Ask HN: Why are you here? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why are you here?

80 pointsBrianOnHN145 comments

I've been following HN for the past decade. It was an inspiration to see so many people working to make things better.

Being part of a community that was solving problems, "improving the world," gave me hope and purpose.

Then, because of my own hope & purpose, I felt like I was able to contribute to hope & purpose in other people.

But things are changing.

Myself, I've lost hope. My hope that 'things will get better' is lost.

I used to believe that startups were meant to solve painful problems. But the most painful problems in the world aren't even discussed here.

And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse.

So now, I most frequently come here for a distraction. To drown out the noise of reality with some overly complicated technical write-up, or some arm-chair theoretical physics, or plead with smart people to look deeper.

Today I'm here, hoping, to find a little hope.

Why are you here?

View on HN

To get the latest github status outages in real time

But more seriously, it's just a higher bar of contribution than other forums on the internet with more interesting articles and points of view.

> Being part of a community that was solving problems, "improving the world," gave me hope and purpose.

This attitude in tech is honestly exhausting. It reminds me of that fake Tech Crunch Disrupt scene in the first season of Silicon Valley. The sooner you kind of give up on this and have fun with the problems you have the easier it is to enjoy your work, imho.

"Our no sql encrypted database will help save the world"

Isn't far from a lot of mission statements

While it's unreasonable to expect too much from tech, as some of the most privileged workers on the planet, we do actually have an obligation to pay attention to whether the mission statement of the place we work is net positive. Don't help build a corporate panopticon just because there's a big number.

Thank you for saying this.

Am I the only one cynical enough to think that all mission statements can be translated to: "make money" and they exist simply because everyone else does it?

If google had kept the same exact same mission statement from day one, would that mission statement actually have an impact on protentional employees? Or would the court of public opinion have more sway? I can say as an n=1 data point, mission statements mean nothing to me.

yes, but how you make money is important. If there's a clear way to make money in a way that's principled, and not just "we'll figure it out later". For example, as a consumer, I trust discord somewhat more than I trust facebook, since they've clearly had a revenue stream from the beginning that wasn't (just?) exploit their users. And biotech has the potential to be significantly better, since there's a clear product. And palantir is significantly worse in that they're explicitly working to build a police state.

I guess I'm saying it's important to think critically about the business case, and not just take founders at their word that they "won't be evil".

"Saving the world" was a marketing campaign to get employees. A lot of businesses have locked into that - lock step - for power. It was required to get employees away from the old dogs. Many of those larger companies from the 50s did NOT market a message of "making the world a better place" yet the world became a better place. Now companies are marketing that - and the world is becoming a lot worse.

I think the problem is that - at least in the United States - the social fabric is being burnt to a crisp because everyone cares only for their followers (which is another way of caring for their own image) - rather than do what is good and moral. If we cared more about our family, real friends and local communities, rather than superficial remote usernames, the social fabric would be fine. I do, unfortunately, think it is too late. I don't think we can re-train billions of people to go back. So now we have to go through. Good luck everyone.

This attitude in tech is honestly exhausting

that may be true for the wider tech community. but the FOSS community is still driven by idealism. and that's why i am here. hackernews has a wider topic range than places that focus on FOSS only and it has a significant (but not dominant) following among FOSS enthusiasts.

basically what used to be kuro5hin and what slashdot maybe still is.

I hang around a few FOSS communities, and the idealism is even more exhausting there. Most people just want to build and use cool or useful things - the zealotry over the FOS part of FOSS has a tendency to produce toxic communities imo.

Building cool and useful things is idealistic! Making things people can enjoy and sharing them with the world is wonderful and something not found in a lot of companies.

I think the zealotry is being protectionist trying to keep things fun and useful and not tainted by the need to extract a profit

seems more of a personal problem, if i may say so. i have absolutely no problem with the idealism in FOSS communities. for one because it's not fake. the people i know really believe in what they are doing and they honestly volunteer to make the world a better place.

if you don't see that then maybe you are not meeting the right people. those who do the work just get along fine. they are not bad-mouthing others for not doing it right.

and people who refuse to work with non-free software, that's their choice, that doesn't make them zealots. and i haven't seen any example of where that would make a community toxic.

that doesn't mean that there is no toxicity, i am sure there is. but not more than what you can find right here on hackernews.

I’m here for the intelligent, relatively anonymous discussion.

Many people on here have similar life experiences and interests to me so it’s nice to be around those folks without the vanity of normal social media.

Re: your loss of hope, I completely disagree. Quality of life has never been better and there are many incredibly smart people trying to solve very hard problems to make it even better. There is and always has been suffering. And there is and always have been people trying to fix it.

I also disagree that the social fabric is at risk of collapse. I only see things on the internet that makes it look like the world is falling apart. But my reality, and my community’s reality doesn’t even get close to matching that.

and the anonymous, relatively intelligent discussions too.

I think the bit about "social fabric at risk of collapse" is, to some degree, always true/possible. A community is only as strong as its constituents, and if everyone thinks the end is near that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I agree with your general sentiment that quality of life has arguably never been better (for everyone, no just techies from developed nations), but it sounds like OP is coming to terms with the inherent tension of pluralism rather than despairing their day to day comfort. I suspect they may have grown up in a relatively homogeneous cultural environment and are now realizing that different folks have vastly different priorities in life; often irreconcilably different.

The best advice I can muster is "be the change you wish to see in the world". Giving up hope is just passing the buck. You'll never have the whole world on your side, but you also don't need it to be.

I'd say that's a pretty good analysis with my only discrepancy being:

> relatively homogeneous cultural environment

Though, I'm sure this is subjective and can be argued, so I'd rather not go into details.

>I also disagree that the social fabric is at risk of collapse.

Social fabric is something that needs to collapse every generation or two and get rebuilt. Imagine living in the social fabric of 1940s. No thanks.

If you just go by the news, yeah, it may seem like everything is terrible all the time. But if you allow for a slightly larger perspective, you can see that things have never been better for humanity. Just look at the massive improvement in average life expectancy over the past 200 years [0]. Through the unrelenting application of human ingenuity, we've more than doubled the average life expectancy (while also massively increasing the number of people on earth). For the people who can focus on specific problems, we can figure out ways to massively improve the quality of life of billions of people. Often it comes out of accidental discoveries or information that jumps across domain boundaries, and I learn a lot across domain boundaries here on HN.

I wish the news celebrated the good more often, but the business model rewards attention, and I guess people give more attention to the bad than the good. But just look back over your own lifetime and note the progress.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?tab=chart...

I couldn't agree more.

This reminds me of how the UK defines poverty as "60% of the median income". I couldn't imagine a more moving goalpost. By definition, there will always be x% of the population in "poverty".

I don't think anyone is in absolute poverty in the UK and life is so incredibly easy and comfortable here.

If no one is in absolute poverty why did 2.1 million people have to ask for emergency food aid over the last year?

