Ask HN: What is your strongest contrarian opinion?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28565919

by shamoo • 5 years ago

60 373 5 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I have hundreds of them. Watch this post get blasted into /dev/nullian.

1a) There never should have been a Covid lock-down, nor should there have ever been a vaccine created.

1b) People's income tax rates should be based on how healthy they keep themselves and how healthy they eat, their lack of smoking and drinking and if they are parents, how healthy their children eat and how much exercise all of them get.

throwaway210222• 5 years ago

Yeah, I wouln't post this under my real name either.

fsflover15• 5 years ago

Sounds like it would require a huge surveillance apparatus. Oh, wait...

AnIdiotOnTheNet10• 5 years ago

1a) The former I can understand an argument for even if I disagree with it. The latter seems balls-out ridiculous though; are you against vaccines in general or just ones for diseases that kill a lot of people?

1b) I'm going to guess you're from a country with a socialized health care system?

oceanplexian4• 5 years ago

The idea that a leaky vaccine might create selective pressure to encourage a more resistant COVID virus isn’t all that far fetched. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have created the vaccine but a few months of clinical trials isn’t going to answer the right questions.

White_Wolf6• 5 years ago

1a - Lockdown wise - 100% with you - Don't put all society on hold to protect the vulnerable. Protect the vulnerable and leave everything else alone; vaccines - should of been created but give only to those that wish it or those "at risk" and only after proper testing. Don't use everyone as lab rats. 1b - Yes please.

junon7• 5 years ago

The whole "vulnerable vs. non-vulnerable" debate is null once you actually understand how viruses work, though. The whole point of preventing spread was to also prevent mutation/variants - the same reason why everyone getting vaccinated is important.

lamontcg3• 5 years ago

There was proper testing of vaccines. You only ever need six months of it.

https://bostonreview.net/science-nature/andrew-l-croxford-lo...

And its a myth that the virus only affects some neat tidy subpopulation like those over 70.

Places like Idaho are rationing care in their hospitals where the ICUs are full of unvaccinated younger COVID cases. Care for COVID patients is also resource intensive and requires weeks in the ICU which makes its impact on the hospital system disproportionately high for every single case.

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/17/1038180254/all-the-hospitals-...

Doctors are now deciding who is going to die by denying people medical care because there isn't enough to go around and practice the kind of triage that that we haven't even practiced in war zones for a long time.

bloodyplonker22• 5 years ago

I believe the topic of this thread was to post contrarian ideas, while also implying that they would be at least somewhat smart ones.

oceanplexian4• 5 years ago

On (1a) I’m sure the vaccine argument will rile folks up but here we are in 2021, with half of the population fully vaccinated, and cases and deaths are at similar or greater levels as they were for most of 2020.

hhmc• 5 years ago

Well yes, but who is dying, the vaccinated or the unvaccinated?

indrax3• 5 years ago

I agree with incentivizing health in general. Doing so without providing healthcare seems wrong.

Doing so through income tax rates is muddling the issues. The rich would hire dieticians and trainers just to save money. If public health is actually a priority, those kinds of services would be subsidized.

goatcode2• 5 years ago

Pair Programming as a first-class citizen is stupid.

Jtsummers11• 5 years ago

What does this mean? As in, "Pair Programming as a mandatory thing is stupid"? That's sensible, otherwise this is hard to parse. It's a tool/technique, like rubber duck debugging with a person present to bounce ideas off of in real-time. It works for some people, it doesn't for others. Use it if it works for you, don't if it doesn't.

jstx15• 5 years ago

That's reasonable. But there are companies out there that pair 100% of the time - no code is ever written by a single person. Sounds like hell.

goatcode2• 5 years ago

mandatory

Pretty much that, or as the first place to go every time, for every card, by everyone. I agree with you: it's a useful tool, but it should be natural and any policy around it should be mutable.

cloche4• 5 years ago

Pair Programming is always suggested by the worst programmers.

fshbbdssbbgdd• 5 years ago

I sometimes suggest pair programming to help my colleagues when they are blocked. Does that make me a bad programmer?

aazaa• 5 years ago

Most high school students shouldn't go to college. It's not very contrarian here, but outside of tech circles in the US it's very unpopular. Hated even.

fsflover15• 5 years ago

Software created using taxpayers’ money must be released as Free Software: https://publiccode.eu.

AnIdiotOnTheNet10• 5 years ago

Is this contrarian? I'd imagine this is actually an incredibly popular opinion shared by basically everyone except government software contractors and some associated officials.

Jtsummers11• 5 years ago

And it's technically how things are in the US. If US federal employees write some software, it's technically in the public domain. Classification levels may cause it to be hidden. It's when a contractor develops it that it starts getting murkier, the terms of their work determining ownership and, consequently, copyright.

fsflover15• 5 years ago

If it was "incredibly popular", this petition would have much more than 30k signatures...

indrax3• 5 years ago

It is unpopular among university and research institutions that get federal grants. Also development companies that win contracts to create government websites/backends.

I agree with it, but it would disrupt a whole industry.

nbhgfdffs• 5 years ago

What about software for F18s or missile defense systems?

Jtsummers11• 5 years ago

My view: They should (and when written by government employees are) be public domain. But they ought to be classified to an appropriate level if they contain information that warrants classification.

Where possible, the programs should be written in a more data-driven manner, where the actual classified portions are contained in data files that are separated from the program source code. This permits you to release the source code without issue (it tells you very little about the actual systems), and then you only have to keep classified the data used by the program and assembled (data + executable) system.

If the program cannot be properly separated from something warranting classification, modular programming is the solution. Divide the program into an unclassified and classified portion. Keeping the former in the public domain and visible (at least with no more than a FOIA request, ideally with less effort) and the latter properly secured.

fsflover15• 5 years ago

1. If revealing their source code breaks security, then it's security by obscurity, which does not work.

2. Every similar law has exceptions concerning classified information.

josephcsible3• 5 years ago

Free software doesn't require you to give a copy to anyone who asks. It just means that if you do give someone a copy, it needs to include the source code and certain legal rights. Presumably, the US isn't going to give copies of software for F18s or missile defense systems away like candy, so I don't see why this requirement would be a problem for those things.

akudha3• 5 years ago

Shouldn't everything created using tax payer money should be released for free - software, research, data collection etc

mbrodersen11• 5 years ago

Does that include all US military technologies/secrets paid for by the US government?

eitland• 5 years ago

Only thing I would change in this proposal is to make it Apache, BSD or MIT licensed instead of free software (which implies GPL), or at least make sure libraries are packed up as LGPL instead of bundling everything under (A)GPL.

I know for sure this is a controversial point of view, but to me it is obvious (even if I can see the reasoning behind hard-line Free Software advocacy).

(What would probably do more good for both Open Source and Free Software in my opinion would be to get rid of CLAs as far as possible since they create a unhealthy relationship where the strong part is constantly tempted to relicense contributed code.)

fsflover15• 5 years ago

free software (which implies GPL)

No, it doesn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software.

AnIdiotOnTheNet10• 5 years ago

Package managers are a terrible paradigm for distributing software.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28407598 - Recent overview of the argument against

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17441773 - I come away appropriately looking like an idiot in this one because I made many wrong assumptions about Haiku's package system, however I still maintain it was a bad decision

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17268775 - Some more argumentation about how to do things better

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24776127 - Related

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19937228 - Vaguely related

I know I have several more, but there doesn't seem to be a good way to search one's own post history on HN. (This statement has since been made obsolete by CRConrad)

CRConrad2• 5 years ago

there doesn't seem to be a good way to search one's own post history on HN.

Depends on how you define a "good" way, but surely https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... -- and the possible permutations of search terms and filtering and ordering -- isn't all that bad?

AnIdiotOnTheNet10• 5 years ago

You must admit that having it hosted on a different domain and apparently not linked to from anywhere (at least as far as I can see) makes it pretty undiscoverable.

That said, I had a hunch complaining about it would bring someone out who had a better solution than I did, and it worked, so thanks.

ghoward• 5 years ago

Thank you for the links! I've been trying to figure out what is wrong with package management and how to do things better. I'm reading your links now.

Also, thank you for labeling them.

giardini• 5 years ago

There are many ways to search one's history on ycombinator - here's one:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=AnIdiotOnTheNet+site%3Anews.ycombi...

9999000009997• 5 years ago

The moment you turn 18 your parents owe you nothing. For better or worse I was kicked out multiple times as a teenager, and evicted, all before turning 18.

I'm well aware that I'm simply not owed anything. However the worst human beings I've ever met are the 20 to 30 year olds who are still being taken care of by their parents, but don't appreciate it. They relentlessly complain about how poorly their being treated. A free place to live at 25 is great treatment as far as I'm concerned.

I learned the hard way these folks just think everyone in the world owes them. They treat having a job as optional. They create endless amounts of unneeded chaos.

As a related point, you need to set extremely high standards for anyone you enter into a relationship. You can't think oh it's okay, I really like this person, it's fine that they don't want to work. Nothing good comes from associating with people like this.

