62 ms·

Ask HN: What is your strongest contrarian opinion?

• LinuxBender 5y ago
  I have hundreds of them. Watch this post get blasted into /dev/nullian. 1a) There never should have been a Covid lock-down, nor should there have ever been a vaccine created. 1b) People's income tax rates should be based on how healthy they keep themselves and how healthy they eat, their lack of smoking and drinking and if they are parents, how healthy their children eat and how much exercise all of them get.
  • throwaway210222 5y ago
    Yeah, I wouln't post this under my real name either.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • fsflover 5y ago
    Sounds like it would require a huge surveillance apparatus. Oh, wait...
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    1a) The former I can understand an argument for even if I disagree with it. The latter seems balls-out ridiculous though; are you against vaccines in general or just ones for diseases that kill a lot of people? 1b) I'm going to guess you're from a country with a socialized health care system?
    • oceanplexian 5y ago
      The idea that a leaky vaccine might create selective pressure to encourage a more resistant COVID virus isn’t all that far fetched. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have created the vaccine but a few months of clinical trials isn’t going to answer the right questions.
  • White_Wolf 5y ago
    1a - Lockdown wise - 100% with you - Don't put all society on hold to protect the vulnerable. Protect the vulnerable and leave everything else alone; vaccines - should of been created but give only to those that wish it or those "at risk" and only after proper testing. Don't use everyone as lab rats. 1b - Yes please.
    • junon 5y ago
      The whole "vulnerable vs. non-vulnerable" debate is null once you actually understand how viruses work, though. The whole point of preventing spread was to also prevent mutation/variants - the same reason why everyone getting vaccinated is important.
    • lamontcg 5y ago
      There was proper testing of vaccines. You only ever need six months of it. https://bostonreview.net/science-nature/andrew-l-croxford-long-term-safety-argument-over-covid-19-vaccines https://bostonreview.net/science-nature/andrew-l-croxford-lo... And its a myth that the virus only affects some neat tidy subpopulation like those over 70. Places like Idaho are rationing care in their hospitals where the ICUs are full of unvaccinated younger COVID cases. Care for COVID patients is also resource intensive and requires weeks in the ICU which makes its impact on the hospital system disproportionately high for every single case. https://www.npr.org/2021/09/17/1038180254/all-the-hospitals-in-idaho-are-rationing-care-because-of-covid-19-surge https://www.npr.org/2021/09/17/1038180254/all-the-hospitals-... Doctors are now deciding who is going to die by denying people medical care because there isn't enough to go around and practice the kind of triage that that we haven't even practiced in war zones for a long time.
  • bloodyplonker22 5y ago
    I believe the topic of this thread was to post contrarian ideas, while also implying that they would be at least somewhat smart ones.
  • oceanplexian 5y ago
    On (1a) I’m sure the vaccine argument will rile folks up but here we are in 2021, with half of the population fully vaccinated, and cases and deaths are at similar or greater levels as they were for most of 2020.
    • hhmc 5y ago
      Well yes, but who is dying, the vaccinated or the unvaccinated?
  • indrax 5y ago
    I agree with incentivizing health in general. Doing so without providing healthcare seems wrong. Doing so through income tax rates is muddling the issues. The rich would hire dieticians and trainers just to save money. If public health is actually a priority, those kinds of services would be subsidized.
• goatcode 5y ago
  Pair Programming as a first-class citizen is stupid.
  • Jtsummers 5y ago
    What does this mean? As in, "Pair Programming as a mandatory thing is stupid"? That's sensible, otherwise this is hard to parse. It's a tool/technique, like rubber duck debugging with a person present to bounce ideas off of in real-time. It works for some people, it doesn't for others. Use it if it works for you, don't if it doesn't.
    • jstx1 5y ago
      That's reasonable. But there are companies out there that pair 100% of the time - no code is ever written by a single person. Sounds like hell.
      • angrais 5y ago
        What would make it hell for you?
        • Jtsummers 5y ago
          I think GP is referring to the 100% pair programming being hell. Pair programming all the time would be hell if you didn't get to choose your partner and/or you needed time away from them for any reason. Do you really want to spend every moment programming sitting next to some other person with one of you driving and the other speaking? Every moment? Maybe if you find the right partner (I had a couple colleagues who, for all practical purposes, were always paired with each other). But good luck finding that in every office you could ever work in.
    • goatcode 5y ago
      > mandatory Pretty much that, or as the first place to go every time, for every card, by everyone. I agree with you: it's a useful tool, but it should be natural and any policy around it should be mutable.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• aazaa 5y ago
  Most high school students shouldn't go to college. It's not very contrarian here, but outside of tech circles in the US it's very unpopular. Hated even.
• fsflover 5y ago
  Software created using taxpayers’ money must be released as Free Software: https://publiccode.eu https://publiccode.eu.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Is this contrarian? I'd imagine this is actually an incredibly popular opinion shared by basically everyone except government software contractors and some associated officials.
    • Jtsummers 5y ago
      And it's technically how things are in the US. If US federal employees write some software, it's technically in the public domain. Classification levels may cause it to be hidden. It's when a contractor develops it that it starts getting murkier, the terms of their work determining ownership and, consequently, copyright.
    • fsflover 5y ago
      If it was "incredibly popular", this petition would have much more than 30k signatures...
    • indrax 5y ago
      It is unpopular among university and research institutions that get federal grants. Also development companies that win contracts to create government websites/backends. I agree with it, but it would disrupt a whole industry.
  • nbhgfdffs 5y ago
    What about software for F18s or missile defense systems?
    • Jtsummers 5y ago
      My view: They should (and when written by government employees are) be public domain. But they ought to be classified to an appropriate level if they contain information that warrants classification. Where possible, the programs should be written in a more data-driven manner, where the actual classified portions are contained in data files that are separated from the program source code. This permits you to release the source code without issue (it tells you very little about the actual systems), and then you only have to keep classified the data used by the program and assembled (data + executable) system. If the program cannot be properly separated from something warranting classification, modular programming is the solution. Divide the program into an unclassified and classified portion. Keeping the former in the public domain and visible (at least with no more than a FOIA request, ideally with less effort) and the latter properly secured.
• AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Package managers are a terrible paradigm for distributing software. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28407598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28407598 - Recent overview of the argument against https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17441773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17441773 - I come away appropriately looking like an idiot in this one because I made many wrong assumptions about Haiku's package system, however I still maintain it was a bad decision https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17268775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17268775 - Some more argumentation about how to do things better https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24776127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24776127 - Related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19937228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19937228 - Vaguely related I know I have several more, but there doesn't seem to be a good way to search one's own post history on HN. (This statement has since been made obsolete by CRConrad)
  • CRConrad 5y ago
    > there doesn't seem to be a good way to search one's own post history on HN. Depends on how you define a "good" way, but surely https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=AnIdiotOnTheNet%20package%20manager&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... -- and the possible permutations of search terms and filtering and ordering -- isn't all that bad?
    • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      You must admit that having it hosted on a different domain and apparently not linked to from anywhere (at least as far as I can see) makes it pretty undiscoverable. That said, I had a hunch complaining about it would bring someone out who had a better solution than I did, and it worked, so thanks.
      • Jtsummers 5y ago
        It's not directly linked, but it is where the search box at the bottom of every page will take you. Algolia was a YCombinator company and since, at the time, HN had no built-in search they piggybacked on them to add the capability.
• 999900000999 5y ago
  The moment you turn 18 your parents owe you nothing. For better or worse I was kicked out multiple times as a teenager, and evicted, all before turning 18. I'm well aware that I'm simply not owed anything. However the worst human beings I've ever met are the 20 to 30 year olds who are still being taken care of by their parents, but don't appreciate it. They relentlessly complain about how poorly their being treated. A free place to live at 25 is great treatment as far as I'm concerned. I learned the hard way these folks just think everyone in the world owes them. They treat having a job as optional. They create endless amounts of unneeded chaos. As a related point, you need to set extremely high standards for anyone you enter into a relationship. You can't think oh it's okay, I really like this person, it's fine that they don't want to work. Nothing good comes from associating with people like this. With that said I've been exceptionally lucky in the last few years. Almost everyone I've dated recently has been independent and career driven. The girl I'm currently dating is easily everything I've ever wanted in a partner, she has a master's, knows 3 languages, and has a great job.