Why are 13% of English households and 25% of Scottish households unable to afford heat and light?

Life may be incredibly easy and comfortable for you, but it's certainly not incredibly easy and comfortable for everyone.

Post like these are exactly what reinforces pessimism. There are almost hallucinogenic levels of reality denial happening around the world - often based on "I'm not experiencing any difficulty personally so how can anything be wrong?"

Problems can't be solved until they're acknowledged and reality is engaged with.

If that doesn't happen problems that are over there can suddenly start appearing right here.

It's smarter and more efficient not to let things get to that point.

> It's smarter and more efficient not to let things get to that point

Thoughts like this give me hope.

How many truly starting people do you see in the UK? 1/3 of them are obese.

I would argue 2019 was a lot better than 2022. Seeing Russia transform itself to an oversized version of North Korea mixed with strokes of Nazi Germany is not what I expect of a timeline that is continuously getting better. And now Turkey is rattling its weapons too. I fear we are heading for some increasingly dark times.

I agree, modern medicine is great. (Notsomuch insurance at least in America)

Other than that though, I find it very hard to point to anything heading in the right direction. Nobody is trying to "massively improve the quality of life of billions of people" they're trying to sell their specific product or be middlemen or "disrupt" things that were regulated for good reason.

I struggle to think of anything non-medical that has dramatically improved 2010-present. Certainly many things have gotten worse (house prices, inflation, no wage increases, politics, wars ...)

I agree that the late 19th to mid 20th century time period sounds amazing. I'd recommend "Connections" by James Burke as a truly well written and produced documentary that shows some of the accidental discoveries and connections that led to scientific progress.

That said, the majority of my life has been in the 21st century and so far I can't recommend it. You're pretty big on life expectancy, but that's actually down in the US and was trending down even before the pandemic. If you look at Robert Sapolsky's work into primate societies and neuroendocrinology, he'll tell you that inequality is one of the biggest stressors of primate tribes, and the implications for humans are obvious. Yet inequality grows ever greater while many of our elite try ever harder to create a morality in which this is acceptable.

I'd look also at children. We just don't have as many of them as we once did. There was a baby bust during the late 30's till the end of WWII that set up for the famous Baby Boom. It seems like we get the bust as though everyone fears the world might end (I'm told it seemed like a real possibility in the 40's), but now for distributed reasons that are economic and ecological. You may say that is just media scare-mongering (I agree their business models reward it dis-proportionately), but real lived experience says otherwise. How many economic disasters do you think a Millenial need live through before they fear the next one? How many years grinding away at a crappy job while education, housing, and healthcare all grow ever more expensive compared to your pay (which by the way might get shipped overseas next quarter)? How many record setting days of heat do I have to endure before I feel like something isn't right?

And if you want more data, look up the wealth and health of Millenials, Gen Xers, and Boomers at any given age - you'll see a continual slide downhill.

And all of that might even be OK - every generation faces its challenges, but when you experience them your entire adult life, and then you get gaslighted and told that the problems don't even exist (presumably in order to justify the ongoing inequality) then you might start to lose hope. You might start to see them doing some strange things. Look at mental health issues amongst Gen Z - another place where the data isn't going to look so rosy. Look at the rise in crime, or the ultimate expression of nihilistic anger - the mass-murder suicide by the young (male) zealot.

Sure you can blame the media, but that just seems like another lazy excuse or attempt to hide the real problems of modern life.

That's a lot to take in. Thanks for taking the time to share your insights.

Is their anything you might say to people that are looking for advice?

I don't have much advice beyond the normal stuff - diet and exercise and discipline. You probably can't change the condition of the world, but you can influence your own.

So, what was the median lead concentration in the blood of children when you were born? For me, it was around 5 micrograms per deciliter [0], but children born in my country (the US) today are showing much less exposure to this horrid toxic metal.

This may also just seem like another cherry-picked metric, but I don't have enough time to show you all the ways things are better now than they were in the not distant past, and it's because we can solve hard problems. I was a doomer myself not too long ago, but after seeing humanity design an efficacious COVID vaccine in just a couple days [1] and get mass production and distribution set up in under a year, I'm pretty confident that we can continue to solve whatever problems come our way.

I graduated from undergrad in 2010 with degrees in physics and M.Eng. The economy was a dumpster fire and after a few months of job hunting, I managed to get a job at McDonald's, working 39.5 hours a week and getting a weekly ~$220 check that felt like a slap in the face. So for your question on "how many more economic crises before we fear the next", it's none more. But at present, the unemployment rate is under 4% and real wages (ie wages after inflation) are increasing for the lowest earners [2], thanks to upward pressure from the hot labor market and to min wage increases by major employers like Amazon and Walmart. I doubt their wages keep pace with inflation over the time it will take to reforge supply chains, but so far, it's the middle and upper class workers who haven't used the hot job market to hop into a more productive (or at least higher paying) position who've taken the hit. The plot of net wealth for millennials [3] shows a very recent downhill trend, but in general, the 2013 to 2019 was a period of net wealth generation for millennials after a decade where annual change in net wealth was consistently negative (save a blip in 2007).

Oh, and on the "rise in crime", professionally, I'm a homicide researcher in Chicago, and I am intimately familiar with crime data. You may be shocked to learn that the rate of crime is actually down [4], as rates in property crime have fallen more than enough to offset the increase in rates of violent crime. As a homicide researcher, I don't care much about property crime up until the point that it becomes violent, but if you're talking about crime rates they're lower than they were in very recent pre-pandemic history, and even if you do restrict discussion only to violent crime rates, things are way, way better now than they were in the the 1980's and 1990's [5], at least for the vast majority of the world's population.

I agree the vibe right now is terrible. But the data just doesn't really back up the vibe.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/lead-blood-usa-children?c...

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/moderna-designed-coronavirus...

[2] https://rooseveltinstitute.org/2022/04/04/increasing-wages-f...

[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CXUCHGASLILB0403M

[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/america-ha...

[5] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rate?tab=chart&c...

Indeed, I could be mistaken on the crime statistics. Perhaps it's because I just experienced an insane increase in crime I experienced personally. My house was broken into twice, though I only felt the need to report it the first time, so perhaps I messed up the data a bit. The police didn't seem particularly interested either so I figured why waste their time. Sounds like they had murders to deal with anyway. But I never saw so much petty crime in my life either - from vandalism to outright shoplifting to homeless people doing their thing; I get everyone's gotta use the bathroom, but I don't need to see it. I heard a lot of the same from talking to people in person and online.

But you say that we can solve hard problems so I'd ask something my grandmother (a retired teacher) asked me yesterday that seems like your subject matter - what can we do to lower the murder rate in the US? She was particularly interested in school shootings, but I'd say overall - it seems like a hard problem that affects the US, what can we do to solve it?

You made a big dent in that problem: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/dem/releases/studies-...

