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Hype is foremost a word embedded in a framework of specific values and a specific concept cluster. It's a pejorative used by a variety of factions: those who sh

Hype is foremost a word embedded in a framework of specific values and a specific concept cluster. It's a pejorative used by a variety of factions: those who share the values, and concepts, but are in some fashion competitors or allied with competitors, etc.; or, those who have a different set of values. Most human behavior, especially commercial and economic, is a function of one's own received beliefs—and one's observations about and participation in the beliefs of others. Whether a given assertion is factual is secondary to whether it alters belief. Though I suppose even "belief" is too strong a word. Let's say "behavior." One need to not believe the hype, to seek to extract value from a market. The question I'd look it is, how are beliefs and behavior shaped by various assertions, and how well do those assertions correspond to various observations and predictions about the nature of reality—including collective behaviors. The funny thing about ponzy schemes and hysterical markets is that the usual account about how they form and how they collapse, hand waves around the core of the whole question: the source of value. A good socialist materialist might attempt to link value to utility amid other prosaic and pragmatic qualities, but our nature as a social species—one motivated in increasing part as we shuffle down the hierarchy of needs by intangibles such as status and its signaling—means that even the concept of utility is just another contentious ambiguity.

aaroninsf 1y ago
A somewhat cynical but not that I can see incorrect inference from this might be that the critical thing to look at in any market is primarily, to what degree is it a matter of "fashion"; and what are the contributions of current and anticipated social capital concentrations on whether something stays in fashion. Nearby is the concept of novelty: fashion in the clothes sense obviously chases a convoluted but ultimately cyclical path through relatively limited spaces. Many of us who have been on HN or in the industry prior to its inception have seen the pendulum swing in technology fashions as well—a regular example being the architectural decisions made in front-end frameworks. The fiction of classical philosophy of science was that it was additive, and that information was well preserved over time, and hence the entire process of scientific progress one of, well, progress. The equivalent fiction here might be that there is some obvious way in which the over-hyped and the real, usually, are determined not by intrinsic merit but rather through the tidal swinging of fashion. Usually. Every once in a while actual progress is made, thank god. ML and AI are obviously one of those cases. The noise of the industry churn and frenzy don't obscure that much, at all.

aaroninsf 1y ago

A somewhat cynical but not that I can see incorrect inference from this might be that the critical thing to look at in any market is primarily, to what degree is it a matter of "fashion"; and what are the contributions of current and anticipated social capital concentrations on whether something stays in fashion. Nearby is the concept of novelty: fashion in the clothes sense obviously chases a convoluted but ultimately cyclical path through relatively limited spaces. Many of us who have been on HN or in the industry prior to its inception have seen the pendulum swing in technology fashions as well—a regular example being the architectural decisions made in front-end frameworks. The fiction of classical philosophy of science was that it was additive, and that information was well preserved over time, and hence the entire process of scientific progress one of, well, progress. The equivalent fiction here might be that there is some obvious way in which the over-hyped and the real, usually, are determined not by intrinsic merit but rather through the tidal swinging of fashion. Usually. Every once in a while actual progress is made, thank god. ML and AI are obviously one of those cases. The noise of the industry churn and frenzy don't obscure that much, at all.