying so finding a good veggie option was a game changer. I will try Sicilian Arancini!
- aidenn0 6y ago
  I can highly recommend veal saltimbocca as being worth a try.
  - Taylor_OD 6y ago
    I will give it a try!
hartator 6y ago
> Remember: strong opinions, loosely held I am actually thinking the reverse now: Loose opinions, strongly held. It's better to a vague - loose opinion like "do not harm" but held it strongly than something precise like "never kill someone" but held it loosely.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  The first (strong opinions) seems to relate to judgements. The second to values (how we arrive at judgements). There's a fair argument that values might need to be less rigorously arrived at but more tightly helf. Many values are beyond proof and more closely resemble axioms or premises. Even here some inclination to revise assessments might be warranted. E.g., "kill, if necessary to save your or another's life from one killing unjustly". Moral absolutes are hard to find. Interesting thought though.
  - dingaling 6y ago
    The problem is that society expects everyone to have a pre-conceived judgement about every topic. I encounter this frequently. "What do you think about <some news event>?" . "Do you think <some music genre> sucks?". "What's your position on <divisive topic>?". Maybe I just haven't arrived at any opinion because it's not relevant enough to my life. And this insistence in finding someone's position on every topic has a negative effect on conversation, because someone's always ready to take offence. TLDR: as few opinions as possible, only relevant to your immediate circumstances
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      The expectations are frequently presumptions, but relatively weak. Often effectively conversation starter. Crossing convention may make for interesting conversations and/or friends.
dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
I'd go as far as 98%, but the problem is it's getting worse! Everybody's optimizing everything, creating ever crappier crap. To quote Jay Pritchett, "Crap. Crappacino. Charlie Craplin."
Der_Einzige 6y ago
Combined with the further "Strong Opinions, Loosely Held" this is very real advice. Broad statements like this tend to be very inline with our intuitions for many things - even if we must admit that they have very little "real" evidence. It doesn't mean that such common aphorisms don't have value or utility in our lives...
bgun 6y ago
> Maybe you haven’t discovered the good 10% yet. Keep looking. Keep in mind that 90% of your own opinions are crap, too - so you aren't likely to know the good from the bad even once you're exposed to it. To put it another way, you can't really know whether you like something or not until you've a) gotten over the fear of it, and b) learned how to do or recognize it competently.
insickness 6y ago
I think it would be more accurate to say, 90% of everything will be crap to you. I listen to a lot of music and it is true that 90% of what I hear I consider crap. However, tastes very widely. I could find an amazing song and show it to all my friends--who like the same genre of music--and only a fraction of them will love the song also.
bravura 6y ago
I'm a firm believer in this, having lived through "NYC used to be so cool" or "Burning Man used to be so cool." If you focus on the essential 10%, you learn what that thing really is about. NOW. Here's where it gets personal and interesting. I went with a friend to a shitty diner and ordered eggs benedict. I love eggs benedict. And he was like: "Why did you do that?" "I love eggs benedict!" "I love eggs benedict too, but I don't like lame eggs benedict." That struck me as so inconceivable. Then I remembered a friend who would constantly order shitty burgers by delivery. And I gave them such grief: "burgers are only meant to be enjoyed when they are amazing, why order a mediocre burger??" In retrospect, I realized that there are certain things that you will like even if they aren't great, once you appreciate them. And certain things you will only like if they are done the excellence. I like any egg benedict, even if it's lame. I am a snob when it comes to burgers. Switch this for your world-view. The important point is that you must learn to appreciate something, before you sort it into "I enjoy it" vs. "not good enough". You can't simply dismiss an entire genre based upon some theoretical a priori motive. But after you have tasted it, and I mean truly tasted it, you can decide whether you can be an elitist about it.
- frenchy 6y ago
  What you're saying is true most of the time, but some times a difference in quality really is a difference in kind. I'm really not a fan of most store-bought bread. I'd eat it if the alternative was homelessness, or if I thought I'd embarass someone by rejecting food they "made"; however, homemade sourdough bread is to die for. Generally, mediocre stuff can be pretty decent, and is worth trying to enjoy, but some crap is really just crap.
danschumann 6y ago
Then work on plumbing systems 90% of the time!
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Perhaps that's why every programming job I ever did involved 10% of interesting problems, and 90% of plumbing to connect the interesting bits?
thedracle 6y ago
I can decidedly say that more than 90% of literal crap is crap.
Lio 6y ago
> If you think you hate something, hold that opinion loosely by putting it to the test. Try to prove it false. Not just that but put it to the test again at some later date. Tastes can change over time and it’s fine to update your opinions.
themodelplumber 6y ago
> Keep your identity small. “I’m not the kind of person who does things like that” is not an explanation, it’s a trap. It prevents nerds from working out and men from dancing. Good one! Subjective identity is merely one's perspective on one's own past experience...why turn the future into the ultimate risk.
dang 6y ago
Related from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11395845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11395845
khalilravanna 6y ago
Two thoughts: 1) I think the view that “90% of people are crap” is incredibly misanthropic, cynical, and a view that would likely make the world a worse place if widely adopted. 2) I think enjoying the 90% of crap is maybe more important than enjoying the 10% of not crap. Being able to enjoy bad movies, bad music, bad art, bad everything is great. Who wouldn’t want to increase the amount of things they could enjoy by 2x or 3x or 9x? I watched Battlefield Earth recently and it was a blast! One of my favorite shows is How I Met Your Mother (which is "crap" if you define "crap" as "less than the 90th percentile in that medium"...it's prolly a 70 or 80th percentile show). Why be an elite who turns their nose up at things when you can enjoy both the things the elites like AND the things they sneer at? Sign me up for the trash!
xupybd 6y ago
>Then there’s relationships. Think there’s no one out there who can make you happy? Maybe you haven’t climbed out of your 90% of crappy relationships yet. Keep looking There is no one that can make you happy. That's up to you. There are people that you can work well with and build a good relationship. That good relationship can help with the happiness but your attitude matters more.
dredmorbius 6y ago
90% of Sturgeon's Law observations are crap.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
Boy, this entry took a very fast nosedive to page 2. Does that mean that HN thinks it's in the 90%?
- dec0dedab0de 6y ago
  Usually that means there are too many comments in ratio to votes. I'm sure there are other triggers that can drop a story's rank too.
darepublic 6y ago
I look myself in the mirror.. and I ain't got nothing to say
mdrzn 6y ago
I don't understand blog articles like this with few lines of text and 7 backlinks to other articles from the same blog. Feels like promotion more than a conversation starter.