A 2014 classic: https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-na...

Strongly disagree with this take.

> If you look at Robert Sapolsky's work into primate societies and neuroendocrinology, he'll tell you that inequality is one of the biggest stressors of primate tribes, and the implications for humans are obvious. Yet inequality grows ever greater

Are the billionaires of the world really part of your tribe (the core set of people you interact with daily)? If not, then the only reason you spend any mental energy on these people is because of your media diet (which is under your control). You are going out of your way to ruminate over these people's lives - - what good is that doing? The person in your mirror decides how your time and energy is spent, you have the power to spend that time and energy on better things than what amounts to jealousy.

> I'd look also at children. We just don't have as many of them as we once did

Lower birth rate is highly correlated with affluence and education. The explanation for changing demographics is more complicated than "ennui".

The world is far from perfect and some things are certainly trending for the worse - - but I think life is getting much better overall. Check out this classic talk [0] for a good summary, and check out this article [1] for an explanation why progress can be hard to notice.

[0] https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_is_the_world_getting...

[1] https://rabbitholemag.com/how-progress-blinds-people-to-prog...

Also:

> I agree that the late 19th to mid 20th century time period sounds amazing

When was the last time you had a tooth pulled without pain killers or antibiotics? How many of your siblings died from cholera, smallpox, or measles? How many were crippled by polio? How many women have you known who died during childbirth? What percentage of the population lived and died as slaves then vs now?

That time period was only good for the rare subset of people "worth" writing about, and even they encountered a great deal more suffering and hardship than we are likely to experience.

The few minutes you spent typing this comment, in a temperature controlled room, free from severe hunger, out of immediate danger, likely without a serious illness, would probably have been the most peaceful and comfortable moment in the lives of most of the people from that period.

I suppose a billionaire was the leader of my tribe for many years until I was laid off from that company last year. So my livelihood and healthcare were dependent on his whims which is incredibly stressful. Like multiple people crying on conference calls stressful.

As for the birthrate, I'm sure it's far from simple, but women report wanting more children then they actually have - it would suggest that something is stopping them from reaching that ideal, wouldn't it?

And as for your other comment, yes I think many of the advances of that period were extraordinary which is why I think it was such an amazing period of time. Surgery was just barely practical at the start and by the mid 20th we were transplanting organs. Polio was eradicated in that time period and childhood disease was greatly reduced as well. It was in fact the heyday of antibiotics - they were novel and resistant bacteria hadn't developed yet.

I've listened to Steven Pinker and Lyman Stone and James Pethokoukis and Arthur Brooks and plenty of other American Enterprise Institute approved talking heads who they like to trot out to tell me that actually unlimited greed is a good thing and we just don't know why Americans are more unhappy than ever and dying en masse younger than they used to of cirrhosis and fentanyl overdose and self-inflicted gunshot wounds. I keep trying to see the same clothes on the Emperor that they tell me they see, but he just looks naked to me.

> I used to believe that startups were meant to solve painful problems. But the most painful problems in the world aren't even discussed here.

Not all painful problems have technical or market based solutions. I'd wager most don't. Those problems are outside the realm of startups.

> Myself, I've lost hope. My hope that 'things will get better' is lost.

Are you so sure things are actually getting worse? I'm not particularly convinced. I'd agree we have some major problems - decay in our institutions and a growing lack of trust, in particular. I think the perception that everything is crumbling is mostly driven by more powerful/pervasive means of injecting vitriolic narratives into society rather than actual crumbling. Just the same, I wouldn't choose to live in any other time. Would you?

I joined in 2010. I visit the site, on average, 4-5 times a day.

Things HN has done for me:

* Gotten me a job

* Helped me expand my technical skills

* Helped me promote my books and side projects

* Entertained me

* Kept me up to date on tech and science news

* Allowed me to "give back" when I have useful advice

* Helped me realize I never want to found a startup

Also want to give a shout-out to HN's moderation team, who do a great job of keeping trolls at bay and encouraging constructive conversation.

I agree with all of those, but I'd replace the last one with:

* Helped me realize I never want to found a VC-backed start-up

When it's time for the investors to come in, because there is a right time, it's time to hand over the reins to that type of operator.

What kind of book and projects?

I am yet to find another place on the internet (not that I'm actively searching) that has the quality of discourse as I've seen on HN.

People (and the mods like dang play a huge part here too) here generally believe _deeply_ in problem solving, looking as objectively as possible at whatever the topic is, and just learning more. There's a genuine curiosity here that resonates with me. I'm a deeply curious person and really find dramatics as a distraction from actually learning about topics.

I've also found that for just about any topic, there's always someone here that knows about it deeply to have an opinion (not just regurgitating an armchair opinion they read in another article, but what seems to be one borne out of some knowledge or experience) and is willing to talk about it in detail without dumbing things down, and there's a debate that ensues.

For all those reasons, HN is the site I frequent the most and is the most enriching.

HN: one of the last remaining Great Good Places of the Internet, a lone tavern in an iconic gateway town to the now not-so-wild west.

Beyond the western borders of this little town, the tech gold rush has both expanded to epic proportions, affecting all the economies in the world, and also gone through enough booms and busts that the phrase "gold rush" seems somehow off.

As more and more young'uns join and jaded veterans return to throng the tavern alike, it often seems to be on the brink of either exploding with the largest gun fight in history, or jumping the shark.

And yet, against all odds, it retains its original magnetism - drawing throngs that grow in number and diversity while seers like [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11](https://news.y... and [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tptacek](https://new... continue to return - dispensing worldly wisdom worth its weight in gold from corner tables.

The secret is the man at the corner of the bar @dang, always around with a friendly smile and a towel on his shoulder. The only sheriff in the west who still doubles as the friendly bartender: always polite, always willing to break up a fight with kind words and clean up messes himself.

Yes a cold-hard look from him is all it takes to get most outlaws to back down, yes, his Colt-45 "moderator" edition is feared by all men, but the real secret to his success: his earnest passion (some call it an obsession) for the seemingly sisyphean task of sustaining good conflict - letting it simmer but keeping it all times below the boiling point based on "the code":

"Conflict is essential to human life, whether between different aspects of oneself, between oneself and the environment, between different individuals or between different groups. It follows that the aim of healthy living is not the direct elimination of conflict, which is possible only by forcible suppression of one or other of its antagonistic components, but the toleration of it—the capacity to bear the tensions of doubt and of unsatisfied need and the willingness to hold judgement in suspense until finer and finer solutions can be discovered which integrate more and more the claims of both sides. It is the psychologist's job to make possible the acceptance of such an idea so that the richness of the varieties of experience, whether within the unit of the single personality or in the wider unit of the group, can come to expression."

May the last great tavern in the West and it's friendly bartender-sheriff live long and prosper.