  • codegeek 5y ago
    As a parent, I think my duty is to teach my kids all important life skills as much as possible so that by the time they are an adult, they don't need us for much (except support if needed). I see a lot of young kids these days who are clueless and not sure what to do. Some of it I would tie back to parents not exposing them to enough things. But who knows.
    • 999900000999 5y ago
      While free will is often debatable, I think at a point it's up to an adult to decide what that adult wants to do. If you at 24 decide you don't want to finish college and you don't want to work, that's your right. I definitely would blame parents who enable this behavior and don't just kick the kids out. As far as I'm concerned, if I meet someone in their late 20s or early 30s who still doesn't want to work, I don't really care what their problem is. I don't need to hear a backstory about how their bosses mean to them when they were 19 and they swore off working forever. I simply know people like that can cause very real damage to my life and I see to avoid them. I have found insurgent cities there's a far higher concentration of these folks, which led to me moving a few years ago. Again, I don't care why Billy or Mindy doesn't want to work. I just know I'm not letting them in my life.
• literallyaduck 5y ago
  1. Taxes should be for a MVP minimum viable product for government. 2. Government should be 100% transparent in time of peace and offset by 1 year in time of war. 3. All government content creation should be public domain.
  • jbotz 5y ago
    I agree with 2 and 3, but can you explain 1 more?
    • quickthrower2 5y ago
      Sounds like a no bloat government. Problem is who defines that? Does it mean no police, no public healthcare? Minimal laws? Not sure.
• david927 5y ago
  I use the term 'bien pensant' as an epithet. I think if you "chew your food" intellectually speaking, you're going to come to some surprising conclusions that will not match conventional wisdom and that's nothing to be afraid of.
• White_Wolf 5y ago
  strongest: - Anyone (Male or Female) that hurts kids should be executed no matter what country they are in. Hunt them down like animals if needed. Others that would cause some heated debates. - All transportation should have a weight multiplier to the base price since every kg adds to the fuel usage. Nobody should have to pay out of their own pockets for you. - Social welfare should not be free. There are low skilled jobs that can be done by most. Missing both arms and other serious things are valid reasons not to do anything. Arachnophobia is not- I can vouch for this one personally. Panic attacks and all. - Immigrants (like me in UK) should not have a right to vote until they get citizenship. This is the proof that you actually understand the country you live in. - Election campain "propaganda" should be legally binding - Voting should be done with "personal" digital security certificate. Anyone involved in electrion fraud should have all assets confiscated and put in prison - Prisons should not be "free meals". You either work or study for a qualification in a field where there is a skill shortage. - Internet should be declared public utility and nobody should have the right to kick anyone off it. In most civilized countries you're as good as dead without it. - All platforms that reach the level of google search in peoples life should be declared public utility and punished for biases and manipulation of any kind. - All big + small taxes should be merged into one (for example 50%)
  • fsflover 5y ago
    > - All transportation should have a weight multiplier to the base price since every kg adds to the fuel usage. Nobody should have to pay out of their own pockets for you. So all poor people will have to be as skinny as possible with consequences for their health.
    • cyberbanjo 5y ago
      No, so people hauling heavy loads have to pay, and not everyone else.
  • jstx1 5y ago
    And I thought that my not liking Rust was contrarian...
  • 5y ago
• mbfg 5y ago
  You lose a day off your life everytime you declare a String variable.
  • mydeskistoosm 5y ago
    why? I'm newish to programming so this is over my head.
    • marcintuleja 5y ago
      I think mbfg may be referring to this https://devcards.io/stringly-typed https://devcards.io/stringly-typed
      • mbfg 5y ago
        indeed. The simpler a string is to use, the more abused it will be. Programmers, forever, have used strings to represent other types, including really complicated types, with machinations of various appending formats; eg: PROJECT-33/3293, where code is built to pull apart the string to get values. This is awful. Strings are not type safe in the loose sense of the word. (Nothing is intrinsically mandating the format, so invariably you will find other code doing PROJECT-33-3293, or PROJECT/32/3293 or whatever.) This is especially seen as map keys, rather than just using a first class, class. An obviously especially bad form of this is, String key = storeId + partId; as you can't differentiate between 12 + 3 and 1 + 23, but the compiler won't tell you this. Finally, although not particularly important, all this string formatting parsing is far less efficient than just simple bean classes. It is all done for the laziness of the writer.
• yuuu 5y ago
  Donald Trump was a president with good intentions.
  • thinkingemote 5y ago
    I think history will show one way or the other.
  • Ekaros 5y ago
    I would argue at least better than those before and after...
    • yuuu 5y ago
      I knew I would get downvoted for this, but whatever. ("We didn't ask for those types of contrarian opinions.") To explain my rationale, I read Fear by Bob Woodward and found Trump to be a more sympathetic character than one might expect. Whether you think he's incompetent or whatever, I thought the book really highlighted his sincerity.
      • rufus_foreman 5y ago
        What was in it that made him more sympathetic to you?
        • yuuu 5y ago
          It was quite a while ago that I read it, but I was struck by how adamantly he refused to budge on economic and military issues (e.g., free trade agreements and Afghanistan). Despite having 99% of his advisors screaming that the consequences of his decisions would be disastrous, he believed (like many others) that some things are generally bad for the country, no matter what statistics were presented to him. His efforts were often stifled by existing bureaucracy and his own advisors. I guess I'm more sympathetic because it seemed that his actions were a result of general distrust of experts and the status quo, not of malice. That should be something that a thread filled with contrarians should be able to appreciate at some level.
• AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  God exists - not just as a word or an idea; He is Someone who is actually there. Go is a good language for many uses (contra junon). C++ is also a good language for at least some uses, but requires more care to use well. Cheap food is killing us. AGI is a mirage, and the singularity is a fantasy.
  • fsflover 5y ago
    > God exists > AGI is a mirage This is a contradiction. If God exists and He created us, then we are AGI.
    • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      I see your point. But that isn't what is conventionally meant by "AGI". By the way, if the "universe is a simulation" people are correct, then we are also AGI (in your sense).
      • fsflover 5y ago
        > that isn't what is conventionally meant by "AGI" It's the same thing. AGI is possible to create in this Universe, if we were created.
        • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
          I couldn't disagree with OP more about God being a person or AGI being a mirage, but just because a being not subject to the laws of the universe was able to create an intelligent entity within that universe does not necessarily mean that any inhabitants of that universe or natural forces within it are able to replicate that feat. But I'm also guessing OP's meaning probably invokes a non-material source of intelligence, i.e. a soul, and that by "intelligence" they mean something more like "consciousness", something that experiences the world as opposed to an action-reaction construct like an algorithm or machine.
          • 5y ago
• junon 5y ago
  C is a good language, Rust is overengineered and rarely the right tool (in contrast to how often it's used), Go is a dumb language. Fight me.
  • fsflover 5y ago
    It's expected that on HN you give your arguments first.
    • junon 5y ago
      Not if I scream louder. I automatically win in that case.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  • the_only_law 5y ago
    I'll fight on the first one, don't care or know enough about Rust for the second and will agree on the third.
  • 999900000999 5y ago
    C is hard. Very very hard. In fact, as a teenager I tired C++( I know it's not exactly the same, but lower level languages are difficult) and found it so hard I stopped trying to learn programing for years. JavaScript, specifically Unity's implementation was my first programing language. Even today, it's my go-to language to get something done quick. Anything larger, like a video game for example, I'll use C#. Even of C was amazing 30 years ago, we have better tools now. You can make 200k writing C#, Python or JavaScript. Why make life hard with a low level language !
    • junon 5y ago
      > Why make life hard with a low level language Because I'm designing an operating system. None of those languages can do that. Also, I'm a maintainer of 2 of the top 10 packages on npm. Javascript is not a language I usually jump to when I care about performance or (extreme) portability. Lastly, C++ != C. They're similar and somewhat compatible, but entirely different at the same time.
• threshold 5y ago
  RISC-V’s success won’t benefit the end user, only spare designers a licensing fee they can well afford. After recompiling everyone’s software and dividing a huge unified ecosystem the end result will be some political victory with no material value.
  • mydeskistoosm 5y ago
    Isn't there some chance someone will manufacture laptops that people can have 100% confidence don't contain hardware-level backdoors?
    • threshold 5y ago
      100% confidence no way, not yet, but arguably it’s a small step in that direction. Building hardware with no backdoors is impossible unless you’re talking 70’s era technology. There’s a long list of reasons why
• anoncowardthrow 5y ago
  (anonymous for obvious reasons) Psychological therapy is the snake oil of the 21st century. See an actual doctor instead. I say this having recovered from a suicide attempt.
