6 ms·

Have you considered that the sour grapes attitude actually comes from an understanding of the world, and how everything has been turned only into profit maximiz

by mihaic 2y ago

Have you considered that the sour grapes attitude actually comes from an understanding of the world, and how everything has been turned only into profit maximization? And that the nitpicking is merely a failure to express that understanding of the world, especially since it seems like pro-status quo commenters don't care to learn more? I think I'm one of the sour grapes commenters often, and I've very often tried to have patience to explain in depth where my opinions come from. My greatest frustration is trying to describe for instance why someone like Mr Beast is antisocial (as I actually did a long time ago), and then being met by responses like "he's obviously doing something right to get all those views and he's promoting altruism", responses that obviously never bother to understand what my point was. If think if we really are supposed to improve the quality of discussions, asking more questions should be common when we fundamentally disagree so much. On fundamental disagreements, either the other party is stupid/naive/uninformed or they have fundamentally different principles that we might not understand, and without which a response is just flaming. Later edit: I actually think the document by Mr Beast is exceptionally well written, and most startups could apply the main lessons from it. I still think his output is extremely antisocial.

aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
matheusmoreira 2y ago
> And that the nitpicking is merely a failure to express that understanding of the world, especially since it seems like pro-status quo commenters don't care to learn more? I agree with you on this but I don't think it's a failure. I think people just get tired after a while. They get tired, and then they start displaying their disapproval in ways that require less work. It's just easier than typing out all those words and being ignored. > My greatest frustration is trying to describe for instance why someone like Mr Beast is antisocial and then being met by responses that obviously never bother to understand what my point was It's really tiresome. At some point you start to realize that you have fundamentally different values than the people you're trying to discuss things with, that these values are irreconcilable and that further argument will just make people hate you instead of convincing them. This isn't really about "sour grapes", we have moral objections to what others are doing, and there's no point in trying to have those arguments with people who do those things for a paycheck.
pembrook 2y ago
> Have you considered that the sour grapes attitude actually comes from an understanding of the world I would argue the opposite. Often the comments that OP is describing are people who have very little knowledge of the topic at hand, only strongly held emotional feelings based on some narrative that appeals to their bias. The problem is, HN is a crowd of people who grew up believing they would all become the next Steve Jobs...a decade or two later, the chips have fallen, and most of us have not become that (yet many have had to watch their former peers become wildly successful). So what we have now is a community of bitter, frustrated, and resentful people hurling those feelings onto whatever the topic of the day is. Instead of accepting your jealousy and failure to achieve [insert desired outcome], it's much easier to believe that...whomever or whatever becomes successful...is doing so not out of merit, but out of deceit. By placing yourself on a higher moral pedestal, you avoid the pain of direct comparison. Ex: Sure, [insert person or company] is successful, but it's because they prey on [insert moral failing of both the product and the people who desire it]!
- alphan0n 2y ago
  >I would argue the opposite… Proceeds to not describe the opposite, and instead projects the viewpoint of the generation that grew up believing that becoming social media icons was the equivalent to being Steve Jobs. We just recognize the grifter attitudes and process from extensive exposure.
- smolder 2y ago
  I never intended to be the next Steve Jobs, I just expected that my dedication to learning and building useful skills would be rewarded in some sense. Things aren't that simple, of course.
  - tylersmith 2y ago
    Why did you expect that? Why would someone reward your personal choice in dedication?
    - elliotec 2y ago
wrsh07 2y ago
Right, a challenge with an artifact like this is that the writing is good. And it's a lengthy read. The early commenters almost by definition haven't read it and can only comment about their opinions on the creative output of Mr Beast As someone who has assiduously avoided watching his videos (because of this opinion), I was impressed by the document because it is incredibly practical. The advice about communication, managing critical components and bottlenecks - very very good. Of course he is singlemindedly focused on building a massive YouTube channel. In the employee handbook it does not say: we treat you well and do the most ethical thing It says: come here and work hard, we will make a big YouTube channel. (Not: a YouTube channel that is good for society!! Just big!!)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
cdchn 2y ago
What did you think was well written about it? Did it provide any useful or unique insights? The writing itself seemed terrible and riddled with spelling errors.
- gabesullice 2y ago
  > What did you think was well written about it? I think it was well written because you could clearly hear his voice through the writing and empathize with his internal struggle with being in a position of authority while also feeling unqualified for the job. > Did it provide any useful or unique insights? As someone who has been very frustrated in the past by my perception of the inefficiency of communicating "up and over" instead of talking laterally to an engineer on another team, I thought he succinctly communicated why it's often necessary and helped me understand the value of that practice. > The writing itself seemed terrible and riddled with spelling errors. Orthography is only one aspect what makes writing good or bad. And a relatively less relevant one IMO.
  - cdchn 2y ago
    >you could clearly hear his voice through the writing That's certainly true. I'm surprised there wasn't an embedded provocative thumbnail for the document at the very top.
roenxi 2y ago
No chance it comes from understanding the world, it is an unfortunate social effect where attacking is much easier than defending. It is particularly apparent in politics where it has to be at least an order of magnitude easier to attack an opposing candidate for their weaknesses rather than defend a friendly candidate for some minor flaw. And there isn't anything wrong with profit maximisation; we use profits to make decisions about resource allocation. That matters a lot, small inefficiencies leading to waste magnified over the entire economy represent huge damage to the people scraping by on the margins.
throw10920 2y ago
> Have you considered that the sour grapes attitude actually comes from an understanding of the world, and how everything has been turned only into profit maximization? I would hope not, because that's not really a thing to be "considered", because it's not factual (as implied by the word "understanding"), but an opinion. There's very little empirical evidence for the claim that "everything has been turned only into profit maximization". It's not something that's true or false - it's a worldview, an emotional outlook. One can imagine other worldviews like "the profit maximization is a direct result of the government not doing its job to break up monopolies" or "I disagree, very few of the companies I interact with are doing profit maximization in a way that significantly negatively impacts me". You can argue about which of those is "true" and find various factoids on the internet that "back them up", but ultimately they're just ways that you look at the world with little empirical basis. As such, predicating all of your comments on them and pushing them at every turn is boring, and against the purpose of HN, which is intellectual curiosity. Reviewing the guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) should pretty quickly tell you why this content isn't appropriate for HN: > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. > Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. These "sour grapes" comments and cynicism-without-substance comments are very clearly not gratifying to one's intellectual curiosity, and almost always fall into the realm of generic tangents and internet tropes. There's a place for activism, but it's not here.
infecto 2y ago
The phrase "other party is stupid" really stood out to me, and it perfectly illustrates the problem I see. Instead of recognizing that people might have fundamentally different principles, upbringing, culture, or simply not be fully informed on a topic, the first conclusion you jump to is that they are stupid.
- mihaic 2y ago
  Have you read the entire sentence that was from? It listed pretty much what you said as an option until more information is gathered. Sometimes even people's culture/principles keeps them from seeing the truth. I honestly don't know what you mean here, I hope you can clarify.