In general, I find the technical detail here better than anywhere else. When discussing a new technology or methodology there's always a wealth of knowledge and wisdom in the comments. In every popular thread there seems to be a handful of true experts/specialists as well as others who have had to deal with the topic at hand in the real world and not just research/lab.

btw, I can't think of a worse place to look for hope than the Internet. If you're looking for hope then talk to your friends and family IRL and realize how much they love you and understand that level of love is actually not uncommon in society. The Internet has none.

So someone recently linked to this post https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm and one of the techniques mentioned harmonises with this sort of post. Not saying your pain isn't real OP, just that folks should consider perhaps why you feel hopeless (hint: youre being manipulated)

Technique #4 - 'INFORMATION COLLECTION'

Information collection is also a very effective method to determine the psychological level of the forum members, and to gather intelligence that can be used against them. In this technique in a light and positive environment a 'show you mine so me yours' posting is initiated. From the number of replies and the answers that are provided much statistical information can be gathered. An example is to post your 'favourite weapon' and then encourage other members of the forum to showcase what they have. In this matter it can be determined by reverse proration what percentage of the forum community owns a firearm, and or a illegal weapon. This same method can be used by posing as one of the form members and posting your favourite 'technique of operation.' From the replies various methods that the group utilizes can be studied and effective methods developed to stop them from their activities.

> And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse.

No, we don't all agree. The most we can probably all agree on is that we're in for some unique and turbulent times. Because this is true of almost every generation, in one way or another.

Consider the possibility that your entire worldview may be highly skewed by an extremely unhealthy information diet. Like someone eating cheeseburgers for every meal, feeling terrible all the time, and then assuming everyone else must feel terrible too.

I would prescribe a new information diet rich in biography/history books to maintain mental regularity and perspective.

> And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse.

If you mean political division within the US. There is a hyper polarization occurring where the far ends of both main parties are taking the reigns.

As someone that is opposed at a fundamental level to most state power, I'm OK with this development. You see more and more federalism occurring because of inaction or intractable disagreements with the federal government, from immigrant sanctuary and drug sanctuary on the left, to firearm sanctuary on the right.

There is a wide scale sorting process occurring where the red states will become more red, and the blue states will become more blue. If in that process, the federal government is neutered and people are able to choose governance with their feet, I view that as a net benefit to humanity.

There are arguments about what this means long term for security in the rest of the world, but I am less concerned with European and Pacific affairs than with our own. Additionally, I can't name a positive benefit to the US policy of foreign intervention over the past 20 years, whereas the negatives have an extremely long list.

I'm here because the other news site I used to visit (Slashdot) became a cesspool of people spamming swastikas (and host files unsolicited advices!) during 2010-2020. All I wanted was to read news and discussing interesting articles so I ended up here. HN seemed "ugly" at first, now I love the way it is.

> "improving the world", "solve painful problems"

This is sales pitch. 99% of the times it actually means "we want to appear as cool (and 'benevolent') as possible while we bill you monthly". It's just a facade. All they care is the might buck, and everything else is debatable.

Same, but I never found HN ugly. It is function over form, and I very much appreciate that.

Yeah I agree that "save the world" is always almost garbage.

Doesn't that suck though? Is it too much to ask to have the majority of my life spent doing something worthwhile?

> the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse

It’s not. We live in a unique time in history (living memory at least) where all parts of society, hidden and unhidden, are interacting in real time globally. We’ve never had this before!

What we as kids and our parents/grandparents as adults mistook for idyllic society where we all get along and life is great and nobody has problems, was in reality a thin veneer draped over a seedy underbelly of raw mess. People pretended to fit in. A lot.

Ask anyone from an underrepresented or even repressed group how great that society was. Bet they’ll say it wasn’t.

Society isn’t collapsing. It is revealing itself. This is the real humanity. The way it’s always been. Varied and messy.

As for why I’m here – same reason I’ve always been online. Because likeminded people who get a kick out of similar things as myself are few and far between in real life. Online, there’s plenty. HN in particular has a good mix of high signal discussion on interesting topics.

Thanks for writing this. Saved me some time!

> It is revealing itself.

This is why I'm more optimistic these days since I think the speed of information is going to keep any dangerous movements in check and a minority. Because opposition can band together online, there really can't be a growth in a "join or die" kind of sense as a growing movement would impose.

Society isn’t collapsing. It is revealing itself.

What does that even mean? Is it revealing itself as being intrinsically ephemeral or something? How is that not a distinction without a difference?

It means the parts of society that were previously hiding are now visible and interacting with you. This can be jarring.

The societal unity we remember never existed. People who are different were just hiding or invisible.

To avoid stereotypical-for-usa examples (gays, immigrants, blacks), go ask a teenage goth growing up in a small town in the 90’s what it was like to be the only goth person in their entire environment. Bet it was super fun and they felt totally accepted by all.

Now go back 30 more years and someone in a similar position wouldn’t even have had access to information that would tell them it was possible to be anything other than $vanilla. They felt different and had no way of knowing that’s okay.

The Jackass Forever documentary, of all places, shared a really good insight when they said ”You can’t even comprehend what a big deal MTV was in the 80’s.”.

It means that people in society are being exposed to things that they wouldn't have been in the past because the ways we communicate changes with regards to faster and more available means of communication, and that our perceptions and reality are different. In reference to their past perception when unaware of this, it would seem that society in contrast is collapsing, even when the state of society has not changed. If we collectively become more aware as a society of an issue, then it's revealed to society in a way it has not been in the past despite no or limited actual deterioration.

> Society isn’t collapsing. It is revealing itself. This is the real humanity. The way it’s always been. Varied and messy.

The phrase “ignorance is bliss” has been bouncing around my head these past few years.

I'm here mostly for interesting news. The submitted topics are fairly diverse, sometimes quite unusual, and more likely to be interesting or informative than any of the other news sources I know. The "community" aspect is every bit as horrifying here as most anywhere else, and the bulk of the comments are just as useless and frustrating here as elsewhere. The exceptions so far continue to make it worth sifting through the nonsense, here, which I can't say about anywhere else now.

To discover aspects of the world and opinions that I wouldn't find anywhere else. I learn a lot of things reading through different articles and comments posted here.

When I find out how things work in reality, or how people think things work, it makes the problems I face have a clearer course of action, or helps me reach a clearer resolution on how to handle them. Even with a hope lost on what is possible or that my purpose was misguided, that much is always there for me.

I'm here because I have a bad habbit of visiting the same sites when I am bored. Sometimes I like to make provocative statments, and anticipate people disagreeing with me which causes a small dopamine rush. For example, I might see you say something like

> I used to believe that startups were meant to solve painful problems

and then I'd respond

> If you ask me, startups are about outsorcing research and development out of larger, risk-avese organisations, so that they may fail outside but get bought up if they don't. The fact that a few manage to survive on their own is not the intention.

And I'd say this in full knowledge that ycombinator is about startups, and the site exists to attract interest to these startups inbetween other content.

