I would argue the opposite. Often the comments that OP is describing are people who have very little knowledge of the topic at hand, only strongly held emotional feelings based on some narrative that appeals to their bias.
The problem is, HN is a crowd of people who grew up believing they would all become the next Steve Jobs...a decade or two later, the chips have fallen, and most of us have not become that (yet many have had to watch their former peers become wildly successful). So what we have now is a community of bitter, frustrated, and resentful people hurling those feelings onto whatever the topic of the day is.
Instead of accepting your jealousy and failure to achieve [insert desired outcome], it's much easier to believe that...whomever or whatever becomes successful...is doing so not out of merit, but out of deceit. By placing yourself on a higher moral pedestal, you avoid the pain of direct comparison. Ex: Sure, [insert person or company] is successful, but it's because they prey on [insert moral failing of both the product and the people who desire it]!
Proceeds to not describe the opposite, and instead projects the viewpoint of the generation that grew up believing that becoming social media icons was the equivalent to being Steve Jobs.
We just recognize the grifter attitudes and process from extensive exposure.
Can you really not think of any powerful/wealthy/influential/successful/... person that you just have a simple fundamental value disagreement with, and would definitely not want to be in their shoes even given the opportunity?
However, I would argue that on this particular forum, in 2024, there's a lot of people pretending they are making "highly rational" value assessments which are in fact emotional upvote blankets. It feels like a vibe shift over the last 10 years from a community of optimistic entrepreneurial types to a community of, as another commenter eloquently put it, Nietzschean "Last Men."
Your description well fits someone who is not on HN (and is well known for being very anti-HN). <>>40826280 >
You should expect reward from dedication because you’ll get it. Not from some god on high or some random person called Tyler Smith. It’s from yourself or the fruits of your labor.
To give an example with interpersonal relationships- never in my adult life have I encountered an adult who freely admits that jealousy is their motivation for attacking the reputation of a friend, but it happens all the time.
Plenty of very successful people that I know personally think that attention-hacking stuff like Mr Beast videos, YouTube/Instagram/TikTok shorts etc are bad news.
Hell, I wouldn't consider myself Steve Jobs level, but I think I've done alright, and I feel that way, so, er, where does that leave me? Do I need 700 million or whatever for it to not be sour grapes? There are plenty of extremely successful (whether financial or otherwise) individuals that I do respect.
HN also has a lot of the "other" type (those who are rational but honest and objective), and the main distinction should be which of those dominate. And I'd argue instead that on HN, that group dominates with their comments and upvotes/downvotes.
Eg. I consider myself the "engineer" or "hacker" type of person: someone who critically looks at most things, and is quick to come up with ideas for improvement ("what could be better?", which is really, to criticize), and need to remember to acknowledge the positives and praise the good. I drew more motivation from being involved with free and open source software or academia than from ever wanting to be "the next Steve Jobs". I totally don't see HN as the echo chamber, but quite the opposite.
Act with morals, work hard, self-improve, and everything will work out!
I'm not the least or most successful of my peers, but I am sympathetic to bitterness and pretty bitter myself that people aren't better, that banal evil and selfishness and deceit are so omnipresent.
I've founded two start-ups in my life, both still generating revenue and still alive but practically failures for their intent. The first one failed primarily since I didn't know how to execute, had no understanding of business model and distribution, all the classics. The second one I think should have been much more successful were it not for a lot of random factors: covid, scheming employees, much harder sales cycles, etc. You may think I'm rationalizing this, but I've had enough self-doubt to reach this conclusion.
I am jealous of the people that founded start-ups 10 years before me, and which gave bad advice that I realized too late to be bad. But at the same time, does this invalidate my view that the entire ecosystem is deeply corrupt and unfair?
Success and failure are a matter of luck and circumstance to a large degree. This implies that outside of a fee meritorious success stories (see the original 90s video of Bezos arguing why book are best to start as a niche), most success stories in the startup world have no more merit than your own, so why wouldn't you expect negative feelings to exist?
