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Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

An hypothesis based on subjective experience:

In the post-modern era (roughly 1945-20??) people were highly skeptical of their egos and of power, advertised humility, and consequently had a sense of humor about themselves and the world. Thus you get names like quark and Google.

Now in the newly-born (reactionary?) era, ego is our God, and we get names like Uber. Physics perhaps hasn't quite joined the new era, yet.

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Interesting, although I think your hypothesis would benefit from additional examples. It’s way too easy to cherry pick with a sample size of 2.

I'd like to think Uber is an uncommon example of hubris by a bad actor.

Lift, Cabify and Freenow are slightly more down to earth ;)

Theranos? Elon Musk? Silicon Valley and IT are full of hubris-based actors, successful or not.

Linus invented Git, one can repent ;)

Yeah, ironically when i think of Uber, i think of Ubermenschen, which featured prominently in Nazi propaganda[1], so 1940s. So much for ego being a new thing and cherry picking how in olden times things were better.

Even so, your thesis was falsifiable which makes it good in my book :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cbermensch#Use_by_the_Naz...

That's what I think of too.

> So much for ego being a new thing and cherry picking how in olden times things were better.

I never said ego was a new thing, or that all of history was better. In fact, I chose the post-war period - whose culture, I would guess, was partly a reaction to the fascist ideology (or any ideology).

> Physics perhaps hasn't quite joined the new era, yet.

I dunno, I've noticed that most physicists I've met have the "ego is God" vibe pretty well cooked in, and they will definitely let you know it.

Interesting take. Might have something to do with the culture of science, which still adheres more to values like collaboration.

Also, the culture of science is inescapably post-modern. The new era aggressively rejects the Enlightenment bases of science such as the supremacy of fact, the weakness of subjectivity, resolving issues by reason, empowerment by our intellects, etc.

As somebody who's interested in postmodern philosophy, I'm not sure I'd characterise it as being against reason or intellectual empowerment. It's primarily skeptical of metanarratives, like the idea of historical progress or the inevitable triumph of reason. The big one it expresses skepticism towards is the modernist project, but that doesn't mean a rejection of reason. After all, postmodern philosophy uses arguments from reasoning to make its case!

Social constructivism and the like also aren't anti-facts or pro-subjectivity (assuming that's what you were implying, just a guess though) - it's about acknowledging which things we consider objectively true are actually only true by convention or tradition rather than being rooted in physical laws. Also how the human mind models knowledge and the relations between our models of reality and reality itself, so we don't mistake the map for the territory.

> As somebody who's interested in postmodern philosophy, I'm not sure I'd characterise it as being against reason or intellectual empowerment.

I agree completely! The "new era" to which I referred is not post-modernism, but what I describe as the current 'reactionary' era in my earlier post (the GGGP, beginning "An hypothesis ..."). Sorry if that was confusing.

Understood, and agreed :)

So what do you think? Are we in a new period after post-modernism? What would you call it? When and how did it start? I can't be the first to think it - by who and where is it talked about?

Some humantities and social science academics I know disdain post-modernism, with all the scholarly reason and social momentum of being 'no longer cool' in high school - 'you're still wearing those shoes?'. I asked one, in front of their friend, about the post-modern person on whom they wrote their thesis. They changed the subject and then later told me quietly, 'I don't read that anymore'.

For all the ridiculousness of that, it's serious business. Post-modernism contained the weapons and armor against fascism and other ideology, and we've disarmed ourselves. What do people intend to replace it with?

If you are referring to Uber the app, "Uber" had nothing to do with ego. The cab experience was poor, and the service was called UberCab to delineate a better cab experience. Cab++ if you wish.

They got sued for using the word "cab" in "UberCab", and just shorted the name to "Uber".

Is that not ego? "We're better than a cab".

It would be ego-less if they called it CabApp or something.

WeTriedOurBestAndHopeWeDidBetterThanRegularCabs™

"We are paying less tax and insurance than a cab"

All the other cabapp names are egoless

The people who named it no doubt put much more thought into the name than we are, and I am confident they knew the implications of the word 'uber'; also, emember that it was founded by Travis Kalanick whose public actions seem to fit some of those implications.

Also compare the word 'uber', however you interpret it, with words like 'google', 'yahoo', 'GNU', 'quark', 'charmed', 'C', 'C++', etc. Those have wit, humor, and disarm ego. (In fairess, maybe there are similarly witty names now that I'm not thinking of?)

You are overthinking this by a wide margin. UberCab was being used with the same meaning of “Ubercool”.

And you are factually wrong: UberCab was created without Travis Kalanick, by Garrett Camp. Travis invested in UberCab 6 months later or so, and he became CEO as part of the deal.

Do your research please.

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