Plenty of new things are important developments, even when there are selfish actors behind them. But also plenty of new things are just scams.
I personally found it hard to separate the two for many year, and fell in the pattern of unifying them. Cynical outlook has been a helpful protecting mechanism, though no longer as useful, as I'm trying to find and play more win-win games.
There are some things that really don't change, and I guess that can be a source of cynicism. The poor will always be among you, lying politicians, the greedy rich, etc. But I'd argue that isn't cause for inaction, quite the opposite, though I can see nihilists just retreating to their beds in despair.
Re: things that really don't change, I'd say "until they do". Plenty of examples in history where the whole system switches to a different equilibrium point (for example as in "Inadequate Equilibria" book).
When I'm referring to cynicism, I'm talking about the difference between the mindset of "these will never change", vs "these are attractor points in the current social system, which all history so far have been used, but the system may have other equilibriums and solutions for which X=`the rich are not greedy`".
Hope that's helpful!
The things that don't change I refer to, I really mean human nature, and I really think that doesn't change much. Some people just want to watch the world burn, etc, some people are greedy, narcissistic, lazy, psychotic, etc.
The cause for optimism, is that we can change society to better deal with the nature of the beast, bring out the best, and suppress the ugly. There's lots of work to do!
We live in a world on near limitless abundance. We already live in a potential post-scarcity world.
The only reason there are poor among us IS the greedy rich; but the greedy rich isn't some faceless, abstract, unkillable cosmic god. They have names and addresses; what they have can be taken from them as has happened many many times throughout history.
Things can change, sometimes slowly, sometimes incredibly quickly.
We have seen the impossible become inevitable over and over in the last few decades, and yet it still seems impossible for people to imagine the "impossible". I wonder if there is a name for that sort of fallacious thinking.
The opportunity is to make the currency of that hierarchy something far above basic needs, IMHO. Perhaps this could be a genuine use-case for cryptocurrencies, so that the ultra wealthy can 'keep score' in maths, rather than mega-yachts, private jets, dark satanic mills, etc.
Only if you ignore every society that that ever existed without a strict economic hierarchy, sure.
I consider myself an anarchist, as in, against unnecessary hierarchy, yet I still believe some hierarchy is inevitable, even necessary and desirable.
The viewpoint that says "why bother looking" is cynicism, I think. This is the viewpoint that says "all optimistic messages are power grabbing schemes." And it is a really disempowering and hopeless way of viewing the world.
I think it is better to keep looking behind the curtain. There's got to be something good back there.
IMO that's not being cynical. That's actually an universally positive trait: being able to spot power-grabbing schemes.
The problem with the negative side of cynicism described in the article is that, (to follow your example) the power-grabbing scheme is not the thing being detected, but rather the display of optimism. Every display of optimism is treated as being a power-grabbing scheme, or worse, naivety.
The things cynics end up attacking in the end isn't the power grabbing per se, but the optimism.
The answer is not to attack everything optimistic, but also neither to attack nothing. Life is hard.
Then, there are clearly two things being called cynicism here.
Arguing that the author is wrong because X is good when the author is actually talking about Y is a fruitless exercise.
> Perhaps as one studies history they find that all forms of positive change conceivable by mere humans have been co-opted and are accounted for in the extremely energetic struggle of the system to remain alive, as it has been selected for very much Darwinistically.
That still doesn't and won't ever mean that positive change is negative. If you're still throwing the baby with a bathwater, you're the bad kind of cynic.
I don't think most engineering departments & product-development-organizations give anywhere near a fair shake to doing good, to trying for better. There's so many meetings called to discuss options, to try to suss out where to go, that revolve around mistrust, that are simply a hunt for security. And there's a good chance these hunts for security are right, that mediocrity would better serve us all. But theres ongoing & persistent resistance, un-understanding of better, that pervades, and I'd like to see a little more optimism, a little more shared idea of possibility about. I think there's a lot of possibility that we consign away, a lot of true organizational excellence (& personal glory along with it) that the easier/safer paths ignore.
I also think HN is a classic, key demonstration of cynicism. I feel like a lot of new ideas presented get slammed, that the critics have a field day. I'd love a broad asssessment of positive/negative valence of posts. My gut feeling is that the novel gets extremely hostile reception here. Someone combined mutable torrents with webtorrent[1], & there felt like such vast continuing cynicism, such "what are the use cases?", such tearing it down, such disbelief & resistance. This just feels like one of endless countless examples of cyncism & disbelief, such desire to disregard, to put the new, potential, positives into a box that can be safely disregarded. This to me is the poison we swallow.
For sure. 100%. Be wary of what people are selling. Be wary of the power-grabbing. But I think we ought try to wire ourselves to be positive if we can. We should look for the tell-tale signs, & try to promote & support the potentially good, the things that may have merit, to have optimism. While calling out the specific delusions & exploitionations that may be afoot.
It's a balancing. But we should try, try try try, to find optimism. Just not without disregarding reason.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/publiusfed... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29513547
> The internet (well, just worldwide connectivity IMO) has turned cynicism into a social signaling mechanism, it's not just HN.
We're cutting to the punch here, but: a lot of the thing you are about to list sound less like "the internet" & more like general society waking up & understanding what's less than optimal.