  • bananamerica 5y ago
    There are many things medication cannot do. Psychotherapy is often not about coming up with novel surprising changes, but rather providing alternatives behaviors to help you do what you most likely already know you should be doing. I'm sad it didn't work out for you, and I don't think everyone should be in therapy. But psychotherapy is overwelmingly proven to work.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    I kind of agree, although honestly I don't think doctor's are much better. Both suffer from the problem of 90% of them being just good enough at their job to handle the easy stuff and utter crap at anything else.
  • mathgladiator 5y ago
    I agree with this, but the truth is that you basically are buying a friend who will keep your secrets secret.
  • mbrodersen 5y ago
    I think therapy is basically paying somebody to listen. Which is a great service if you don’t have anybody really listening to you in your life.
• mikewarot 5y ago
  Computer security can be solved by using capability based security. Virtual Machines and containers are just improvised crude versions of it. We've got about 5 more years before everyone catches on to that fact, and things start to get better. The insecurity of general purpose computing has been a major factor in the walled gardens that most people stick to when using the internet. People don't realize the freedom we had back in the MS-DOS days when you could write protect your OS and try ANYTHING in almost perfect safety.
  • dento 5y ago
    Computer security cannot be solved as long as the users don't understand the decisions they are making, so that will never happen. Walled gardens exist to remove those decisions, so that users can't hurt themselves.
    • mikewarot 5y ago
      Imagine a wallet with cash in it... Ariel opens her wallet and takes out a Hamilton ($10 USD), and hands it to Beth. The most she can lose is the $10. In this scenario, the most Ariel can lose is that $10, no matter how evil Beth is. If Eva manages to impersonate Beth, still the maximum loss is $10. In no manner can the balance of Ariel's wallet be lost. If you have an operating system that never hands over the wallet to an application, but instead uses capabilities, in a clear and transparent manner, then the user is quite capable of doing the right thing, as millennia of experience have shown. Our current crop of OS choices don't even make it possible to select and built a capability on behalf of the user. There is no "wallet" analogy without capabilities. We're living in a world where you must hand over your wallet to anyone to complete a transaction... which is nuts.
  • gls2ro 5y ago
    Computer security cannot be solved with any technology unless you want to fix everybody in the world to be "good players". This will always be a hopefully balanced game between people trying to protect a system and people trying to get access to it/information. As long as there will be people that want to hack a system, that system will never be secured 100%. Here is one example: There is such a thing as hacking air gapped systems. So there is no amount of containers that you can add to protect you from bad actors.
• jstx1 5y ago
  The more a language or paradigm is touted as some amazing revelation by a small group of people, the less likely I am to like it. Rust, Julia, Haskell, pure functional programming, lisp-for-lisp's sake etc. I develop an instant negative reaction to what looks like a cult from the outside.
  • Jtsummers 5y ago
    You don't even learn them enough to be able to articulate an argument against them? You just reject them outright?
    • jstx1 5y ago
      I've played around with each of them. I'm not criticising them technically - they all have great aspects and can teach you a lot even if I think on the whole they're overrated. My reaction to the communities that they have makes me less likely to engage more with each of the languages. I also know that some of these languages have very well regarded communities - that's why this is my response to OP's question.
    • armchairhacker 5y ago
      I’ve used Haskell and Racket (lisp), and while they’re great for learning fun new ways of coding and very specific use-cases, they’re terrible general-purpose languages. I’ve also used Julia, albeit less, but i don’t really see the “amazing-ness” of it. Although I come from a typed-languages background with a good IDE, so I can definitely see how it’s amazing to someone coming from Python or R. Rust honestly is IMO a great language and a huge step from C++. But again, it’s not the end-all, I still usually pick Java / Kotlin or something else unless performance really matters.
      • nextos 5y ago
        Julia is great because it's fast and you can develop everything in a single language. Take PyTorch or TensorFlow for example. They are hard to understand because they are a mix of C++ and Python. Whereas Flux.jl is a pure Julia library and performance is comparable. There are even efforts to build a pure BLAS replacement in Julia, and performance is comparable to FORTRAN. If you are into scientific computing, this is amazing because it lets you operate at a much higher level, close to mathematics.
• ilyash 5y ago
  I'm working on my own programming language since 2013 so I am thinking about programming quite a bit. So here is the summary of those years: * All programming languages suck. We are not there yet as humanity. I can not think outside of the box enough to make the breakthrough that should be made, at least as of now. While looking at other programming languages, I see the same issue: inability to express thoughts in concise and straightforward manner. Unsolved issue. * The only idea in programming that I consider definitely good is pattern matching. Note that I'm talking about the concept here. No particular implementation strikes me as "yep, this is it": be it limitation to strings only (regex) or syntax-only implementation (preventing composability of the patterns) or some other sh*t. Have a nice weekend!
  • philwelch 5y ago
    > All programming languages suck. I'm not sure this if is a contrarian opinion, but this is one of my biggest career takeaways. Every programming language I have used for an extended period of time turned out to suck. Whenever I find a new programming language that doesn't suck, I end up using it enough to discover the specific way in which it sucks. So I've inferred that every programming language I haven't extensively used, and doesn't seem to suck, will just end up sucking in some way I will ultimately discover.
    • ilyash 5y ago
      > specific way in which it sucks. This I don't have objective data but it seems that I'm reaching the "they did what?" pretty quickly when I read about yet another language. Don't need to start using it even.
      • philwelch 5y ago
        The good(?) news is that this has helped me get over my instinct of, "I don't want to use this language because it sucks". You want me to use Java? OK, as long as we're using Java in a situation where the specific way in which Java sucks is a smaller issue than the specific way in which any alternative language would suck.
• brtkdotse 5y ago
  Computer science degrees are a waste of time and money unless you want to go into academia. If you ignore FAANGs you can get a very comfortable job as a developer after a bootcamp & internship.
  • markus_zhang 5y ago
    I think some recruiters filter out people who don't come from a CS background. I think maybe something like a diploma route that concentrates on the CS courses are a better choice. You still get the proof but avoid those garbage irrelevant courses you are forced to take.
    • brtkdotse 5y ago
      See the “ignore FAANG” part :)
      • markus_zhang 5y ago
        The thing is that I don't know which one filters out :/ (I'm pretty sure it's not just FAANG and I know in some country they completely ignore anyone that doesn't have a university degree). But anyway I do feel that my CS education right now (just a few courses into a graduate diploma) ONLY serves as some push for me to complete my study. I'm interested into CS but not that interested to devour everything on my own, so taking some courses is helpful on that perspective.
  • oceanplexian 5y ago
    I worked at the FAANGs and a non negligible number of people either dropped out of college or have no degree.
    • markus_zhang 5y ago
      Are they new hires? Is everyone has 0 connection inside?
  • 908B64B197 5y ago
• oceanplexian 5y ago
  Automatic software updates are a terrible idea. Not only do they make systems and devices less reliable but they are a vector for a malicious entity (Maybe even the vendor themselves, see Apple & CSAM)
  • fsflover 5y ago
    Automatic security updates are important.
    • duped 5y ago
      Unfortunately they're not propagated through different channels
      • fsflover 5y ago
        In a reasonable OS, e.g., Debian, they are.
        • xyzzy21 5y ago
          Not every OS is connected to the internet... Not every OS connected to the internet can afford the risks of bad updates (which are far more common than proponents think/claim)
          • s3krit 5y ago
            Debian package management doesn't have to rely on an internet connection. You could have the source of the security updates be a cd or USB stick or something with no problems
  • GPerson 5y ago
    I hate automatic software updates. Is there a large contingent out there who loves them?
    • 5y ago
• zozbot234 5y ago
  This thread is supposed to be for strong contrarian opinions - stuff that you actually believe, that you think others don't. Most replies aren't really doing that. (Yes, this is my actual answer. I do expect that others will object to it.)
  • fsflover 5y ago
    It would be useful if you listed which posts exactly are not contrarian and tell why you think so.
    • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      Not OP, but: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28566111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28566111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28569366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28569366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28568600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28568600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28566108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28566108 All are actually pretty popular opinions, especially on HN. Personally I interpreted the original question to be asking for opinions contrary to prevailing HN sentiment.
  • thinkingemote 5y ago
    Is this comment itself a contrarian idea?
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• bananamerica 5y ago
  I like The Prequels.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Wow, that's actually a very contrarian opinion both in the general population and HN's demographic.