So all in all I'd rather not be here.

I'm here because for any interesting article there is a fairly high chance a couple of experts on the topic will be talking about it in the comments.

i'm here to learn about new cool things.

one of the things I think makes HN unique is that we can discuss things without "having to agree that the fabric of society is at risk of collapse." Whether it is or isn't, the teardown of a T1 router is cool.

I often feel the need to comment in ways that i hope remind others that not everybody agrees with their opinions. You can call it trolling, I hope to add information or at least amusement.

But mostly I enjoy the acquisition of new bits of (probably not immediately useful, but new to me) technical knowledge from others who share the same joy.

I'm happy you're happy :)

> one of the things I think makes HN unique is that we can discuss things without "having to agree that the fabric of society is at risk of collapse."

If you are saying that HN discussion mostly steers clear of U.S. culture-war drama, I think I agree and appreciate that. I hadn't really thought of it, until you posted it. Kudos.

I used to go to Twitter to get some of the same technology thought exposure, but the usefulness / drama ratio seems to have decreased dramatically since I was there last (but I realize that might just be who I follow).

Yeah now if only I saw more articles about T1 routers and less crypto currency fights, disingenuous political threads and arrogance in ignorance.

I've been a wannabe developer since I graduated college with a BS in physics. I taught myself C#, python, and some C++, for a few different things I was interested in. I'm generally interested in tech hardware and computer science. The HN community incredible experience in all kinds of domains, and so I like to see what people have to say on interesting topics.

I guess I see the world's problems as just another engineering challenge. Just put in the work to create value. Make things better piece by piece.

> And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse.

I disagree. I'm fairly optimistic. Yes there are problems. But there's plenty of good things happening as well. Perhaps it depends what you're looking for?

I actually don't come here for the tech contributions primarily (even though I enjoy tech). The most interesting contributions are when non-tech contributions make it to the top.

You're the 3rd post I see here about depressing matters. The other ones:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31565514

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31565012

I come here because HN is the best place to be wrong on the internet, and that has been a very efficient way to learn. I read the comments here before the article most times. When they're good, they're really the best, and when they're weak, they're a good sense of what the current convention is.

I would agree we are in an era of forced change, where a small cadre of people using the logic of a few simple ideas have literally conspired to impose their will on the rest of us via our systems of reconciliation (laws, etc) that are built on language. I often think about how my morals obligate me to respond, and what I keep going back to is that the opposite or negation of fear is faith, where if I feel fear, it is the necessary effect of lacking faith, and where one has faith, they cannot have fear. Big fuzzy thoughts certainly, but much simpler when you think about faith not as a rational conclusion, but as an axiom on which all your perception is founded. As life, we are meant to thrive, and for the good of all other life to thrive as well.

What attracted me to the hacker ethos when I was a kid was that what we believe and think doesn't make us good, it's what we in fact physically do and make in the world that matters, so I post here to give words and form to thoughts.

Regarding the percieved problems and suffering of "the world," they're mostly an artifact of narrative. Terrible things happen, but I think suffering itself is also a choice. Worrying is a substitute activity, politics is what we engage in when we have chosen to inferiorize ourselves to what we percieve to be power, or autonomy, usually after eschewing truth. Talking about it as anything other than fancy sportsball is a neurotic vice of conflict addiction. They do it because they love it, it's just for the intensity.

Maybe your question was unintentionally ontological, but it's funny to think that perhaps the answer, "to thrive," is as appropriate as any?

What are the most painful problems in the world, in your opinion? I think many users feel similarly to you, but the topics aren't brought up enough to generate conversation.

The problems that are at the center of the divides in our population. They are discussed/argued endlessly, and by intention are not discussed a lot here. The rules say if it's something that you would see on television news, it's probably off-topic here.

We don't need this place to turn into another typical comment section on the internet. Go to one of those places if you want to shout at other people who are not there with open minds.

why should we leave the discussion to those who don't have an open mind?

the most pressing problems in my eyes are:

* the elimination of poverty

* racism and prejudice

* gender-equality

* sustainable development

* education

each of these topics have been discussed here, but they could benefit from more attention.

Over-consumption of available resources? https://www.overshootday.org/

(which will have various consequences like social unrest, wars)

That the world moves more and more to totalitarianism and surveillance and brainwashing? (China, Russia, Turkey, ..., ordered by population, the list is very long, depending on what critera you apply)

I'm here because I've found a community of kindred spirits. We vent our spleen and pick each other's examples apart a bit too much, but moderation and an amazing job by the mods like DanG, keep us in line.

Technology is a tool that can be used for good or evil. In our case, we're on the timeline where instead of the singularity being used to uplift man, it's called the Algorithm, and used to commodify our dissent. Except here... an oasis from that.

There are powerful ideas still left to be implemented which can address the major technical issues, as well as the biggest issue facing mankind, the need to convey complex concepts without losing context.

We'll have all sorts of upsetting news fed to us by that evil AI, but know that it's not as dire as all that, for the most part. Focus on the things you can control, and celebrate the wins when they happen.

"And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse."

No? It certainly is being undermined and sky is falling perception is certainly fueled by old and social media, but if you talk to an average person on the street, you won't hear them actually preparing for a collapse ( and you rest assured that if anyone actually thought a collapse is coming, they would be preparing so that at least they are not caught unprepared ). They might not tell the truth, but that is another story.

"Why are you here?"

Probably best place online for talking with people I don't know and people who are likely smarter than me. It is not without flaws and its own biases, but compared to most communities out there, its not even really comparable. Also, it is a bad habit now.

I am here for a similar reason, but I don't consider it an escape from reality. The loss of hope you are talking about is being manufactured by our news media, political parties and foreign actors. It is not reality. The reality is that we are more peaceful, secure and have less misery than for most of human history. The reality is that diligent people are working hard every day within their domains to advance the state of the art, to keep solving hard problems, to make the world just a little better. So I come here to plug into that reality a bit and disengage with something that brings me anger and anxiety and is often not the least bit true.

So as you watch people here solve problems and build new things, don't forget that to take your inspiration from that and build some new things in your own life and community.

I struggle to think of one way that the average american is better since 2010. Most of the "hard problems" being solved by tech companies are ways to increase shareholder value, find new and more invasive ways to advertise.

I'm here to find weird nieche blog posts, and get insights about what the most overpriviliged people in the world think is right and just in the world.

I’ve been lurking on HN for a while now, and decided to make a new account so I can start posting and contributing more. I like this place because it always has interesting things being posted and the people are all generally civil and looking to learn and spread knowledge.

I like the culture of this website. I don’t really come here to solve big world problems. I mostly come to learn new things and see new perspectives.

In a world of instagram, tik tok, and Reddit, this place is a godsend. I’ve tried to quit all social media and spend my time on more productive websites and places. I found myself checking and commenting on HN more.

