Hacker News Reader

Comment by wallace_f | Hacker News Reader

He's right. Modern intellectual and political aversion to open competition and experimentation is, at best, unethical.

I wouldn't call it unethical, but unfair. It happens mostly in the more extreme corners of the political spectrum, whether it is right or left. That perspective of non-discussion has gained a strong foothold in the "center" unfortunately, too, recently. I believe many people have the feeling that they haven't been heard and thus are not interested in listening any more.

It's not an irreversible trend, I suppose, if each and everyone of us manages to take one step back and start listening again.

Yea that's what I was thinking, and also along with another idea about experimentation. People on both sides can become even intolerant of the other's rights to their civil libertiea and democratic right of self-governance. What I mean, in practice, is that if a state wants to legalize a plant, run its own healthcare system, well in fact they should be encouraged to do so. We should be to some extent tolerant of these experiments and competition among states in social policy. It is consistent with democracy and what the Founding Fathers intended. But instead everyone wants to command the authority of the central government to demand everyone has to do it their way, and the results end up really egregiously bad as you can see today.

You seem to be assuming a great deal of things axiomatically. All of your claims are subject to philosophical discussion. The "Founding Fathers" are not God. Liberalism, democracy, and civil liberties are not given and obvious goods (Plato saw democracy as the worst form of government and one that degenerates into tyranny, probably more through ethos than procedure).

And is certainly a reflection of people's lack of REAL confidence in themselves.

This, combined with our ironically deteriorating ability to communicate in a digital age is leading down not such a bright road.

Could you elaborate?

I suspect he's talking about people's refusal to "debate" whether they should be subjected to suffering, discrimination, abuse, etc.

As the other comment points out, people aren’t willing to challenge themselves but also feign a confidence about themselves due to various factors such as economic and societal pressures. Admitting you have no idea most of the time is probably more accurate (estimate is obviously a reasonably afauirable skill) but that’s not what boss man is looking for.

I think this also evidences itself in the prevalence of imposter theory, especially in younger generations. The reason the saying goes, “that feeling never goes away” is because we all operate outwardly as if we are more expert than we are and begin to believe that lie.

Does that clarify?

No, not really. It's still rather vague to me. Could you give me a concrete example?

Sure!

If you look at the levels of reported 'imposter syndrome', there is a noted rise over the last few years.

I'm assuming here that you are aware of imposter syndrome and perhaps have felt it at times yourself. I certainly have.

To our peers, we pretend we know more than we do to feign this confidence that has almost emerged as necessary since there are so many that can do our jobs as programmers.

This feigned confidence manifests as imposter syndrome. Since we can't be honest (and risk management firing us because we're incompetent), we never quite feel like we're 'good enough' for our jobs.

Does that help?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com