154 points by mcrittenden 6y ago

rabuse 6y ago

Doesn't this also relate to the Pareto principle?

grenoire 6y ago

This seems like... a bunch of very loosely connected ideas in a blog post.

CharlesW 6y ago
To be fair, 90% of blog post ideas are crap too.

HenryKissinger 6y ago

I enjoy discovering new music a lot. I'm also extremely selective in picking the songs that go into my personal music library. Maybe 5% of the songs I listen to, _within the subgenres I already prefer_, make it. I don't disagree with the author, based on my narrow personal experience.

polka_haunts_us 6y ago

Eh. I like the phrase but I disagree with the premise you apply to it. If I were defining a few things about myself I would say "I like Anime" and "I hate EDM". I keep ratings for every anime I've ever watched, the average score is about 7.48/10. Objectively, a lot of it was crap that I would never recommend to anyone, but it's crap I enjoy. On the other hand, there are EDM songs I like that are on my playlist on Spotify. Even though I'll happily listen to them, they don't make me think "Wow, I really need to test my view that I don't like EDM". I already know I don't like it. The fact there are exceptions doesn't make it not a useful rule for me to follow when choosing music. IMO the healthier attitude, rather than seeking out things you don't like, is to leave yourself open to things you don't like, particularly in a group setting. It's very annoying lately, my group of friends wants to play video games after work, but everybody has some kind of game type they don't like that makes it hard to reach consensus. Rather than being in constant pursuit of optimized personal pleasure, it's important that I sometimes just play the games I don't like so in the future they'll play the games they don't like with me. And then maybe by chance one of us actually will end up liking it despite ourselves. There's another layer here as well as to the scale of things. "I don't like EDM" is a very differently scaled statement than "I don't like Music". When confronting your own preferences, I think it's important to compartmentalize them appropriately. I identify myself as someone that likes anime, but I will never watch another shonen sports anime again willingly.

