Hacker News Reader

Comment by antiverse | Hacker News Reader

I'll save you the trouble of reading, whatever this is. Here you go:

>But what is the psychological impact of a bespoke Internet, tailored to you, and one where it is increasingly difficult to outrun yourself? “Bespoke” sounds luxuriously considerate, but it also entails a kind of revelation. It comes from the older word bespeak, which refers to an indication or a piece of evidence. Sewn into the bespoke is the fabric of external judgments. In the tailor’s series of sartorial calculations and decisions, the wearer is shaped, a silhouette is cast.

Imagine seriously writing word salads and calling them articles. It's too disjointed with no coherent thesis to it, and just meanders for what is (i imagine) an attempt to fulfil a wordcount quota.

View on HN

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

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

It's asking what we will make of ourselves when the determining factor of Identity - the returned gaze of the Other - is 'just' an AI. Hegelian dialectic and such aside, it's an interesting question and I for one found the article more or less readable, if a bit on the self indulgent side (as these types of essays tend to be).

What do you consider to be the difference between identity and Identity? Or other and Other?

capitalization?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitonym

> A particular example of where capitonyms are prominent is in terminology relating to philosophy, [...]. Capitalized words are often used to differentiate a philosophical concept from how the concept is referred to in everyday life, [...]

In other words, capitalizing "Identity" or "Other" just means that the word has a specific meaning in this particular text, and the dictionary definition may be unreliable.

"The Other" is often capitalized.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_(philosophy)

I'll also just note that, for the tech-minded folks, some of these philosophical concepts have surprising relevance to applications in machine learning & AI, especially these days. Epistemology was a purely philosophical topic until machine learning researchers stumbled around trying to reinvent it.

Can you clarify what is confusing about the quote that you reference above?

It seems pretty well formed and makes it's point succinctly and with a reasonable metaphor.

> succinctly

Really? I can think of plain english way to describe (if I understood it correctly) the sentiment in less words and far less cognitive load.

Personally I feel repelled towards this in the same way as code golf, except it's also long, so perhaps worse.

> I can think of plain english way to describe (if I understood it correctly) the sentiment in less words

I don't think the goal of any serious writing is to do it in as few words as possible. Instead, the goal is to write it with the right number of words. Taking a complicated idea and distilling it down to concrete bullet points loses all of the subtleties of the meaning, destroys the pace, and any of the poetry as well.

What you're left with is something like https://norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm

>I don't think the goal of any serious writing is to do it in as few words as possible.

Even if that's true, it's irrelevant. They were responding to the claim that ithis particular piece was written succinctly, which it manifestly was not.

As short as possible, but no shorter.

clearly this article is not meant for you

I like cognitive load when I'm reading. Unless I'm reading an email from a coworker or a manual for some software I'm using, the cognitive load is nice.

I do too, but from the weight of the idea - not the complexity of the delivery

Complex ideas require complex delivery to communicate.

No they don't. This is just pointless sophistry. It does not explain the idea. It's writing that looks like the point is to show the writer's erudition, not explain the idea.

If you try to express a complex idea directly, in practice, your audience often misses the point or misunderstands it. The complex delivery has in it redundancy. It approaches the idea from different angles. It connects the idea to other ideas.

(That's also a misuse of the word "sophistry", by the way.)

Aha! You are one of them ;-) And I'm apparently not.

Complex idea require multiple simple deliveries in a structured way.

My experience is that this is often insufficient--or if we suppose that it's possible, I can't figure out how to express the complex idea by sticking a bunch of simple deliveries together.

I don't want to abuse analogies, but let's say that you get asked the question, "Why don't you write a computer program that detects when another program hangs, and then restarts the program?" If I'm just going to give an off-hand answer, I'll say that this is connected to a famous problem in computer science, and it's proven to be impossible to solve. If I really want to explain why it's not possible without hand-waving it, I'm going to have to explain concepts like computability, models of computation, and "code as data".

But it's natural to encounter people with these questions.

Philosophy is the same way. It's easy to come up philosophical questions and hard to come up with answers.

If you're writing an article, in either philosophy or computer programming, you're going to have to be careful to ride right line between simplicity and complexity. Too simple, and what you're saying is incorrect. Too complicated, and nobody will understand you.

"Word golf" has different rules than code golf. In word golf, highest score wins.

Definitively subjective. IMO the metaphor was apt in bringing their point across. Got me thinking about other tangents like general systems interplay, conway’s law etc. This kind of etymological philosophizing just might not be your cup of tea but not everyone is like that.

TLDR different people absorb and engage with information in different ways.

What is "word salad" for you, is a lyrical and motivated translation into humanist terms for the non-technical but well-educated reader with a different background, reading style, and perhaps, agenda.

The lyrical essay is a form of writing and argumentation with hundreds of years of literary history. It's not meant to be a man page.

For people rooted in this type of argumentation, fully-examined metaphor is what animates ideas and frames them in terms they can reason with.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com