Hacker News Reader

Comment by distcs | Hacker News Reader

They may be 2nd year CS student but the world they experience is not any less real than ours who have been in the industry for 10-20 years.

You may disagree with them and that's fine. There is a sort of generation gap obviously and our opinions would differ from theirs. That's fine too.

But what is really unacceptable to me is how you dismiss their viewpoint because they are a 2nd-year CS student! What if they were not a 2nd-year CS student and still believed the same things?

Please be better than this. Comments like yours make these threads a terrible reading experience!

Also http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html

> Saying that an author lacks the authority to write about a topic is a variant of ad hominem—and a particularly useless sort, because good ideas often come from outsiders. The question is whether the author is correct or not. If his lack of authority caused him to make mistakes, point those out. And if it didn't, it's not a problem.

View on HN

> But what is really unacceptable to me is how you dismiss their viewpoint because they are a 2nd-year CS student!

> Saying that an author lacks the authority to write about a topic is a variant of ad hominem

This is not really about authority. An outsider can have good ideas. A person who has no experience and no knowledge of the subject will usually spout nonsense as seen on this thread.

If someone was talking about how child birth doesn't need any sort of pain medication because the experience isn't that painful, wouldn't you want to know if they had actually given birth at least once?

Concretely, reading what a person who has never worked a full time job (much less had to juggle having a family and a full time job), has to say about work-life balance is pointless.

Reading their thoughts on how not working overtime precludes raises and promotions is a waste of time.

Watching as they finish their rant by appealing to a sense of duty that every software engineer must have because "if Google or AWS goes down, it breaks everything" when the people responsible for these systems are a tiny minority of all software engineers...

Come on. If OP was not a 2nd year CS student, I would have been surprised.

No, his comment is spot on. A 2nd year CS student doesn't know jack shit about working in a professional capacity, and should not be sharing terrible advise that leads to burn out that other people may follow because they too don't know shit about working in a professional capacity.

Advice carries accountability, and if you don't have the necessary experience to carry advice, it is much better to shut your trap than to reveal your ignorance. The type of inclusive coddling you are doing does not improve the world, it makes everything worse and socially penalizes people for speaking the truth. /You/ are the person who should re-consider your comments.

So you think it is ok to dig up someone's past threads and show that they are 2nd year CS student to discount their point?

If their point is incorrect or wrong, why can't they be discussed on its own? Why is it necessary to discuss the person?

May I suggest reading DH1 of http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html?

> Saying that an author lacks the authority to write about a topic is a variant of ad hominem—and a particularly useless sort, because good ideas often come from outsiders.

There are many others who are engaging with the arguments this young person made without bringing their age or professional status into question. That's a healthy debate. What is happening in this subthread is not!

Both are good. I did both in my other comment. Appeal to authority and ad hominem may be fallacies, but there is truth to the fact this person is speaking advise without any basis for offering it, which is relevant and helpful to point out. It is improper to chastise someone for speaking the truth.

The background can usefully affect one's choice of whether, and how, to engage.

In this case, the post already was pretty poor, on its own merits, as has been pretty well covered all over this thread. The added info took it from poor, to poor and risible, and also probably worth ignoring or quickly dismissing with a post (for onlookers) then not continuing to engage, even for those who might otherwise be inclined to start a back-and-forth conversation about it. Like, one is unlikely to dig up some well of hard-won wisdom on this specific topic that might change one's mind, from this poster, by engaging with them, given that background info.

Who's speaking (or writing) matters. It may not matter for determining whether they're right or wrong, but it matters for how (and whether) one responds.

I think the internet would be a much better experience if every person online had generic details about themselves attached to their handle; e.g. age, ethnicity and nationality, parents' net worth and income, employment history or lack thereof, etc. So just like in real life, I could easily dismiss the strong opinions of others who do not have the experience necessary to form any educated opinions on which they speak.

Yes, there is no truth, and no one's reality is less "real" than others -- but children are known to talk confidently (dare I say arrogantly) about things which they know not, when they think there are no consequences. Therefore, I would like to be able to easily filter out their opinions, so as to improve my reading experience, and that of others.

If they were not a 2nd-year CS student, they would either be: very early into their career and lucky, willfully naive or privileged, or simply a malicious and adversarial person. Atleast a child can be taught to act properly.

> I think the internet would be a much better experience if every person online had generic details about themselves attached to their handle; e.g. age, ethnicity and nationality, parents' net worth and income, employment history or lack thereof, etc.

I strongly disagree.

> So just like in real life, I could easily dismiss the strong opinions of others who do not have the experience necessary to form any educated opinions on which they speak.

And this is why. In evaluating an opinion, it doesn't really matter what the person's background is. Experts can have wrong or crazy opinions and laypeople can have correct ones.

What matters is how solid their arguments for their positions are.

I disagree with their comment too. I too believe their comment is way too much wrong. I disagree with them. But I would not go so far as creating a throwaway account (like you did) just to do dig up their past threads to find out that they are only a 2nd year CS student. It does not matter to me that their views (which are diametrically opposite than mine) came from an experienced pro or a 2nd year student. What matters to me is that their views are opposite of mine. That can be expressed without digging up their past threads.

It's not an ad hominem attack, a second year CS student is highly unlikely to carry the experience of years working in the industry in order to be able to answer this question with any degree of reliability. Calling them out on this is spot on, and I'm getting really tired of people attempting to deflect or whinge about toxicity because an certain argument doesn't sit well with them.

> It's not an ad hominem attack, a second year CS student is highly unlikely to carry the experience of years working in the industry in order to be able to answer this question with any degree of reliability.

You are literally providing an example of ad hominem attack and yet you are claiming that it is not ad hominem?

Their argument is wrong of course. So you and me are in agreement there. And their argument is wrong on its own merits. That they are a second year CS student is besides the point. Their argument would be very much wrong even if they were a 20 year experienced professional.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com