    • bananamerica 5y ago
      Yes. And I'm not young. I knew the original trilogy very well when the prequels came up.
  • Dig1t 5y ago
    This is me, except with the Game of Thrones ending ;P
    • bananamerica 5y ago
      I love Game of Thrones but was afraid to watch the ending because I couldn't find a single person that like it. Not there's hope.
      • skydhash 5y ago
        Just don't. It's not worth it. Pretend it was cancelled
    • bakuninsbart 5y ago
      Well that just makes you a donkey. Sorry, I'm generally trying to be polite on here even to people supporting outrageous opinions like the usage of torture or the death penalty. But supporting the last season of GoT is going one step to far, how could you reach such a depraved opinion?
      • bananamerica 5y ago
• SirensOfTitan 5y ago
  Compulsory education that assumes each kid is a uniform widget to be produced is a terrible way to develop people. People think so little of children and their capacity to learn, engage, and understand that they compel them to spend some of the most dynamic years of their life learning about things they don’t care about that they promptly forget in adulthood. Kids are natural learning machines and we murder that natural curiosity and capacity for mastery through school. I think there are better ways. We cannot, for example, teach kids about democracy in environments that give kids often less agency than prisoners in prisons. Democratic schools like Summerhill, Sudbury or unschooling are good starts. Kids at those schools have control over their schedule: if they want to keep a more structured schedule, they can, if they want a more relaxed schedule, sure. Each kid also has a vote in how the school is run, including in a judicial system for administering discipline. At the very minimum, ending age segregation policies at schools would be a good start for more dynamic learning.
  • zozbot234 5y ago
    Compulsory education is not about developing kids as people. It's glorified daycare.
    • GPerson 5y ago
      I generally agree with this, and I also think it implicitly serves a few other purposes in addition to being daycare. High school gets people used to the idea that they will spend their lives following a schedule and producing things. It also promotes the idea that we live in a community and teaches us about interacting with one another; (probably not in the most effective way). There’s also an element of teaching us about or maybe indoctrinating us into a particular system of work/reward which our society is supposed to operate under.
  • 908B64B197 5y ago
    > We cannot, for example, teach kids about democracy in environments that give kids often less agency than prisoners in prisons. > Each kid also has a vote in how the school is run, including in a judicial system for administering discipline. That's admirable.
• kleer001 5y ago
  Repeat violent criminals should have the option (and be encouraged) to have elective castration to reduce their sentencing. This will hopefully reduce their violent impulses and reduce their progeny. Relatives should be somewhat culpable for the repeat violent crimes of their parents/children/siblings, anyone who shares at least 50% of their genes. With, of course, escape clauses if they're distant, estranged, or never heard of them. Religion should be as personal as sexual behaviour.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • anotherevan 5y ago
    Have you read Neanderthal Parallax trilogy[1] by Robert Sawyer? It portrayed a culture that had some of your views regarding crime and culpability of relatives. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/series/40828-neanderthal-parallax https://www.goodreads.com/series/40828-neanderthal-parallax
    • kleer001 5y ago
      Yes, that's where I got the idea. I'm sure there's plenty of reasons it wouldn't work when attempted in a real world culture, let alone the resistance from getting laws about it passed. Such lovely and fun ideas in that trilogy! Second IMHO only to the Culture novels in terms of semi-realistic deep social world building.
  • niij 5y ago
    Culpability of relatives for unrelated crimes exists in North Korea. Does anyone else have an example of countries that do this.
    • kleer001 5y ago
      I think I remember hearing that it existed to some extent in Old German areas. Naturally it would have faded out as enlightenment ideas about freedom and science spread.
• illwrks 5y ago
  Contrarian you say.... Brexit is about introducing friction so that Tory party donors etc can have the opportunity to create companies that aim to 'make things and more frictionless' and then profit.
  • markus_zhang 5y ago
    One part of politics about creating chips from thin air (If you do this I won't harm you). Another one is profiting from fear (essentially the same thing but from a different perspective).
  • gukov 5y ago
    Pretty much every large government initiative introduces friction that makes someone really rich: - Patriot Act after 9/11 (defense industry, metal scanners, TSA) - Covid response (big pharma, hospitals, protective equipment, etc.
• dvdhnt 5y ago
  As the artificial facade of supposed shared values, propped up by global capitalism and pop culture, dissolves, it becomes quite apparent that while the internet connects us, we definitely do not share the same culture or held beliefs. Case in point, look at this thread - "what grinds your gears?" is the theme, and while some come through with what one might expect from HN (programming hot takes, critiques of entrenched systems), we're also getting quick responses espousing castration, the death penalty, imperialism, Trumpism, etc. We, my friends, are a cluster.
  • the_only_law 5y ago
    > it becomes quite apparent that while the internet connects us, we definitely do not share the same culture or held beliefs. Ooh I’ll agree on this one. And since I’ve seen a a number of people effectively advocate for nuclear war as a solution to economic problems, I’ll give my equally unrealistic and destructive solution to our cultural issues: Split up the US. It’s apparent that many people even within the same states and cities live in wildly different worlds. No way in hell they can all manage to have functional representation in government.
• 7402 5y ago
  Climate models should not be relied upon as much as everyone thinks they should.
  • boc 5y ago
    Say more?
• markus_zhang 5y ago
  Watch "Yes Minister" and "Yes Prime Minister" and you can get a lot of contrarian opinions.
  • Ekaros 5y ago
    I can't decide which I prefer the political class or the mandarin class... Maybe being contrarian I would go with mandarins...
• mydeskistoosm 5y ago
  - Contemporary feminism hurts most women and encourages relationship-sabotaging behavior. - The narrative that the US and other Western nations' participation in white supremacy and slavery/colonialism is the main societal influence today is overblown and is likely leading to unnecessary political violence and turmoil. - I don't think abortions should be banned, but generally speaking, it is incredibly easy to not get pregnant. Don't have sex. Unless you were raped, no one is 'forcing' anything on you, those were your decisions. It is baffling to me that no one says this out loud. - There are only two genders. - Kyle Rittenhouse acted in legitimate self-defense. The popular understanding of the case is beset with misinformation about what happened.
  • greenie_beans 5y ago
    oof! these are bad and pretty mainstream. not contrarian at all. so i guess my contrarian opinion is that most ideas like this that are assumed contrarian by the idea-holder are actually widespread and mainstream. contrarians think they're contrarian yet they're generally generic.
    • mydeskistoosm 5y ago
      I'm extremely confident I would lose my job if I expressed any of these out loud or on a social account connected with my name. I think that speaks to some level of contrarianism. You've said yourself that they're bad. You've also claimed they're mainstream, so unless you're being redundant you meant that they were 'bad' in the sense of 'bad ideas' not 'bad examples of contrarian ideas'.
      • valdiorn 5y ago
        Same with me. I hate how the media has just blatantly lied about the Kyle Rittenhouse case. I donated some money to his defence. That's not something I'd be happy to mention at work.
        • mydeskistoosm 5y ago
• philwelch 5y ago
  The web is a collection of terrible, short-sighted engineering mistakes that all compound each other unnecessarily. HTTP, HTML, CSS, and Javascript could probably all be scrapped and replaced with better standards. The only problem is that Google is probably the only organization capable of pulling that off, but Google's interests do not really overlap with the interests of most web users.
  • cuddlybacon 5y ago
    I agree. As someone whose day job doesn’t involve writing UI code, web UI still ends up being the easier of the two to implement.
  • ksaj 5y ago
    I think that is because we refer to everything using mixed metaphors. We "surf" "pages" on the "web" over the "information superhighway." If we had a uniform view of what it is, we might be able to make something of it.
  • muzani 5y ago
    It's not that contrarian. I think many modern web frameworks try to do this gradually. I wouldn't be surprised if Google attempted it and failed.
  • mbrodersen 5y ago
    I think you substantially underestimate how difficult it would be to come up with something “better” that can do everything HTTP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript can do. You are talking about the most successful global information system in existence. Outcompeting all other proposals/competitors. Good luck with that one.
    • philwelch 5y ago
      The problem is how many of the things the web does that I don't want it to, like spying on me and consuming ludicrous amounts of compute resources. And the fact that it's controlled by people whose desires and interests are contrary to that of the user.
• duped 5y ago
  Freedom of speech is problematic. The spread of covid misinformation today is as bad as shouting "fire" in a crowded theater and the people doing it on social media or in public should be held criminally culpable.
