dmafreezone

So it takes strong writing, good arguments, and citations for a dissident to have any hope of being seen. Since that doesn’t describe every upvoted HN comment, what are you really saying here?

HN is a bubble within a bubble. It’s where Kagi rules the search world and Google is all but a dessicated corpse. It’s also a place with a karma system, encouraging only the most bubbleworthy discussion and discouraging any posts from dissidents. I would put a negative weight on sentiments here when averaging them with those elsewhere.

> nothing wrong with striving for a better life

Yes, but there are many things wrong with equating "better" with "more money" without sparing half a thought to introspection.

Arguably it also led to a complete lack of change, with the civil machinery simply being renamed and now serving a different master. The military and police now work for those in power, not the people. An autocracy pretending to be a democracy.

You know the best way to protect your PII from websites? Don’t use the internet.

I make a new account any time my karma gets too high. I’d rather not be a sheep, thank you.

Maybe, if you want to relearn the bitter lesson.

http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html

It’s the other way around. Working at Google (or any other FAANG) for a time period past your personal “bullshit limit” will ensure you will never do anything ambitious with your life ever again.

Fools need chatGPT most, but wise men only are the better for it. - Ben Franklin

ChatGPT is also frequently incorrect. It becomes obvious in some cases, particularly in areas you are an expert in.

Reminds me of a PG essay about a "Dunning-Kruger pass". [0]

    When searching for ideas, look in areas where you have some expertise. If you're a database expert, don't build a chat app for teenagers (unless you're also a teenager). Maybe it's a good idea, but you can't trust your judgment about that, so ignore it. There have to be other ideas that involve databases, and whose quality you can judge. Do you find it hard to come up with good ideas involving databases? That's because your expertise raises your standards. Your ideas about chat apps are just as bad, but you're giving yourself a Dunning-Kruger pass in that domain.

[0] https://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

To some extent we have already developed some filtering against Reddit et al to protect our bayesian priors, but many who lack those filters could suffer greatly from encountering the internet.

Isn’t it obvious? Look around. Hackers have been stamped out even on hacker news. Now it’s all FAANG lifers and MBA or VC types trying their hand at grifting. Nothing good comes of that. Whoever is making the next thing “for real” just gets acquired and shut down.

Moreover, get out of your echo chamber and you’ll see that for a majority of humanity Google is the internet. You have to supplant the utility, not just the brand. Most businesses cannot handle the latter let alone the former. If you want something to replace Google, you have to think about replacing the internet itself. But not many are that bold.

> What is the alternative, though? This is an honest question, I really want to know: How would the "this is horrible, how can you deign to work that way?" crowd coordinate thousands of people on a project to create something that is bigger than what 5–20 people can create?

Nobody needs to be co-ordinating thousands of people. 5–20 people can create Instagram. The entire problem in these companies is that leadership is so out of touch they cannot differentiate between a checklist and a product, and empire-building is their proxy for value. The solution is to change the leadership, but it is usually too late in large orgs (the new leadership has to be brought in somehow from somewhere, and that will be done the same way the current leadership happened).

So the real solution is for those who care to go elsewhere, out-compete, and out-succeed. Then quit after acquisition, if such a thing happens.

Yeah, if you spent your life like this you kind of wasted it. I’ve noticed that HN has fewer and fewer hackers day after day. Not sure when they will change the name.