With that said I've been exceptionally lucky in the last few years. Almost everyone I've dated recently has been independent and career driven. The girl I'm currently dating is easily everything I've ever wanted in a partner, she has a master's, knows 3 languages, and has a great job.

codegeek2• 5 years ago

As a parent, I think my duty is to teach my kids all important life skills as much as possible so that by the time they are an adult, they don't need us for much (except support if needed). I see a lot of young kids these days who are clueless and not sure what to do. Some of it I would tie back to parents not exposing them to enough things. But who knows.

9999000009997• 5 years ago

While free will is often debatable, I think at a point it's up to an adult to decide what that adult wants to do.

If you at 24 decide you don't want to finish college and you don't want to work, that's your right. I definitely would blame parents who enable this behavior and don't just kick the kids out.

As far as I'm concerned, if I meet someone in their late 20s or early 30s who still doesn't want to work, I don't really care what their problem is. I don't need to hear a backstory about how their bosses mean to them when they were 19 and they swore off working forever.

I simply know people like that can cause very real damage to my life and I see to avoid them. I have found insurgent cities there's a far higher concentration of these folks, which led to me moving a few years ago. Again, I don't care why Billy or Mindy doesn't want to work. I just know I'm not letting them in my life.

literallyaduck• 5 years ago

1. Taxes should be for a MVP minimum viable product for government.

2. Government should be 100% transparent in time of peace and offset by 1 year in time of war.

3. All government content creation should be public domain.

jbotz2• 5 years ago

I agree with 2 and 3, but can you explain 1 more?

quickthrower22• 5 years ago

Sounds like a no bloat government. Problem is who defines that? Does it mean no police, no public healthcare? Minimal laws? Not sure.

david927• 5 years ago

I use the term 'bien pensant' as an epithet. I think if you "chew your food" intellectually speaking, you're going to come to some surprising conclusions that will not match conventional wisdom and that's nothing to be afraid of.

White_Wolf6• 5 years ago

strongest: - Anyone (Male or Female) that hurts kids should be executed no matter what country they are in. Hunt them down like animals if needed.

Others that would cause some heated debates.

- All transportation should have a weight multiplier to the base price since every kg adds to the fuel usage. Nobody should have to pay out of their own pockets for you.

- Social welfare should not be free. There are low skilled jobs that can be done by most. Missing both arms and other serious things are valid reasons not to do anything. Arachnophobia is not- I can vouch for this one personally. Panic attacks and all.

- Immigrants (like me in UK) should not have a right to vote until they get citizenship. This is the proof that you actually understand the country you live in.

- Election campain "propaganda" should be legally binding

- Voting should be done with "personal" digital security certificate. Anyone involved in electrion fraud should have all assets confiscated and put in prison

- Prisons should not be "free meals". You either work or study for a qualification in a field where there is a skill shortage.

- Internet should be declared public utility and nobody should have the right to kick anyone off it. In most civilized countries you're as good as dead without it.

- All platforms that reach the level of google search in peoples life should be declared public utility and punished for biases and manipulation of any kind.

- All big + small taxes should be merged into one (for example 50%)

fsflover15• 5 years ago

- All transportation should have a weight multiplier to the base price since every kg adds to the fuel usage. Nobody should have to pay out of their own pockets for you.

So all poor people will have to be as skinny as possible with consequences for their health.

cyberbanjo• 5 years ago

No, so people hauling heavy loads have to pay, and not everyone else.

jstx15• 5 years ago

And I thought that my not liking Rust was contrarian...

908B64B1974• 5 years ago

All transportation should have a weight multiplier to the base price since every kg adds to the fuel usage. Nobody should have to pay out of their own pockets for you.

I don't think it would amount to much. A lot of the cost is per seat, no matter the weight.

Immigrants (like me in UK) should not have a right to vote until they get citizenship. This is the proof that you actually understand the country you live in.

Isn't that already the case?

I'm on the fence for allowing non-citizens to vote in municipal elections. After all, it's mostly local policy that's debated and, by living there, they are directly impacted by it.

bananamerica6• 5 years ago

- What kind of hurting and to what degree? Does slapping kid in the face just once counts? What about psychological torture? What happens if we get this wrong, can we "unexecute" someone?

- that would a pain to charge and enforce.

- if someone has the means to pay for their own welfare, why would they be eligible in the first place? Isn't providing for those without means like the whole point of social welfare?

- many citizens have no understanding whatsoever of how their country work.

- you can only bind reality through law to some very limited extent. Suppose Winston Churchill had promised "four years of peace"...

- that seems harsh...

- internet is most certainly a public utility.You can, however, live without it.

- I think that's a good idea.

- That too.

White_Wolf6• 5 years ago

Isn't providing for those without means like the whole point of social welfare

That is indeed the point of it and should be applied to disabled/sick, etc like it already does. That doesn't prevent them from doing various jobs that the government needs to give a paycheck for and are either low skilled or can be part time. For example answering calls in a reception, or even doing first line support over the phone.

dento2• 5 years ago

Some of the common answers that make me differ:

Social welfare should not be free. There are low skilled jobs that can be done by most. ...

Most people are not able to do anything productive for the society, expect for in a limited number of positions. It would be more expensive to provide a job for everybody (training, commute, supervision). Many jobs are cheaper to automate than have a human to do it without paying salary. Many others are simply not worth doing at all.

Election campain "propaganda" should be legally binding

"When the Facts Change, I Change My Mind. What Do You Do, Sir?"

All platforms that reach the level of google search in peoples life should be declared public utility and punished for biases and manipulation of any kind.

Why would anybody build a platform like that, then? Punishing for any biases sounds like a hard task as well, as the main use of a platform like google search is the "bias" to include more useful results. Moreover, this kind of thing would become a political too rather quickly. I agree on the idea level, but I don't see any way to do this well.

White_Wolf6• 5 years ago

Many jobs are cheaper to automate

This is 100% true but the point was that you're spending the money anyway. There are always roles that are too expensive to automate and where a human mind is worth 10 machines(ex:for converting archives to digital, translating older texts).

"When the Facts Change..." that is what courts are for. Good are bad they are the only system we have for sorting out problems like this

mbrodersen11• 5 years ago

20% of most populations have an IQ below 83. It is pretty much impossible for anybody with an IQ of 83 or lower to do a job. So it is OK for those people to starve to death?

josephcsible3• 5 years ago

I don't believe for a minute that it's pretty much impossible for 1 in 5 people to have a job.

White_Wolf6• 5 years ago

Why wouldn't they be able to pick up a call and open a support ticket? or scan old books (press the button style). I do understand you point though. There wouldn't be enough for all of them. You can keep helping them and only use them when needed.

At the end of the day it's about having workforce available when needed that you're already paying for and not having to pay someone else. Whether you have to use it or not is a different matter.

josephcsible3• 5 years ago

- All transportation should have a weight multiplier to the base price since every kg adds to the fuel usage. Nobody should have to pay out of their own pockets for you.

To avoid accidentally encouraging healthy-weight people to become underweight, I'd suggest one change to this: make it only apply to the amount that people are overweight by. For example, a 5'6" person who weighs 155lb or less wouldn't pay any surcharge, one who weighs 160lb would pay a surcharge on 5lb, one who weighs 200lb would pay a surcharge on 45lb, etc.

White_Wolf6• 5 years ago

Having a range with no surcharge is a great way to do it and keep it healthy and fair indeed. Nice one man.

cloche4• 5 years ago

Immigrants (like me in UK) should not have a right to vote until they get citizenship. This is the proof that you actually understand the country you live in.

This is how it is in the US. As a non-citizen immigrant I can understand this point of view. On the other hand, it's taxation without representation which is what Americans originally fought for.

mbfg2• 5 years ago

You lose a day off your life everytime you declare a String variable.

mydeskistoosm10• 5 years ago

why? I'm newish to programming so this is over my head.

marcintuleja• 5 years ago

I think mbfg may be referring to this https://devcards.io/stringly-typed

yuuu3• 5 years ago

Donald Trump was a president with good intentions.

thinkingemote2• 5 years ago

I think history will show one way or the other.

Ekaros7• 5 years ago

I would argue at least better than those before and after...

yuuu3• 5 years ago

I knew I would get downvoted for this, but whatever. ("We didn't ask for those types of contrarian opinions.") To explain my rationale, I read Fear by Bob Woodward and found Trump to be a more sympathetic character than one might expect. Whether you think he's incompetent or whatever, I thought the book really highlighted his sincerity.

junon7• 5 years ago

C is a good language, Rust is overengineered and rarely the right tool (in contrast to how often it's used), Go is a dumb language.

Fight me.

fsflover15• 5 years ago

It's expected that on HN you give your arguments first.

junon7• 5 years ago

Not if I scream louder. I automatically win in that case.

the_only_law6• 5 years ago

I'll fight on the first one, don't care or know enough about Rust for the second and will agree on the third.

9999000009997• 5 years ago

C is hard.

Very very hard. In fact, as a teenager I tired C++( I know it's not exactly the same, but lower level languages are difficult) and found it so hard I stopped trying to learn programing for years.

JavaScript, specifically Unity's implementation was my first programing language. Even today, it's my go-to language to get something done quick. Anything larger, like a video game for example, I'll use C#.