dmcginty 6y ago
To expand on what you're saying, there's a big difference between "I don't like X" and "X is bad". I've never been much of a wine person. It's not without trying. I've had everything from cheap boxed Franzia to a several hundred dollar bordeaux (that was totally wasted on me). I took a wine class where I was given samples and explicitly told "this is what good wine tastes like". I don't dislike wine and I don't think wine is bad, but the 10% of wine that is good doesn't appeal to me that much.
- fossuser 6y ago
  The wine example is a tricky one because there's another metric aside from like/dislike or good/bad that wine falls into. Maybe class related status bullshit? I enjoy wine, but I also recognize a lot of the snobbiness about it (particularly at the high end) is a mixture of snake oil and rich people looking for a place to buy more status. I remember some interview on NPR with a wine expert. The host was asking why in all the double blind trials people aren't able to consistently rate wines or even have consistent preferences. The wine expert complained that it's the fault of doing it double blind and 'when they're present with the people' (and likely giving them obvious clues about what's supposed to be good or not) 'they can tell the difference'. There's good/bad, like/dislike, but there's also true and fraud, high status and low status. Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference, sometimes there isn't a difference.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    The middle-class version of this is craft beers. Oh god, the grief I was getting from my friends once almost everyone got infected by the "I only buy expensive craft beers, and I care for taste" showmanship. To each their own, but I really do think that a particular brand of cheap, mass-market beer that I like tastes better, and it's also cheap. I have other things that I like to pay premium for.
- smogcutter 6y ago
  Yeah, I think where the trouble starts is when people take preferences as a declaration of some kind of Kantian universal imperative. So someone else’s taste becomes a judgment on you as a person. This drives people bananas on the internet, where you don’t have to treat other people like, you know, people. In particular, I think this accounts for the frothing rage that video game reviews can generate. For my part, I’m just glad I grew out of giving a shit what kind of music other people like.

rightbyte 6y ago

These unfounded aphorisms are quite tiring. I went to the store today and bought tomatoes. 100% was red and fine.

WJW 6y ago
Presumably the 90% of tomatoes that were not red and fine were made into ketchup or something like that. Of course if you select for an attribute first then that attribute is going to be over-represented.
- rightbyte 6y ago
  I giggled a bit, but the nice red tomatoe yield is quite high in my small garden experience.
  - ska 6y ago
    Otoh the seeds you got for your small garden were already heavily filtered... so maybe still applies?
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Of the remaining 10% that reached the shop, 90% were probably not perfect photo-like quality, and you can find them dumped in the trash can at the end of the day (if you can grab them before local freegans do, that is).
username90 6y ago
When items have reliable quality we call them commodities and suddenly stop noticing their quality.
PeterisP 6y ago
In a random store most likely 100% of tomatoes are crap, as stores overwhelmingly pick the varieties of tomatoes which are optimized so that they can be transported and stored and transported without damage and spoilage (and since logistics takes time, they have to be picked before they're fully ripe), trading off flavor, taste and nutrients. There are many tomato varieties that objectively taste much better (you don't have to be a snob or supertaster, the difference is obvious), but they are hard or impossible to distribute through modern logistics, you would have to live very close to the grower (or grow them yourself) so that you can eat them the day they're picked without driving them around half the country. And, of course, you get them when they're in season, not year-round. That's impractical, so most of us rather choose to eat crap tomatoes most of time - and so 90% of tomatoes are crap. Even if they're red and we consider that crap as normal, they're still crap in comparison.

adamc 6y ago

90% of hacker news is crap, too.

ecf 6y ago
Why yes, everything would include Hacker News as well.
- fny 6y ago
  Actually, 99% of HN is crap. 90% of the front page is crap.
  - maerF0x0 6y ago
    but does that 90% cluster on a particular user set, or is it 90% of each user's submissions are crap?
  - TrainedMonkey 6y ago
    I was going to say the same thing, there is insane amount of pre-filtering before we even see anything. So real proportion of crap things is somewhere above 99%.
  - nix23 6y ago
    Wow that's actually true, but our comment are too ;)
mhh__ 6y ago
I guestimate that the ratio to my eye is a bit better for HN on technology, but I'd also argue that anything outside business, science, and engineering the ratio is often worse - Political threads seem to really show off a lot of overstretching, both in issues of political economy and in often pretty blatantly tribal lack of due diligence that wouldn't fly if the thread were about (say) something just as easily google-able but technology (HN I love you, but you're bringing me down, and all that).
kuroguro 6y ago
And 90% of the comments too! :)

YarickR2 6y ago

90% of people are crap too ? That's mean

bryanrasmussen 6y ago
60% of people are water, 75% of feces are water.
- goatcode 6y ago
  100% of cancer has water in it.
  - u678u 6y ago
    The nazis drank water.
goatcode 6y ago
>90% of everything is crap Perhaps to someone who considers them things.

