Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by merelydev | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

merelydev

TLDR: "Don't hate the player, hate the game".

View on HN

No, we really should hate the players. They are keeping the game from changing.

A small number of players set the rules of the game.

A players collectively choose that everyone must follow those rules.

No sarcasm: play a different game. If you play their game, of course you'll suffer. But if you play a game they're repulsed by, you can win a life they'll never have access to: one filled with people who love and respect you and an environment where your best self and life can emerge.

The parent comments are talking about how the game is negatively impacting society. Your suggestion is to check out and leave society to them. One of the many problems with that suggestion is that it's hard for your best self/life to emerge in a bleak future.

I think it's possible to "pick and choose" to some extent. I've found most of the bleak future stuff goes away if I turn off my phone, but since I need it to contact people in 2026, I try and give things their due, and, to the best of my ability, ignore the more unpleasant aspects of modern life. I think the landline telephone is a good example. It was fun to chit-chat with friends on the phone, but when a telemarketer called, I either hung up immediately, or said "stop calling," then hung up. It can be the same way in modern society. Weight the conversations with warm-bodied people higher, and stop scrolling as much (to put it overly-simplistically).

It’s done wonders for my free time and mood by deleting my Reddit account and restricting HN to toilet time. Instead of reading rage bait American news I do a daily scan of BBC. All those are sources of negativity and stress that bring nothing of value to your life. I invest my newfound time and energy into my family, hobbies, and health.

Nice. That feels like the correct way to me

You can’t ignore climate change

Ignoring it is a tradition at this point in the US...

fair

> Your suggestion is to check out and leave society to them

Absolutely not. Their suggestion is to play a different game. You don't even have to play a game with win conditions. You can just play to play.

That's not what I said. I didn't say anything about leaving society, I alluded to leaving their society. That's the thing: people keep giving these guys money and attention. If you take that away, they become more than irrelevant. Simplified: if they're going West, you go East.

The more "small time" people reject this narrative that we need a bunch of elitist white guys shoving their mediocrity down our throats, the faster we rebuild a society they're barred from accessing.

    I didn't say anything about leaving society, I alluded to leaving their society. That's the thing: people keep giving these guys money and attention. If you take that away, they become more than irrelevant.

Can you explain how to do that without either drawing attention to them via discussions like this or leaving society altogether? I don't personally fund a16z, but my taxes do. Calls to coordinated action to stop giving them money also count as attention.

Leave Babylon behind and go build local businesses and communities in what they refer to as "flyover country." That's what I'm doing. Easy? Fuck no. But does it take their relevancy away from them? At the scale of everyone who isn't a coastal barnacle: big time.

They view the rest of this country with disdain and indifference. I'm suggesting that others quit looking at these people as lords and sages to be placed up on a pedestal. Most of them are quite incompetent, skill-less, and frankly, not cool enough to want to hang out with (why they're making "jokes" about there only being two jobs left in the world in the future: Anthropic employees and hookers for Anthropic employees [1]). I'm sorry but I'm not taking direction from a bunch of dorks who can't get laid without paying for it. And I'd take a wild guess that given the climate, the lion's share of America is with me.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tjrCFuEA1ds

What does flyover country have to do with the present discussion? Kalshi is just as big a problem (or bigger even) in Nebraska as New York. Taxes going to Anduril happens whether you live in Malibu or Missouri.

> What does flyover country have to do with the present discussion?

Read what I already wrote above, I made it pretty clear.

They can still buy laws that negatively affect me as long as enough others are giving them money.

You can, of course, distance yourself from their world and work on things they would never see as valuable. However, you can't check out of the most grand game we're playing, the game of life and existence. Those people desperately want to toy with things that could eventually prevent you from being able to live a life where you still have food, water and shelter. You can ignore it while they're still not all-powerful, but as their wealth and influence grows, you will eventually have to confront it.

What if their game is to flip the boards of everyone else’s games?

Then so be it. Hopefully they've considered all of the angles and can defend themselves against people being radicalized to the point of hunting them down.

Turns out their obsession with moats was prescient.

That’s a cop-out. It’s the most powerful “players” who are making the “game” what it is, and they make the rules be whatever benefits them.

It would be pretty reasonable to hate the player who brings a machine gun to a stadium, kills every opponent to start scoring and when people complain says “Nothing in the rules says we can’t kill other players to score. If I didn’t gun everyone down, the opposing team would’ve. Don’t hate the player, hate the game”.

Yes this is their reasoning, it doesn't mean we shouldn't hate the players and the game alike

That is like hating a hacker who hacks into your vulnerable server that is outdated and allows ssh password login. If there is vulnerabilities in the system someone will eventually exploit them, sure not you or me but there is always someone out there that will.

That same hacker can choose to responsibly disclose the vulnerability through the proper channels, or take advantage of it to benefit themselves at the expense of others. Which one they choose objectively determines the quality of person they are.

That is how we find ourselves in this mess, we design systems thinking only of everything that can go right and not what can go wrong.

Protecting yourself from every possibility where things can go wrong is not something anyone can afford.

Let’s bring your example into the physical world:

“That is like hating a thief who robs your home which has an old lock and a window you forgot open. If there is an open window in the house someone will eventually climb through it, sure not you or me but there is always someone out there that will.”

It is perfectly reasonable to hate the person who robbed your house or hacked your server. “If that someone hadn’t, another someone would” is in no way a defence. It is not OK to actively harm someone just because they didn’t protect themselves.

Yes. My point is that until you learn to lock your door, thief will enter and steal your property. You can hate them all you want, that wont change the facts or magically lock your door.

Unfortunately the thief has introduced legislation that bans any better locks, and they have a magical veto that allows them to strike down any attempts at changing said laws.

Should I still not hate the thief?

I prefer to live somewhere where I can be relatively sure that forgetting to close my windows doesn't get me robbed. That means punishing those who take advantage of open windows. Turns out deterrence can be quite effective.

Security is always about tradeoffs and in a functioning society you don't need to have perfect security (and pay the extreme cost required for it) because we do indeed put blame on individuals that abuse the system.

It’s not the players we should hate but the ones who make the rules of the game. Specifically not the ones who make the rules for the greater good but for themselves.

So, the players?

No rule makers. Players are not the one making the rules of a game. They just play it.

What game has David Ellison been playing? The same as yours or perhaps slightly different? Does that difference matter?

That's what thiefs say

“Also, I have no intention of acknowledging that not all people have an equal chance at winning the game, nor doing anything about it for that matter.”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com