4 ms·

Yeah, it's this tribal bandwagon mentality. People think that having strong opinions is a sign of intelligence, and it's quite safe to just adopt what other app

Yeah, it's this tribal bandwagon mentality. People think that having strong opinions is a sign of intelligence, and it's quite safe to just adopt what other apparently smart people agree on. There's a lot of it in the tech world - PHP bad, bash good, MySQL bad, Postgres good. I adopted most of these views when I was young (~15 years ago) because older, more experienced people were saying those things.

xanderlewis 2y ago
I think you’re overestimating the seriousness of these statements of ‘hatred’. Isn’t it all a bit of a joke? I thought it was, anyway. > People think that having strong opinions is a sign of intelligence …which is very strange, because it seems quite clear that a hallmark of intelligence (or at least thoughtfulness) is the ability to sit on the fence and hold multiple — seemingly contradictory — opinions at once.
- The_Colonel 2y ago
  > I think you’re overestimating the seriousness of these statements of ‘hatred’. Isn’t it all a bit of a joke? I thought it was, anyway. No, at least not exclusively. > …which is very strange, because it seems quite clear that a hallmark of intelligence (or at least thoughtfulness) is the ability to sit on the fence and hold multiple — seemingly contradictory — opinions at once. I think seeing the world as multi-faceted and multi-colored (as opposed to black & white) is a sign of thoughtfulness. Many of these "contradictions" will then dissolve in the air.
- ykonstant 2y ago
  In a former HN post about Comic Sans, I linked a math seminar lecture that used a modified Comic Sans asking for the exact font and remarked that it looks very nice. The only response I got was one trashing me for insinuating a Comic Sans-derived font would look good, saying the presentation looked awful, and not answering my question about the font.

xanderlewis 2y ago

I think you’re overestimating the seriousness of these statements of ‘hatred’. Isn’t it all a bit of a joke? I thought it was, anyway. > People think that having strong opinions is a sign of intelligence …which is very strange, because it seems quite clear that a hallmark of intelligence (or at least thoughtfulness) is the ability to sit on the fence and hold multiple — seemingly contradictory — opinions at once.

The_Colonel 2y ago
> I think you’re overestimating the seriousness of these statements of ‘hatred’. Isn’t it all a bit of a joke? I thought it was, anyway. No, at least not exclusively. > …which is very strange, because it seems quite clear that a hallmark of intelligence (or at least thoughtfulness) is the ability to sit on the fence and hold multiple — seemingly contradictory — opinions at once. I think seeing the world as multi-faceted and multi-colored (as opposed to black & white) is a sign of thoughtfulness. Many of these "contradictions" will then dissolve in the air.
ykonstant 2y ago
In a former HN post about Comic Sans, I linked a math seminar lecture that used a modified Comic Sans asking for the exact font and remarked that it looks very nice. The only response I got was one trashing me for insinuating a Comic Sans-derived font would look good, saying the presentation looked awful, and not answering my question about the font.