by mihaic 2y ago

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

matheusmoreira 2y ago

> And that the nitpicking is merely a failure to express that understanding of the world, especially since it seems like pro-status quo commenters don't care to learn more? I agree with you on this but I don't think it's a failure. I think people just get tired after a while. They get tired, and then they start displaying their disapproval in ways that require less work. It's just easier than typing out all those words and being ignored. > My greatest frustration is trying to describe for instance why someone like Mr Beast is antisocial and then being met by responses that obviously never bother to understand what my point was It's really tiresome. At some point you start to realize that you have fundamentally different values than the people you're trying to discuss things with, that these values are irreconcilable and that further argument will just make people hate you instead of convincing them. This isn't really about "sour grapes", we have moral objections to what others are doing, and there's no point in trying to have those arguments with people who do those things for a paycheck.

pembrook 2y ago

> Have you considered that the sour grapes attitude actually comes from an understanding of the world I would argue the opposite. Often the comments that OP is describing are people who have very little knowledge of the topic at hand, only strongly held emotional feelings based on some narrative that appeals to their bias. The problem is, HN is a crowd of people who grew up believing they would all become the next Steve Jobs...a decade or two later, the chips have fallen, and most of us have not become that (yet many have had to watch their former peers become wildly successful). So what we have now is a community of bitter, frustrated, and resentful people hurling those feelings onto whatever the topic of the day is. Instead of accepting your jealousy and failure to achieve [insert desired outcome], it's much easier to believe that...whomever or whatever becomes successful...is doing so not out of merit, but out of deceit. By placing yourself on a higher moral pedestal, you avoid the pain of direct comparison. Ex: Sure, [insert person or company] is successful, but it's because they prey on [insert moral failing of both the product and the people who desire it]!