Even of C was amazing 30 years ago, we have better tools now. You can make 200k writing C#, Python or JavaScript. Why make life hard with a low level language !

junon7• 5 years ago

Why make life hard with a low level language

Because I'm designing an operating system. None of those languages can do that.

Also, I'm a maintainer of 2 of the top 10 packages on npm. Javascript is not a language I usually jump to when I care about performance or (extreme) portability.

Lastly, C++ != C. They're similar and somewhat compatible, but entirely different at the same time.

jstx15• 5 years ago

My CS curriculum at school was basically data structures and algorithms in C++. I really appreaciate that that's how I got started and I think it made things easier later on.

mbrodersen11• 5 years ago

C is easy. I learned it as a teenager just reading the K&R book and playing around with a compiler. I had no aces to the internet, no stack overflow etc. Lots of fun.

codegeek2• 5 years ago

"Go is a dumb language." "Fight me"

I like Dumb languages. Next.

PenguinCoder• 5 years ago

I think Go is a great language, with some dumb decisions.

fzil• 5 years ago

I thought this was the mainstream opinion of Go, outside of its own community?

gavinhoward2• 5 years ago

I actually agree, though I would personally add stuff to C to make it a better foundation. I also want a boringcc C compiler, like djb asked for.

junon7• 5 years ago

What's boringcc?

anta40• 5 years ago

At least writing REST API in Go is much easier compared to Rust.

Since you are writing OS (which Go is not designed for), what's your thought on Pascal or Ada?

cblconfederate3• 5 years ago

the obsession of programmers with languages is remarkable. Imagine if mathematicians spent most of their daily lives arguing if the leibnitz or the newton notation is better, and proposing new, slightly differently curved symbols every month. I think it just shows that the field doesn't have productive results to show so it's preoccupied with meta discussions.

threshold• 5 years ago

RISC-V’s success won’t benefit the end user, only spare designers a licensing fee they can well afford. After recompiling everyone’s software and dividing a huge unified ecosystem the end result will be some political victory with no material value.

mydeskistoosm10• 5 years ago

Isn't there some chance someone will manufacture laptops that people can have 100% confidence don't contain hardware-level backdoors?

anoncowardthrow• 5 years ago

(anonymous for obvious reasons)

Psychological therapy is the snake oil of the 21st century. See an actual doctor instead.

I say this having recovered from a suicide attempt.

bananamerica6• 5 years ago

There are many things medication cannot do. Psychotherapy is often not about coming up with novel surprising changes, but rather providing alternatives behaviors to help you do what you most likely already know you should be doing. I'm sad it didn't work out for you, and I don't think everyone should be in therapy. But psychotherapy is overwelmingly proven to work.

AnIdiotOnTheNet10• 5 years ago

I kind of agree, although honestly I don't think doctor's are much better. Both suffer from the problem of 90% of them being just good enough at their job to handle the easy stuff and utter crap at anything else.

mathgladiator3• 5 years ago

I agree with this, but the truth is that you basically are buying a friend who will keep your secrets secret.

deterministic3• 5 years ago

I think therapy is basically paying somebody to listen. Which is a great service if you don’t have anybody really listening to you in your life.

AnimalMuppet2• 5 years ago

God exists - not just as a word or an idea; He is Someone who is actually there.

Go is a good language for many uses (contra junon). C++ is also a good language for at least some uses, but requires more care to use well.

Cheap food is killing us.

AGI is a mirage, and the singularity is a fantasy.

fsflover15• 5 years ago

God exists
AGI is a mirage

This is a contradiction. If God exists and He created us, then we are AGI.

AnimalMuppet2• 5 years ago

I see your point. But that isn't what is conventionally meant by "AGI".

By the way, if the "universe is a simulation" people are correct, then we are also AGI (in your sense).

caeril• 5 years ago

I like to see the world through a similar lens, one that turned me from an atheist into a theist:

I believe this universe is a quantized simulation. The evidence for various forms of Planck quanta make this abundantly clear.

Simulation implies a simulator.

Therefore, God exists, in some form or another.

mbrodersen11• 5 years ago

Which God are you talking about? Zeus? The Sun God? Plenty to pick from.

mikewarot6• 5 years ago

Computer security can be solved by using capability based security. Virtual Machines and containers are just improvised crude versions of it.

We've got about 5 more years before everyone catches on to that fact, and things start to get better.

The insecurity of general purpose computing has been a major factor in the walled gardens that most people stick to when using the internet.

People don't realize the freedom we had back in the MS-DOS days when you could write protect your OS and try ANYTHING in almost perfect safety.

dento2• 5 years ago

Computer security cannot be solved as long as the users don't understand the decisions they are making, so that will never happen. Walled gardens exist to remove those decisions, so that users can't hurt themselves.

mikewarot6• 5 years ago

Imagine a wallet with cash in it... Ariel opens her wallet and takes out a Hamilton ($10 USD), and hands it to Beth. The most she can lose is the $10.

In this scenario, the most Ariel can lose is that $10, no matter how evil Beth is. If Eva manages to impersonate Beth, still the maximum loss is $10. In no manner can the balance of Ariel's wallet be lost.

If you have an operating system that never hands over the wallet to an application, but instead uses capabilities, in a clear and transparent manner, then the user is quite capable of doing the right thing, as millennia of experience have shown.

Our current crop of OS choices don't even make it possible to select and built a capability on behalf of the user. There is no "wallet" analogy without capabilities. We're living in a world where you must hand over your wallet to anyone to complete a transaction... which is nuts.

gls2ro• 5 years ago

Computer security cannot be solved with any technology unless you want to fix everybody in the world to be "good players". This will always be a hopefully balanced game between people trying to protect a system and people trying to get access to it/information.

As long as there will be people that want to hack a system, that system will never be secured 100%.

Here is one example: There is such a thing as hacking air gapped systems. So there is no amount of containers that you can add to protect you from bad actors.

jstx15• 5 years ago

The more a language or paradigm is touted as some amazing revelation by a small group of people, the less likely I am to like it. Rust, Julia, Haskell, pure functional programming, lisp-for-lisp's sake etc. I develop an instant negative reaction to what looks like a cult from the outside.

Jtsummers11• 5 years ago

You don't even learn them enough to be able to articulate an argument against them? You just reject them outright?

jstx15• 5 years ago

I've played around with each of them. I'm not criticising them technically - they all have great aspects and can teach you a lot even if I think on the whole they're overrated. My reaction to the communities that they have makes me less likely to engage more with each of the languages.

I also know that some of these languages have very well regarded communities - that's why this is my response to OP's question.

armchairhacker4• 5 years ago

I’ve used Haskell and Racket (lisp), and while they’re great for learning fun new ways of coding and very specific use-cases, they’re terrible general-purpose languages.

I’ve also used Julia, albeit less, but i don’t really see the “amazing-ness” of it. Although I come from a typed-languages background with a good IDE, so I can definitely see how it’s amazing to someone coming from Python or R.

Rust honestly is IMO a great language and a huge step from C++. But again, it’s not the end-all, I still usually pick Java / Kotlin or something else unless performance really matters.

ilyash5• 5 years ago

I'm working on my own programming language since 2013 so I am thinking about programming quite a bit. So here is the summary of those years:

* All programming languages suck. We are not there yet as humanity. I can not think outside of the box enough to make the breakthrough that should be made, at least as of now. While looking at other programming languages, I see the same issue: inability to express thoughts in concise and straightforward manner. Unsolved issue.

* The only idea in programming that I consider definitely good is pattern matching. Note that I'm talking about the concept here. No particular implementation strikes me as "yep, this is it": be it limitation to strings only (regex) or syntax-only implementation (preventing composability of the patterns) or some other sh*t.

Have a nice weekend!

philwelch5• 5 years ago

All programming languages suck.

I'm not sure this if is a contrarian opinion, but this is one of my biggest career takeaways. Every programming language I have used for an extended period of time turned out to suck. Whenever I find a new programming language that doesn't suck, I end up using it enough to discover the specific way in which it sucks. So I've inferred that every programming language I haven't extensively used, and doesn't seem to suck, will just end up sucking in some way I will ultimately discover.

ilyash5• 5 years ago

specific way in which it sucks.

This

I don't have objective data but it seems that I'm reaching the "they did what?" pretty quickly when I read about yet another language. Don't need to start using it even.

duped3• 5 years ago

Not all thoughts are concise and straightforward. That's not a problem that can be solved.

Concision by itself is not something to optimize for, since it usually leads to misunderstanding at scale.

ilyash5• 5 years ago

Not all thoughts are concise and straightforward. That's not a problem that can be solved.

My observation is that inexperienced programmers have this kind of mess in their head. No programming language can help with that. Hard to tell because I'm not sure what exactly you mean.

Concision by itself is not something to optimize for,

Concision is one of the aspects. Too much and the code is unreadable. Not enough and code is too long. In both cases mental effort grows and maintainability suffers.

xyzzy212• 5 years ago

I think is as much a claim against PEOPLE and their ability to understand problems and inability to think logically as it is any language itself.