  • AnnoyedComment 5y ago
    Shouting fire in a theater is protected speech.
  • armchairhacker 5y ago
    I agree, except the issue with banning speech is that there’s no fine line. When does “covid misinformation” go from conspiracy theories (5G microchips) to skepticism (“does [X measure] really slow the spread”) to hard truths (the vaccine does cause adverse side effects in a small subset of the population). I have no problem censoring blatant misinformation, but i’d rather be more tolerant than censor something that might be true or modest.
  • version_five 5y ago
    This is a mainstream view
  • mikewarot 5y ago
    Had the public health authorities not burned through their credibility in the past, there wouldn't be a massive issue with non-authoritative views. It didn't help that they changed stories multiple times for dubious reasons.
• guilhas 5y ago
  Covid pandemic is a sham. The impact of the virus is being overblown. The virus was created/altered in a lab. The vaccination of most of the population has an ulterior motive
  • K0balt 5y ago
    What is the ulterior motive? I mean, the majority of the population already gets vaccines?
    • guilhas 5y ago
      Not after becoming adults, unless you need something specific, or take the flu vaccine, the majority were not having vaccines. Don't know why, can be some kind of study, or a drill for a biological war
      • boc 5y ago
        The sooner you realize that nobody is running the world from the shadows, the better off you'll be from a mental health standpoint.
        • guilhas 5y ago
          Thanks reverse Morpheus! here I was thinking the shadows was the ONLY place the world is run from
• HarHarVeryFunny 5y ago
  That we're just meat machines with no free will? Not exactly contrarian perhaps (just per laws of physics), but probably a one-percenter opinion.
  • GPerson 5y ago
    Laws of physics are mathematical constructs. You can’t prove or disprove the existence of free will with a mathematical formalization.
    • HarHarVeryFunny 5y ago
      Well, no, and you can't prove that tomorrow you won't see a pig just start floating in the air. The thing with the laws of physics is they they appear to predict 100% of what happens in nature. No one has ever seen something in nature, or in the lab, that either couldn't have been predicted by the physics of the day, or later after new laws theories were created. So.. either your muscle fibers are controlled by your neurons, acting according to their understood biochemical operations, i.e. the laws of physics/chemistry, or they are not... Free will says that your actions are not proscribed by the wiring of your brain and laws of physics - that you have a choice in what you do. Until someone observes a neuron not acting according to the laws of chemistry, that seems like an awfully long-shot belief, even if nothing can be ruled out. Perhaps someone in the future will discover the human spirit is controlling quantum behavior ?!
      • GPerson 5y ago
        You are saying, “no, the laws of physics are not mathematical constructs”..? If you’re interpreting “laws of physics” in your original post to mean “what’s really happening”, then your original post is effectively “Free will isn’t really happening because I believe it’s not really happening (laws of physics)”. It also sounds like you’re implicitly making assumptions that what’s really happening is obviously deterministic. This is not clear. “ No one has ever seen something in nature, or in the lab, that either couldn't have been predicted by the physics of the day, or later after new laws theories were created.” The list of contradictions to this statement is massive, unless you’re just asserting your faith that all questions will be answered.
• greenie_beans 5y ago
  this isn't contrarian, but all these people on here think they have contrarian opinions but they're pretty widespread opinions.
  • 0x456 5y ago
    The irony of a topic like this is that the algorithm will put the least contrarian opinions on top. Right now the most conventional/pedestrian opinion you could possibly imagine is listed first.
  • ivars 5y ago
    Because you are never "the only one". Truly contrarian opinions would sound like madness to us.
• bob229 5y ago
  Critical Race theory is absolute crackpot nonsense. That’s only contrarian though because the silent majority are cowards
  • mydeskistoosm 5y ago
    >because the silent majority are cowards I think part of it is because the language that those ideas are built on is intentionally very slippery. If you aren't extremely careful with how you word things, you wind up sounding like you're denying factual historical events. John McWhorter is the only voice I've heard so far who can reveal the swiss-cheese nature of the set of beliefs contained by the term 'CRT', and do so in the very language of the educated class that espouses CRT.
  • version_five 5y ago
    I think this is true about a lot of current orthodoxy. Most people know something stupid when they see it, but few want to stick their neck out so they just go along with it. Ths greatest enemy of freedom is apathy
  • mikewarot 5y ago
    Which Critical Race Theory? The narrow legal sense which is all about bias built into the system by layers of subversively racist laws? The Left political grift version which encourages performative virtue signaling instead of enacting actual change. The traditional grift version used to sell trainings where white people are told all evil is the fault of their whiteness? The Right political grift version which uses the worse excess of the above grift version to quietly silence pr forestall actual change. The social movement that acknowledges with (purposely?) bad language that the system is rigged, and needs to be fixed.
    • mathgladiator 5y ago
      This is what frustrates the debates because literally there are no shared definitions.
      • 5y ago
• 0xFreebie 5y ago
  The world was better in 1999.
  • bhelkey 5y ago
    Better how?
• cuddlybacon 5y ago
  Sticking to tech, I differ from the HN consensus on: * Small UI changes (eg moving a button) don’t make me have to relearn the UI from scratch. * If an app developer has a way were I can get my work done faster, I want to know about it. Getting shit done is more sacred to me than the workflow I built myself. * Related: devs do achieve the above. * Most documentation doesn’t explain anything that can’t be learned from a code completion engine. When I do have questions, Stack Overflow is more likely to have a concise explanation that the official docs. * Native apps are something only us devs give a shit about. * Functional programming isn’t catching on for two reasons: the on boarding experience is missing things (mostly the big picture aspects of structuring an app) and b) Haskell is the post child of functional Languages.
• fsflover 5y ago
  Everyone should be using Qubes OS [0] to get a reasonable security on desktop. [0] https://qubes-os.org https://qubes-os.org
• gremloni 5y ago
  Everyone is happier, women included when we stick to household chores and raising children.
  • aklemm 5y ago
    What do you mean by “we”? Are you a woman? A happy woman keeping house, raising kids, and cruising Hacker News?
• Nevermark 5y ago
  I don't agree with "No Silver Bullet". The idea that no single advance in software engineering can make an order or more magnitude of difference in productivity. Software, like every other area of endeavor, contains no inherent barriers to major advances relative to regular advances. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet Many laws of "can't" are just dressed up pessimism. Many things never happened before they did. I am not saying such an advance will happen. Just that it could.
  • cowanon22 5y ago
    "No Silver Bullet" is similar to "Moore's law" - an observation rather than an absolute rule. In both cases, the authors were only projecting into the future 10 years. It is just measurement, not pessimism or optimism. The fact that "No Silver Bullet" is still true 35 years later show just how hard progress can be.
    • Nevermark 5y ago
      Fred Brooks wasn't just making an observation. He was making a case that there was no room for such significant jumps in software efficiency because most software development was now focused on essential complexity, not accidental complexity. http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf That argument does not hold water to me for two reasons: 1. I think a lot of programming, from glue code to optimization to bug fixing, is still accidental complexity. 2. The level of reuse is still nowhere near reflective of the fact that the majority of code is recoding of already well known algorithms, patterns, and methods with only slightly differences for the current problem context. This happens for business, technical and social reasons. So I see huge potential for progress. Whether that progress will ever involve a 10x improvement due to a single major insight I don't know. But there is room for it to happen.
      • goto11 5y ago
        Sure there is huge potential for progress, but Brooks have not argued otherwise. He just states there will not be a single invention which will increase productivity 10x across the board. Just as an example, a lot of developer time is spent trying to understand some legacy code in order to apply a fix. No single programming technique or tool will make that go away.
• cpach 5y ago
  Nearly all misery in the modern world is caused by the invention of agriculture.
  • armchairhacker 5y ago
    If humans never invented agriculture we might still be living as hunter-gatherers. So our problems would mainly be getting food, shelter, preventing injury, and infection - problems most people don’t face today. Jobs, boredom, pollution, rare diseases - hunter-gatherers don’t deal with these. So you’re right, nearly all misery is caused by agriculture. Except, not everything. We still deal with inferiority, finding mates, unwanted sexual advances. Pride is an issue today and it has been an issue before we were even humans.
  • leobg 5y ago
    Probably true. But agriculture is what made possible the explosion of population growth. One result of which is you and me. So if agriculture brought about misery, our existence is part of it. In other words: Without agriculture, we wouldn’t be less miserable. We just would not be, period.
