Hacker News Reader

Comment by cartesius13 | Hacker News Reader

This is probably the most annoying straw man argument against Gemini. One of the first things you see in their official page is:

"Gemini is a new internet protocol which:

Is heavier than gopher Is lighter than the web Will not replace either"

And if you hang out and talk to people using it you find out that most, if not all, of them are well aware that Gemini will not and can not replace the Web.

Even Drew Devault has said this about Gemini: "Gemini does not solve all of the web’s problems, but it addresses a subset of its use-cases better than the web does, and that excites me. I want to discard the parts of the web that Gemini does better, and explore other solutions for anything that’s left of the web which is worth keeping". And don't think anyone here in good faith will say that this is "marketing Gemini as a Web replacement". You are imagining these marketers and arguing against them

View on HN

> "I want to discard the parts of the web that Gemini does better, and explore other solutions for anything that’s left of the web which is worth keeping"

You conveniently left off the next part of that sentence: "(hint: much of it is not)" It's pretty clear that ddevault thinks that Gemini can replace a large fraction of the web (which is the issue under dispute).

The difference between "Gemini can replace the whole web", "Gemini can replace a large fraction of the web", and "Gemini can replace anything more than a vanishingly tiny sliver of the web" is largely irrelevant, as all of them are false, and my argument reads the same if you substitute either of those other two phrases in.

It really sounds like you've misunderstood Gemini and what people like about it, and are now working backwards to demonstrate that your gut feeling ("Gemini <<< Web") is correct.

While in reality, most people using Gemini are using it to blissfully ignore parts of the Web that they are tired of. Gemini was intentionally designed to discourage complex experiments and additional functionality.

Sometimes, I just want to ride a bike, not an airplane. That doesn't mean cyclists believe that bikes can replace air travel.

Also, replace is maybe not the best word here since a lot Gemini enthusiasts believe some things that are possible on the Web don't need a replacement because we would be better off if they didn't even exist.

I also disagree that Gemini is a web replacement as in "everything the Web does Gemini can also do", when read "replace" this is what I think and this is clearly not true. To me it's more like "Some things the Web can do, Gemini also can and the things it can't do aren't really desirable anyway because they can be abused to do things I think is bad and evil"

My point is that most people using Gemini agrees with this: "It is its own thing with its own community that is entirely complementary to the web, and nothing more" even if they think some parts of the Web can be replaced by Gemini (which it can. Text only web pages with simple markup is a thing)

>It's pretty clear that ddevault thinks that Gemini can replace a large fraction of the web (which is the issue under dispute).

Replacing a large fraction is EXTREMELY different than replacing the web which is how you originally phrased it.

"Large fraction" is also extremely vague. Unless they've stated a quantitative amount of the web which they think this can replace then this argument is pointless.

You're making quite the fallacy here - that if a quantitative amount is not given, then you can't make arguments about the statement. That's false.

ddevault (and other gemini enthusiasts) use this kind of qualitative marketing speak to portray Gemini as something that is comparable to the web, while avoiding making quantitative claims, and that is part of my grievance, as stated in my original comment.

You have quite the nerve pointing out other people's alleged fallacies, while you yourself are doing everything in your power to interpret the statements of the Gemini community in a very onesided way. IIRC, the etiquette of this very place says:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Since this whole discussion has left constructive territory a long time ago and arguably violates these guidelines already, I will refrain from replying to this part of the discussion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com