Comment by Zetice | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Zetice | Hacker News Reader

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> I still find different approaches and other peoples' experience interesting

...except this is the literal opposite of that, this is presented as an introductory resource. The literal opposite of "other peoples' experience", it's an intro into the topic.

> You don't have to be an expert to make assumptions of the content, learning is incremental.

My entire argument is that you must make evaluations about the source of the content, so I think it's clear you completely missed what I actually said for what you wanted to believe I said.

> As for why I care? I'm trying to help you broaden your perspective, if possible, maybe it brings me good (real life) karma.

No, I didn't ask why you cared about talking to me, I asked why you cared about Internet Argument Points. You brought them up, then got pissy about me caring about them.

> Still waiting for your reputable institutions, or anything resembling a useful response.

I don't owe you shit and this is manipulative. You don't get to tell me what to do or how I engage in a conversation.

> I've asked what gripes you have with the repository, but crickets.

"This is from an anonymous source who has no incentive to be accurate, so it is of unknown quality." is my "gripe". It's the gripe you replied to originally, so stop gaslighting.

> If you aren't even going to try to be constructive why are you wasting your precious time? What are you gaining from this?

I presume you wrote this to yourself.

> ...except this is the literal opposite of that, this is presented as an introductory resource. The literal opposite of "other peoples' experience", it's an intro into the topic.

We're discussing this in a broader sense than the OP right? Individuals vs institutions (whatever those are) and if the former can be useful. You claim they never are, because experts don't need them and novices can't assess the quality.

> My entire argument is that you must make evaluations about the source of the content, so I think it's clear you completely missed what I actually said for what you wanted to believe I said.

I understand you as dismissing anything not from a reputable institution. Is that not what you meant by "Avoid individuals entirely, and focus on institutions who are meaningfully harmed by their inaccuracy if discovered."? I read you literally. I don't see examples in the real world of institutions being meaningfully harmed by mistakes, ever.

> No, I didn't ask why you cared about talking to me, I asked why you cared about Internet Argument Points. You brought them up, then got pissy about me caring about them.

What?

> I don't owe you shit and this is manipulative. You don't get to tell me what to do or how I engage in a conversation.

No you don't but it would be much better use of your time to just define these institutions. I claim their "monetary incentive" you mentioned mean they push you into their walled gardens, like AWS, Oracle and others. As I see it unbiased sources don't exist, and all sources have to be taken with a grain of salt. I would love to be proven wrong, why the hesitation to share an example? Was I close with the Docker one?

Maybe we're even in agreement but you've painted yourself in a corner? What other conclusions can I draw after all this back and forth?

> "This is from an anonymous source who has no incentive to be accurate, so it is of unknown quality." is my "gripe". It's the gripe you replied to originally, so stop gaslighting.

"Hence nobody else in the entire world should see any value in it either, because anonymous internet stranger." - Zetice

With such deep thoughts you should consider running for president, you'll be in good company. You probably understand that everyone starts as a nobody, how are they supposed to build said reputation if nobody ever evaluates them on their work? Chicken and the egg. Maybe that's his incentive? Build reputation, or land a job, or a million other reasons. I don't judge anything on shallow requirements like reputation, it can be a useful metric but never necessary. I would miss a lot of great content if I did.

> We're discussing this in a broader sense than the OP right?

No.

> I understand you as dismissing anything not from a reputable institution.

Nope.

> What?

I said, I didn't ask why you cared about talking to me, I asked why you cared about Internet Argument Points. You brought them up, then got pissy about me caring about them.

> it would be much better use of your time to just define these institutions.

Nope.

> I claim their "monetary incentive" you mentioned mean they push you into their walled gardens, like AWS, Oracle and others. As I see it unbiased sources don't exist, and all sources have to be taken with a grain of salt. I would love to be proven wrong, why the hesitation to share an example? Was I close with the Docker one?

...no. Literally any top 100 university (and their related CS departments) in the world would be a more correct example.

> Maybe we're even in agreement but you've painted yourself in a corner?

Nope.

> "Hence nobody else in the entire world should see any value in it either, because anonymous internet stranger." - Zetice

Nope.

Turns out I was right, and you have no clue at all what I wrote, despite it being plain and straightforward. What should concern you is the dozen or so people who agreed with me enough to upvote my original comment; what are they getting that you aren't?

> No.

> Nope.

Yes we are, at least I am. Or did someone borrow your account when you said "Avoid individuals entirely"? If we discussed the OP we would be discussing the details of the repo, but when I asked you to elaborate on that all I got was "This is from an anonymous source who has no incentive to be accurate, so it is of unknown quality.". I don't see any other way to read you.

> ...no. Literally any top 100 university (and their related CS departments) in the world would be a more correct example.

Nice, we're getting somewhere. There's good content coming from universities, but relying only on them isn't going to work in a fast moving industry like this. They do not cover everything. My experience is that it's a good starting point but the work is learned by practice, making mistakes and improving. Only then does that knowledge reach universities, but by that time it might be (probably is) outdated. They rarely go deep into the nitty gritty, why PostgresQL over SQLite and similar?

