Hacker News Reader

Comment by jff | Hacker News Reader

I swear there's a pervasive feeling among bicycle and mass transit advocates that if the experience is too convenient, it's not morally right. A bicycle is morally right because it takes effort and gets you to work a bit slower than a car. An e-bike is morally wrong because you don't have to work as hard and you get to work just as fast; you're not sacrificing anything by not taking a car, you're not a hero. Similar reasons behind buses/trains vs. ideas of self-driving electric municipal cars.

View on HN

This is true of any community where the barrier to entry has rapidly eroded. The old-school members who bought their way in with hard work and perseverence (and also usually luck or money) react negatively to recent arrivals who don't understand the community's norms -- which are now suddenly out of date. Meanwhile, the new arrivals often see the old guard as a prickly, up-tight clique. I'm thinking of Endless September, D&D, Anime fandom, model aircraft, music scenes, Old Money versus New Money, Lisp Machine hackers versus Unix folks, Unix folks versus OMGUbuntu... the variations are endless, but they're all the same.

And yet, try as I might to be philosophical about it, my gut tells me that people passing me on e-bikes are vile cheaters.

As someone who has killed deer with a bow and arrow (not on a regular basis: it's difficult and I don't always have the time required), I feel the same way about the new rule change that allows people to hunt with crossbows in archery season. I have sympathy for people who can't or won't draw a bow, but I don't see what's wrong with them just hunting during gun season as they always have.

Did they give a rationale for the change?

I'm kind of curious, since my understanding is that America as a whole is not hunting "enough" (to keep deer populations at a sustainable level), if it isn't an explicit attempt to thin deer populations more.

It's meant to help out feeble people, but it will probably help population management as well. Deer populations are really only out of control in suburbia, where crossbows used over a long hunting season might make the biggest difference. No one is going to call the cops because they heard a crossbow go off.

You don't have to involve these kinds of morals do to prefer a practical solution that exists now to a science-fiction concept that doesn't.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com