8 ms·

This is the problem. You didn't even read my argument. Go read it again, carefully, instead of skimming through it. My point is: Maybe one of these religions

This is the problem. You didn't even read my argument. Go read it again, carefully, instead of skimming through it. My point is: Maybe one of these religions is right. Maybe something is the best. Maybe a side must be picked. You didn't argue for better. You argued that everything is the same, that all things are good and nothing is bad and that every single thing in the programming universe is a tool in a toolbox. I disagree. Violently. The point is neither the culting acolytes OR people like you can prove it either way. But calling people who don't share your opinion as "culting acolytes" is manipulative. The words have negative connotations and it's wrong. Extreme opinions in science and logic are often proven to be true, they are often validated. To assume that anyone without a neutral opinion is a cultist is very biased in itself. Here's a good analogy: I believe the world is round. I'm an extremist. You on the other hand embrace all theories as tools in a toolbox. The world could be round or it could be flat, your the reasonable neutral arbiter taking neither the side of the flat-earther or round-earther. The illusion now is more clear. All 3 sides are a form of bias, but clearly our science says only one of these sides is true, and this side is NOT the "neutral arbiter" side

deleted 4y ago
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awgm 4y ago
yeah but sometimes its useful to use a flat earth model when for instance the ground youre going to build something like a shed on is relatively flat. in the big picture sense i agree but in different contexts an alternative abstract model can suffice and actually be more efficient if the aim is to build the shed in this case
still_grokking 4y ago
I did not argue for "everything is the same". Quite the contrary. I've said: Everything depends on context. What makes sense for Haskell does not necessary make sense for other languages. Also there is no "side" that needs to be picked. What's a good idea in one context could be a terrible idea in some other context. But people are copying blindly Haskell lately. The issue is that this happens blindly — again without questioning anything about the underlying premises. Doing so is called "cargo culting". And that's something done by acolytes. (The words are loaded for a reason, btw.) I'm coming from a language (Scala) where it took almost 15 years to recognize that Haskell isn't anything that should be imitated. Now that most people there start to get it people elsewhere start to fall for the exact same fallacy. But this time this could become so big that this will end up like the "OOP dark ages" which we're just about to finally leave. People are seemingly starting to replace one religion with the other. This won't make anything better… It's just equally stupid. It makes no difference whether you replace one "hammer" with another but still pretend that everything is a nail.
- deltasevennine 4y ago
  You did argue for everything is the same. Basically by "same" I mean everything is "equally good" depending on context. The whole hammers are for hammering and screwdrivers are for screwing thing... I explicitly said your argument was that everything was a tool in a toolbox and you exactly replicated what I said. My point is: something can be truly bad and something can be truly good EVEN when considering all possible contexts. You can't prove definitively whether this is the case for FP or OOP or any programming style for that matter. You can't know whether someones "side" is a cargo cult or not when there's no theoretical way for measuring this. The cultish following may even be correct in the same way I cargo cult my belief that the world is ROUND and not flat.
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    "You did argue for everything is the same." I do not see where he did that. He argued simply that context matters. (And yes a "bad" tool can be the right tool, if it is the only tool avaiable.) "My point is: something can be truly bad and something can be truly good EVEN when considering all possible contexts." And diving deeper into philosophy here, can you name one example?
