TikiTDO

I figure out what exactly I am doing, and more importantly why exactly I am doing it. It's easy to sit down and thing "I want to change the world, I want to beat Facebook of Google at their game, I want to develop an awesome game or a tool that everyone needs." Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the hows and whys of an idea that really define the scope, complexity, and execution of your project.

> Ah. This, maybe. But no, I'm afraid you've misunderstood and not in a way that I feel I'm equipped to address now without sacrificing brevity or comfort.

Really now?

> In instances where I feel I have unintentionally caused someone to misunderstand (or really, been a shitty communicator), I'm obligated to correct and explain better.

How's this for putting words in your mouth? I have spent well over an hour writing a in depth analysis of your posts, describing my thought process, and theorizing on what I believe to be your thought process. At this point I am confident that I may flat out call you out on a lie perpetrated during this very discussion; you stated you are obligated to clear up any misunderstandings, and are now flat out refusing to do so due to "brevity and comfort." Clearly your so called obligations don't amount to much.

Oh, and perhaps you should learn to differentiate between "Asking a question" and "Putting words in my mouth." If I ask whether you will honestly consider something to be true, I'm looking for an insightful answer (Longer than one word usually), not suggesting that you do or do not. Instead, you are presenting a series of inconsistent, unsubstantiated claims, half formed thoughts, and backing all that up with an obvious disinterest in anything resembling an attempt at allowing me to understand you. After I gave you countless examples of various magnitudes you could use for counter-examples that is really quite rude.

In hindsight it should have been obvious since your original dismissive reply, but I was still holding on to the vain hope that as a poster on HN you would have slightly more dedication to communication than an average redditor. The idea that there is something to back down from really crystallizes the difference; you appear to think this is some argument which one of us could win, while I am trying my best to understand you and point out where I feel you are contradicting yourself or reality. Sure, I may be doing it in a rude fashion, but again, I do so in response to what I perceive to be a hostile tone, for reasons I described in my previous post.

In short, I don't care in the slightest whether you think you are backing down or not; I feel that this entire exchange was a complete waste on my part since you clearly had no interest in attempting to clear up any of the misunderstandings that obviously exist between us. Thank you for allowing both of us to waste our time, and I apologize for have participated in this farce of a discussion.

Wow, you are really good at being covertly insulting. At least I had the decency to make my insults really obvious, you decide to attack me on a multitude of vectors while persisting in keeping your unsubstantiated moral high ground. Note, you set the tone for the conversation with the original reply dismissing my first (Long and detailed) post as utterly ridiculous using a rather difficult to believe, and quite unsupportable claim. Now you suddenly expect some sort of polite response to show an interest in you and your topic. I am no where near nice enough to accommodate, but I will gladly call you out on your hypocrisy if you decide to make an issue of it. That said, why would I spend time writing a post if I didn't care at all what you have to say? Sure, I may think your assertions are silly, your debating technique flawed, and your tone is more insulting by accident than mine is on purpose, but if I didn't care for the topic I would not bother replying at all.

To start of, let's not ignore how you decided to omit the lie of omission from your point by point response to my post. That is already quite telling of your tone, and could humorously enough be construed to be a lie of omission.

You are quick to dismiss my points as pseudo-philosophical without actually explaining why you may believe that, or what sort of reasoning you use to dismiss them. Regarding your example I can see that your threshold of lying lies at the definition of "direct lie," which is certainly the easiest to detect. However, there are many other types of lies, each of which serve important roles in the properly functionality of our society. You could easily discover this on your own if you didn't dismiss perfectly valid resources because at first glance they appear to describe "how to be a selfish dick and perpetuate misery."

For instance, you are quick to deem an accidental lie to be outside the scope of acceptable definitions of lying. For some reason you only consider something a lie if you are actually aware of it. However, while intention is certainly a part of lying, it is by no means the most important. A lie is simply an untruthful statement, regardless if you mean for it to deceive someone. I will agree that trying to correct yourself in these cases is certainly a remedy, but that hinges on you understanding that you have caused someone to misunderstand something, which may not always be the case.

Regarding your "hah, jk," will you honestly say that even in situations where it would be socially awkward or even unacceptable? "Thank you for the food, it was very good... hah, jk, that was one of the most bland meals I have ever eaten" or "You look good, that shirt does not make you look fat at all... hah, jk, you should go get liposuction." Going back to the point I made originally, lying is literally a core part of our culture, you may not even notice when you are doing it since telling the truth can often be amazingly insulting.

Presenting opinions as facts is probably just as common as the lie of exaggeration. It may be something as simple as presenting yourself as an expert when you are not; perhaps you have tried to explain a complex scientific theory without a full understanding of the material in question. Even if the actual content of your description is accurate, you have lied in acting as if you are a knowledgeable expert in the field. Or maybe if you are are asked to provide a design a work to replace an aging system, and you decide to do your work without actually understanding why and how the previous design functioned, and what limitations it was meant to overcome. Really, any situation where you act as an expert without actually being one qualifies for this category. Again, this is actually very common in the business world. You seldom have the time necessary to familiarize yourself with all the relevant material, yet cannot run the risk of appearing unqualified or incompetent by using looser terms like, "In my opinion X" or "I think Y" in place of "X is Y."