> make a "hot take" against US democrats,
They're pretty useless absolutely but the opposition has been stalwartly effective. Bernie wasn't that far off from being president & even though he's far outside the current party, the core consitutents desire far far more from this party. A lot of democrats-the-people loath the uselessnessness. Hot takes are deserved against any party that has gotten so little done. But also, most democrats are pretty sympathetic to how impossible the situation has been, how constitutionally rigged everything has been against them getting any chance to do anything. It's been decade after decade of democrats having zero actual chance to pass anything meaningful, other than, say, Romneycare. the demorat's are slammable but we all know there's not in many's lifetime been a single chance to determine whether they're actually useful or not.
> CRT, cryptocurrencies, management, VCs, capitalism,
Mostly deserved & out of touch higher echelon's detached from ground truth. The one exception IMO: I don't see any dunking against Critical Race Theory (CRT)s that doesn't come off as maligning & poisonous. There's no popular way to be anti-woke, yay.
> pastafarianism
Again a weird conflation of that which is slammed versus that which slams & is woke. No one makes "hot takes" against pastafarianism. We all know they are already warm saucy goodness. Pastafarians don't make hot takes against anyone else. Like CRT, like US democrats, they're just trying to do good; they only want progress, there's no possession with tearing down the bad or other.
To return to our seeming core disagreement, you said:
> Cynical "dunks" burnish your qualifications to your in-group:
This feels like turning a hunt for oppression into a reason to disregard people. Many groups deserved to be dunked on, BECAUSE THEY ARE CYNICAL. Because they are inaccessible, not open, not participating, not doing enough, doing bad, or outright acting in bad faith.
It's difficult to figure out exactly where any voice is positioned, but, critical review that says: "you are not being optimistic enough": that's (sometimes) not cynical. Just because review is negative does not make it cynical. One can have higher expectations & use those to stage critical reviews.
> it's not just HN. Cynical "dunks" burnish your qualifications... you'll get all your fellow in-group folks upvoting/retweeting/liking your "hot take". IMO this is the greatest threat of all
I've walked point by point through how I don't see your listed examples as bad or hazarous or cynical. There's due cynicism against bad, there's due well wishes for the good to be better. I'm not completely opposed- there's certainly a critical air about- but to me it's not the internet & a lot of those airs are resistive to oppressionaries, are optimistic in nature. It is a very critical time, absolutely, but I don't see much of the critiques as cynical or performative or harmful: I see them as part of a direly needed push out of the long rut society has been stuck in, & a drive towards better. And one that isn't trying to harm or damage, but to simply make aware, to share.
I don't mean to say that any of these in particular are or are not hostile, dangerous, or negative. They were examples of issues that people like to have "dunks" or "hot takes" on.
> Again a weird conflation of that which is slammed versus that which slams & is woke. No one makes "hot takes" against pastafarianism. We all know they are already warm saucy goodness. Pastafarians don't make hot takes against anyone else. Like CRT, like US democrats, they're just trying to do good; they only want progress, there's no possession with tearing down the bad or other.
I'm not trying to sort these into sides. That's my point.
> This feels like turning a hunt for oppression into a reason to disregard people. Many groups deserved to be dunked on, BECAUSE THEY ARE CYNICAL. Because they are inaccessible, not open, not participating, not doing enough, doing bad, or outright acting in bad faith.
> It's difficult to figure out exactly where any voice is positioned, but, critical review that says: "you are not being optimistic enough": that's (sometimes) not cynical. Just because review is negative does not make it cynical. One can have higher expectations & use those to stage critical reviews.
> There's due cynicism against bad, there's due well wishes for the good to be better. I'm not completely opposed- there's certainly a critical air about- but to me it's not the internet & a lot of those airs are resistive to oppressionaries, are optimistic in nature. It is a very critical time, absolutely, but I don't see much of the critiques as cynical or performative or harmful: I see them as part of a direly needed push out of the long rut society has been stuck in, & a drive towards better.
The long rut of what, on what time scale, when? When was it "better" and when did it become "worse"? It wasn't that long ago that McCarthyism was used to bully political sides, when the US and the Soviet Union propped up brutal puppet regimes to fight proxy wars, when Africa/India/China was divided into an arbitrary map of colonial powers, when queer folks were unacceptable in the general public while being ruthlessly bullied (and this continues to this day!) in private, when Muslims/Arabs/South Asians were regularly frisked in Western airports, when people of color had their lives ruined for the possession of token amounts of recreational drugs. It's always been this way.
My point has nothing to do with either "side". That some of these are negative things by some and positive things by other is also something that I understand and accept. My point is that, when you create group-identity, you begin to get dialogue like "because fuck capitalism" that gets many upvotes/shares/engagement, instead of nuanced arguments like "there's no recourse for labor to fall back onto when management manipulates them". What that does is it crowds out the voices of people interested in novel ideas ("what if I get dunked on for being socialist/capitalist/Georgist/whatever") and shifts the dialogue away from problems and solutions into in-group signaling ("yeah I'm gonna upvote all the anti-capitalist posts because f*** the 1%!"). It's a culture that makes people defensive and adversarial ("ugh I wanna see what IPFS is all about but they're associated with Filecoin which is crypto and all my friends hate crypto so I shouldn't") instead of supportive and uplifting. It also then incenitivizes people ("huh I get lots of upvotes when I hate on <X>, so I should keep doing it") to keep up the cycle of hot takes. When cynicism meets group-identity politics, you get IMO the worst case.