Hacker News Reader

Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

There's a certain sort of anti-intellectualism that revels in the idea that if there doesn't exist a simple solution, then there must not exist any solution. It is either an inability to grasp the notion of complexity, or a childish refusal to. Therefore, any system that is too complex for them to understand must be demonized and destroyed.

View on HN

Reminds me of H.L. Mencken's "There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong."

1: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken#1910s

What’s the “well-known solution” to cancer?

Hard to multiply without a host.

https://xkcd.com/1217 aka "just remove the cancer"

How is that “neat, plausible”?

I’ve never heard of any “solution” to cancer, well known or not, that was neat and plausible.

I think you're about to understand the quote.

I think I already understood the quote at the time of writing the previous comment…

Hence why I quoted the exact words.

Do you understand it?

Not sure why you're being confrontational? I'm not the OP but it's clear there's some misunderstanding

The quote is: - neat - plausible - wrong

"Just get rid of the cancer" is - neat because it sounds obvious and tidy - plausible because we can and do cut out cancer - wrong because it ignores the nuance that cutting into a patient's body can have massive impacts on long term health. It can also be wrong because certain cancers have no tumor sites.

No, I don’t think there’s a misunderstanding, unless the parent has literally never seen anyone on HN quote exact words before.

They’re likely being dumb and/or intentionally misleading.

The quote is meant as a type of sarcasm/humor. Meaning if a presented solution is neat and plausible it's likely going to be wrong.

I know… that’s why I wrote I’ve never seen such a solution for cancer presented as if it where both neat and plausible simultaneously.

If anyone offers an example that could have plausibly fooled the median HN reader at the time of reading, then I will change my mind.

It's a lot like the old McNamara fallacy. It's especially tempting for technically-minded people to fall into. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy

It’s emotional immaturity, like you said very childish.

Narcissists are deeply emotionally immature, in a way that is incredibly resistant to healing. Their entire life narrative and every action is based on a fundamental delusion. Most of us struggle with change and admitting when we are wrong… To heal, a narcissist must change their entire world view and admit they have been living a harmful lie their entire life.

It’s quite bad when such a person gains significant power and has goals that conflict with well-being of others.

It's very sad that the Nazis made eugenics into a taboo for the next century. The conclusion of WW2 should've been the opposite - narcissism and lack of empathy (also known as psychopathy) endanger the entire world and need to be minimized in the gene pool. It is, of course, too late now.

Lack of empathy is not just inborn trait, it is ideological expectation. Nazi praised lack of empathy (especially in men) and ended up raising people to be like that

And currently, quite a lot of what conservatives see as traditional masculinity is that - you look at what they teach young men and lack of empathy is seen as asset. Compassion is seen as weakness.

But it has zero to do with genetics, it is values.

I think related to this is the notion that if people are unhappy with the status quo, and a clearly defective solution is offered, they still go for it.

"Something needs to be done. This is something. Let's do it".

The fact that this something might make it worse is ignored.

A variant of this is watching someone demonstrate years of practice and assume you could as well(without practice). The underlying assumption is if something works that easily it must also be simple.

Beautifully said

Reply on news.ycombinator.com