    • cpach 5y ago
      I agree! And for the record: I don’t believe it’s possible, or desirable, to go back to the hunter-gatherer era. As Trevor Horn would have it: “We can’t rewind, we’ve gone too far”
  • rufus_foreman 5y ago
    That is pretty contrarian, I thought the cause was man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• gremloni 5y ago
  Freedom of speech should have specific limitations around hate speech. Hate speech should be defined as racism and sexism.
  • GPerson 5y ago
    Who gets to define what racism and sexism are?
    • gremloni 5y ago
      A government agency with specific reviews periodically. Alternatively something akin to the chamber of commerce— a public private partnership.
      • mythrwy 5y ago
        Ah so exposing government corruption is hate speech then!
        • gremloni 5y ago
          That’s like saying exposing commercial corruption can be a crime since the chamber of commerce is in charge of it. Agencies exist for a reason.
          • gameman144 5y ago
            Hrmm, I don't think this carries through -- chambers of commerce are private organizations, so they don't carry the threat of governmental overreach behind them.
            • gremloni 5y ago
              They absolutely do. Hence why I used the public private partnership moniker.
      • GPerson 5y ago
• akudha 5y ago
  Patriotism is a dumb idea most of the time. For example, seeing people shouting their country names in sports events etc for no reason is just plain weird - it is just sporting event, why not just enjoy the sport, have a beer, have fun and go home? We are almost at 2022 - a virus originating in one country spread across the world within months. We are dependent on each other much more than any other generation. Unless the human race acts united, huge problems like climate change aren't going away. Instead of classifying problems based on borders, we should look at all problems as human problems, not Chinese, American, Russian or whatever.
  • triceratops 5y ago
    I agree in general that patriotism is dumb. But honestly sports events are probably the healthiest place to channel any patriotic feelings - bragging rights are literally all that's at stake for the audience (and gambling winnings, I guess).
    • the_only_law 5y ago
      > bragging rights are literally all that's at stake for the audience (and gambling winnings, I guess). Almost… https://youtu.be/PFFFa9M4T80 https://youtu.be/PFFFa9M4T80
  • version_five 5y ago
    I don't think this is very contrarian. Competition, even with no underlying reason (like patriotism) is what improves things. Some "united human race solving global problems" is just dressing up a centrally planned economy, which demonstrably has worse outcomes for almost everyone. There are lots of totalitarians that believe their cause (e.g. climate change, covid) is so important that it should take precedence over market forces (i.e. what people want). Maybe you are advocating that, but its not a contrarian opinion, it's what every armchair slacktivist technocrat is pushing for, as long as it mainly applies to others.
    • akudha 5y ago
      I don't think this is very contrarian. I dunno, the recent increase in rhetoric across the world seems otherwise. Trump, Modi, right wing in Europe etc I didn't mean anything close to centrally planned economy. Countries can certainly work together without having a rule by committee type situation.
• philipkglass 5y ago
  It's a misallocation of resources for the state to try to save adults who don't want saving. If a drug addict doesn't specifically request help to beat their addiction, it would be simpler and cheaper for the legal system to give them as much of the drug as they want. They'll either become functional addicts or just finish their slow-motion suicides. Either is less wasteful than forcing them into rehab or incarceration.
  • mydeskistoosm 5y ago
    I kind of agree with this, but I've thought about it and it typically leads to an ugly sort of huxleyan society where most people wind up on drugs that are being provided by the government
• indrax 5y ago
  There is virtually no real diversity in experimentation on social decision making processes. (Governments, Economies, Science) So debates devolve into some form of e.g. capitalism vs. socialism, but both system are governed by similar variations of a sovereign nation state, which are adapted from monarchies. Compare this to the space of all possible government descriptions and we're only looking at a weird narrow slice. Because evolutionary pressures on governments produce stability and power instead of 'goodness of people', I suspect any random system that sounds remotely sensible would probably be superior to anything we have now. If we actually designed something that took into account new knowledge and technology, we could do much better. Expectation of future profits is equivalent to belief that markets are inefficient. (Which of course they often are.) Open source economic planning could yield massive economic gains and doesn't require centralized power or use of force. (Pacifist governance is one of those unexplored spaces) An open public ledger would allow for resource allocation and incentivizing work without needing a monetization strategy. If we track and account for externalities doing a good thing funds itself. You don't need a way to take money from the people you're helping. This also disincentivizes negative externalities. As an example of how bad things are: We still debate on natural language forums instead of using structured arguments that link to common datasets and simulations. These comments get 'points' instead of bayesian probabilities, and there's no way to filter or rescore anything based on it's epistemological support or new data.
• closeparen 5y ago
  Very few people are cut out to be "book-smart." The education system must find and nurture those with the aptitude and the inclination, but should not try to force it on the rest.
• guidovranken 5y ago
  - Tor has done more harm than good for human rights - Alcohol does not make people more aggressive to a large extent. In the vast majority of clubs/festivals almost everybody is inebriated but violence is fairly rare (in my experience). (I'm a non-drinker btw so I have no horse in this race). - David Bowie's music is unremarkable. - We should keep Linux unpopular because the more users it gets, the more malware/spyware/advertising/telemetry it will attract. It is fine where it is now in terms of its userbase.
  • cowanon22 5y ago
    > Tor has done more harm than good for human rights Sad but true - it seems like every technology that is made to promote free speech, anonymity, or non-centralization ultimately leads to bad actors using it and more authoritarian laws being passed. I'm not sure what the solution is.
    • t-3 5y ago
      The solution is to do away with the source of authority; anarchy. Conveniently, this is also my answer to the question for this Ask.
  • threshold 5y ago
    David Bowie’s music is of the type where you need to listen several times to a track before the hooks function. Also every album is quite different, so perhaps it’s just not for you but I would suspect if you gave it more of a chance you may change your mind. I love his music.
  • rufus_foreman 5y ago
    >> David Bowie's music is unremarkable The Spiders from Mars music on the Ziggy album is remarkable. The remarkable role that Bowie played was as a connector. Some rock stars get lucky, get rich and famous, and then decide they are going to shoot up as much heroin as possible before they die. David Bowie got lucky and decided to use his fame to make the world a little bit closer to the way he wanted it to be. I never would have heard of Mark Ronson without Bowie, never would have heard of Brian Eno, might not have heard of Iggy Pop. Probably would have heard of Lou Reed but who knows. Those people made remarkable music. Bowie helped get them in the spotlight. But yeah, I haven't listened to "Let's Dance" in many years.
• goto11 5y ago
  Software developers are not as smart as they think. The most disastrous technical decisions I have seen have all come from developers, not from clueless non-technical managers. Things like "lets rewrite everything in foo-language, this will solve all our problems."
  • mbrodersen 5y ago
    I don’t think that point of view is contrarian? At least among the more experienced developers. My guesstimate that 80% of problems in software development are created by the software developers themselves.
  • strzibny 5y ago
    I personally really had to fight off clueless technical decisions from non-technical leaders, so it depends on where you are coming from.
  • Jensson 5y ago
    If clueless developers gets to make such decisions then the problem is that clueless management is too clueless to say no.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• lamontcg 5y ago
  We've proven we don't deserve the freedom of speech and we will be censored and regulated by private corporations. The Internet made people worse humans and not better.
  • mikewarot 5y ago
    Walled gardens whose algorithms maximize outrage have made things worse. Human beings were fine with internet access before that point, except for September... September used to be the time all the new students got their first internet accounts.
    • lamontcg 5y ago
      4chan and 8chan aren't walled gardens and september would normally end because some of the idiot freshmen would get their access yanked by whoever ran the NNTP servers at the school.
• sprkwd 5y ago
  The internet was a bad idea.
  • Ekaros 5y ago
    I don't know. Large automatically routing network is pretty good and useful thing... It just became horrible idea...
• version_five 5y ago
  The west lost the cold war, ideologically As a corollary, western society peaked in the 80s
• krapp 5y ago
  And you people consider yourselves contrarians. Let me show you amateurs how to upset an apple cart. Donald Trump, raging narcissist, charlatan and fascistic bigot that he was, was also the most authentically American President America has ever had. He embodied the American spirit - it's true spirit - unmasked and exposed in its full lunatic glory, and it should surprise no one that some Americans loved him enough to form an actual cult around him.