The other flaw: the presumption that solutions can only be linear sequential - languages are written into linear sequential files which contribute "keys under the street light". And no we haven't figure out any better way. But we don't acknowledge the problem either.

mbrodersen11• 5 years ago

You seems to assume that it is possible to design a programming language that doesn’t suck for some people using it. I am pretty sure that is impossible. Just look at the many “X sucks!” mixed with “X is the best!” Posts on HN. A great example is X = Lisp.

ilyash5• 5 years ago

I see what you mean. I am more focused on personal perspective (all languages suck). It's good to be more aware about the perspective. I'll also try to look from the suggested perspective too. Thanks!

brtkdotse3• 5 years ago

Computer science degrees are a waste of time and money unless you want to go into academia. If you ignore FAANGs you can get a very comfortable job as a developer after a bootcamp & internship.

markus_zhang5• 5 years ago

I think some recruiters filter out people who don't come from a CS background. I think maybe something like a diploma route that concentrates on the CS courses are a better choice. You still get the proof but avoid those garbage irrelevant courses you are forced to take.

brtkdotse3• 5 years ago

See the “ignore FAANG” part :)

oceanplexian4• 5 years ago

I worked at the FAANGs and a non negligible number of people either dropped out of college or have no degree.

markus_zhang5• 5 years ago

Are they new hires? Is everyone has 0 connection inside?

908B64B1974• 5 years ago

Bootcamps have failed one after another. The most well known, Lambda, is even desperate enough they will "loan" you a new "grad" for free to try to get you to hire one [0]. And that's not even scratching the surface of what's wrong with bootcamps in general, like having instructors barely a few months ahead of students giving out lectures and grading assignments [1].

I can't say I've seen anyone straight out of a bootcamp that was a great hire. I guess these online coding schools might cater to motivated teenagers that are interesting in trying out CS before enrolling in a proper degree. The few good hires I've seen were all STEM grads that decided to take a bootcamp after graduation, or CS grads that were not confident in their ability to enter the marketplace. They could have probably achieved the same thing with a bit of self study or a few electives in college.

[0] https://lambdaschool.com/the-commons/announcing-lambda-fello...

[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p...

bakuninsbart3• 5 years ago

My argument against this would be that a lot of the things you learn in a CS degree are really interesting and useful, but hard to force yourself to learn if you don't have to. The big one for me is the ability to do proofs in mathematics and theoretical CS, which translates rather well to hard programming problems. Without being tortured with it in college, I doubt I would have ever bridged that gap.

There is certainly a subset of people that do like to solve these problems, and don't like to go to university, but I would assume it is rather small.

The other thing, which is probably less true in countries where you have to pay for university, is that people who join the job market very early view everything in monetary values. My university buddies would do things just because it sounds interesting or hard or could make a positive difference in the world, while my friends who joined the labor market immediately after school are much more focused on their career development and salary.

brtkdotse3• 5 years ago

I agree, that why I added the caveat “unless you want to go into academia”

giantg2• 5 years ago

I think I would agree, but with the caveat that the hiring companies need to change how they view credentialization. Right now many companies will just toss your resume if you don't have a BS+.

I have a BS an MSIS. Most of the information isn't used in my job.

the_only_law6• 5 years ago

How can I work in domains like HPC (not run of the mill work, but not really “academic” either) without having formal education expose me to the the scale and infrastructure needed?

FWIW I don’t have a degree nor do I believe the average CS program is worth the money (US context ofc)

SamvitJ• 5 years ago

Do you mean that a "college degree is a waste of time and money unless you want to go into academia"?

If you had to decide between dropping $X for a computer science degree, and $X for e.g. some liberal arts degree, are you suggesting that the liberal arts degree is a better investment for a career as a developer?

I'm not sure if you're making a statement about how things should be or how they are. Because pretty sure 90%+ companies still value computer science degrees.

oceanplexian4• 5 years ago

Automatic software updates are a terrible idea. Not only do they make systems and devices less reliable but they are a vector for a malicious entity (Maybe even the vendor themselves, see Apple & CSAM)

fsflover15• 5 years ago

Automatic security updates are important.

duped3• 5 years ago

Unfortunately they're not propagated through different channels

GPerson10• 5 years ago

I hate automatic software updates. Is there a large contingent out there who loves them?

Jtsummers11• 5 years ago

Anyone who has to be the family IT person. Though it's a love-hate relationship. On the one hand, automatic updates (particularly security related ones) keep my family members' systems, well, up to date and secured. On the other hand, UI changes mean I have to go and update my own systems and figure out where that damned option or button moved to so I can help.

Since user interfaces (in particular) are not cleanly separated from the underlying system on personal devices, updates end up deploying both. I'd love for my family to get an updated browser or messaging client that only addresses issues around, say, the SSL implementation or HTTP or Unicode handling that specifically address security concerns. And then separate updates that alter the interface which become (somewhat) opt-in updates (though eventually they will be effectively mandatory). But that's not the reality of software development.

UncleMeat• 5 years ago

Security professionals.

cuddlybacon3• 5 years ago

Me, within reason.

A major version change (eg UI rewrite or API breakage is an exception).

I don’t get the constant breakage the rest of HN seems to get, so there is no reason to pay the cost of manual updates.

armchairhacker4• 5 years ago

I only mind when they make the software worse or hurt whatever i’m trying to do, e.g. more slowdowns or making some feature harder to use (and not just moving it somewhere else, actually removing it or adding steps). Or if the update fails to download and leaves my software in an unusable state.

But if your app updates with minimal inconvenience, good for you. In fact it comes in handy when the update adds new features or improves performance.

sershe3• 5 years ago

I agree, and people do tend to disagree, and not just because of security. Forced non-security updates for paid software should simply be mostly-illegal. For non-networked software, and most changes for networked software, it's a no-brainer. For breaking server API changes... you sell it, you have to support it let's say for 10 years.

I suspect having this requirement would also greatly improve API design...

zozbot2342• 5 years ago

This thread is supposed to be for strong contrarian opinions - stuff that you actually believe, that you think others don't. Most replies aren't really doing that. (Yes, this is my actual answer. I do expect that others will object to it.)

fsflover15• 5 years ago

It would be useful if you listed which posts exactly are not contrarian and tell why you think so.

AnIdiotOnTheNet10• 5 years ago

Not OP, but:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28566111

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28569366

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28568600

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28566108

All are actually pretty popular opinions, especially on HN. Personally I interpreted the original question to be asking for opinions contrary to prevailing HN sentiment.

thinkingemote2• 5 years ago

Is this comment itself a contrarian idea?

bananamerica6• 5 years ago

I like The Prequels.

AnIdiotOnTheNet10• 5 years ago

Wow, that's actually a very contrarian opinion both in the general population and HN's demographic.

bananamerica6• 5 years ago

Yes. And I'm not young. I knew the original trilogy very well when the prequels came up.

Dig1t• 5 years ago

This is me, except with the Game of Thrones ending ;P

bananamerica6• 5 years ago

I love Game of Thrones but was afraid to watch the ending because I couldn't find a single person that like it. Not there's hope.

bakuninsbart3• 5 years ago

Well that just makes you a donkey. Sorry, I'm generally trying to be polite on here even to people supporting outrageous opinions like the usage of torture or the death penalty. But supporting the last season of GoT is going one step to far, how could you reach such a depraved opinion?

krapp3• 5 years ago

Get out.

Revenge of the Sith was good though.

sprkwd2• 5 years ago

Me too. The podrace was amazing.

Ekaros7• 5 years ago

Phantom Menace was not bad kid's movie.

SirensOfTitan• 5 years ago

Compulsory education that assumes each kid is a uniform widget to be produced is a terrible way to develop people. People think so little of children and their capacity to learn, engage, and understand that they compel them to spend some of the most dynamic years of their life learning about things they don’t care about that they promptly forget in adulthood. Kids are natural learning machines and we murder that natural curiosity and capacity for mastery through school.

I think there are better ways. We cannot, for example, teach kids about democracy in environments that give kids often less agency than prisoners in prisons. Democratic schools like Summerhill, Sudbury or unschooling are good starts. Kids at those schools have control over their schedule: if they want to keep a more structured schedule, they can, if they want a more relaxed schedule, sure. Each kid also has a vote in how the school is run, including in a judicial system for administering discipline.

At the very minimum, ending age segregation policies at schools would be a good start for more dynamic learning.

zozbot2342• 5 years ago

Compulsory education is not about developing kids as people. It's glorified daycare.

GPerson10• 5 years ago

I generally agree with this, and I also think it implicitly serves a few other purposes in addition to being daycare. High school gets people used to the idea that they will spend their lives following a schedule and producing things. It also promotes the idea that we live in a community and teaches us about interacting with one another; (probably not in the most effective way). There’s also an element of teaching us about or maybe indoctrinating us into a particular system of work/reward which our society is supposed to operate under.

908B64B1974• 5 years ago

We cannot, for example, teach kids about democracy in environments that give kids often less agency than prisoners in prisons.
Each kid also has a vote in how the school is run, including in a judicial system for administering discipline.

