Hacker News Reader

Comment by arcatech | Hacker News Reader

When you see a group of people being critical, you can either see it as a “bummer”, or you can see it as people critically thinking about a thing.

Is it really more useful to have everyone expressing how much they like something instead of identifying problems?

Is seeing people talking about the things they don’t like something that makes you unhappy? Why?

View on HN

I think the HN rule for "curmudgeonly" applies.

> Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative.

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

I think HN should be a place where I am excited to see what others have to add. When I see a post I am excited to see what takes and spins others have on it. I do want real criticism and a lively debate about important things, but there has to be a balance.

I want to see other comments that seem like they genuinely want to help steer something or build people up. Sometimes I get the impression that's not happening on HN.

Discussing the privacy implications of a big box that says "drag files to me!" is thoughtful criticism.

I would get the point if this was someone's personal Show HN project but this is Cloudflare. They can withstand a little critique.

There needs to be another rule against being a techno-sycophant.

I think I might agree, but just so we're clear: what exactly is a "techno-sycophant"?

To the curmudgeon, its techno-sycophancy to say the wheel is a pretty good thing.

It’s just another take on shill / sheeple / etc. it gets old.

And to the sycophant, pointing out real and obvious drawbacks is being a curmudgeon.

In such situations, the golden mean is a useful lens.

The golden mean is only a useful lens if all sides are equally prepared to take up extremist positions. If some people are taking up considerate or even reasonable positions but others take up the absolute, the golden mean will always skew towards the unreasonable.

Mortal combat is the only way to resolve this.

The problem is that everything is negative, all the time. Nothing good is allowed to be acknowledged. Everything someone or some company does must not be acknowledged to have any redeeming value- it’s all just negative

Which is sad, because so much amazing stuff is happening on the world right now, and seems to be only accelerating. For everybody.

Amazing stuff? You mean technical stuff right? Because politically, demographically and climate wise we're headed for disaster or at least dystopia.

I wished I could find all the science and technology as uplifting as my friends do.

> Nothing good is allowed to be acknowledged.

What makes you say this?

I don't know, I find it very hard to stay positive about our general direction in the last couple of years, and know few people in real life who don't share this opinion, in or outside of tech. And I'm also not entirely sure I understand why others are excited, it perplexes me. I would appreciate any insight into this.

Maybe AI slop has something to do with it?

It may not be critical thinking though, but simply being contrarian, which is one of the easiest ways to sound smart without necessarily providing much of value or substance. And strangely, seeing as it’s relatively rare IRL, seemingly the default on the internet. Blindly praising isn’t worth much either, but I doubt that’s what jonluca is encouraging. It’s possible to “yes, and” without resorting to either sycophancy or relentless negatively.

> Is seeing people talking about the things they don’t like something that makes you unhappy? Why?

Probably (I'm just assuming) because that person observes negative/cautious/"I don't like this because X and Y and also Z"/etc sentiment too much and feels like people are only quick to notice issues while forgetting about good sides.

It's only an assumption, though.

This is what the influencer propaganda machine on social media has done to people's view of critical thinking.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com