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The general type of person on HN is more rigid-minded than a decade ago. They are less interested in exploring new ideas and more about the status quo. None of

The general type of person on HN is more rigid-minded than a decade ago. They are less interested in exploring new ideas and more about the status quo. None of these people actually believe this about themselves, but it is obvious when reading through the comments. These people also tend to get increasingly bitter over time, which fuels a lack of curiosity and a shallow, dismissive attitude. I find these people to be lame and look to escape them whenever possible.

tablespoon 5y ago
> The general type of person on HN is more rigid-minded than a decade ago. They are less interested in exploring new ideas and more about the status quo. None of these people actually believe this about themselves, but it is obvious when reading through the comments. Examples? Sometimes interest in particular types of "new" ideas is just naivete, and seeing those "new" ideas fail or not live up to the hype can lead to a new appreciation of certain aspects of the status quo.
- weeblewobble 5y ago
  Open web, decentralization, privacy/tracking, advertising in general, right to repair, walled gardens, Google shutting down projects. Just off the top of my head, these are a bunch of topics on which HN threads take the form of advocacy rather than discussion or curiosity.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    Those all sound like issues where there are stock hacker stances. Well, it would certainly be entertaining to see contrarians on those topics against the traditional hacker views.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Open web, decentralization, privacy/tracking, advertising in general, right to repair, walled gardens, Google shutting down projects. Just off the top of my head, these are a bunch of topics on which HN threads take the form of advocacy rather than discussion or curiosity. Why would discussions about those topics go any other way? The options are well known, and have well-understood pros and cons. It's not surprising that most people have made up their minds. I mean, do you think it's realistic that thread about, say, Soviet-style central planning to proceed with "discussion or curiosity," like it was some new, fresh idea?
- gpm 5y ago
  I've certainly become more interested in the status quo in the last 5 years, so I guess I can offer myself up as a sort of example. (Though I do believe that about myself, and I'm not sure it actually translates to being less interested in exploring new ideas either...) Maybe a bit of it is just me getting older, but I think most of it is observing that a lot of things are actively getting worse, and thus prioritizing "stopping the bleeding". A concrete example of this would be Biden as a politician, 5 years ago I would have hated him as useless (not improving things) and mildly corrupt, now I don't mind him as useless (not making things worse) and only mildly corrupt - with the unfortunate reality that that is the best option the US had. PS. Let's try and keep this thread from becoming a debate about Biden and politicians, he's a useful example but not the point, I don't expect everyone to agree with my assessment.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Point. It's also just fundamentally harder to get excited about new ideas as you age. When you're young, you don't know anything, so you look at every new idea in its purest form. When you're old, you can't not make comparisons to known history, and so look at every new idea with a shadow gallery of similar ideas. Which probably ultimately skews favor towards conservative approaches (things that look like things that have previously worked) than novel one (things that look like nothing else, or like other things that have failed). Which is to say, to react to new ideas as though you were young, once you're old, takes effort and self-reflection. It's a valuable skill to cultivate, but it also doesn't happen naturally.
  - gpm 5y ago
    Replying to myself: This got me thinking about what exactly I mean by status quo, I don't think it's quite as obvious as it seems at first glance. One important distinction is status-quo as a goal, vs status-quo as a solution. Status quo as a goal often makes sense - when the current state of affairs isn't that bad and it would be easy for things to get worse, keeping things the same is a good thing. Solutions however rarely make sense, because solutions operate in a changing environment, and keeping doing the same thing is basically pretending you're maintaining the status quo, when you're actually yielding different results. To use atmospheric CO2 as an example, status quo atmospheric CO2 would be a remarkable achievement. Status quo energy generation obviously fails to achieve that, because the baseline amount of atmospheric CO2 keeps going up. Another thing to ask is status quo of "what", status quo of atmospheric CO2 