    - 0xdeadbeefbabe 4y ago
      Not deltasevennine, but giving the CPU fewer things to do sounds good to me (in any context), even if it is currently unpopular. Some cults are popular and some aren't.
      - hutzlibu 4y ago
        "Not deltasevennine, but giving the CPU fewer things to do sounds good to me (in any context)" Ah, but what if you are freezing and that CPU is your only heat source ...
    - deltasevennine 4y ago
      >I do not see where he did that. He argued simply that context matters. (And yes a "bad" tool can be the right tool, if it is the only tool avaiable.) Well I see it. If you don't see it, I urge you to reread what he said. A bad tool can be the right tool but some tools are so bad that it is never the right tool. >And diving deeper into philosophy here, can you name one example? Running is better then walking for short distances when optimizing for shorter time. In this case walking is definitively "bad." No argument by anyone. Please don't take this into a pedantic segway with your counter here.
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
Nope. You're the one who isn't listening or understanding. still_grokking's point is that even if one approach is better than the other, a slavish cargo-cult adherence to that approach will still produce bad results.
- still_grokking 4y ago
  Thanks! Couldn't say this better. I'm not arguing about the approaches as such, I've stated that cargo culting around any of them is a bad thing by itself. Blindly imitating something for which you didn't fully grasp all pros and cons will at best not help you and in most cases make things worse.
- deltasevennine 4y ago
  Nope. You aren't listening to me. I am getting exactly what he's saying. What I am saying is that the cargo culters could be right. You don't know. Nobody knows. Additionally he DID say that the approaches were all tools in a toolbox.
_gabe_ 4y ago
> I believe the world is round This isn't an opinion or a belief, it's a verifiable fact. We know the world is round because: if you travel east you'll eventually arrive at your starting destination; if you stand on a ship's crow's nest you can see further than the crew on the deck because of the curvature of the earth; if you fly a plane and make two 90 degree turns and travel an equal distance, you will end up at your starting point due to the curvature of the earth; if you go to space in a space station, you can visually verify that the earth is round. Cargo culting acolytes will believe the earth is round with no explanation as to why. Just because you believe the right thing doesn't mean you're not cargo culting. If you can't explain why you believe what you believe, you're simply believing to follow a particular crowd, regardless of the validity of the belief.
- deltasevennine 4y ago
  Sure. I simply use this "world" example because everyone here is in the same cult as me: "The world is round cult." When I use it, they get it. If I were speaking to a different cult, I would use a different example. You will note, both flat earthers and non-flat earthers have very detailed and complex reasoning for why they "believe" what they believe. But of course most members of either group have Not actually went to space to verify the conclusions for themselves.
  - _gabe_ 4y ago
    My point was most people do cargo cult and that's bad, no matter what. And the notion that you have to go to space to know the earth is round is flawed, as I tried to illustrate using several examples that didn't necessitate traveling to space to infer that the earth is not flat. After all, Eratosthenes was able to calculate the circumference of the earth with approximately 0.5% margin of error[0]. Since they didn't have rockets in 250 B.C, it should be clear that there are other empirical methods to test these hypotheses. To reiterate, cargo culting is always bad. If you don't have a reason for what you believe, then there's a chance your belief is flawed and it would behoove you to research your question and prove to yourself the validity or invalidity of your belief. [0]: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial_geodesy/geo02_hist.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial_geodesy/geo...