erik_landerholm 6y ago

I didn't know this was a "law", but i've been triangulating on this same feeling for a long time now. I would say it's 1%-10% of anything is actually good. You can basically apply this to almost any category, but for most things it doesn't really matter. I would guess while no two people would agree if asked to pick their top 5% of any one thing, if you tallied up all the votes and had enough participation, you could probably put together a list that would generally include the best of whatever that category is.

aidenn0 6y ago
The story behind it is interesting; critics complained about the low-quality of typical sci-fi. Sturgeon observed that 90% of novels in any genre (or pieces of art in general) are garbage, so the observation that "90% of sci-fi is crap" does not speak to the quality of sci-fi as a genre.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

noncoml 6y ago

> 90% of Everything Is Crap I guess this applies to this blog entry as well. And my reply here I guess.

comfrey 6y ago

There is a corollary to Sturgeon’s law which states: This remains true for the remaining 10%

username90 6y ago
Which would mean that it is actually "The bottom 90% is significantly worse than the top 10%".

maerF0x0 6y ago

Plus one on accurately quoting/applying strong opinions, loosely held. Anecdotally, most of the time I see this applied people just want someone to be easy to convince. Easy to convince should be a function of the data/reasoning that lead to the currently held choice. Until an exceeding choice is found, why relinquish the currently held one for one with _less_ data/rationale?

mywittyname 6y ago

>Think you hate poetry? Roller coasters? Banjo music? Thai food? Maybe you haven’t discovered the good 10% yet. Keep looking. Maybe liking something means appreciating the average. I like steaks. I mean, I really like dry aged t-bones, but I also like a simply seasoned sirloin. I wouldn't even turn down an well done hockey puck if it came with a baked potato. I don't like movies. You would never find me indulging in the latest Sharknado nonsense. But I can enjoying myself while watching a critically-acclaimed film.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

busterarm 6y ago

Yes.

goatcode 6y ago

Neat.

avrionov 6y ago

Not a good piece. Total waste of time.

Taylor_OD 6y ago

Sure. Recently I tried an Indian dish that quickly made Indian food go from being my 10th favorite option to my 1st. Turns out I just hadnt found the Indian food I loved until that night. Now it makes me wonder if there is an Italian dish I would love that much.

novaRom 6y ago
What was it exactly? As for Italian one, did you try Sicilian Arancini?
- Taylor_OD 6y ago
  Chickpea (Chana) Saag! Most of the chicken I've had in Indian food has not been very satisfying so finding a good veggie option was a game changer. I will try Sicilian Arancini!
aidenn0 6y ago
I can highly recommend veal saltimbocca as being worth a try.
- Taylor_OD 6y ago
  I will give it a try!

hartator 6y ago

> Remember: strong opinions, loosely held I am actually thinking the reverse now: Loose opinions, strongly held. It's better to a vague - loose opinion like "do not harm" but held it strongly than something precise like "never kill someone" but held it loosely.

dredmorbius 6y ago
The first (strong opinions) seems to relate to judgements. The second to values (how we arrive at judgements). There's a fair argument that values might need to be less rigorously arrived at but more tightly helf. Many values are beyond proof and more closely resemble axioms or premises. Even here some inclination to revise assessments might be warranted. E.g., "kill, if necessary to save your or another's life from one killing unjustly". Moral absolutes are hard to find. Interesting thought though.
- dingaling 6y ago
  The problem is that society expects everyone to have a pre-conceived judgement about every topic. I encounter this frequently. "What do you think about <some news event>?" . "Do you think <some music genre> sucks?". "What's your position on <divisive topic>?". Maybe I just haven't arrived at any opinion because it's not relevant enough to my life. And this insistence in finding someone's position on every topic has a negative effect on conversation, because someone's always ready to take offence. TLDR: as few opinions as possible, only relevant to your immediate circumstances
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    The expectations are frequently presumptions, but relatively weak. Often effectively conversation starter. Crossing convention may make for interesting conversations and/or friends.

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago

I'd go as far as 98%, but the problem is it's getting worse! Everybody's optimizing everything, creating ever crappier crap. To quote Jay Pritchett, "Crap. Crappacino. Charlie Craplin."

