Hacker News Reader

Comment by rpm4321 | Hacker News Reader

Did you even read my comment? I'm genuinely very interested in PG's take on this, and it was inspired by a protracted debate from earlier today:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5003916

Also, in my opinion "full of shit" accurately reflects the opinion of the majority of the anti-Kurzweil people on HN. It's an example of the sort of middlebrow dismissal that typifies a lot of the comments at the link above. That's what I'm trying to get at - whether HN really thinks Kurzweil deserves these sorts of knee-jerk, absolutist reactions, one way or the other.

Personally, I think the ideas are serious and deserve some thought and consideration. As I mentioned above, I'm fairly sympathetic to them long-term, but a bit skeptical short-term.

The headline is also obviously a bit of an attention getter, sure, but I'm certainly not a Karma Farma'.

View on HN

I don't believe you.

Quite sincerely. I don't believe you.

Yeah, because it's perfectly logical that I would engage in a multi-thousand word, multi-month debate:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4923914

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5003916

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4791558

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4851307

all as preamble in my master plot to... ??? wait, what is it exactly you're accusing me of again? "Trolling"? - or was I just after those whopping 7 karma points this whole time?

In all seriousness, I've wanted to post this Ask PG for a long time, and I used the debate from the article earlier today as an excuse to write it. I've read pretty much every word both Kurzweil and PG have ever written, but they've never really crossed paths as far as I'm aware. PG's a very pragmatic, no-nonsense, deep thinker, and my guess is he'd be skeptical, but it's too bad this post didn't take off because I really would have loved to read his take on it.

Maybe I should have said 'full of crap' or 'full of it'. Didn't mean to offend your virgin eyes. ;) PG-13 titled posts are nothing new to HN, so I really didn't think I'd be making waves.

I generally don't plumb people's comment histories.

Your post fit the half-decent troll template perfectly.

Controversial topic: check.

Used inflammatory language: check.

Had some half-reasonable-sounding stuff too: check.

Mentioned high-profile participant by name: check.

I'm glad to learn that you were a false positive. But, given the same prima facie facts again, I'd make the same judgement again.

Hey jacques_chester, fair enough. It obviously wasn't only you who assumed that, because unfortunately the post was flagged. In retrospect it was obviously the S word that did me in, but it really didn't seem out of line compared to the dozens of very popular, slightly-NSFW titles I've seen on HN over the years.

Anyway, I've reposted it with a safer title in case you want to chime in on the debate. Hopefully it takes off again because I really would love to hear PG's take on the whole thing:

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5006328

Boy, I don't remember ever seeing a comment war escalate and de-escalate so quickly. Maybe there's hope for the Middle East after all. ;)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com