That's admirable.

wikidani• 5 years ago

judicial system for administering discipline while I don't agree entirely with you, this is something I would love to see implemented. The disciplinary measures usually taken in schools are never consistent and always done in a case to case basis so, I never thought they could ever be fair

kleer0013• 5 years ago

Repeat violent criminals should have the option (and be encouraged) to have elective castration to reduce their sentencing. This will hopefully reduce their violent impulses and reduce their progeny.

Relatives should be somewhat culpable for the repeat violent crimes of their parents/children/siblings, anyone who shares at least 50% of their genes. With, of course, escape clauses if they're distant, estranged, or never heard of them.

Religion should be as personal as sexual behaviour.

anotherevan2• 5 years ago

Have you read Neanderthal Parallax trilogy[1] by Robert Sawyer? It portrayed a culture that had some of your views regarding crime and culpability of relatives.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/series/40828-neanderthal-parallax

kleer0013• 5 years ago

Yes, that's where I got the idea. I'm sure there's plenty of reasons it wouldn't work when attempted in a real world culture, let alone the resistance from getting laws about it passed.

Such lovely and fun ideas in that trilogy! Second IMHO only to the Culture novels in terms of semi-realistic deep social world building.

niij• 5 years ago

Culpability of relatives for unrelated crimes exists in North Korea. Does anyone else have an example of countries that do this.

kleer0013• 5 years ago

I think I remember hearing that it existed to some extent in Old German areas. Naturally it would have faded out as enlightenment ideas about freedom and science spread.

illwrks• 5 years ago

Contrarian you say.... Brexit is about introducing friction so that Tory party donors etc can have the opportunity to create companies that aim to 'make things and more frictionless' and then profit.

markus_zhang5• 5 years ago

One part of politics about creating chips from thin air (If you do this I won't harm you). Another one is profiting from fear (essentially the same thing but from a different perspective).

gukov• 5 years ago

Pretty much every large government initiative introduces friction that makes someone really rich:

- Patriot Act after 9/11 (defense industry, metal scanners, TSA)

- Covid response (big pharma, hospitals, protective equipment, etc.

dvdhnt• 5 years ago

As the artificial facade of supposed shared values, propped up by global capitalism and pop culture, dissolves, it becomes quite apparent that while the internet connects us, we definitely do not share the same culture or held beliefs.

Case in point, look at this thread - "what grinds your gears?" is the theme, and while some come through with what one might expect from HN (programming hot takes, critiques of entrenched systems), we're also getting quick responses espousing castration, the death penalty, imperialism, Trumpism, etc.

We, my friends, are a cluster.

the_only_law6• 5 years ago

it becomes quite apparent that while the internet connects us, we definitely do not share the same culture or held beliefs.

Ooh I’ll agree on this one. And since I’ve seen a a number of people effectively advocate for nuclear war as a solution to economic problems, I’ll give my equally unrealistic and destructive solution to our cultural issues:

Split up the US. It’s apparent that many people even within the same states and cities live in wildly different worlds. No way in hell they can all manage to have functional representation in government.

7402• 5 years ago

Climate models should not be relied upon as much as everyone thinks they should.

boc2• 5 years ago

Say more?

markus_zhang5• 5 years ago

Watch "Yes Minister" and "Yes Prime Minister" and you can get a lot of contrarian opinions.

Ekaros7• 5 years ago

I can't decide which I prefer the political class or the mandarin class... Maybe being contrarian I would go with mandarins...

mydeskistoosm10• 5 years ago

- Contemporary feminism hurts most women and encourages relationship-sabotaging behavior.

- The narrative that the US and other Western nations' participation in white supremacy and slavery/colonialism is the main societal influence today is overblown and is likely leading to unnecessary political violence and turmoil.

- I don't think abortions should be banned, but generally speaking, it is incredibly easy to not get pregnant. Don't have sex. Unless you were raped, no one is 'forcing' anything on you, those were your decisions. It is baffling to me that no one says this out loud.

- There are only two genders.

- Kyle Rittenhouse acted in legitimate self-defense. The popular understanding of the case is beset with misinformation about what happened.

greenie_beans4• 5 years ago

oof! these are bad and pretty mainstream. not contrarian at all. so i guess my contrarian opinion is that most ideas like this that are assumed contrarian by the idea-holder are actually widespread and mainstream. contrarians think they're contrarian yet they're generally generic.

mydeskistoosm10• 5 years ago

I'm extremely confident I would lose my job if I expressed any of these out loud or on a social account connected with my name. I think that speaks to some level of contrarianism. You've said yourself that they're bad. You've also claimed they're mainstream, so unless you're being redundant you meant that they were 'bad' in the sense of 'bad ideas' not 'bad examples of contrarian ideas'.

aklemm3• 5 years ago

These aren’t edgy, they’re basic ignorance.

jbotz2• 5 years ago

Contemporary feminism...

There is no one definitive "contemporary feminism", and most people who consider themselves feminists almost certainly don't hold the beliefs that you probably attribute to this mystical creed.

Don't have sex

First of all, there are people saying this out loud... and soon thereafter they want to outlaw abortions even in case of rape, so it would seem to be just empty rhetoric. Secondly even those who most loudly state this opinion can't seem to follow it and get unplanned pregnancies just as much as those who don't.

There are only two genders

Factually incorrect, even if you limit yourself to humans. There are people with XXY and XYY chromosomes. And they are not even all that rare. If you look at biology beyond humans it becomes even more incorrect.

Jensson4• 5 years ago

Factually incorrect, even if you limit yourself to humans. There are people with XXY and XYY chromosomes.

XXY and XYY aren't genders, gender is a social construct. And society has constructed two genders, male and female. I know that some tries to construct more genders, but it doesn't seem to work, we still just have two socially accepted genders. Male - Female has so extremely strong cultural roots and everyone have very strong associations to those, trying to create something new that doesn't have the same backing and calling that new thing a new gender isn't the same thing, it isn't a gender without all that cultural baggage.

philwelch5• 5 years ago

The web is a collection of terrible, short-sighted engineering mistakes that all compound each other unnecessarily. HTTP, HTML, CSS, and Javascript could probably all be scrapped and replaced with better standards. The only problem is that Google is probably the only organization capable of pulling that off, but Google's interests do not really overlap with the interests of most web users.

cuddlybacon3• 5 years ago

I agree.

As someone whose day job doesn’t involve writing UI code, web UI still ends up being the easier of the two to implement.

ksaj• 5 years ago

I think that is because we refer to everything using mixed metaphors. We "surf" "pages" on the "web" over the "information superhighway."

If we had a uniform view of what it is, we might be able to make something of it.

muzani• 5 years ago

It's not that contrarian. I think many modern web frameworks try to do this gradually. I wouldn't be surprised if Google attempted it and failed.

deterministic3• 5 years ago

I think you substantially underestimate how difficult it would be to come up with something “better” that can do everything HTTP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript can do. You are talking about the most successful global information system in existence. Outcompeting all other proposals/competitors. Good luck with that one.

philwelch5• 5 years ago

The problem is how many of the things the web does that I don't want it to, like spying on me and consuming ludicrous amounts of compute resources. And the fact that it's controlled by people whose desires and interests are contrary to that of the user.

goto113• 5 years ago

I'm not sure the first part is contrarian, since everybody loves to complain about web standards. It also seem a widespread fallacy among developers that you can fix all problems in an technology stack by scrapping everything and starting from scratch.

manx• 5 years ago

As I see it, Google is doing exactly that with Flutter. It's a completely new layout and styling system for different devices, platforms and screen sizes.

philwelch5• 5 years ago

I will look into that!

duped3• 5 years ago

Freedom of speech is problematic. The spread of covid misinformation today is as bad as shouting "fire" in a crowded theater and the people doing it on social media or in public should be held criminally culpable.

AnnoyedComment• 5 years ago

Shouting fire in a theater is protected speech.

armchairhacker4• 5 years ago

I agree, except the issue with banning speech is that there’s no fine line. When does “covid misinformation” go from conspiracy theories (5G microchips) to skepticism (“does [X measure] really slow the spread”) to hard truths (the vaccine does cause adverse side effects in a small subset of the population).

I have no problem censoring blatant misinformation, but i’d rather be more tolerant than censor something that might be true or modest.

version_five5• 5 years ago

This is a mainstream view

mikewarot6• 5 years ago

Had the public health authorities not burned through their credibility in the past, there wouldn't be a massive issue with non-authoritative views.

It didn't help that they changed stories multiple times for dubious reasons.

guilhas3• 5 years ago

Covid pandemic is a sham. The impact of the virus is being overblown. The virus was created/altered in a lab. The vaccination of most of the population has an ulterior motive

K0balt2• 5 years ago

What is the ulterior motive? I mean, the majority of the population already gets vaccines?

guilhas3• 5 years ago

Not after becoming adults, unless you need something specific, or take the flu vaccine, the majority were not having vaccines.

Don't know why, can be some kind of study, or a drill for a biological war

HarHarVeryFunny9• 5 years ago

That we're just meat machines with no free will? Not exactly contrarian perhaps (just per laws of physics), but probably a one-percenter opinion.