would be remarkable, status quo of change in atmospheric CO2 over time wouldn't solve the crisis, though it would be a great improvement over what we have right now. IIRC status quo of the second derivative of atmospheric CO2 over time (i.e. how fast the rate at which we output it changes over time) is about what we currently maintain. It follows that status quo of the third derivative would be a major step backwards. I think the conclusion I've been coming to over the last few years, is that "status quo of quantities that aren't rates is usually a good default for a goal". For atmospheric CO2 it would be a remarkable achievement. For geopolitical tensions is europe, it's not quite ideal, but we don't actually have a war and I'd be pretty happy if it stayed that way. For diseases, I mean, we aren't all dying, and so on and so forth. That doesn't mean it's always the right goal. If we're in the middle of a major war, we should be seeking a new status quo where we aren't in a war. Given that the new mRNA HIV vaccine actually works the goal should change to "reduce HIV" rather than "maintain the status quo" since that's now possible. It's just that status quo is a starting point for a goal and deviations from it should probably be supported by a solid argument for "we can do better" or "we can't even do that well".
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  In the "old days" people were mostly talking about doing startups, or doing creative geeky stuff. There's still a lot of that, of course, which is why I'm still here, but there's definitely a lot more "How do I game this metric to get hired by a FAANG?" Getting hired by a FAANG is the antithesis of doing a startup, or doing some original research, or even working on a clever hack just for the joy of it.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    The economics of joining a startup has changed compared to a decade ago. This was made most apparent a couple years ago when the thread on a VC's startup boosterism video roundly denounced it for spreading empty promises: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21865065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21865065
- errantmind 5y ago
  If we are continuing with the generalization about this 'type' of person, you can point to just about any controversial topic posted here. The mental gymnastics these people use is as old as history. They take edge-cases and statistical anomalies and use those to generalize about entire groups/categories. Other people jump onto these shallow 'statements of fact' and continue to expand the generalization until the conclusions are as absolute and as wide as possible. These wide conclusions appeal to rigid minds as they have wide bases and are airtight, with no room for context nor nuance. This is just one example of how this type reacts to particular issues, the full impact is pervasive throughout the whole site. Yes, I know there is an irony in me generalizing about this type of person, but I'm unsure how else to talk about it.
  - t-writescode 5y ago
    For what it's worth, this kind of argument style / fallacy is called the "Weakman Argument" (vs Strawman Argument), where the view might be held by some, but not many and certainly not most.
    - errantmind 5y ago
      I'd argue the opposite, everyone does it to some degree or another on every topic. There is a near-infinite degree of nuance to any given topic. You can slide up and down the ladder of abstraction depending on your own understanding and your audience. Some people have the patience and curiosity to develop a more nuanced understanding of a topic and refuse to generalize in discussion, which has the effect of excluding those with a less nuanced understanding of the topic; others generalize faster, possibly for rhetorical purposes and to align with people lacking a more nuanced understanding of the topic. This leads to an amplification of the least nuanced position that the majority of people support. You see this effect in almost any community. To avoid this, you'd have to devise a way to exclude people who refuse to develop a more nuanced understanding of any given topic (i.e. lack curiosity).
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    >>> The general type of person on HN is more rigid-minded than a decade ago. They are less interested in exploring new ideas and more about the status quo. >> Examples? > If we are continuing with the generalization about this 'type' of person, you can point to just about any controversial topic posted here. The mental gymnastics these people use is as old as history... > This is just one example of how this type reacts to particular issues, the full impact is pervasive throughout the whole site. Your reply doesn't actually contain any examples. It's, as you said, just "[you] generalizing about this type of person."
jdkjs 5y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
abecedarius 5y ago
Same impression, and it's why I spend less time here. Haven't yet lost the habit of checking daily.