I'm sure you've heard the saying "Those who can do, those who can't teach". Hyperbole but there's some truth to it, they aren't really innovators in the field these days. Don't misunderstand me as dismissing them though, but I couldn't get anything done if that was the only source I'm allowed to read.

> Turns out I was right, and you have no clue at all what I wrote, despite it being plain and straightforward.

Yes, and I read you literally, see my quotes above. You can always correct me or rephrase them if you want.

> What should concern you is the dozen or so people who agreed with me enough to upvote my original comment; what are they getting that you aren't?

I don't find comfort in internet consensus. The majority of people are reactionary and can't form an original thought to save their lives. Tell them the internet is bad and they'll ask for a ban. Sure I find that concerning but not for the reasons you think, it's the reason democracy will never work, but that's a topic for another discussion.

Studies have shown that negative/inflammatory comments get more engagement than constructive ones. Do what you will with that. This post did reach the front page, but I'm sure you'll dismiss that.

Restate what you think I said.

I've quoted you several times asking for clarification, in almost every reply, but I'll bite because I appreciate the more constructive turn this is taking.

> Avoid individuals entirely, and focus on institutions who are meaningfully harmed by their inaccuracy if discovered.[1]

> "This is from an anonymous source who has no incentive to be accurate, so it is of unknown quality." is my "gripe". It's the gripe you replied to originally, so stop gaslighting.[2]

The incentive in this case being monetary (even though OP sells the book to those who are willing to pay, as I understand you he has no incentive to be as correct as possible). And because I either know nothing, or everything about a subject it's either completely useless to me because I already know it all, or dangerous because I won't spot mistakes.

> Either you are an expert on the topic of systems engineering and can assess the quality of this submission but don’t need it as you have better sources, or you are not an expert and can therefore not assess its quality (it comes from a random person on the Internet, after all) and therefore can’t safely use it.[3]

I don't agree it's that simple, knowledge is a spectrum and I will never be done learning. I'm also confident in my ability to sift through bullshit and don't need to be spoonfed from an institution with a stamp of approval to find value.

Based on that I'm not even extrapolating, I'm reading you literally that content should be avoided purely based on the messenger and not the content itself.

And to avoid getting misunderstood, I understand bias is a thing but it goes both ways. I'm not trying to argue individuals are better than corporations or institutions. Good content exists from all sources. I enjoy reading post-mortems from FAANG, but take them with a grain of salt. And I also have some repos starred containing similar content I'd like to dig deeper into at some point.

Some of the best content I've read are from passionate individuals who like to poke around the edges, they are the innovators as I see it. But I'm bullish on open-source and free software, so there's my bias. Universities are often outdated, Institutions (for example the FSF) have their agenda and corporations push their stack. I still read them all, but with a conscious mind.

To summarize: I'm arguing your claim that individuals can't be trusted and should (always) be dismissed based on WHO they are, and not WHAT they write. You're of course free to have that view, and I get the gist of what you're trying to say, but to dismiss that content completely is extreme. If you would've just said "not for me" and moved on, or a comment on some of the content in OP I would have no opinion what so ever. But you're claiming it should have no value, for anyone, ever. That's what I'm questioning.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36602841

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36609072

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36606230

Ah, so you have no clue what I said. Thanks for clarifying, makes it easy to dismiss your emotional outbursts as such.

Let me know if you figure out what my argument was, and maybe we can discuss, but it honestly seems out of your grasp at the present moment, given how focused you are on "winning Internet points".

So what did you say if not what I quoted? Why is it up to me to figure it out, just clarify for me? There's no emotion from me in fact I find this somewhat stimulating, otherwise I would've left long time ago, but I see the urge to dismiss me entirely as being emotional. I'm just a random internet stranger after all, and it's easier that way. Anyway it was fun, I wish you the best.

The fact that you can't even tell how emotionally invested you got here is probably the main takeaway from this conversation, for you.

You took what I said, that blindly trusting a random source on the Internet to the point of spending hours judiciously studying its contents is, to me, not a wise way to spend time, and continually interpreted a vastly more extreme and broad version with the clear intent to pick a fight.

If you can't see how you took this incredibly personally, that's going to be a major issue for you moving forward. You can't behave like this in the real world and expect positive outcomes.

This took a strange turn. How are your exact words, over several comments "interpreting vastly more extreme and broad version"?

Yes, I tend to remind people to be constructive, "be the change you want to see" and all. You resorting to ad hominem rather than staying on subject is the only emotion here, all the repetition is slightly annoying though, but no more than the buzz of a mosquito at night. Don't take yourself too seriously.

Anything else you need to get off your chest while you're at it?

For anything I said to have been an ad hominem I would have needed to disqualify your argument as a result of who you are. Considering what I've said here is that you misunderstand my argument, not that your interpretation is wrong because of some facet of yourself, it is therefore not an ad hominem.

Any evaluation of you on my part is in addition to you being wrong, not a logical cause of your wrongness. But I do appreciate the admission that you're not all that well educated, it does help me understand why this petty little disagreement means so much to you.

All that just to end with exactly your own definition of ad hominem. Congratulations, have a medal. If you're curious I AM uneducated, did you have a point?

There are no misunderstandings, I read (and quote) you literally. I've been patient and given you several chances to rephrase but you refuse and resort to this. What more can I do?

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