I feel like even the worst comments here are just way better than a place like reddit. I’ve found a couple other small sites i like to visit as well.

Not your question, but as an older guy, I'd recommend turning off "news" and other pipelines of trending opinions/media. I've seen over the years how fake and pointless most of it is. Sometimes things seem "up", and other times "down", and many times these are really out of sync with reality.

Yes there's real problems in the world, but focus on you, your family, and friends and neighbors. If you want to do something "more" than that, then go and live somewhere else in the world where people are really hurting and could use some help.

The rest of this tech stuff is just a job to earn money for the above, it's not your purpose.

Thanks for your insight.

To be clear, I don't feel like a tech worker. Tech/code is just one of the mediums I use for my writing.

In time, I hope I'll realize my purpose as being someone that inspires others with my writing.

But, right now, this is the best that I've got.

Interesting stories and discussions. I think the threads about startups and their issues are the least interesting and I mostly just skip over them. Everything else I've found to be positive or creatively motivational.

My hope that 'things will get better' is lost.

I do think that things are getting better, only it doesn't happen where we're looking at, but elsewhere.

And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse.

I believe we've been confusing consensus with propaganda (from every side) for decades. I don't think that's sustainable, except in periods of strong growth, when consquences can be covered.

Crisis are times to understand.

I've also learned to be humble. To first try to fix my life, before thinking about fixing the world.

I'm here to observe, not to judge.

> we can all agree...that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse

We can? Maybe I'm on the wrong site...

After de-Googling and quitting Facebook, I just wanted some place to still serve as a decent news aggregator and discussion forum without social features or anyone building an ad profile based on which threads I'm engaging with. I don't give a crap about startups, but this seemed like the only sane place left for somewhat generalist topics after Scott Alexander's spat with the New York Times made him way too much of a hero for the "anti-racists are the real racists" crowd and poisoned his comments section.

It’s a daily ritual that covers one of my core needs. That need is staying up to date with my industry. At the partner level of professional firms you are expected to keep up to date with your industry news. When I was focused on US income tax, that was very easy. There was a few dedicated portals I would check each morning to make sure I caught all of the latest trends in the IRS, treasury, and other related entities (we did things called provisions in the context of public company audits requiring its own upkeep).

I transitioned to fin tech (web development specifically) almost two decades ago and early on one of my biggest struggles was keeping up with the state of the industry. I was checking dozens of portals and wasn’t even certain that I wasn’t missing anything because sometimes they would update the documentation without updating the version number!

Anyway one day I was at a Ruby meet up and joined a discussion where a senior was mentoring a group of juniors and he advised they all read HN daily to keep up to date on what technologies to pick. I checked it out, it served that need any my need, so I never looked back.

All these years later I still start my day off every morning with a perusal of the first few pages looking for Ruby/React/Python(in the context of vis like matplotlib) articles and then consider myself up to date enough (unlikely any major development I’m unaware of). And of course I come back multiple times per day looking for life style discussions simply because I feel the level of discourse here is generally much better than similar topics when discussed on Reddit.

I’ve been on an off a few times since maybe 2015-2016.

To be honest, usually there’s something interesting going on on this site, and I’m bored a lot. Even if the “interesting” is something bad.

Certain topics do generate good discussion, and in retro tech threads there’s always some good war stories. HN seems to be particularly good at curating a lot of good material related to systems programming particularly, and I have dozens of very high quality articles on various subjects saved.

>Why Are You Here?

For the most part, HN is still relatively politics free. Those spaces are few and far between nowadays.

Unfortunately, that's changing. It has a lot to do with the fact that so many people here have livelihoods that depend on the "Silicon Valley" ecosystem, and that system is showing cracks in the facade. You can see it in the shifting of the public perception of Tech; the hoi polloi are sick of it, and politicians are scared of it.

The irony of you bringing politics into the conversation. :D

I take breaks here and there at works, and at night I read online with a movie/show in the background on the TV.

HN is the only outlet aggregator with a modicum of value, there's nothing else on the internet that comes close, everything else is just so blah.

Maybe the time is ripe for a startup to curate/aggregate content of value, or maybe it's just a sign of the status quo: nobody cares about anything of any depth.

The markets will decide, for now TikTok reigns supreme.

Habit, mostly.

I usually have the comments link hidden, because most of the time it's very biased in the direction opposite to my own, so that just causes my blood pressure to rise.

Lately it's not particularly interesting. A small cohort of blogs gets featured every week with fairly mundane posts.

Lots of mainstream publications pushing narratives.

This used to be a site that had interesting and niche content, now it's just bland corpo circlejerk 98% of the time...

Most startups and businesses will fail. Go look up that thread where antirez premiered Redis, and the one from the Dropbox founders too. Lots of naysayers or just flat reactions. If it was obvious what would change the world, we'd all be millions doing it. HN gives you a higher chance of seeing it than not, esp. the outrage machines that pass as newspapers and broadcast these days.

1. Find out about new technology from a high quality source with decent commentary

2. Get a sense of what people in technology are thinking about technology and society (though no doubt quite skewed).

3. It's my only connection or source of insight into the Imperium, living as I do in a European province. Admittedly it is not much, but I can't do twitter, facebook, reddit or American news: it's too too bad.

Not to sound too stupid but what do people mean by "that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse."

I typically think of Mongols sacking Rome as society collapsing. All I see going on now is some people not agreeing on public policy, not Mongols on the horizon.

As for why I am here, mostly to kill time waiting for meetings, drinking coffee and to see how the other half live.

The only reason for me to be here is that I find it to give me a competitive advantage over my colleagues (in the IT field). For example, I get to know new relevant tech first, and more important and I get to know relevant opinions of such tech as well.

On the dark side, HN has made me more arrogant when it comes to IT discussions. I'm trying to quit HN, though.

> HN has made me more arrogant when it comes to IT discussions.

I’ve always been rather conservative in these types of discussion, even to the point of leaving a conversation to verify things I’m already confident about.

But I’m just floored at the absolute confidence of things people will say despite them being trivially refuted. I saw someone ask for help configuring some ASP.NET application on IIS and this other person with the utmost confidence told them to abandon IIS because it “had a lot of CVEs” and when asked for an alternative provided an FTP server.

To learn.

I interview a lot of engineers and one of my questions is: "how do you keep up to date with technology?"

I want to hear about the forums they visit (ie, HN!), youtube channels, peers, heck even magazines, radio or TV. Unfortunately most of them don't have an answer for this. One day, maybe I'll find another HN'er...

Because /. died. I'm here to keep tabs on tech edge and up and coming things. Also, for the comment section. I like when people post their successes but I'm also thirsty for failures.

The reality is I'm here because I like startups, startup tech, building new (cool) things, and trying to make a difference.

Honestly, for prosaic reasons. Most of the posts are interesting, most of the comments are interesting and there isn't an obsession with "internet points". I'm sorry if this sounds elitist, but it is also less crowded than other places. I almost never see bots or trolls.