You are actually right when you say that you hurting someone with truth is unlikely to have happened so far, but for a wholly different reason than the one you present. Returning yet again to my original point, you are probably not even consciously aware of all the lies you say day in and day out, simply because you do not consider them lies. To you these things are part of your social strata; you say them because not doing so could be offensive. During your childhood your were exposed time and again to situations where lying was acceptable, you may in fact have been punished for not lying at times. That leads back to the point I was trying to make in my original post. You must be cautious when teaching a child about lying, since lying is simply a part of our society.

I have to wonder what you consider lying though. Have you ever omitted all of the information necessary for an informed decision? Have you ever purposefully or accidentally misinterpreted what another person has was saying for your own benefit, or misrepresented it to someone else? Have you ever uttered an exaggeration that would be hard to distinguish from the truth? Have you ever presented your opinion as if it was fact? Each of those is a type of lie that we may make without even noticing, often times not using these techniques in certain situation would even be considered a social faux pas. So tell me again with 100% certainty that you have only lied 5 times in the past 5 years, that way at least I can be sure you can lie to yourself.

And if by some freak chance of fates you really have managed to go 5 years while for the most part only telling the truth, if you really are akin to a character out of a fairy-tale then I invite you to take a look at what Robert Greene says about lying in the "48 Laws of Power." You may not even understand how powerful a weapon you wield, and how much it may be hurting you, and those around you.

Ah, I was waiting for this question. You can never escape a champion for the wisdom of the majority after all.

While I have not raised kids, I do not see why that should factor into the discussion. Your comment suggests that you are operating under the assumption that experience is the only thing that confers ability. However, you may have noticed at some point in your life that we are quite good at obtaining knowledge via the traditional means of learning from the archived experience of others. Arguably even better than learning by first hand experience, though that is up for debate. I have studied various aspects of (adult and child) psychology and sociology to satisfy my urge to understand humanity, and my thoughts on the matter are based on that gained knowledge.

While I agree that experience can lead to new insights, and can result in a more optimal utilization of your own knowledge, it is certainly not required to actually discuss a matter. Maybe the lack of practical experience would be more notable if I were trying to suggest some sort of novel ideas, but I am just stating something which has been seen time and again throughout the ages; what skills are necessary to be successful, and how to impart them to your offspring.

As you may imagine, I have spent some time trying to understand why some people raise their kids to be successful, and why others fail horribly at the act. It does not take spending 20 years to see a pattern of success or failure emerging with the application of certain techniques. So to more directly answer your question, my opinions based neither of my own experience, nor on my understanding of how kids "should" be raised. Instead, my views are based on the mass of information I have seen and read on the topic, and the trends that clearly exhibit themselves in that data.

Going further, I actually find that relying on any long term experience can at times make the results somewhat suspect. While experiencing something several times can help you understand it all the better, once you spent a better part of two decades practicing something you will almost certainly be convinced that you are doing everything correctly. To admit otherwise would be to admit your own failings which few people are willing to do, especially in an area as sensitive as child rearing. This leads to the surprisingly common situation wherein an "authority" who is trusted to make the right decisions acts contrary to the accepted scientific norms of the time. Take for example a grandmother that raised 8 children, and will expound for hours on the necessity of beatings to raising healthy and successful kids. I am sure most of the HN readers can think of a lot of other examples of this in a myriad of fields.

Obviously though, neither you, nor anyone else should make fundamental decisions regarding how to raise your child based on something some guy on the Internet said. A responsible parent should spent at least as much time as I have reading the material relevant to the topic in order to make informed decisions. What more, if it appears to a somewhat informed person that you have not done this basic work, they should, as I have with the GGP, point out the flaws in your reasoning without having to wade through comments disqualifying their opinion simply because they have not actually put what they have read into practice. If you have issues with what I said, then by all means please present them, and the supporting arguments, for me to discuss or concede as necessary, but do not for a second think that you can discount me from the discussion simply because I do not adhere to the strict experience requirements that you feel are necessary before even think about the topic.

Lying is not just ok on the internet, it's practiced practically everywhere. People lie in business, people lie in politics, people lie in marketing, people lie in retail, people lie on internet forums, people lie on the street, people lie in their homes, places of business, and places of leisure. The fact is simple: people lie. You can and should teach your kids about when it is not appropriate to lie, but please get off your moral high horse of pretending that lying is the some sort of mortal sin.

Imagine how badly you would fuck up your kid's life if you managed to really convince him that lying is some sort of abject horror. He would be eaten alive the instant he took a step outside of your home into the real world. When in your opinion is a kid ready for sophisticated reasoning about when to lie? Do you suggest waiting until well past their core formative years before suddenly going, "Hey, remember how I said if you lie you will go to jail? Yeah, about that..." Maybe even wait for their rebellious teenage years so that they get REALLY confused about how they're supposed to behave.