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awgm 4y ago

yeah but sometimes its useful to use a flat earth model when for instance the ground youre going to build something like a shed on is relatively flat. in the big picture sense i agree but in different contexts an alternative abstract model can suffice and actually be more efficient if the aim is to build the shed in this case

still_grokking 4y ago

I did not argue for "everything is the same". Quite the contrary. I've said: Everything depends on context. What makes sense for Haskell does not necessary make sense for other languages. Also there is no "side" that needs to be picked. What's a good idea in one context could be a terrible idea in some other context. But people are copying blindly Haskell lately. The issue is that this happens blindly — again without questioning anything about the underlying premises. Doing so is called "cargo culting". And that's something done by acolytes. (The words are loaded for a reason, btw.) I'm coming from a language (Scala) where it took almost 15 years to recognize that Haskell isn't anything that should be imitated. Now that most people there start to get it people elsewhere start to fall for the exact same fallacy. But this time this could become so big that this will end up like the "OOP dark ages" which we're just about to finally leave. People are seemingly starting to replace one religion with the other. This won't make anything better… It's just equally stupid. It makes no difference whether you replace one "hammer" with another but still pretend that everything is a nail.

deltasevennine 4y ago
You did argue for everything is the same. Basically by "same" I mean everything is "equally good" depending on context. The whole hammers are for hammering and screwdrivers are for screwing thing... I explicitly said your argument was that everything was a tool in a toolbox and you exactly replicated what I said. My point is: something can be truly bad and something can be truly good EVEN when considering all possible contexts. You can't prove definitively whether this is the case for FP or OOP or any programming style for that matter. You can't know whether someones "side" is a cargo cult or not when there's no theoretical way for measuring this. The cultish following may even be correct in the same way I cargo cult my belief that the world is ROUND and not flat.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  "You did argue for everything is the same." I do not see where he did that. He argued simply that context matters. (And yes a "bad" tool can be the right tool, if it is the only tool avaiable.) "My point is: something can be truly bad and something can be truly good EVEN when considering all possible contexts." And diving deeper into philosophy here, can you name one example?
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 4y ago
    Not deltasevennine, but giving the CPU fewer things to do sounds good to me (in any context), even if it is currently unpopular. Some cults are popular and some aren't.
    - hutzlibu 4y ago
      "Not deltasevennine, but giving the CPU fewer things to do sounds good to me (in any context)" Ah, but what if you are freezing and that CPU is your only heat source ...
  - deltasevennine 4y ago
    >I do not see where he did that. He argued simply that context matters. (And yes a "bad" tool can be the right tool, if it is the only tool avaiable.) Well I see it. If you don't see it, I urge you to reread what he said. A bad tool can be the right tool but some tools are so bad that it is never the right tool. >And diving deeper into philosophy here, can you name one example? Running is better then walking for short distances when optimizing for shorter time. In this case walking is definitively "bad." No argument by anyone. Please don't take this into a pedantic segway with your counter here.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

Nope. You're the one who isn't listening or understanding. still_grokking's point is that even if one approach is better than the other, a slavish cargo-cult adherence to that approach will still produce bad results.

still_grokking 4y ago
Thanks! Couldn't say this better. I'm not arguing about the approaches as such, I've stated that cargo culting around any of them is a bad thing by itself. Blindly imitating something for which you didn't fully grasp all pros and cons will at best not help you and in most cases make things worse.
deltasevennine 4y ago
Nope. You aren't listening to me. I am getting exactly what he's saying. What I am saying is that the cargo culters could be right. You don't know. Nobody knows. Additionally he DID say that the approaches were all tools in a toolbox.

_gabe_ 4y ago

> I believe the world is round This isn't an opinion or a belief, it's a verifiable fact. We know the world is round because: if you travel east you'll eventually arrive at your starting destination; if you stand on a ship's crow's nest you can see further than the crew on the deck because of the curvature of the earth; if you fly a plane and make two 90 degree turns and travel an equal distance, you will end up at your starting point due to the curvature of the earth; if you go to space in a space station, you can visually verify that the earth is round. Cargo culting acolytes will believe the earth is round with no explanation as to why. Just because you believe the right thing doesn't mean you're not cargo culting. If you can't explain why you believe what you believe, you're simply believing to follow a particular crowd, regardless of the validity of the belief.

deltasevennine 4y ago
Sure. I simply use this "world" example because everyone here is in the same cult as me: "The world is round cult." When I use it, they get it. If I were speaking to a different cult, I would use a different example. You will note, both flat earthers and non-flat earthers have very detailed and complex reasoning for why they "believe" what they believe. But of course most members of either group have Not actually went to space to verify the conclusions for themselves.
- _gabe_ 4y ago
  My point was most people do cargo cult and that's bad, no matter what. And the notion that you have to go to space to know the earth is round is flawed, as I tried to illustrate using several examples that didn't necessitate traveling to space to infer that the earth is not flat. After all, Eratosthenes was able to calculate the circumference of the earth with approximately 0.5% margin of error[0]. Since they didn't have rockets in 250 B.C, it should be clear that there are other empirical methods to test these hypotheses. To reiterate, cargo culting is always bad. If you don't have a reason for what you believe, then there's a chance your belief is flawed and it would behoove you to research your question and prove to yourself the validity or invalidity of your belief. [0]: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial_geodesy/geo02_hist.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial_geodesy/geo...