To check if my internet connection is working. I have the impression that HN loads faster than google

I come here mostly for the comment section. Often I'll find some genuine nuggets of wisdom & occasionally nuanced discussions (but this is getting rarer). I also use HN to aggregate links better than I would be able to on Google/DDG/Reddit/etc.

I sincerely think that you are consuming too much material from social media and news outlets, so you think that the whole world is on fire everyday. Eliminate these things from your life and focus on local problems before trying to save the whole world.

I'm here to learn and to keep up with latest happenings in the world of technology. I believe that there are many smart and intelligent people here doing great stuffs. Interacting with these people helps me to see things in different perspectives.

Mainly the same reasons as you, but in terms of actually interacting here - I like coming to a place where my default position is to assume whoever I'm talking to is smarter than I am. 99% of the time they are and it broadens my horizons.

I come here out of a bad procrastination habit, however I do find a lot of the comments and discourse to be highly valuable. It's a nice break from other forms of social media where the principe of charity is thrown out the window.

I lurk here to keep myself abreast of what's going on in tech from the perspective of professionals like myself.

Folks here are smart as hell, so HN has always been a way for me to be a little fish in an ocean. Keeps me humble and I learn a lot.

abreast

1) I am here to check the latest and greatest bleeding edge stuff.

Then I assess the latest flavor of the month across the stack and try to avoid using it at all costs.

2) To check what is being cloned the most as a product - but it's pretty much the same the last ten years - slick minimalistic SaaS UI that pulls some data. But sometimes, I see some glimpses of brilliance.

3) To read the occasional interesting discussions on some more political topics.

4) Someone has already gone through the trouble of finding cool links, and I follow them.

Comment on the hard problems:

The majority of HARD! World Changing if solved problems are not gonna be solved by showing a grid in React ... :)

I was told there would be punch and pie.

I'm here because there is genuine discourse on the latest topics amongst an intelligent group of people. The basic html/readable, ad free and digestible content is a bonus.

To learn from smart people and contribute value when possible.

Very high-quality conversation, interesting topics, interesting people from all walks of life, and very reliable way to keep tabs on tech.

Hmm, I guess my view of what I expected out of HN changed in the same way. Though I attribute it solely to growing older (and pervasive internet). But my goal was always distraction.

Reading a bunch of interesting stuff is great to soothe your anxiety, and most articles don’t get you hooked like a great book does, so I’m not (so much) at risk of reading really late into the night.

> So now, I most frequently come here for a distraction.

I come here to read all these posts complaining about having too many distractions.

I'd love to tell you it's to keep up on trends and ideas in tech, but really it's just to watch random alt-right trolls occasionally post thinly-veiled bullshit about eugenics and read the comments whenever anybody suggests poor people aren't just lazy, and also the crypto bro rage.

The tech stuff is cool too, I guess.

Lol, when there isn't hope, at least we have comedy :)

I am here against my better judgment. Marveling how much time you beautiful people are willing to lose.. Goodbye :)

I've been feeling this same way recently. Used to love checking here, seeing people's projects, finding the new trends and ideas. And I don't think hn has changed but more my perspective on the software industry (and the world?).

I literally cannot think of the last time software has changed and made my life better. And there are endless examples of it making the world worse.

All the issues caused by beloved industry giant AirBnB breaking regulations and ruining local neighborhoods. Software being the thing that caused the worst plane crash in years. Endless privacy violations from essentially every company. I've had to deal with Google's support recently and that was AI hell.

Even products I consider good are only getting worse. I still have a decades old Photoshop because you could actually buy it back then and the new features really arent worth it.

Software seems to be just a very efficient tool for the shareholders of the world to "capture value" and to find new and innovative ways to make our lives worse and more expensive.

These days I mostly read out of habit and because there's always something happening (unlike the discords/forums im in which are nicer but less poppin') and really compared to other places its still nice

But the right-wing anti-woke crowd and the optimistic "tech will save the world" types are hard to stomach for me.

I've been dreaming of quitting the industry altogether, though there are a lot of benefits for staying. Maybe find one of the incredibly rare places that actually have a vision for the world (non-profit?). Even where I work at an accessibility company that ostensibly is making the world better it really feels more like spinning wheels and corporate power plays more than any real desire to do anything good. Because honestly, if the customer went for a competitors product that would be fine?

Anyways sorry for the rambling. Things seem bleak and hopeless and regardless of whether things will ultimately get better (maybe? im not convinced) they will certainly get worse for the foreseeable future. I don't want to be part of the group making it worse and tech companies pretty much are. Yada yada captialism

Certainly worse things to do than read hackernews tho :p

I think there's a capitalism culture that is killing a lot of what could have been good software. People are less interested in making something great or useful than they are getting a huge bag of money from VC / tech.

I know before I got into professional programming I was frequently excited and working on side projects, including utility libraries, games and creative coding, and other things that I considered "valuable" just for the sake of doing them. Now I work for a digital agency building and maintaining a bunch of marketing websites that add, to my mind, zero "value" to the external world... maybe a corporate sale or two, but nothing actually helpful, useful, or even fun.

Why do I do this? Because it was a relatively low friction way for me to make a decent living while keeping my general work hours low. I don't have any illusions about the industry being some grand savior; frankly, I'm not even sure things can last at this pace of investor propped up companies bleeding cash but still somehow considered a good investment, but I'm going to use it while it is profitable and live a modest life without too much worry until things do hit the fan. I think that if I made a career change out of tech I might have the time and energy to return to my old programming projects but when I've spent the better part of the day on someone else's web app I don't have much stomach for building my own on my spare time.

I know I should get this view, it seems a much healthier way to live. I just find it so overwhelmingly sad how much time and effort in the world is wasted on things like marketing. And it's gotten to the point at my job where it's a struggle to get the will to do anything knowing that at the end of the day it really doesn't matter.

Several of my friends just got jobs at Google/Amazon/Microsoft recently and it's such a weird feeling being both very happy for them, knowing they're making the right choice, knowing I should be too, and this feeling of despair like I'm losing them forever to some horrible pit.

& yeah feel that too. I've been idly working on my fun cute little website for a while now but it's hard to be motivated when at best it might amuse a few people for a few minutes. Still net positive but eeeeeh code enough at work already :p

Thanks for the empathetic response. It's nice to know that I'm not alone or simply 'afflicted' as many of other comments suggest.

np. & I was very glad to see your post too

It makes me sad how many people seem (wilfully?) deluded about what companies are doing. Gotta be a great time to solve interesting problems and make good money as long as you don't care what "problems" are being solved.

Might be a happier life getting over it and just having work be work and not anything meaningful.

About to see a therapist about this stuff as soon as I can figure out how insurance works :p let me know if you have any insights. Until then just vibing & dreaming of starting a combination boardgame cafe / local low-power radio station / art studio / event space / mixed-use residential house

I 'm hoping that one day it will become interesting again

Also because it's like reddit but with older people.