Bezos won because he is a cutthroat entrepreneur who deeply understands the rules. The Amazon story is a Bezos creation, specifically designed to draw attention away from the ugly parts of Amazon and to make Bezos look like a plucky underdog fighting for consumers. It's a PR narrative and hilariously distorted.
HN feels like a bunch of people bitter about AI, bitter about social media, bitter about the Saas model, bitter about Crypto, bitter about ads, bitter about privacy, bitter about capitalism, bitter about Elon Musk, bitter about every damn thing imaginable. Like a bunch of grumpy old men, we don’t like new things here, the 90s were the peak of the internet and computing apparently.
The archetype HN holds in highest regard would be an anonymous European socialist lone Mother Theresa/Jack Reacher hacker living off the grid (privacy reasons, of course) and grinding away at open source dev utilities out of the goodness of their heart. Anything outside of that? Profit maximizing drivel intended to trick the dumb masses!
> Like a bunch of grumpy old men, we don’t like new things here, the 90s were the peak of the internet and computing apparently.
I invite you to consider, based on your own wording, that you are doing more feeling than rationalizing. It is some work, and perhaps not completely possible, to do a comprehensive and correct meta analysis aiming to gauge the state of rational vs non-rational commentary on HN.
> bitter about AI, bitter about social media, bitter about the Saas model, bitter about Crypto, bitter about ads, bitter about privacy, bitter about capitalism, bitter about Elon Musk, bitter about every damn thing imaginable
The fact that the world is imperfect is not a reason to ignore that the world is imperfect. One must of course satisfy their Ego and make some peace with the world that is around them that it is in some sense "good", but the act of a rational mind, after it is done indulging the (necessary?) behaviors of the animal in which it resides, is to relentlessly nitpick, criticize, deconstruct the world around it, as far is it is possible, without feeling.
Yes, all those things suck, or have things that suck about them. If one of them is the field in which you work, you may even resent the criticism. And yet, it is only by acknowledging what is wrong that we can build and do what is (more) right.
Perhaps what I will say, is that if HN is supposed to be a place of technical innovation, it is undeniably true that it is no longer possible to easily innovate, anymore. And if that is true, then there should some discussion of all the ways that what has been built now constrains/no longer makes possible the alternatives. That is not something you can change with a "happy go lucky attitude" or renouncing a cynical one. In fact, one can argue that "can do no harm" attitude is what has brought about this venture. Perhaps a slower, more considered approach, would have resulted in a better outcome.
It is the opposite of idealism to see the world as it is. Pragmatism is rooted in acknowledging both the good and bad.
Idealism is ignoring the bad in the name of "pragmatism". Maybe you have to ignore it for your Public Relations metrics, but not for your executive or engineering perspective(s).
I'm a long time reader, but only recently registered to post. I think this statement is quite illuminating to illustrate the point of the person you're responding to.
I actually didn't know HN existed until a colleague told me about it as a place to find a bit more optimism about technology than has become the norm on places like reddit. The overwhelming vibe on reddit is that capitalism bad, big tech bad, AI bad, etc. And I have definitely noticed this a lot more on HN in the last few years than when I first started reading.
I don't know why, and obviously it is just my anecdotal opinion, but it is how I feel, and I have seen many posters who feel the same.
Obviously we should all be open to different views, but sometimes I just want a little haven where I can read about technology and cool stuff alongside people who are mostly optimistic about that stuff, without having to be swamped by "end state capitalism" sentiment, like everywhere else. That's just what I want, I'm not making any moral judgement on what others want.
I mean, this is evident in posts by one of "model" founders, Paul Graham. Many of his posts are about how most are doing things wrong, only framed in a positive way (for success, do this instead of the usual things you've been doing).
So perhaps you came in attracted by one side, but stuck around for the arguments, even if unconsciously ;)
Other's would know more than me, I'm just an anecdote.
All I can say is that I find many responses to be Pavlovian, not well thought out, overly negative or cynical, and in my humble opinion just part of a low effort zeitgeist against capitalism.