alphan0n 2y ago
>I would argue the opposite… Proceeds to not describe the opposite, and instead projects the viewpoint of the generation that grew up believing that becoming social media icons was the equivalent to being Steve Jobs. We just recognize the grifter attitudes and process from extensive exposure.
smolder 2y ago
I never intended to be the next Steve Jobs, I just expected that my dedication to learning and building useful skills would be rewarded in some sense. Things aren't that simple, of course.
- tylersmith 2y ago
  Why did you expect that? Why would someone reward your personal choice in dedication?
  - elliotec 2y ago

wrsh07 2y ago

Right, a challenge with an artifact like this is that the writing is good. And it's a lengthy read. The early commenters almost by definition haven't read it and can only comment about their opinions on the creative output of Mr Beast As someone who has assiduously avoided watching his videos (because of this opinion), I was impressed by the document because it is incredibly practical. The advice about communication, managing critical components and bottlenecks - very very good. Of course he is singlemindedly focused on building a massive YouTube channel. In the employee handbook it does not say: we treat you well and do the most ethical thing It says: come here and work hard, we will make a big YouTube channel. (Not: a YouTube channel that is good for society!! Just big!!)

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

cdchn 2y ago

What did you think was well written about it? Did it provide any useful or unique insights? The writing itself seemed terrible and riddled with spelling errors.

gabesullice 2y ago
> What did you think was well written about it? I think it was well written because you could clearly hear his voice through the writing and empathize with his internal struggle with being in a position of authority while also feeling unqualified for the job. > Did it provide any useful or unique insights? As someone who has been very frustrated in the past by my perception of the inefficiency of communicating "up and over" instead of talking laterally to an engineer on another team, I thought he succinctly communicated why it's often necessary and helped me understand the value of that practice. > The writing itself seemed terrible and riddled with spelling errors. Orthography is only one aspect what makes writing good or bad. And a relatively less relevant one IMO.
- cdchn 2y ago
  >you could clearly hear his voice through the writing That's certainly true. I'm surprised there wasn't an embedded provocative thumbnail for the document at the very top.

roenxi 2y ago

No chance it comes from understanding the world, it is an unfortunate social effect where attacking is much easier than defending. It is particularly apparent in politics where it has to be at least an order of magnitude easier to attack an opposing candidate for their weaknesses rather than defend a friendly candidate for some minor flaw. And there isn't anything wrong with profit maximisation; we use profits to make decisions about resource allocation. That matters a lot, small inefficiencies leading to waste magnified over the entire economy represent huge damage to the people scraping by on the margins.

throw10920 2y ago

> Have you considered that the sour grapes attitude actually comes from an understanding of the world, and how everything has been turned only into profit maximization? I would hope not, because that's not really a thing to be "considered", because it's not factual (as implied by the word "understanding"), but an opinion. There's very little empirical evidence for the claim that "everything has been turned only into profit maximization". It's not something that's true or false - it's a worldview, an emotional outlook. One can imagine other worldviews like "the profit maximization is a direct result of the government not doing its job to break up monopolies" or "I disagree, very few of the companies I interact with are doing profit maximization in a way that significantly negatively impacts me". You can argue about which of those is "true" and find various factoids on the internet that "back them up", but ultimately they're just ways that you look at the world with little empirical basis. As such, predicating all of your comments on them and pushing them at every turn is boring, and against the purpose of HN, which is intellectual curiosity. Reviewing the guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) should pretty quickly tell you why this content isn't appropriate for HN: > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. > Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. These "sour grapes" comments and cynicism-without-substance comments are very clearly not gratifying to one's intellectual curiosity, and almost always fall into the realm of generic tangents and internet tropes. There's a place for activism, but it's not here.

infecto 2y ago

The phrase "other party is stupid" really stood out to me, and it perfectly illustrates the problem I see. Instead of recognizing that people might have fundamentally different principles, upbringing, culture, or simply not be fully informed on a topic, the first conclusion you jump to is that they are stupid.

mihaic 2y ago
Have you read the entire sentence that was from? It listed pretty much what you said as an option until more information is gathered. Sometimes even people's culture/principles keeps them from seeing the truth. I honestly don't know what you mean here, I hope you can clarify.