9 ms·

It's always a safe bet that the top Hacker News comment will always be "won't work, it's too hard." It's like sitting around for a year trying to sell a project

It's always a safe bet that the top Hacker News comment will always be "won't work, it's too hard." It's like sitting around for a year trying to sell a project at my current employer, with everybody and their lead telling you "that'll never work," then you implement in a weekend and those same people start nitpicking what you've come up with. (What happened to it'll never work? "Well, your CSS isn't great.") Honestly, those folks that stand back with their arms crossed watching you fail, and reminding you the whole way that you might fail, are the biggest pains in my ass in this profession. By a mile. Maybe you can contribute your wisdom by going to Lockheed, instead of Internet commentary in which you bet against them?

protonfish 12y ago
And it's always a safe bet the top response to that comment will be somebody criticizing it without any solid facts or reason but with fuzzy "you just need to believe harder!" kind of nonsense.
- jsmthrowaway 12y ago
  Actually, I subtly said "get the hell out of the way if you don't think it'll work," not warm and fuzzy smarminess. But it's much easier for you to mock if you read warm and fuzzies out of it, and I get that. What I said, reworded, was the people who sit on the sidelines of anything and tell you, while you are trying something, that it won't work are among the worst people in the profession. I didn't say believe harder. I don't give a damn what you believe and don't need you reminding me, constantly, that my project has a chance of failure. Keep it to yourself or get on board. That's my point. I am not a kind person, so that you'd ascribe feel-good nonsense to me is downright hilarious. I can handle it but a lot of people can't, and it's really, really tiring to keep a team from becoming demoralized when there's a naysayer popcorn gallery in every thread and watercooler discussion.
  - Kalium 12y ago
    The naysayers do us all a valuable service. They remind us that hope, dreams, and belief do not solve engineering problems. You know what demoralizes a team like nothing else? And endless litany of projects that failed because nobody wanted to listen to the people pointing out problems.
    - genericuser 12y ago
      You know what demoralizes a team EXACTLY like that? When people on the team think they are pointing out problems, but are doing so without support, by simply saying "That won't work" instead of "That won't work because of ...". This does nothing to further a project and leaves the burden of proof for a working solution on the person who proposed the solution in the first place, and the way for them to prove their solution is to continue working on it, with no actionable feedback to revise their project on.
- macinjosh 12y ago
  It is also a safe bet that the response to the original comment's response will be some guy saying how being hopeful about something is complete nonsense. It's turtles all the way down. Guess we should just give up on Internet commenting. /s
  - javajosh 12y ago
    Interestingly, the heat for this pattern is always taken by the last comment, for some strange reason. Maybe it's the communities way of saying "Duh, we know this happens, and the way we stop conversations from going down the meta-toilet is to not have them." Although I would say it's more fair to downvote every comment that fits the pattern, to the root, rather than just the latter ones.
    - krapp 12y ago
      >Although I would say it's more fair to downvote every comment that fits the pattern, to the root, rather than just the latter ones. That's a good way to lose your comment-voting privileges - I just noticed my ability to vote on comments disappeared at some point.
nutjob123 12y ago
I dislike negativity as much as the other guy but fusion specifically has been "10 years away" for the last 60 years. I'm not convinced, especially without any specifics about what improvements they made. Probably just another grab for funding.
the_real_bto 12y ago
It's easy to be a critic. Dropbox is a prime example of this effect: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
rayiner 12y ago
That's hardly ever true. In my experience, Hacker News is full of people from the software field; folks whose professions are often unconstrained by physics,[1] and who have a generally optimistic "this can happen" mentality. That's why everyone here believes we'll have fully self-driving cars in 5-6 years. In the rest of the engineering world, the answer to any question is: it'll be harder than you think it'll be (physics will beat you over the head at every step). You can cross your arms and say "that won't work" and you'll be correct 97% of the time. Fusion is something that some of the smartest people in the world, with enormous amounts of money behind them, have been beating their heads against for the last half century or more. Somebody will figure it out, eventually, but statistically, any given project is very likely not to be the one that does, and it will almost certainly take much longer than the optimists assume it will take. Did you know that coal plants, which still make up the majority of U.S. energy production, are only about twice as efficient today than they were a century ago? [1] Although math can be a kick in the ass too if you're working in domains where you can prove there are no polynomial-time algorithms for whatever problem you're working on. E.g. there is a reason people have been banging their heads on the garbage collection problem since the 1950's and it's still an active area of research.
- jsmthrowaway 12y ago
  > That's hardly ever true. Even pg discussed the phenomenon, as you undoubtedly know. There's a good idea, or a news article hailing progress, or some other kind of optimism, then the first comment is a mid-brow dismissal. They are the lowest-effort comments to make; "that won't work because X isn't well-respected and Y often happens to similar teams" requires almost no research and cannot really be refuted. The only way to refute it is by calling a spade a spade, and look what I get for doing so: having my comment twisted to be fuzzy feel-good smarm crap, when really I'm just saying "shut up and get out of the way if you don't think it'll work."
  - rayiner 12y ago
    I don't think of such comments as being "mid-brow" dismissals. Indeed, the people most knowledgable about the field are the ones who are most likely to tell you it won't work. And 97% of the time they'll be right. As for "shut up and get out of the way"--whose way exactly? Unless you're a nuclear physicist, comments expressing hopeful optimism aren't very useful.
munchbunny 12y ago
I think people here are generally willing to believe that this is solved if the hard problems are solved. Right now the skepticism is that the hard problems haven't been solved - but that's true of any bet that you make. Either the hard problem has been solved, or you're betting that your people will solve it soon.
aetherson 12y ago
Thank you for your detailed explanation of why people should not make any attempt to apply their judgment, experience, or knowledge of the world to press releases, and instead accept them uncritically.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

protonfish 12y ago

And it's always a safe bet the top response to that comment will be somebody criticizing it without any solid facts or reason but with fuzzy "you just need to believe harder!" kind of nonsense.