  • mathgladiator 5y ago
    Holy shit, that might be right. While I believe it was a disaster, it was definitely American spirit. This made me think about: https://youtu.be/rJjKP8vYjpQ https://youtu.be/rJjKP8vYjpQ
  • mbrodersen 5y ago
    I completely agree. Trump is the true honest American soul distilled into a single persona. Exposing all of the underlying hate, racism, narcissism etc. that most of public Americans refuse to acknowledge. I never thought that wasn’t obvious?
  • perilunar 5y ago
    That's not contrarian. I think a large proportion of the rest of the world would agree with this.
    • krapp 5y ago
      It's impossible to be contrarian to everyone, but it's contrarian to someone.
• timoth3y 5y ago
  > What is your strongest contrarian opinion? That it is pointless to ask that question on HN or any social site because actual contrarian opinions will be downvoted and hidden. The most popular "edgy" opinions will be voted as the most contrarian and be rise to the top.
  • the_only_law 5y ago
    > The most popular "edgy" opinions will be voted as the most contrarian and be rise to the top. Reminds me of r/unpopularopinion
  • anotherevan 5y ago
    Take my up vote.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • 6510 5y ago
    lets try: Academia is the art of archiving things discovered outside of it.
    • cblconfederate 5y ago
      And the art of stealing credit from immigrant workers that are locked-in an ecosystem for a period of years. I wonder when a #metoo will start in academia to complete the self-destructing cycle.
  • version_five 5y ago
    The majority appear to believe that actual contrarian opinions are "misinformation" and the average person isn't smart enough to be exposed to them without being corrupted, so only approved opinions, linked to reliable sources like government, should be allowed to be shared.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• Tarsul 5y ago
  Communism would've been the better choice for the world, not for the people of the 20th century themselves but for the following generations. We are destroying the world with our consumerism (capitalism) and we just can't stop although most of us know that what we do is wrong. We are all complicit and guilty. Everyone with a consciousness, when old, will look back to these days and know that s/he has done too little [or rather: consumed too much], full of regret and sadness. [Unless...] edit: yes, I'm talking about climate change.
  • Jensson 5y ago
    Soviet didn't use less energy than the west, they just had poorer living standards but they pollute just as much. I agree that the current consumption culture us bad, but socialism isn't the answer to that problem. All you need to do is to properly regulate capitalism, like some countries in Europe do. The only reason that doesn't happen in USA is that such regulations aren't politically popular. Socialism wouldn't help push through unpopular regulations, instead people would just vote to keep using oil anyway.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• sayonaraman 5y ago
  Expertise is overrated
  • aklemm 5y ago
    By definition, that’s impossible. Can you describe it more throughly?
  • mbrodersen 5y ago
    Right. So you prefer getting your life saving brain surgery done by a random person picked off the street instead of a trained brain surgeon who have successfully performed life saving brain surgery for 20+ years? Really?
    • sayonaraman 5y ago
      this is an exception that proves the rule
• alexitosrv 5y ago
  I fear we overcomplicated everything software/infrastructure IT related, and in the no so far future we will completely be dominated by huge mega corps. We already see something of that since the last 20 years, but also because of hubris and ego we continue making things harder and harder for new comers new hackers.
• erik_seaberg 5y ago
  The best thing you can do for a beginner is to train them into being an expert, not make beginner-grade tools. Climbing a high learning curve is good because they end up being more capable of solving harder problems. We shouldn’t shy away from things like domain-specific languages in the name of approachability; if you want a competitive advantage you have to do something not everyone else can.
• Vaslo 5y ago
  We shouldn’t downvote contrarian views in general, no matter how much we oppose them. Only when they get preachy or smarmy should we consider it.
• idoh 5y ago
  I could go on for days … A - The majority of data science insights is kinda useless for guiding software product direction. Much better to have a well defined strategy and just execute on that, tradeoffs and all. I have to engage in the game because that’s what my boss expects. B - In 100 years we are going to look back at pet ownership with disdain, especially cats, because how could we keep these animals in an environment that’s so restrictive if they are indoors, and how could we unleash them on the ecology if they are outdoors? C - If you want to help the poor, and save money on prison expenses, then funding public defenders is really the way to go. D - I love the US and what it stands for, but if there hadn’t been a revolution then no big deal, we’d probably be in the same place more or less. E - Govermentment intervention didn’t solve the great depression, it made it worse. I hold these all equally strongly.
  • cloche 5y ago
    > D - I love the US and what it stands for, but if there hadn’t been a revolution then no big deal, we’d probably be in the same place more or less. You could say this about most revolutions, and wars too for that matter. They accomplish little in the long run.
• todd8 5y ago
  One of my contrarian opinions (judging from the number of comments here) is that it is best to avoid posting controversial contrarian opinions on social media, including HN, in response to a question (e.g. Ask HN) especially if the OP asking the question is not a well established user. The OP could be a troll or maybe employed by a government looking for people that should be surveilled. To be honest though, it is thought provoking to skim though all of these out of the ordinary ideas and responses.
• mort1merp0 5y ago
  Since corporations are legally people with rights of free speech, like individuals have...then they should be taxed like the average person is, on revenue. If a corporation is responsible for the death of a person, the CEO, CFO, COO, and members of the board should serve prison time. If the corporation is a repeat offender, then the corporation should suffer the death penalty. The assets liquidated a public auction. Also Corp Officers and board members go to jail and are forbidden from ever holding such position again. I look forward to your down votes.
  • Ekaros 5y ago
    I would take step further, since corporations are legally people, they shouldn't limit responsibility of their owners. That is if corporation results in deaths all owners should also suffer real penalty such as prison time.
  • quickthrower2 5y ago
    Taxing revenue harms the low profit commodity businesses, like small retailers why being excellent for tech giants especially the ad selling ones like Google/Facebook. A better idea might be tax investors at income tax levels on capital gains, regardless of holding time (adjusted for inflation indexation) And increase corporation tax for companies above a certain profit level maybe at $1bn up.
• sershe 5y ago
  IT-related opinion: if you gratuitously perform blocking operations (disk IO, network calls, taking locks blocked on the same) on the UI thread, in a commercial product that has a close button (i.e. not an ATM UI or a nuclear reactor control), you should be forever barred from doing software development for money. If I could redesign popular OSes in god mode, blocking the UI thread for more than a few 100s of ms would crash the app with no workarounds. I have to admit GC is a grey area...
• sershe 5y ago
  Non-IT related opinion: compassion is vastly overrated. I think it is similar to tribalism and moralistic fervor; it's good as an abstract motivator in small quantities, but if used continuously, it makes you feel great about yourself while always producing terrible results.
• cercatrova 5y ago
  Realpolitik is all there is. I often see comments about how people should behave rather than understanding how they actually do. Fundamental human nature is nigh immutable; people will always be greedy, will always want to compete, will always wage war, and so on. To think that another social system would change that is a flaw of understanding humans. I see this most often in people espousing communism over capitalism, for example, but people will be people even under communism, the social system won't change that. Sinularly, many people are mad about countries doing "unethical" things, but countries do not have ethical norms, they merely have interests, and that's what they'll advance towards. To think that countries for example shouldn't spy on each other or assassinate their enemy leaders is also a misunderstanding of human nature, and more largely of geopolitics.
  • nzmsv 5y ago
    Agreed! I periodically burn some karma on this point and should probably stop. Most people are brainwashed to believe the system they live under is the bestestest and won't even consider any other alternative. Indeed this unfailing belief is necessary for the whole thing to work. When you point out to them that political systems fight for their own survival, just like organisms and memes do they call that "whataboutism". But fundamentally we are all humans and we function about the same way the world over. In times of stress we humans put a ruthless dictator in charge as a last-ditch Hail Mary. Once conditions improve we replace them with something more suitable. Trying to "enlighten" an impoverished place like Afghanistan is misguided and just keeps their society stuck. But most people think dictators are mysterious aliens that arrive out of nowhere and start oppressing the poor masses. Before you click that downvote button, think for a second. Imagine that America was a place of poverty and desperation. Whom would Americans elect? Oh wait, we already know who middle America made president back in 2016. The way to get people to elect friendlier governments is to make their environment better, not moralize.
• akg_67 5y ago
  American Capitalism will end the same way Soviet Communism ended.
• _nalply 5y ago
  Sometimes apps are moving targets as if they were games. I propose a grace period of maybe 250 ms after a visible change. Let's say I click a button but the window poof! disappeared just exactly then and revealed a different button beneath the closed window. Aargh! Now I caused something else! My contrarian opinion is that we should try out this: if a button disappeared visually it is still there for 250 ms more. So we aren't caught by the GUI change. After 250 ms we can react and cancel the intention to click. I am sure we need to experiment with the time needed and make it configurable.
