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I this post has enabled me to put my finger on what makes me uncomfortable about articles like this. Even though I frequently understand and sympathise with t

by Lerc 2y ago

I this post has enabled me to put my finger on what makes me uncomfortable about articles like this. Even though I frequently understand and sympathise with the goals and feelings of the writers, there are two factors that stand out. 1. A sense of certainty of the causal nature of the issues at hand. It comes across that the author has concluded the correct course of action. 2. Everybody, including you, should follow their concluded course of action. I would be fine with an article talking about what the cargo cult metaphor means, its historical accuracy and how the author thinks that impacts upon people. It would then seem to be quite reasonable for them to say that they are going to cease using the metaphor because of those reasons, and to invite people to consider doing the same if they think the reasons seem valid to them. It's ok to say "I think this, so I'm going to change my behaviour" It seems unreasonable to say. "I think this, so everyone should change their behaviour" Unfortunately it feels like we are heading to "I know this, so everyone should change their behaviour" The call for everyone else to change is backed by the certainty of their opinion. It presents complainants as wanting you to do their thing not because it's their opinion, it's because it is undeniable fact. It places you as morally deficient if you disagree. This affects things large and small, whether people want you to boycott a brand of toothpaste, or talk about milliBTC as the base unit of bitcoin, or talk about the topic they are uninterested in in a different forum. The solution is simple, everyone has to do this simple act of my bidding. Surely if the case for the damage caused by the cargo cult metaphor were to be made clearly and undeniable, people would not need to be told to stop using it, They just would.

SllX 2y ago
> Unfortunately it feels like we are heading to > "I know this, so everyone should change their behaviour" Depending on which avenues of the web you were on more than 10 years ago, even if that was some of the side streets on Tumblr or Twitter or whatever, we long ago already reached that point. It’s just gotten progressively more mainstream with each passing year, but the backlash was always going to come, and we’re living it.
- jrowen 2y ago
  Or, depending on who you conversed with at the forum... How do we disprove the null hypothesis that this is a part of human nature and there have always been and will always be people that state their opinions as fact to be more persuasive, and that those voices tend to dominate over the more tempered ones?
paroneayea 2y ago
That's almost every article on HN, though. Don't use inheritance, don't use C, use Kubernetes, don't use Kubernetes, etc etc. I suspect the thing that's bothering people in the comments here isn't as much that the author is making an argument but that the author is making an argument on cultural grounds?
- userbinator 2y ago
  People are fed up with the constant identity-politics culture-war bait. Mainstream news is already full of that stuff. HN in general is far more interested in the technical articles of the author.
  - scarecrowbob 2y ago
    It's kind of fun because any comment can be stated in a an objectionable way, I think. "Don't talk about identiy politics and things that seem like "dentity-politics culture-war bait". It's a fun game. You could do the same thing to this comment if you chose. I don't like Kant, but there might be something to the principle of unverisality...
    - ta8645 2y ago
      The difference being that the culture isn't awash in people demanding adherence to Kant. It seems that every time someone voices an objection to the tiresome identity-politics that is so prevalent today, others will ensure the conversation devolves into a discussion of slippery definitions and pedantic dismissals of the complainant's understanding. The truth is, _many_ people are fed up with the dominant leftist dogma that permeates almost every area of culture, government, and the economy today. We can argue until the sun goes down about the nature and specifics of what that entails, but people are reacting to _something_; it does exist, irrespective of any failure to describe it well.
      - ternnoburn 2y ago
        It's not leftist dogma. Leftists aren't capitalists, friend. Hard to argue the government and economy are post capitalist. And most leftists I know absolutely hate performative progressivism. Dems are widely mocked in leftist circles for doing stunts but not doing anything to help. Like Pelosi wearing Kente cloth while doing nothing to aid African people. So please, you might actually have people who agree with you in the leftist camp, stop bundling us with the Dems.
BlueTemplar 2y ago