GPerson10• 5 years ago

Laws of physics are mathematical constructs. You can’t prove or disprove the existence of free will with a mathematical formalization.

HarHarVeryFunny9• 5 years ago

Well, no, and you can't prove that tomorrow you won't see a pig just start floating in the air.

The thing with the laws of physics is they they appear to predict 100% of what happens in nature. No one has ever seen something in nature, or in the lab, that either couldn't have been predicted by the physics of the day, or later after new laws theories were created.

So.. either your muscle fibers are controlled by your neurons, acting according to their understood biochemical operations, i.e. the laws of physics/chemistry, or they are not...

Free will says that your actions are not proscribed by the wiring of your brain and laws of physics - that you have a choice in what you do. Until someone observes a neuron not acting according to the laws of chemistry, that seems like an awfully long-shot belief, even if nothing can be ruled out. Perhaps someone in the future will discover the human spirit is controlling quantum behavior ?!

schwartzworld2• 5 years ago

How do you define free will?

HarHarVeryFunny9• 5 years ago

I define free will as the belief that you have some choice in your actions, rather than them being proscribed by the wiring of your brain. Normally belief in free will is based on some dualistic non-physical notion of self.

ivars2• 5 years ago

Free will never made any sense to me as soon I started to think about such things. Events are either deterministic or random. None of that involves freedom of choice.

greenie_beans4• 5 years ago

this isn't contrarian, but all these people on here think they have contrarian opinions but they're pretty widespread opinions.

0x456• 5 years ago

The irony of a topic like this is that the algorithm will put the least contrarian opinions on top.

Right now the most conventional/pedestrian opinion you could possibly imagine is listed first.

ivars2• 5 years ago

Because you are never "the only one". Truly contrarian opinions would sound like madness to us.

bob229• 5 years ago

Critical Race theory is absolute crackpot nonsense. That’s only contrarian though because the silent majority are cowards

mydeskistoosm10• 5 years ago

because the silent majority are cowards

I think part of it is because the language that those ideas are built on is intentionally very slippery. If you aren't extremely careful with how you word things, you wind up sounding like you're denying factual historical events.

John McWhorter is the only voice I've heard so far who can reveal the swiss-cheese nature of the set of beliefs contained by the term 'CRT', and do so in the very language of the educated class that espouses CRT.

version_five5• 5 years ago

I think this is true about a lot of current orthodoxy. Most people know something stupid when they see it, but few want to stick their neck out so they just go along with it. Ths greatest enemy of freedom is apathy

mikewarot6• 5 years ago

Which Critical Race Theory?

The narrow legal sense which is all about bias built into the system by layers of subversively racist laws?

The Left political grift version which encourages performative virtue signaling instead of enacting actual change.

The traditional grift version used to sell trainings where white people are told all evil is the fault of their whiteness?

The Right political grift version which uses the worse excess of the above grift version to quietly silence pr forestall actual change.

The social movement that acknowledges with (purposely?) bad language that the system is rigged, and needs to be fixed.

mathgladiator3• 5 years ago

This is what frustrates the debates because literally there are no shared definitions.

0xFreebie• 5 years ago

The world was better in 1999.

bhelkey• 5 years ago

Better how?

cuddlybacon3• 5 years ago

Sticking to tech, I differ from the HN consensus on:

* Small UI changes (eg moving a button) don’t make me have to relearn the UI from scratch.

* If an app developer has a way were I can get my work done faster, I want to know about it. Getting shit done is more sacred to me than the workflow I built myself.

* Related: devs do achieve the above.

* Most documentation doesn’t explain anything that can’t be learned from a code completion engine. When I do have questions, Stack Overflow is more likely to have a concise explanation that the official docs.

* Native apps are something only us devs give a shit about.

* Functional programming isn’t catching on for two reasons: the on boarding experience is missing things (mostly the big picture aspects of structuring an app) and b) Haskell is the post child of functional Languages.

fsflover15• 5 years ago

Everyone should be using Qubes OS [0] to get a reasonable security on desktop.

[0] https://qubes-os.org

gremloni7• 5 years ago

Everyone is happier, women included when we stick to household chores and raising children.

aklemm3• 5 years ago

What do you mean by “we”? Are you a woman? A happy woman keeping house, raising kids, and cruising Hacker News?

Nevermark5• 5 years ago

I don't agree with "No Silver Bullet". The idea that no single advance in software engineering can make an order or more magnitude of difference in productivity.

Software, like every other area of endeavor, contains no inherent barriers to major advances relative to regular advances.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet

Many laws of "can't" are just dressed up pessimism. Many things never happened before they did.

I am not saying such an advance will happen. Just that it could.

cowanon222• 5 years ago

"No Silver Bullet" is similar to "Moore's law" - an observation rather than an absolute rule. In both cases, the authors were only projecting into the future 10 years.

It is just measurement, not pessimism or optimism. The fact that "No Silver Bullet" is still true 35 years later show just how hard progress can be.

Nevermark5• 5 years ago

Fred Brooks wasn't just making an observation.

He was making a case that there was no room for such significant jumps in software efficiency because most software development was now focused on essential complexity, not accidental complexity.

http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf

That argument does not hold water to me for two reasons:

1. I think a lot of programming, from glue code to optimization to bug fixing, is still accidental complexity.

2. The level of reuse is still nowhere near reflective of the fact that the majority of code is recoding of already well known algorithms, patterns, and methods with only slightly differences for the current problem context. This happens for business, technical and social reasons.

So I see huge potential for progress. Whether that progress will ever involve a 10x improvement due to a single major insight I don't know. But there is room for it to happen.

cpach2• 5 years ago

Nearly all misery in the modern world is caused by the invention of agriculture.

armchairhacker4• 5 years ago

If humans never invented agriculture we might still be living as hunter-gatherers. So our problems would mainly be getting food, shelter, preventing injury, and infection - problems most people don’t face today. Jobs, boredom, pollution, rare diseases - hunter-gatherers don’t deal with these.

So you’re right, nearly all misery is caused by agriculture.

Except, not everything. We still deal with inferiority, finding mates, unwanted sexual advances. Pride is an issue today and it has been an issue before we were even humans.

leobg• 5 years ago

Probably true. But agriculture is what made possible the explosion of population growth. One result of which is you and me. So if agriculture brought about misery, our existence is part of it. In other words: Without agriculture, we wouldn’t be less miserable. We just would not be, period.

cpach2• 5 years ago

I agree!

And for the record: I don’t believe it’s possible, or desirable, to go back to the hunter-gatherer era.

As Trevor Horn would have it:

“We can’t rewind, we’ve gone too far”

rufus_foreman5• 5 years ago

That is pretty contrarian, I thought the cause was man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

gremloni7• 5 years ago

Freedom of speech should have specific limitations around hate speech. Hate speech should be defined as racism and sexism.

GPerson10• 5 years ago

Who gets to define what racism and sexism are?

gremloni7• 5 years ago

A government agency with specific reviews periodically. Alternatively something akin to the chamber of commerce— a public private partnership.

Ekaros7• 5 years ago

I could accept this if there was clear test. Take a speech considered hate speech, substitute any words describing single group with those of others. If it is still considered hate speech give out punishment.

gremloni7• 5 years ago

The baseline for hate and its repercussions are not the same for every group so I don’t think a simple substitution or role reversal makes total sense. I’m with you on a clear test with some sort of normalization function applied that takes into consideration the current state of society.

akudha3• 5 years ago

Patriotism is a dumb idea most of the time. For example, seeing people shouting their country names in sports events etc for no reason is just plain weird - it is just sporting event, why not just enjoy the sport, have a beer, have fun and go home?

We are almost at 2022 - a virus originating in one country spread across the world within months. We are dependent on each other much more than any other generation. Unless the human race acts united, huge problems like climate change aren't going away. Instead of classifying problems based on borders, we should look at all problems as human problems, not Chinese, American, Russian or whatever.

triceratops• 5 years ago

I agree in general that patriotism is dumb. But honestly sports events are probably the healthiest place to channel any patriotic feelings - bragging rights are literally all that's at stake for the audience (and gambling winnings, I guess).

the_only_law6• 5 years ago

bragging rights are literally all that's at stake for the audience (and gambling winnings, I guess).

Almost… https://youtu.be/PFFFa9M4T80

version_five5• 5 years ago

I don't think this is very contrarian. Competition, even with no underlying reason (like patriotism) is what improves things. Some "united human race solving global problems" is just dressing up a centrally planned economy, which demonstrably has worse outcomes for almost everyone.

There are lots of totalitarians that believe their cause (e.g. climate change, covid) is so important that it should take precedence over market forces (i.e. what people want). Maybe you are advocating that, but its not a contrarian opinion, it's what every armchair slacktivist technocrat is pushing for, as long as it mainly applies to others.

akudha3• 5 years ago

I don't think this is very contrarian.

I dunno, the recent increase in rhetoric across the world seems otherwise. Trump, Modi, right wing in Europe etc

I didn't mean anything close to centrally planned economy. Countries can certainly work together without having a rule by committee type situation.

bromuro• 5 years ago

What makes you believe that competition is what improves “things”?

titovodka• 5 years ago

I think people take patriotism for granted or don’t really understand what it entails.