tablespoon 5y ago

> The general type of person on HN is more rigid-minded than a decade ago. They are less interested in exploring new ideas and more about the status quo. None of these people actually believe this about themselves, but it is obvious when reading through the comments. Examples? Sometimes interest in particular types of "new" ideas is just naivete, and seeing those "new" ideas fail or not live up to the hype can lead to a new appreciation of certain aspects of the status quo.

weeblewobble 5y ago
Open web, decentralization, privacy/tracking, advertising in general, right to repair, walled gardens, Google shutting down projects. Just off the top of my head, these are a bunch of topics on which HN threads take the form of advocacy rather than discussion or curiosity.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Those all sound like issues where there are stock hacker stances. Well, it would certainly be entertaining to see contrarians on those topics against the traditional hacker views.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Open web, decentralization, privacy/tracking, advertising in general, right to repair, walled gardens, Google shutting down projects. Just off the top of my head, these are a bunch of topics on which HN threads take the form of advocacy rather than discussion or curiosity. Why would discussions about those topics go any other way? The options are well known, and have well-understood pros and cons. It's not surprising that most people have made up their minds. I mean, do you think it's realistic that thread about, say, Soviet-style central planning to proceed with "discussion or curiosity," like it was some new, fresh idea?
gpm 5y ago
I've certainly become more interested in the status quo in the last 5 years, so I guess I can offer myself up as a sort of example. (Though I do believe that about myself, and I'm not sure it actually translates to being less interested in exploring new ideas either...) Maybe a bit of it is just me getting older, but I think most of it is observing that a lot of things are actively getting worse, and thus prioritizing "stopping the bleeding". A concrete example of this would be Biden as a politician, 5 years ago I would have hated him as useless (not improving things) and mildly corrupt, now I don't mind him as useless (not making things worse) and only mildly corrupt - with the unfortunate reality that that is the best option the US had. PS. Let's try and keep this thread from becoming a debate about Biden and politicians, he's a useful example but not the point, I don't expect everyone to agree with my assessment.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Point. It's also just fundamentally harder to get excited about new ideas as you age. When you're young, you don't know anything, so you look at every new idea in its purest form. When you're old, you can't not make comparisons to known history, and so look at every new idea with a shadow gallery of similar ideas. Which probably ultimately skews favor towards conservative approaches (things that look like things that have previously worked) than novel one (things that look like nothing else, or like other things that have failed). Which is to say, to react to new ideas as though you were young, once you're old, takes effort and self-reflection. It's a valuable skill to cultivate, but it also doesn't happen naturally.
- gpm 5y ago
  Replying to myself: This got me thinking about what exactly I mean by status quo, I don't think it's quite as obvious as it seems at first glance. One important distinction is status-quo as a goal, vs status-quo as a solution. Status quo as a goal often makes sense - when the current state of affairs isn't that bad and it would be easy for things to get worse, keeping things the same is a good thing. Solutions however rarely make sense, because solutions operate in a changing environment, and keeping doing the same thing is basically pretending you're maintaining the status quo, when you're actually yielding different results. To use atmospheric CO2 as an example, status quo atmospheric CO2 would be a remarkable achievement. Status quo energy generation obviously fails to achieve that, because the baseline amount of atmospheric CO2 keeps going up. Another thing to ask is status quo of "what", status quo of atmospheric CO2 would be remarkable, status quo of change in atmospheric CO2 over time wouldn't solve the crisis, though it would be a great improvement over what we have right now. IIRC status quo of the second derivative of atmospheric CO2 over time (i.e. how fast the rate at which we output it changes over time) is about what we currently maintain. It follows that status quo of the third derivative would be a major step backwards. I think the conclusion I've been coming to over the last few years, is that "status quo of quantities that aren't rates is usually a good default for a goal". For atmospheric CO2 it would be a remarkable achievement. For geopolitical tensions is europe, it's not quite ideal, but we don't actually have a war and I'd be pretty happy if it stayed that way. For diseases, I mean, we aren't all dying, and so on and so forth. That doesn't mean it's always the right goal. If we're in the middle of a major war, we should be seeking a new status quo where we aren't in a war. Given that the new mRNA HIV vaccine actually works the goal should change to "reduce HIV" rather than "maintain the status quo" since that's now possible. It's just that status quo is a starting point for a goal and deviations from it should probably be supported by a solid argument for "we can do better" or "we can't even do that well".
Turing_Machine 5y ago
In the "old days" people were mostly talking about doing startups, or doing creative geeky stuff. There's still a lot of that, of course, which is why I'm still here, but there's definitely a lot more "How do I game this metric to get hired by a FAANG?" Getting hired by a FAANG is the antithesis of doing a startup, or doing some original research, or even working on a clever hack just for the joy of it.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  The economics of joining a startup has changed compared to a decade ago. This was made most apparent a couple years ago when the thread on a VC's startup boosterism video roundly denounced it for spreading empty promises: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21865065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21865065
errantmind 5y ago
If we are continuing with the generalization about this 'type' of person, you can point to just about any controversial topic posted here. The mental gymnastics these people use is as old as history. They take edge-cases and statistical anomalies and use those to generalize about entire groups/categories. Other people jump onto these shallow 'statements of fact' and continue to expand the generalization until the conclusions are as absolute and as wide as possible. These wide conclusions appeal to rigid minds as they have wide bases and are airtight, with no room for context nor nuance. This is just one example of how this type reacts to particular issues, the full impact is pervasive throughout the whole site. Yes, I know there is an irony in me generalizing about this type of person, but I'm unsure how else to talk about it.
- t-writescode 5y ago
  For what it's worth, this kind of argument style / fallacy is called the "Weakman Argument" (vs Strawman Argument), where the view might be held by some, but not many and certainly not most.
  - errantmind 5y ago
    I'd argue the opposite, everyone does it to some degree or another on every topic. There is a near-infinite degree of nuance to any given topic. You can slide up and down the ladder of abstraction depending on your own understanding and your audience. Some people have the patience and curiosity to develop a more nuanced understanding of a topic and refuse to generalize in discussion, which has the effect of excluding those with a less nuanced understanding of the topic; others generalize faster, possibly for rhetorical purposes and to align with people lacking a more nuanced understanding of the topic. This leads to an amplification of the least nuanced position that the majority of people support. You see this effect in almost any community. To avoid this, you'd have to devise a way to exclude people who refuse to develop a more nuanced understanding of any given topic (i.e. lack curiosity).
- tablespoon 5y ago
  >>> The general type of person on HN is more rigid-minded than a decade ago. They are less interested in exploring new ideas and more about the status quo. >> Examples? > If we are continuing with the generalization about this 'type' of person, you can point to just about any controversial topic posted here. The mental gymnastics these people use is as old as history... > This is just one example of how this type reacts to particular issues, the full impact is pervasive throughout the whole site. Your reply doesn't actually contain any examples. It's, as you said, just "[you] generalizing about this type of person."

jdkjs 5y ago

[flagged]

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

abecedarius 5y ago

Same impression, and it's why I spend less time here. Haven't yet lost the habit of checking daily.