Der_Einzige 6y ago

Combined with the further "Strong Opinions, Loosely Held" this is very real advice. Broad statements like this tend to be very inline with our intuitions for many things - even if we must admit that they have very little "real" evidence. It doesn't mean that such common aphorisms don't have value or utility in our lives...

bgun 6y ago

> Maybe you haven’t discovered the good 10% yet. Keep looking. Keep in mind that 90% of your own opinions are crap, too - so you aren't likely to know the good from the bad even once you're exposed to it. To put it another way, you can't really know whether you like something or not until you've a) gotten over the fear of it, and b) learned how to do or recognize it competently.

insickness 6y ago

I think it would be more accurate to say, 90% of everything will be crap to you. I listen to a lot of music and it is true that 90% of what I hear I consider crap. However, tastes very widely. I could find an amazing song and show it to all my friends--who like the same genre of music--and only a fraction of them will love the song also.

bravura 6y ago

I'm a firm believer in this, having lived through "NYC used to be so cool" or "Burning Man used to be so cool." If you focus on the essential 10%, you learn what that thing really is about. NOW. Here's where it gets personal and interesting. I went with a friend to a shitty diner and ordered eggs benedict. I love eggs benedict. And he was like: "Why did you do that?" "I love eggs benedict!" "I love eggs benedict too, but I don't like lame eggs benedict." That struck me as so inconceivable. Then I remembered a friend who would constantly order shitty burgers by delivery. And I gave them such grief: "burgers are only meant to be enjoyed when they are amazing, why order a mediocre burger??" In retrospect, I realized that there are certain things that you will like even if they aren't great, once you appreciate them. And certain things you will only like if they are done the excellence. I like any egg benedict, even if it's lame. I am a snob when it comes to burgers. Switch this for your world-view. The important point is that you must learn to appreciate something, before you sort it into "I enjoy it" vs. "not good enough". You can't simply dismiss an entire genre based upon some theoretical a priori motive. But after you have tasted it, and I mean truly tasted it, you can decide whether you can be an elitist about it.

frenchy 6y ago
What you're saying is true most of the time, but some times a difference in quality really is a difference in kind. I'm really not a fan of most store-bought bread. I'd eat it if the alternative was homelessness, or if I thought I'd embarass someone by rejecting food they "made"; however, homemade sourdough bread is to die for. Generally, mediocre stuff can be pretty decent, and is worth trying to enjoy, but some crap is really just crap.

danschumann 6y ago

Then work on plumbing systems 90% of the time!

TeMPOraL 6y ago
Perhaps that's why every programming job I ever did involved 10% of interesting problems, and 90% of plumbing to connect the interesting bits?

thedracle 6y ago

I can decidedly say that more than 90% of literal crap is crap.

Lio 6y ago

> If you think you hate something, hold that opinion loosely by putting it to the test. Try to prove it false. Not just that but put it to the test again at some later date. Tastes can change over time and it’s fine to update your opinions.

themodelplumber 6y ago

> Keep your identity small. “I’m not the kind of person who does things like that” is not an explanation, it’s a trap. It prevents nerds from working out and men from dancing. Good one! Subjective identity is merely one's perspective on one's own past experience...why turn the future into the ultimate risk.

dang 6y ago

Related from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11395845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11395845

khalilravanna 6y ago

Two thoughts: 1) I think the view that “90% of people are crap” is incredibly misanthropic, cynical, and a view that would likely make the world a worse place if widely adopted. 2) I think enjoying the 90% of crap is maybe more important than enjoying the 10% of not crap. Being able to enjoy bad movies, bad music, bad art, bad everything is great. Who wouldn’t want to increase the amount of things they could enjoy by 2x or 3x or 9x? I watched Battlefield Earth recently and it was a blast! One of my favorite shows is How I Met Your Mother (which is "crap" if you define "crap" as "less than the 90th percentile in that medium"...it's prolly a 70 or 80th percentile show). Why be an elite who turns their nose up at things when you can enjoy both the things the elites like AND the things they sneer at? Sign me up for the trash!

xupybd 6y ago

>Then there’s relationships. Think there’s no one out there who can make you happy? Maybe you haven’t climbed out of your 90% of crappy relationships yet. Keep looking There is no one that can make you happy. That's up to you. There are people that you can work well with and build a good relationship. That good relationship can help with the happiness but your attitude matters more.

dredmorbius 6y ago

90% of Sturgeon's Law observations are crap.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

Boy, this entry took a very fast nosedive to page 2. Does that mean that HN thinks it's in the 90%?

dec0dedab0de 6y ago
Usually that means there are too many comments in ratio to votes. I'm sure there are other triggers that can drop a story's rank too.

darepublic 6y ago

I look myself in the mirror.. and I ain't got nothing to say

mdrzn 6y ago

I don't understand blog articles like this with few lines of text and 7 backlinks to other articles from the same blog. Feels like promotion more than a conversation starter.