• BjoernKW 5y ago
  - Socialism (as in: actual socialism, not the European / Scandinavian variety that for the most part still builds upon a free-market economy), when implemented, will inevitably fail. In most cases, because it'll devolve into an authoritarian system fairly quickly. Those arguing in favour of socialism often will resort to a True Scotsman argument: "Yes, but this wasn't real socialism." - The idea of "limits to growth" (as promoted by the Club of Rome) is a fallacy that - although since the time of Thomas Malthus it has been proven wrong time and again - remains bewilderingly popular. - The EU is a cold war relic that's ridiculously ill-equipped for the challenges of the 21st century. Though motivated by misguided ideas, petty nationalism, and selfishness, given time Brexit might prove to not have been such a bad idea after all. - Nuclear power at least in the short term should be considered a vital component of combatting climate change. Regarding software: - Web standards are actually quite decent. The web and web technologies are great way of providing and distributing applications. As for more some recent events: - Lockdowns and civil rights restrictions in general are neither an effective, nor a reasonable or sustainable approach for dealing with a pandemic. - Zero Covid / No Covid / a Covid elimination strategy is an unsustainable dead end. - Negative COVID-19 test results, not vaccination passports, should be relied on as an access requirement.
  • mydeskistoosm 5y ago
    >been proven wrong time and again Has it been proven? I'm not a malthusian at all and that argument drives me up the wall. However the best answer I can come up with is "capitalism is a brass-balled bet that we'll figure our problems out, and so far we have."
    • BjoernKW 5y ago
      Malthus' assumptions and conclusions have been empirically proven wrong, and resoundingly so. An abundance of resources leads to slower population growth instead of a continued geometric growth. Paradigm shifts such as the industrial, green, and digital revolutions allow us to ever more efficiently extract resources from a (somewhat) closed system instead of the availability of resources remaining constant. Apart from the data alone, which pretty much speaks for itself, from Steven Pinker to Ray Kurzweil, from economics to ecological and cognitive sciences there are numerous arguments against the Malthusian model and a Malthusian world: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-malthus-is-still-wrong/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-malthus-is-st... http://www.socialstudies.org/sites/default/files/publications/se/6106/610608.html http://www.socialstudies.org/sites/default/files/publication... https://aeon.co/ideas/the-earths-carrying-capacity-for-human-life-is-not-fixed https://aeon.co/ideas/the-earths-carrying-capacity-for-human... https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/weekinreview/15mcneil.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/weekinreview/15mcneil.htm...
• amadeuspagel 5y ago
  There's something deeply ironic about asking this question on a forum where answers are sorted by votes.
• cloche 5y ago
  The South should have been allowed to secede from the Union. The US would be much better off today although that would have come at the expense of the new country.
• ivanmontillam 5y ago
  That X amount of years or Y amount of certifications will get you anywhere on its own. See that 12-year-old kid killing it in the NFTs? See that AI startup IPO'ing? Just offer the market what it wants.
• Ekaros 5y ago
  Humans are inherently evil tribalistic creatures.
• the_only_law 5y ago
  Judging by how often this gets slammed when I’ve discussed it in the past, I’ll assume it’s contrarian enough. On HN, downvotes serve little purpose, assuming that the user base actually believes the notions of superiority and quality of discussion here compared to other sites on the internet. For explicitly off-topic or guideline violating comments, flags exist. Downvotes seem to serve no other purpose than as a low effort “I disagree” or “I don’t like this” which wouldn’t be an acceptable reply if it were a comment.
• softwaredoug 5y ago
  Is this contrarian? Immigration should be massively increased in the US. The surest way for the US and west to grow its international influence, economy, and live up to its values is through immigration. It’s not a zero sum game: immigrants create jobs for everyone. They increase many forms of diversity and expose us to may PoVs. Multiculturalism works, as exhibited by the higher social capital in major cities compared to the ethnically homogenous rural areas. The West would increase its economic competitiveness with other powers (ie China) that are less likely to increase immigration. This will strengthen the security and influence of western powers, giving them also a worldly outlook compared to those with much less immigration. Faux immigration like H1B and other guest worker visas cruelly create a second class workforce. It would be more humane to allow more actual immigration. It’s an obvious policy win, I wish more people would vocally support radically increased immigration.
  • ozzythecat 5y ago
    >Faux immigration like H1B and other guest worker visas cruelly create a second class workforce. More importantly, it increases the labor pool without giving immigrants the right to vote. >Multiculturalism works, as exhibited by the higher social capital in major cities compared to the ethnically homogenous rural areas. The major cities also have significant infrastructure, crime, and affordability issues. Some of them also have major homelessness problems. I'm not saying that's because of immigrants, but saying that immigrants live in cities and those cities are "better" is kind of non-sensical. If anything, COVID showed us that people want to get away from cities. Is the higher social capital bit really true? My own family immigrated many years ago to the US. From my parents' home country, there are millions of other people in the US. Many of them don't care to assimilate. They have a romanticized view of this home country, and have outright anti-semitic and other intolerant beliefs. >This will strengthen the security and influence of western powers, giving them also a worldly outlook compared to those with much less immigration. If you're bringing in the best and brightest minds, sure. The US, for example, is fairly bogged down with a significant, inefficient government apparatus. Taxes seem to go up without quality of life enhancements. I could see an increased labor pool increasing revenue, but how about housing affordability and healthcare? We don't have "quality" jobs for the folks who are already in this country. How do we increase immigration while lifting everyone up? I am not necessarily disagreeing with your ideas, but I think you're simplifying some very hard problems.
• ixacto 5y ago
  We should stop having a military that does anything outside the United States.
• oldsklgdfth 5y ago
  This is an opinion I used to hold. Humans are an apex invasive species at this point. We are all plugged into a *-industrial complex. We sell dissatisfaction to each other to promote consumption to keep the whole thing going. There is no nobility in bearing children or even in continuing living.
• mapster 5y ago
  Most of societal problems can be fixed by focusing early education solely on philosophy, logic, art. We are pushed thru the ed system as future labor, but lack the tools to coexist in a very large and complex society.
• rufus_foreman 5y ago
  Note to readers: scroll down, the actual contrarian opinions are at the bottom.
• rufus_foreman 5y ago
  DeNiro wasn't an antihero in Raging Bull, he was a hero. Same with Taxi Driver. Same with John Wayne in The Searchers.
• cloudbonsai 5y ago
  Despite the popular belief, if you are a non-professional investor with a smallish capital (~$5-10mm), you can relatively easily beat the market.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• badpun 5y ago
  We can’t know if climate change models are correct - it’s way too much code, solid bug-checking of it would cost many billions, and without it, the models are more scientism than science. The core problem here is that it’s hard to test if you don’t know what is the expected outcome (we don’t know how much the temperature is supposed to increase - we expect the model to tell us that…). In such cases, you don’t do black-box testing (i.e. just writing a bunch of test-cases), but rather have to resort to doing a painstaking and rigorous analysis of the code itself. We’ve done it in the past (e.g. on early space flight code), but the scope of the codebase was way smaller. Also, I suspect that, a lot of the time, people work on the model (tweak parameters, find and fix numerical problems etc) until it starts giving responses which match their apriori expectations. That’s pure scientism (bs masquerading as science).
• cblconfederate 5y ago
  - space is overrated - the last time that people lost interest was 40 years ago, the new generations missed that, and now they are about to lose interest again. humans are made by earth , for earth. real progress requires post-humans, genetically modified - we don't want flying cars, it was a brainfart of sci-fi of the 60s, a linear combination of what was cool at the time, planes and cars. we dont want faster planes either - people happily spend the majority of their trip in airport waiting lines and getting to/from the airport - we instead want our 140 characters because we are informational creatures. We are basically an entity living inside a brain with extra legs. it doesn't matter if we can't travel across the world if we can 'travel' instead. The real world doesn't matter much when our basic needs are covered, instead we get our rewards swimming in the sea of information and ideas. Therefore there are 2 worthy goals for humanity now: longevity or brain computer interfaces. either fullfills the ultimate desire of a conscious mind: to 'live' forever.
• rzach 5y ago
  * Abortion is wrong in all cases (angers the liberals) but * We need broad socialized healthcare, paid parental leave, etc to help the mothers (angers the conservatives) * Money is contributing to systemic racism - let's get rid of it and just be good people
• nokya 5y ago
  I can't write it here :)