jsmthrowaway 12y ago
Actually, I subtly said "get the hell out of the way if you don't think it'll work," not warm and fuzzy smarminess. But it's much easier for you to mock if you read warm and fuzzies out of it, and I get that. What I said, reworded, was the people who sit on the sidelines of anything and tell you, while you are trying something, that it won't work are among the worst people in the profession. I didn't say believe harder. I don't give a damn what you believe and don't need you reminding me, constantly, that my project has a chance of failure. Keep it to yourself or get on board. That's my point. I am not a kind person, so that you'd ascribe feel-good nonsense to me is downright hilarious. I can handle it but a lot of people can't, and it's really, really tiring to keep a team from becoming demoralized when there's a naysayer popcorn gallery in every thread and watercooler discussion.
- Kalium 12y ago
  The naysayers do us all a valuable service. They remind us that hope, dreams, and belief do not solve engineering problems. You know what demoralizes a team like nothing else? And endless litany of projects that failed because nobody wanted to listen to the people pointing out problems.
  - genericuser 12y ago
    You know what demoralizes a team EXACTLY like that? When people on the team think they are pointing out problems, but are doing so without support, by simply saying "That won't work" instead of "That won't work because of ...". This does nothing to further a project and leaves the burden of proof for a working solution on the person who proposed the solution in the first place, and the way for them to prove their solution is to continue working on it, with no actionable feedback to revise their project on.
macinjosh 12y ago
It is also a safe bet that the response to the original comment's response will be some guy saying how being hopeful about something is complete nonsense. It's turtles all the way down. Guess we should just give up on Internet commenting. /s
- javajosh 12y ago
  Interestingly, the heat for this pattern is always taken by the last comment, for some strange reason. Maybe it's the communities way of saying "Duh, we know this happens, and the way we stop conversations from going down the meta-toilet is to not have them." Although I would say it's more fair to downvote every comment that fits the pattern, to the root, rather than just the latter ones.
  - krapp 12y ago
    >Although I would say it's more fair to downvote every comment that fits the pattern, to the root, rather than just the latter ones. That's a good way to lose your comment-voting privileges - I just noticed my ability to vote on comments disappeared at some point.

nutjob123 12y ago

I dislike negativity as much as the other guy but fusion specifically has been "10 years away" for the last 60 years. I'm not convinced, especially without any specifics about what improvements they made. Probably just another grab for funding.

the_real_bto 12y ago

It's easy to be a critic. Dropbox is a prime example of this effect: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

rayiner 12y ago

That's hardly ever true. In my experience, Hacker News is full of people from the software field; folks whose professions are often unconstrained by physics,[1] and who have a generally optimistic "this can happen" mentality. That's why everyone here believes we'll have fully self-driving cars in 5-6 years. In the rest of the engineering world, the answer to any question is: it'll be harder than you think it'll be (physics will beat you over the head at every step). You can cross your arms and say "that won't work" and you'll be correct 97% of the time. Fusion is something that some of the smartest people in the world, with enormous amounts of money behind them, have been beating their heads against for the last half century or more. Somebody will figure it out, eventually, but statistically, any given project is very likely not to be the one that does, and it will almost certainly take much longer than the optimists assume it will take. Did you know that coal plants, which still make up the majority of U.S. energy production, are only about twice as efficient today than they were a century ago? [1] Although math can be a kick in the ass too if you're working in domains where you can prove there are no polynomial-time algorithms for whatever problem you're working on. E.g. there is a reason people have been banging their heads on the garbage collection problem since the 1950's and it's still an active area of research.

jsmthrowaway 12y ago
> That's hardly ever true. Even pg discussed the phenomenon, as you undoubtedly know. There's a good idea, or a news article hailing progress, or some other kind of optimism, then the first comment is a mid-brow dismissal. They are the lowest-effort comments to make; "that won't work because X isn't well-respected and Y often happens to similar teams" requires almost no research and cannot really be refuted. The only way to refute it is by calling a spade a spade, and look what I get for doing so: having my comment twisted to be fuzzy feel-good smarm crap, when really I'm just saying "shut up and get out of the way if you don't think it'll work."
- rayiner 12y ago
  I don't think of such comments as being "mid-brow" dismissals. Indeed, the people most knowledgable about the field are the ones who are most likely to tell you it won't work. And 97% of the time they'll be right. As for "shut up and get out of the way"--whose way exactly? Unless you're a nuclear physicist, comments expressing hopeful optimism aren't very useful.

munchbunny 12y ago

I think people here are generally willing to believe that this is solved if the hard problems are solved. Right now the skepticism is that the hard problems haven't been solved - but that's true of any bet that you make. Either the hard problem has been solved, or you're betting that your people will solve it soon.

aetherson 12y ago

Thank you for your detailed explanation of why people should not make any attempt to apply their judgment, experience, or knowledge of the world to press releases, and instead accept them uncritically.

deleted 12y ago

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