Well, it's one thing to do it for these silly and easy examples, but how about : "Surely if the case for the damage caused by smoking / drugs / climate change / platforms were to be made clearly and undeniable, people would not need to be told to stop using it, They just would." But they don't, typically because this involves doing very hard changes in their lives. So, you have to keep the pressure for decades (or even centuries) of the "I know this, so everyone should change their behaviour" kind, if you want to have any hope for the behaviours to change. And at some point, it just becomes tiresome to always have to debate this, you know ? (How long can you can keep debating with people who think that aspects of fascism / Putin's behavior is good ?) Anyway, I will keep publicly shaming the kind of developer scum who in 2025 still uses the likes of GitHub / Discord / LinkedIn, and doesn't even have the decency to admit there might be something problematic with them.
- Lerc 2y ago
  >"Surely if the case for the damage caused by smoking / drugs / climate change / platforms were to be made clearly and undeniable, people would not need to be told to stop using it, They just would." Smoking - undeniable, but addictive. Yet despite the difficulty in quitting, smoking is in decline. Many smokers have tried to quit. They don't need more hectoring, they need support. Climate Change - Broad consensus is not the same as undeniable. Rapidly becoming undeniable. Change is happening, belatedly, and perhaps too late, but it is occurring. Drugs - Far too broad a category to be undeniable in practically any aspect. Definitely disagreement on the correct course of action on every aspect. Platforms - even more nebulous. Harms are alleged for many platforms but those claims are still a long way from being undeniable, yet the exodus from certain platforms would suggest that people leave when they feel the need. >And at some point, it just becomes tiresome to always have to debate this, you know ? Forcing your will on others because getting them to agree with you has become tiresome, does not seem to me, to be a productive way to change minds. > (How long can you can keep debating with people who think that aspects of fascism / Putin's behavior is good ?) As long as it takes, with reason, information, and compassion. >Anyway, I will keep publicly shaming the kind of developer scum who in 2025 still uses the likes of GitHub / Discord / LinkedIn, and doesn't even have the decency to admit there might be something problematic with them. I struggle to see the difference between shaming and bullying. Declaring people to be scum because they use a service you have a problem with just alienates them. When you have provided a list of services that includes so many people you declare to be scum. You have done even more than that. You have alienated yourself. I would like to think that I stand on my principles. I have never had a FaceBook or LinkedIn account. I do not, however, vilify those who make different decisions from myself. An odd aspect of much of this how I have always thought of myself as a very left-wing person, yet I found myself increasingly distant from people proclaiming themselves to be left-wing. The principles I value that leads to me to feel left wing are compassion, inclusion, freedom, and support. I can't reconcile those values with people who declare themselves to be lefties to seem to be so opposed to them. Recently someone posted a George Orwell quote on HN. It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else. Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come. Now it seems a lot of people do their bullying in the name of fighting Fascism while seeing Fascism in the myriad forms of things theey disagree with. One of the characteristics that led Steve Rogers to be selected for Captain America was his answer to the question "Do you want to kill Nazis?" His response, "I don't want to kill anyone, but I don't like bullies; I don't care where they're from." The writer of those lines had a message about what it meant to be a good person. Please have compassion. Instead of calling-out or publicly shaming, have a one-on-one conversation, listen and understand their position, explain your own.
Lendal 2y ago
It's easy for people who get paid to think to overthink things. He's overthinking it. It's hard enough for people to communicate as it is. Now we're being asked to research the ancient history, etymology and moral underpinnings of words and phrases when all we really want to do is communicate with our colleagues. I think it's okay to use any word or phrase as long as everyone knows what it means, and accurate communication has been achieved. People who find themselves with more time and money than sense on their hands have the privilege of writing articles like this. That's wonderful. Good for him. I'm happy for him. The rest of us can just carry on like we never read that article because although it's quite interesting, it's also absolutely useless.

