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> “As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript”
by vikingcaffiene 5y ago
> “As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript”
I got some bad news for 2009 PG from the future…
- bigdict 5y ago> No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion Seriously, this reads like satire now.
- dnissley 5y agoI don't think it does, so long as one uses a sufficiently broad definition of religion (e.g. crypto, wokeness). Also my impression is that there was a spike of js hate ~3-5 years ago that has since subsided. I think it grew alongside the development of web applications, where more and more people who had little previous exposure to js were suddenly forced to confront it as some part of their workflow or other. Can you point to a big dust up thread about js recently? I can't think of one personally. At most there are various complaints about specific js technologies like npm. EDIT: Since everyone wants a definition of religion, here's the copypaste from my response downthread: Priests, holy writings, dogmatic beliefs, original sin, etc.
- IncRnd 5y ago> I don't think it does, so long as one uses a sufficiently broad definition of religion (e.g. crypto, wokeness). Crypto and wokeness are not religions in the actual sense of the word religion. It's a shame that people redefine words in order to change their meanings to fit what they are saying.
- dnissley 5y agoI suppose it's too soon to tell if they take off, but they seem to fit the bill to me: Priests, holy writings, dogmatic beliefs, original sin, etc. As a way of bounding this definition, I don't think javascript would count as a religion. Although perhaps I'm not sufficiently tapped into that world to make the necessary parallels.
- cjohnson318 5y agoDo all religions have a concept of original sin?
- dnissley 5y agoDefinitely not, although any grouping of beliefs with a concept mapping to original sin strikes me as religious. So kind of a "not all rectangles are squares but all squares are rectangles" situation.
- IncRnd 5y ago> I suppose it's too soon to tell if they take off, but they seem to fit the bill to me: Priests, holy writings, dogmatic beliefs, original sin, etc. Your list left out one thing that is in the definition of the word, religion.
- Geezus_42 5y agoAnd that is?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wernercd 5y agoBring up tabs vs spaces or ;'s at end of lines or spaces as code (IE: Python) and watch the fervor over opinions fly. You may not call it "religion"... but deep held beliefs of the Only True Way come out and I'm not sure what else it should be called.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Geezus_42 5y agoZealotry?
- SyzygistSix 5y agoI'd go with superstition.
- Geezus_42 5y agoThat the evolution of language, it's been going on for hundreds of thousands of years...
- SyzygistSix 5y agoNo, it's a game of labels, where people like to slap labels on things to assume commutative properties of other things they have attached labels to in order to celebrate or condemn the people who identify with those labels.
- lliamander 5y agoI get there similarities, but I worry we are engaging in semantic diffusion. If we define religion as "anything people get super passionate and opinionated about" then it's pretty much tautological that people will argue about such things, without telling us anything about why such arguments start in the first place.
- cjohnson318 5y agoHow do you define religion? And how does crypto and wokeness fit into that definition. I feel like you're using crypto and wokeness in a perforative sense, but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, and assuming you have a working definition that's interesting and useful.
- fortran77 5y ago> Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums? Or knitting, or Rust, or the second amendment, or patents, or bitcoin, or Prop 13, etc.
- cratermoon 5y agoemacs or vi? windows or linux? Kirk or Picard? Marvel or DC? Han shot first!
- swiley 5y agoSystemd or openrc? Wayland or Xorg? Python or Go?
- cratermoon 5y agoQWERTY or Dvorak?
- nandhinianand 5y agoDvorak all the way. to eternity.. :-P
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ineedasername 5y ago1) Neither: Nano 2) Neither: VMS 3) Neither: Dr. Who 4) Neither: Family Circle 5) That is correct
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hkmurakami 5y agoSecond amendment is religious text.
- axiom92 5y agoFurther down the article you will see: >For example, the question of the relative merits of programming languages often degenerates into a religious war, because so many programmers identify as X programmers or Y programmers.
- nomoreplease 5y agoI noticed that to. PG contradicts himself within a couple paragraphs
- xwdv 5y agoGod those were simpler times back then.
- systemvoltage 5y agoTotally agree. Politics has ripped the fabric of society. I vividly remember how political discourse was in 2009. It was nowhere near as toxic, fascist, rage-fueled, woke, and dangerous as it is now. What has been lost? Truth. We've stopped caring about seeking truth and instead have resorted to subscribing to mob-mentality. Equally applies to both sides. The mere act of listening to both sides is considered as "silence is crime". WTF people. HN is probably one of the better places to have a political discourse but it has also suffered. I yearn for pre-social media days.
- runawaybottle 5y agoYou are discounting the fact that 8 billion people are connected (nth-removed at worse) to the largest communication network ever. There are legitimately only large mobs at this point. We’re fundamentally struggling with scale and there’s no two ways about it.
- systemvoltage 5y agoI yearn for pre-internet days :-)
- Kinnard 5y agopg is certainly religious about lisp . . . http://paulgraham.com/diff.html http://paulgraham.com/diff.html http://www.paulgraham.com/quotes.html http://www.paulgraham.com/quotes.html
- nine_k 5y agoThis happens to every question into which people are so emotionally invested that even discussing any modifications or alternatives seriously is painful for them. That is, when it's a part of one's identity, like religion, or [list other protected classes here]. Maybe in 2009 people around pg were not emotionally invested in JavaScript so much. Like,they were more professional, or maybe just still preferred Lisp and didn't care about JS much. In any way, the whole thread here just illustrates the pg's point, which only grew stronger since 2009.