It’s much deeper than cheering on for a national team.

Lebanon has basically eroded because you have groups who were acting in the interest of their own rather than the country as a whole.

_ah• 5 years ago

I believe you have misunderstood the purpose of patriotism.

Belief in a country is self-identification with a shared narrative. Just like with a startup, some things are impossible to achieve unless everyone (perhaps irrationally) believes they are possible.

Is Country X special? Maybe not. But if everyone there believes it's special, the country may yet become some version of its ideal self. Patriotism is vision casting. It is the story we tell ourselves that we may become the people we want to be.

philipkglass• 5 years ago

It's a misallocation of resources for the state to try to save adults who don't want saving. If a drug addict doesn't specifically request help to beat their addiction, it would be simpler and cheaper for the legal system to give them as much of the drug as they want. They'll either become functional addicts or just finish their slow-motion suicides. Either is less wasteful than forcing them into rehab or incarceration.

mydeskistoosm10• 5 years ago

I kind of agree with this, but I've thought about it and it typically leads to an ugly sort of huxleyan society where most people wind up on drugs that are being provided by the government

indrax3• 5 years ago

There is virtually no real diversity in experimentation on social decision making processes. (Governments, Economies, Science) So debates devolve into some form of e.g. capitalism vs. socialism, but both system are governed by similar variations of a sovereign nation state, which are adapted from monarchies. Compare this to the space of all possible government descriptions and we're only looking at a weird narrow slice.

Because evolutionary pressures on governments produce stability and power instead of 'goodness of people', I suspect any random system that sounds remotely sensible would probably be superior to anything we have now. If we actually designed something that took into account new knowledge and technology, we could do much better.

Expectation of future profits is equivalent to belief that markets are inefficient. (Which of course they often are.) Open source economic planning could yield massive economic gains and doesn't require centralized power or use of force. (Pacifist governance is one of those unexplored spaces) An open public ledger would allow for resource allocation and incentivizing work without needing a monetization strategy.

If we track and account for externalities doing a good thing funds itself. You don't need a way to take money from the people you're helping. This also disincentivizes negative externalities.

As an example of how bad things are: We still debate on natural language forums instead of using structured arguments that link to common datasets and simulations. These comments get 'points' instead of bayesian probabilities, and there's no way to filter or rescore anything based on it's epistemological support or new data.

closeparen• 5 years ago

Very few people are cut out to be "book-smart." The education system must find and nurture those with the aptitude and the inclination, but should not try to force it on the rest.

guidovranken• 5 years ago

- Tor has done more harm than good for human rights

- Alcohol does not make people more aggressive to a large extent. In the vast majority of clubs/festivals almost everybody is inebriated but violence is fairly rare (in my experience). (I'm a non-drinker btw so I have no horse in this race).

- David Bowie's music is unremarkable.

- We should keep Linux unpopular because the more users it gets, the more malware/spyware/advertising/telemetry it will attract. It is fine where it is now in terms of its userbase.

cowanon222• 5 years ago

Tor has done more harm than good for human rights

Sad but true - it seems like every technology that is made to promote free speech, anonymity, or non-centralization ultimately leads to bad actors using it and more authoritarian laws being passed. I'm not sure what the solution is.

t-32• 5 years ago

The solution is to do away with the source of authority; anarchy. Conveniently, this is also my answer to the question for this Ask.

rufus_foreman5• 5 years ago

> David Bowie's music is unremarkable

The Spiders from Mars music on the Ziggy album is remarkable. The remarkable role that Bowie played was as a connector.

Some rock stars get lucky, get rich and famous, and then decide they are going to shoot up as much heroin as possible before they die. David Bowie got lucky and decided to use his fame to make the world a little bit closer to the way he wanted it to be.

I never would have heard of Mark Ronson without Bowie, never would have heard of Brian Eno, might not have heard of Iggy Pop. Probably would have heard of Lou Reed but who knows. Those people made remarkable music. Bowie helped get them in the spotlight.

But yeah, I haven't listened to "Let's Dance" in many years.

goto113• 5 years ago

Software developers are not as smart as they think. The most disastrous technical decisions I have seen have all come from developers, not from clueless non-technical managers. Things like "lets rewrite everything in foo-language, this will solve all our problems."

mbrodersen11• 5 years ago

I don’t think that point of view is contrarian? At least among the more experienced developers. My guesstimate that 80% of problems in software development are created by the software developers themselves.

strzibny• 5 years ago

I personally really had to fight off clueless technical decisions from non-technical leaders, so it depends on where you are coming from.

Jensson4• 5 years ago

If clueless developers gets to make such decisions then the problem is that clueless management is too clueless to say no.

lamontcg3• 5 years ago

We've proven we don't deserve the freedom of speech and we will be censored and regulated by private corporations. The Internet made people worse humans and not better.

mikewarot6• 5 years ago

Walled gardens whose algorithms maximize outrage have made things worse.

Human beings were fine with internet access before that point, except for September... September used to be the time all the new students got their first internet accounts.

lamontcg3• 5 years ago

4chan and 8chan aren't walled gardens

and september would normally end because some of the idiot freshmen would get their access yanked by whoever ran the NNTP servers at the school.

sprkwd2• 5 years ago

The internet was a bad idea.

Ekaros7• 5 years ago

I don't know. Large automatically routing network is pretty good and useful thing... It just became horrible idea...

version_five5• 5 years ago

The west lost the cold war, ideologically

As a corollary, western society peaked in the 80s

krapp3• 5 years ago

And you people consider yourselves contrarians. Let me show you amateurs how to upset an apple cart.

Donald Trump, raging narcissist, charlatan and fascistic bigot that he was, was also the most authentically American President America has ever had. He embodied the American spirit - it's true spirit - unmasked and exposed in its full lunatic glory, and it should surprise no one that some Americans loved him enough to form an actual cult around him.

mathgladiator3• 5 years ago

Holy shit, that might be right. While I believe it was a disaster, it was definitely American spirit. This made me think about: https://youtu.be/rJjKP8vYjpQ

mbrodersen11• 5 years ago

I completely agree. Trump is the true honest American soul distilled into a single persona. Exposing all of the underlying hate, racism, narcissism etc. that most of public Americans refuse to acknowledge. I never thought that wasn’t obvious?

perilunar• 5 years ago

That's not contrarian. I think a large proportion of the rest of the world would agree with this.

krapp3• 5 years ago

It's impossible to be contrarian to everyone, but it's contrarian to someone.

timoth3y• 5 years ago

What is your strongest contrarian opinion?

That it is pointless to ask that question on HN or any social site because actual contrarian opinions will be downvoted and hidden.

The most popular "edgy" opinions will be voted as the most contrarian and be rise to the top.

the_only_law6• 5 years ago

The most popular "edgy" opinions will be voted as the most contrarian and be rise to the top.

Reminds me of r/unpopularopinion

anotherevan2• 5 years ago

Take my up vote.

65102• 5 years ago

lets try:

Academia is the art of archiving things discovered outside of it.

cblconfederate3• 5 years ago

And the art of stealing credit from immigrant workers that are locked-in an ecosystem for a period of years. I wonder when a #metoo will start in academia to complete the self-destructing cycle.

version_five5• 5 years ago

The majority appear to believe that actual contrarian opinions are "misinformation" and the average person isn't smart enough to be exposed to them without being corrupted, so only approved opinions, linked to reliable sources like government, should be allowed to be shared.

Tarsul• 5 years ago

Communism would've been the better choice for the world, not for the people of the 20th century themselves but for the following generations. We are destroying the world with our consumerism (capitalism) and we just can't stop although most of us know that what we do is wrong. We are all complicit and guilty. Everyone with a consciousness, when old, will look back to these days and know that s/he has done too little [or rather: consumed too much], full of regret and sadness. [Unless...]

edit: yes, I'm talking about climate change.

Jensson4• 5 years ago

Soviet didn't use less energy than the west, they just had poorer living standards but they pollute just as much.

I agree that the current consumption culture us bad, but socialism isn't the answer to that problem. All you need to do is to properly regulate capitalism, like some countries in Europe do. The only reason that doesn't happen in USA is that such regulations aren't politically popular. Socialism wouldn't help push through unpopular regulations, instead people would just vote to keep using oil anyway.

sayonaraman2• 5 years ago

Expertise is overrated

aklemm3• 5 years ago

By definition, that’s impossible. Can you describe it more throughly?

mbrodersen11• 5 years ago

Right. So you prefer getting your life saving brain surgery done by a random person picked off the street instead of a trained brain surgeon who have successfully performed life saving brain surgery for 20+ years? Really?

sayonaraman2• 5 years ago

this is an exception that proves the rule

alexitosrv• 5 years ago

I fear we overcomplicated everything software/infrastructure IT related, and in the no so far future we will completely be dominated by huge mega corps. We already see something of that since the last 20 years, but also because of hubris and ego we continue making things harder and harder for new comers new hackers.

erik_seaberg• 5 years ago

The best thing you can do for a beginner is to train them into being an expert, not make beginner-grade tools. Climbing a high learning curve is good because they end up being more capable of solving harder problems. We shouldn’t shy away from things like domain-specific languages in the name of approachability; if you want a competitive advantage you have to do something not everyone else can.