by Lerc 2y ago

SllX 2y ago

> Unfortunately it feels like we are heading to > "I know this, so everyone should change their behaviour" Depending on which avenues of the web you were on more than 10 years ago, even if that was some of the side streets on Tumblr or Twitter or whatever, we long ago already reached that point. It’s just gotten progressively more mainstream with each passing year, but the backlash was always going to come, and we’re living it.

jrowen 2y ago
Or, depending on who you conversed with at the forum... How do we disprove the null hypothesis that this is a part of human nature and there have always been and will always be people that state their opinions as fact to be more persuasive, and that those voices tend to dominate over the more tempered ones?

paroneayea 2y ago

That's almost every article on HN, though. Don't use inheritance, don't use C, use Kubernetes, don't use Kubernetes, etc etc. I suspect the thing that's bothering people in the comments here isn't as much that the author is making an argument but that the author is making an argument on cultural grounds?

userbinator 2y ago
People are fed up with the constant identity-politics culture-war bait. Mainstream news is already full of that stuff. HN in general is far more interested in the technical articles of the author.
- scarecrowbob 2y ago
  It's kind of fun because any comment can be stated in a an objectionable way, I think. "Don't talk about identiy politics and things that seem like "dentity-politics culture-war bait". It's a fun game. You could do the same thing to this comment if you chose. I don't like Kant, but there might be something to the principle of unverisality...
  - ta8645 2y ago
    The difference being that the culture isn't awash in people demanding adherence to Kant. It seems that every time someone voices an objection to the tiresome identity-politics that is so prevalent today, others will ensure the conversation devolves into a discussion of slippery definitions and pedantic dismissals of the complainant's understanding. The truth is, _many_ people are fed up with the dominant leftist dogma that permeates almost every area of culture, government, and the economy today. We can argue until the sun goes down about the nature and specifics of what that entails, but people are reacting to _something_; it does exist, irrespective of any failure to describe it well.
    - ternnoburn 2y ago
      It's not leftist dogma. Leftists aren't capitalists, friend. Hard to argue the government and economy are post capitalist. And most leftists I know absolutely hate performative progressivism. Dems are widely mocked in leftist circles for doing stunts but not doing anything to help. Like Pelosi wearing Kente cloth while doing nothing to aid African people. So please, you might actually have people who agree with you in the leftist camp, stop bundling us with the Dems.

BlueTemplar 2y ago

Well, it's one thing to do it for these silly and easy examples, but how about : "Surely if the case for the damage caused by smoking / drugs / climate change / platforms were to be made clearly and undeniable, people would not need to be told to stop using it, They just would." But they don't, typically because this involves doing very hard changes in their lives. So, you have to keep the pressure for decades (or even centuries) of the "I know this, so everyone should change their behaviour" kind, if you want to have any hope for the behaviours to change. And at some point, it just becomes tiresome to always have to debate this, you know ? (How long can you can keep debating with people who think that aspects of fascism / Putin's behavior is good ?) Anyway, I will keep publicly shaming the kind of developer scum who in 2025 still uses the likes of GitHub / Discord / LinkedIn, and doesn't even have the decency to admit there might be something problematic with them.

Lerc 2y ago
>"Surely if the case for the damage caused by smoking / drugs / climate change / platforms were to be made clearly and undeniable, people would not need to be told to stop using it, They just would." Smoking - undeniable, but addictive. Yet despite the difficulty in quitting, smoking is in decline. Many smokers have tried to quit. They don't need more hectoring, they need support. Climate Change - Broad consensus is not the same as undeniable. Rapidly becoming undeniable. Change is happening, belatedly, and perhaps too late, but it is occurring. Drugs - Far too broad a category to be undeniable in practically any aspect. Definitely disagreement on the correct course of action on every aspect. Platforms - even more nebulous. Harms are alleged for many platforms but those claims are still a long way from being undeniable, yet the exodus from certain platforms would suggest that people leave when they feel the need. >And at some point, it just becomes tiresome to always have to debate this, you know ? Forcing your will on others because getting them to agree with you has become tiresome, does not seem to me, to be a productive way to change minds. > (How long can you can keep debating with people who think that aspects of fascism / Putin's behavior is good ?) As long as it takes, with reason, information, and compassion. >Anyway, I will keep publicly shaming the kind of developer scum who in 2025 still uses the likes of GitHub / Discord / LinkedIn, and doesn't even have the decency to admit there might be something problematic with them. I struggle to see the difference between shaming and bullying. Declaring people to be scum because they use a service you have a problem with just alienates them. When you have provided a list of services that includes so many people you declare to be scum. You have done even more than that. You have alienated yourself. I would like to think that I stand on my principles. I have never had a FaceBook or LinkedIn account. I do not, however, vilify those who make different decisions from myself. An odd aspect of much of this how I have always thought of myself as a very left-wing person, yet I found myself increasingly distant from people proclaiming themselves to be left-wing. The principles I value that leads to me to feel left wing are compassion, inclusion, freedom, and support. I can't reconcile those values with people who declare themselves to be lefties to seem to be so opposed to them. Recently someone posted a George Orwell quote on HN. It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else. Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come. Now it seems a lot of people do their bullying in the name of fighting Fascism while seeing Fascism in the myriad forms of things theey disagree with. One of the characteristics that led Steve Rogers to be selected for Captain America was his answer to the question "Do you want to kill Nazis?" His response, "I don't want to kill anyone, but I don't like bullies; I don't care where they're from." The writer of those lines had a message about what it meant to be a good person. Please have compassion. Instead of calling-out or publicly shaming, have a one-on-one conversation, listen and understand their position, explain your own.

Lendal 2y ago

It's easy for people who get paid to think to overthink things. He's overthinking it. It's hard enough for people to communicate as it is. Now we're being asked to research the ancient history, etymology and moral underpinnings of words and phrases when all we really want to do is communicate with our colleagues. I think it's okay to use any word or phrase as long as everyone knows what it means, and accurate communication has been achieved. People who find themselves with more time and money than sense on their hands have the privilege of writing articles like this. That's wonderful. Good for him. I'm happy for him. The rest of us can just carry on like we never read that article because although it's quite interesting, it's also absolutely useless.