Meta is Murder | Hacker News Reader

Meta is Murder

codinghorror.com

25 pointsMintz23 comments

Too much meta is bad, too little meta is also bad. If you live by 'meta murders', you're going to become a braindead doer, instead of a creative and insightful contributor. I believe that to find a good balance of meta in all things, we should simply look at meta-cognition and find balance there, and then extrapolate out.

I recommend checking out this article from Seed Magazine: http://seedmagazine.com/content/print/thinking_meta/ :

Unless we are aware of our tendency to act irrationally in certain situations, then we’ll continue to act irrationally. That much is predictable.Although the mind is full of flaws, we can learn to outsmart them.

I think for an approach to productive use of meta discussion in these tech circles, we should begin by looking at the already existing strategies for utilizing meta-cognition for our benefit - like the ones listed here: http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/Articles/metacognition/start.htm

In short, thinking about thinking, thinking about you think, are quite valuable, but do it wrong, do it too much, and you end up driving yourself nuts -- and say crazy things like meta is murder and run away from it....'I will not think, I think too much, will not think...will be braindead zombie not questioning what I'm doing...' -- also, your analysis of your thoughts isn't often that valuable to other people, which I think relates to why we find reading about bloggers telling us how they blog is kind of mmm, boring.

I don't think this sort of topic qualifies as Hacker News.

I guess they didn't get the joke.

A lot of people cite MetaTalk as a reason that MetaFilter works. If you talk to a regular from the site they'll tell you MetaTalk is key to the success of the site because it's a sort of release valve.

The solution to the "not hacker news" problem isn't to shout people down. You need to give them that release valve. The comments are a symptom of a problem, and it needs to be addressed through the site architecture.

could be handled by directing people to a posting about hacker news, where they could comment to their hearts content (or, hopefully, read historical conclusions to their comment's topic, if one already exists)

I tried out and stopped using the JoS discussion boards (way before the days of reddit) primarily because this release valve didn't exist. My submission would occasionally get magicked away and there was no recourse, no way to ask why that had happened.

[obligatory comment on flagging instead of complaining]

"Generally speaking, I am not a fan of the meta."

Ironic that he should say this, considering that a considerable portion of his communications relate to meta-discussions.

This blog post is a discussion of a podcast discussion of where to host discussion of stackoverflow discussion.

In this specific case, he wants to talk about talking.

In general against; in this case, for.

I think he just wants to ignore any criticism aimed at Stack Overflow. That's the impression I get from his comments on the meta site, anyway.

"LALALAL ITS FINE LALALA"

while there is one (annoying) search result that points to www.experts-exchange.com stack overflow is relief.

Sometimes I just want to scream: Stop having 3-hour discussions about what to name the product and just build the product!

I understand your sentiment, but I also really like trying to think of cool names...

As do I; which is probably why I have yet to scream.

I've heard this called "name-paralysis"

The name of a product is really, really important to the product's success. The reason that three-hour long discussions about it are frustrating that they aren't a good way to find a good name - all the names you've heard in the discussion blur together and it's not possible to "get" the quality of any uniquely good names.

A lot of design is like that - it is the art of just having a simple thing that "works". The simple thing seems easy but is really hard because you have to consider many factors but not do a simple compromise. It's also something that more less can't be done by a simple committee.

I do that with class/variable names when coding. Then I scream at myself.

The thing about meta-discussion is, to an extent, it is people talking to hear themselves or each other talk.

That sounds terrible but is it? Suppose instead of just talking, people sang? Singing to hear yourself sing is wonderful. So the question isn't just whether you are accomplishing anything with meta-comments. The question is whether you either accomplishing or whether you are just enjoying what you're doing in a somewhat rich, creative or satisfying way. This seems more likely when the meta-discussion is humorous and good spirited than when it is angry and mean-spirited. But perhaps some people enjoy trying to destroy other people's intellectual position on some level or other.

Actually this is so spot on!

I ADMIT! I have been living a meta-life for far too long now. A life where I ponder about HOW I want to/should live my life. In a sense it has given me much - a perceived knowledge and understanding about me, life and the world. All in theory. Lately in my meta-living I've come to the conclusion that that's just what it is. A meta-life. I need to stop meta and go out there, to actually get things done. Get practical.

I think a better term is Self-Referential

Meta data is not always self referential.

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