Kids are not as stupid as you seem to believe they are, and that's something coming from me since I believe kids are pretty damn stupid. I am not suggesting that they are ready for a university level psychology lecture, but by that point they will have been exposed to plenty of negative things that you should probably take some effort to explain. If your kids are not ready for at least a basic introduction to social reasoning at 10 then you haven't been doing a very good job at educating them.

Flash won the early online game battle against ActiveX. We all know how flash is positioned these days. It's not a question of regard, but market penetration.

Sure, if I wanted the full treatment, I also hear there's this "Believing Bullshit" book. Unfortunately, I recall reading a synopsis, and I get the feeling that I would be wasting my money were I to buy it. The tone and content of the article in no way suggested that the book would be anything but more of the same. This isn't something you could fix with a footnote, or by writing 150,000 words on the topic. It is, I feel, a fundamental flaw of the author.

Maybe I'm being too hard on the book, and it is actually much more interesting than the article gives it credit for. Unfortunately, I'm not particularly interested in looking into the matter, and that is where the article failed for me.

I feel this article is guilty of exactly what it argues against. Many of the views he writes off as ridiculous may be the results of countless thought processes working in any number of contexts. Instead of accepting this, he simplified each view that contradicts his own down to an obviously ridiculous claim, then makes use of what is effectively a traditional straw man argument. Sure, it's true that if your views are rationalized the way he expects them to be then you have no logical let to stand on. On the other hand should you have any sort of more complex and rational approach to the matter it appears that he will still gladly lump you with the lunatics.

That said, I do agree that the issue he is trying to point out is of vital importance. The fact is that most of the people that believe in mysticism, religions, UFOs, psychic powers, and other things to that effect are completely disconnected from the physical reality that they inhabit. However, I do not think the solution is to tell these people that their views are ridiculous, before quoting scientific facts the implications of which you might not even understand yourself. You would be better off establishing a rapport, and gradually introducing more and more facts that do not agree with their interpretation of the world. In the end you may both find some wisdom in the result.

While I am of mixed opinion on the article, the one part that really stands out for me is his insistence of the necessity of long, difficult texts. I am one of the people that seldom reads a book these days. It's not that I find it too challenging, or too long. I certainly read fast enough, and my background is sufficiently wide. However, I do find it far too repetitive and rife with personal opinion that does not aid my quest for more knowledge.

Why would I read a book about a programming language when there is a set of APIs, tutorials, and articles that can convey the information in 1/10th the time? Why should I read a dozen chapters about the history leading to a new mathematical concept when I can just quickly read the research paper about that specific concept? Why do I have to read a hundred asides about what the author does on his days off, how he loves his wife and his dog, of what sort of stupid questions his students asked of him? I'm just here for information, and unfortunately books are rarely the most ideal way of getting it.

Not to say that all books are bad, and should be deprecated as a medium. I have, and will always find good books enjoyable. However, to insist that they are an irreplaceable feature of the quest for knowledge is ignoring the reality of how the quest for knowledge has changed. In the end it's not about long, difficult texts; just difficult texts will often suffice.

Something does not compute there. If your changes are getting reverted, obviously someone cares enough to notice, so it follows that they should care enough to check the discussion. Are you sure you're not just getting hit by a bot? Maybe you did not tag your changes properly? If anything, there might be a problem that the admins should look at. I would like to see some of these changes you are talking about.

There are some other very important advantage of text that I feel you omitted. First, the ability to simultaneously carry on discussion on multiple topics all at once is a huge factor. In a normal, face to face conversation following an interesting but unrelated line of thought can sidetrack the entire conversation, often beyond the point of recovery. When you move to a textual medium you can easily carry on two or even three topics provided that both sides can keep track of the various conversation contexts all at once. Best of all, you can follow up on these branches in conversation even while the other person is typing.

That brings me to the second huge benefit. When talking, you will very rarely speak at the same time as another person. Not only is it rude in basically all cultures I am familiar with, it also makes it hard to follow what either person is saying. With text there are no such limitations. When you consider that an average person can read up to 300 WPM, while someone that has practiced speed reading can easily break 600, it is not too infeasible that both sides of a conversation may be typing the vast majority of the time. For those well practiced in text-based communication this can greatly increase the average amount of information transfered per unit time, easily negating the difference in typing vs speaking speeds, and possibly even improving upon it.

I do agree on your notes about body language and emotions. I have lost count of the number of times I have seem people interpret sarcastic textual statements to be completely serious. On the other hand I find that people get better at recognizing even that when spending enough time reading chat/comments online.

Sure, it's not really historical, but it is certainly indicative of the new age. If you look at the top articles right now, not one of them is particularly important in the grand scheme of things. I think this is surely more interesting that finding out that some data center management tool that perhaps a few dozen people on here will ever use has switched to a different open source license.

I found that I had the same problem. My solution was quite simple; Crunchyroll has the distinct honor of being the second domain to be wildcard forwarded straight to the trash folder.