I started using HN without knowing that it was formerly a startup news thing.

I think I've summed my HN usage pretty nicely here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29673736

see what's new in the world of stem with a dash of reverse engineering of the world around me.

Nothing but pure enjoyment. It's the smartest place (of appreciable scale) on the internet.

>Why are you here?

Where else should we go? It is not like there is another forum like what you describe.

The articles here give me something to talk about with colleagues and managers during one-on-ones.

That's really it.

I always check the comments section every time to see if someone says "what a waste of time" or "tldr;" before clicking though :)

I guess to answer right this moment? I have about 100,000 sqlite3 entries being processed in production. 1 time pain where i cant do anything there. Cant even check up on the progress because it would take sql queries to check. Then in dev, I have a counter to keep track and the number is still going up. It's processing about 10/second and should get to about 150k updates.

Bit of a problem because this shouldn't be so slow.

>I've been following HN for the past decade. It was an inspiration to see so many people working to make things better.

In terms of why HN? Nowhere better to be. I wouldn't recommend anyone be on platforms like Facebook, reddit, or twitter. You're going to make lists you dont want to be on. The world war has started.

>Being part of a community that was solving problems, "improving the world," gave me hope and purpose.

I want to believe!

>I used to believe that startups were meant to solve painful problems. But the most painful problems in the world aren't even discussed here.

Not allowed to discuss those on HN, you'll get rapidly flagged and downvoted. You'd be banned near instantly on those other platforms if you discuss those. In fact it's worse. You won't know you're banned, they hide the fact you were banned in order to deflate the issues. Yet they still exist as issues and the longer they go unaddressed the bigger the problems become.

I haven't actually seen this happen before where 1 political side is working so hard to control this so much and it's only going to be at their own detriment.

>And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse.

Hard to disagree with this. Which market hasn't crashed in relation? Stock? Crypto? Money? etc?

>Today I'm here, hoping, to find a little hope.

This has been coming for 30 years. It will result in a new religion and boy this new religion is rather large. Puts other recent new religions like scientology to shame.

Flipside, we also have a few other societal inflection points which have to be addressed. Even better is that these are not going to be popular at all.

Here's the hope. Over the next 50 years the world will be a completely different place. There's going to be a ton of pain along the way but we will reach a fundamental life value which is fantastic.

I prefer feed of curated articles in all kind of topics rather than news that are more or less propaganda. I completely stoped reding news three years ago. Since then, HN and few RSS channels are enough for me.

I've worked in tech for over 10 years. I'm here to stay current with trends & ideas. I quit Facebook and major news outlets several years ago; this is the only news I read besides The Pour Over.

I'm here because I enjoy talking to people who are smarter than me.

Less BS.

Less BS in the comments, less BS in the posts, etc.

Honestly, feels like what reddit _should_ feel like or at least used to feel like. When I engage with ppl on HN I don't feel like I'll get a bad faith reply.

I’m here to be surprised. I love the things I find here that would have never crossed my path just reading the news, and the news I see elsewhere, I’m elated by informed discussion of it here.

For a variety of reasons, I like to see how delusional people who work in the tech industry are. This is the best place to do that that I've found.

I'm here because I don't know where else to go...

I'm here to learn new things that the technical community is doing. I'm also here to share what I'm up to as I hack my dumb ideas together.

I feel there are more reasons to optimistic, and this is due to technology. Here is the thought experiment to contend with: Could Nazi Germany emerge today, or does the speed of information create a barrier to wide spread building of momentum? It's worth thinking about.

The unfortunate aspect is that the noise in the system is exhausting, and I think it's better to just focus on living a good life and not get swept up into any movement.

I am drawn to HN for its diversity of content.

What was "improving the world" for you?

Why are there so many lost/doomer threads recently. People starting to realise delivering meaningless "value" to shareholders while turning the Earth in to an uninhabitable scorched, polluted, plastic covered wasteland was not such a good idea? Need someone to say its okay sweetie, its not your fault, you definitely couldn't have seen thaaat one coming. A guilty conscience?

> Why are there so many lost/doomer threads recently.

I suspect layoffs and recession is hitting home.

If I had to guess, probably the current geopolitical struggles, the domestic struggles in places like the US (though it’s hardly new there) and recent chatter about recession/tech crashes.

If you're talking about HackerNews in particular, I'm here to troll white supremacists and little more.

> And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse.

I don't agree at all. Perhaps you might need to spend less time reading news and social media? The real people in my real life all get along, even the MAGA and socialist people.

Anyway, I'm here because this is the closest thing to "You are the average of your closest five [highly-technical] friends." I don't really know a lot of high-tier, highly-technical people in meatspace.

Because the news feed is moderately high quality, the comments are usually very high quality (like slashdot in the 90's), and what ends up in the news feed is relatively uncorrelated to the rest of my news sources.

Re startups: They aren't here to solve painful problems, they are here to make the shareholders and especially the founders/early investors gobs of money. When central banks failed to consider the risk pricing nature of interest rates and pushed them to near zero because inflation was happening in the third world rather than in the first, it became easier to make those guys money through deceit rather than coming up with a good idea and implementing it to solve a problem and so that's what we've had going on.

Re fabric of society: It's not at risk of collapse, it's just undergoing radical change because the identity marxists have pulled a Martin Luther and are out in full force shouting their grievances. We are in a time of digesting complaint and deciding what tiny part of it is true and needs to be addressed and what part is just the rantings of radicals holding to a poor mental model of the world with religious zeal. It will sort itself out one way or the other and things will eventually be fine.

Where i supposed to be?

Expert opinion & not-mainstream points of view.

Buried amidst all the low key fascism are some interesting technical articles.

> low key fascism

This sentiment keeps popping up. I don't understand what it means. Can you explain?

It's so american how you think, I'm cringing. Helping the WORLD, just that ? Let's all try to first help ourselves maybe a kid or two of our own, and we'll see if we have time for the "world".

Ofc you now think "the fabric of society is at risk of collapse" since the disappointement you felt when you realized the world barely even spoke english, let alone asked for your help, crushed you into depression.

I dont like when boomer say we're basically vociferating snowflakes but serious you talk only in hyperbole centered around you enormous power over the entire planet. Read yourself, focus on things you can act upon.

The technical CS/Programming discussions have some very good comments. For other fields here it is barely better that the Daily News comment section.

There are very nice people who can help you with difficult-to-find information. As in : "I remember this very obscure game in the 90s who came in some shareware magazine bla bla bla" 20 min later "That must be super-Ultroon the Mechanic Dinosaur, I played it a lot..."

> The technical CS/Programming discussions have some very good comments

I agree, save for a few topics, cryptocurrency seems to devolve into two different circle jerks, and anything mentioning Rust is at risk for nice spat in the comments.

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