Vaslo• 5 years ago

We shouldn’t downvote contrarian views in general, no matter how much we oppose them. Only when they get preachy or smarmy should we consider it.

idoh• 5 years ago

I could go on for days …

A - The majority of data science insights is kinda useless for guiding software product direction. Much better to have a well defined strategy and just execute on that, tradeoffs and all. I have to engage in the game because that’s what my boss expects.

B - In 100 years we are going to look back at pet ownership with disdain, especially cats, because how could we keep these animals in an environment that’s so restrictive if they are indoors, and how could we unleash them on the ecology if they are outdoors?

C - If you want to help the poor, and save money on prison expenses, then funding public defenders is really the way to go.

D - I love the US and what it stands for, but if there hadn’t been a revolution then no big deal, we’d probably be in the same place more or less.

E - Govermentment intervention didn’t solve the great depression, it made it worse.

I hold these all equally strongly.

cloche4• 5 years ago

D - I love the US and what it stands for, but if there hadn’t been a revolution then no big deal, we’d probably be in the same place more or less.

You could say this about most revolutions, and wars too for that matter. They accomplish little in the long run.

todd8• 5 years ago

One of my contrarian opinions (judging from the number of comments here) is that it is best to avoid posting controversial contrarian opinions on social media, including HN, in response to a question (e.g. Ask HN) especially if the OP asking the question is not a well established user. The OP could be a troll or maybe employed by a government looking for people that should be surveilled.

To be honest though, it is thought provoking to skim though all of these out of the ordinary ideas and responses.

mort1merp0• 5 years ago

Since corporations are legally people with rights of free speech, like individuals have...then they should be taxed like the average person is, on revenue.

If a corporation is responsible for the death of a person, the CEO, CFO, COO, and members of the board should serve prison time.

If the corporation is a repeat offender, then the corporation should suffer the death penalty. The assets liquidated a public auction. Also Corp Officers and board members go to jail and are forbidden from ever holding such position again.

I look forward to your down votes.

Ekaros7• 5 years ago

I would take step further, since corporations are legally people, they shouldn't limit responsibility of their owners. That is if corporation results in deaths all owners should also suffer real penalty such as prison time.

quickthrower22• 5 years ago

Taxing revenue harms the low profit commodity businesses, like small retailers why being excellent for tech giants especially the ad selling ones like Google/Facebook.

A better idea might be tax investors at income tax levels on capital gains, regardless of holding time (adjusted for inflation indexation)

And increase corporation tax for companies above a certain profit level maybe at $1bn up.

sershe3• 5 years ago

IT-related opinion: if you gratuitously perform blocking operations (disk IO, network calls, taking locks blocked on the same) on the UI thread, in a commercial product that has a close button (i.e. not an ATM UI or a nuclear reactor control), you should be forever barred from doing software development for money.

If I could redesign popular OSes in god mode, blocking the UI thread for more than a few 100s of ms would crash the app with no workarounds.

I have to admit GC is a grey area...

sershe3• 5 years ago

Non-IT related opinion: compassion is vastly overrated. I think it is similar to tribalism and moralistic fervor; it's good as an abstract motivator in small quantities, but if used continuously, it makes you feel great about yourself while always producing terrible results.

cercatrova• 5 years ago

Realpolitik is all there is. I often see comments about how people should behave rather than understanding how they actually do. Fundamental human nature is nigh immutable; people will always be greedy, will always want to compete, will always wage war, and so on. To think that another social system would change that is a flaw of understanding humans. I see this most often in people espousing communism over capitalism, for example, but people will be people even under communism, the social system won't change that.

Sinularly, many people are mad about countries doing "unethical" things, but countries do not have ethical norms, they merely have interests, and that's what they'll advance towards. To think that countries for example shouldn't spy on each other or assassinate their enemy leaders is also a misunderstanding of human nature, and more largely of geopolitics.

nzmsv• 5 years ago

Agreed! I periodically burn some karma on this point and should probably stop. Most people are brainwashed to believe the system they live under is the bestestest and won't even consider any other alternative. Indeed this unfailing belief is necessary for the whole thing to work.

When you point out to them that political systems fight for their own survival, just like organisms and memes do they call that "whataboutism". But fundamentally we are all humans and we function about the same way the world over.

In times of stress we humans put a ruthless dictator in charge as a last-ditch Hail Mary. Once conditions improve we replace them with something more suitable. Trying to "enlighten" an impoverished place like Afghanistan is misguided and just keeps their society stuck. But most people think dictators are mysterious aliens that arrive out of nowhere and start oppressing the poor masses.

Before you click that downvote button, think for a second. Imagine that America was a place of poverty and desperation. Whom would Americans elect? Oh wait, we already know who middle America made president back in 2016. The way to get people to elect friendlier governments is to make their environment better, not moralize.

akg_67• 5 years ago

American Capitalism will end the same way Soviet Communism ended.

_nalply• 5 years ago

Sometimes apps are moving targets as if they were games.

I propose a grace period of maybe 250 ms after a visible change.

Let's say I click a button but the window poof! disappeared just exactly then and revealed a different button beneath the closed window. Aargh! Now I caused something else!

My contrarian opinion is that we should try out this: if a button disappeared visually it is still there for 250 ms more. So we aren't caught by the GUI change.

After 250 ms we can react and cancel the intention to click.

I am sure we need to experiment with the time needed and make it configurable.

BjoernKW2• 5 years ago

- Socialism (as in: actual socialism, not the European / Scandinavian variety that for the most part still builds upon a free-market economy), when implemented, will inevitably fail. In most cases, because it'll devolve into an authoritarian system fairly quickly. Those arguing in favour of socialism often will resort to a True Scotsman argument: "Yes, but this wasn't real socialism."

- The idea of "limits to growth" (as promoted by the Club of Rome) is a fallacy that - although since the time of Thomas Malthus it has been proven wrong time and again - remains bewilderingly popular.

- The EU is a cold war relic that's ridiculously ill-equipped for the challenges of the 21st century. Though motivated by misguided ideas, petty nationalism, and selfishness, given time Brexit might prove to not have been such a bad idea after all.

- Nuclear power at least in the short term should be considered a vital component of combatting climate change.

Regarding software:

- Web standards are actually quite decent. The web and web technologies are great way of providing and distributing applications.

As for more some recent events:

- Lockdowns and civil rights restrictions in general are neither an effective, nor a reasonable or sustainable approach for dealing with a pandemic.

- Zero Covid / No Covid / a Covid elimination strategy is an unsustainable dead end.

- Negative COVID-19 test results, not vaccination passports, should be relied on as an access requirement.

mydeskistoosm10• 5 years ago

been proven wrong time and again

Has it been proven? I'm not a malthusian at all and that argument drives me up the wall. However the best answer I can come up with is "capitalism is a brass-balled bet that we'll figure our problems out, and so far we have."

BjoernKW2• 5 years ago

Malthus' assumptions and conclusions have been empirically proven wrong, and resoundingly so.

An abundance of resources leads to slower population growth instead of a continued geometric growth. Paradigm shifts such as the industrial, green, and digital revolutions allow us to ever more efficiently extract resources from a (somewhat) closed system instead of the availability of resources remaining constant.

Apart from the data alone, which pretty much speaks for itself, from Steven Pinker to Ray Kurzweil, from economics to ecological and cognitive sciences there are numerous arguments against the Malthusian model and a Malthusian world:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-malthus-is-st...

http://www.socialstudies.org/sites/default/files/publication...

https://aeon.co/ideas/the-earths-carrying-capacity-for-human...

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/weekinreview/15mcneil.htm...

amadeuspagel• 5 years ago

There's something deeply ironic about asking this question on a forum where answers are sorted by votes.

cloche4• 5 years ago

The South should have been allowed to secede from the Union.

The US would be much better off today although that would have come at the expense of the new country.

ivanmontillam• 5 years ago

That X amount of years or Y amount of certifications will get you anywhere on its own.

See that 12-year-old kid killing it in the NFTs? See that AI startup IPO'ing?

Just offer the market what it wants.

Ekaros7• 5 years ago

Humans are inherently evil tribalistic creatures.

the_only_law6• 5 years ago

Judging by how often this gets slammed when I’ve discussed it in the past, I’ll assume it’s contrarian enough.

On HN, downvotes serve little purpose, assuming that the user base actually believes the notions of superiority and quality of discussion here compared to other sites on the internet.

For explicitly off-topic or guideline violating comments, flags exist. Downvotes seem to serve no other purpose than as a low effort “I disagree” or “I don’t like this” which wouldn’t be an acceptable reply if it were a comment.

softwaredoug• 5 years ago

Is this contrarian?

Immigration should be massively increased in the US. The surest way for the US and west to grow its international influence, economy, and live up to its values is through immigration. It’s not a zero sum game: immigrants create jobs for everyone. They increase many forms of diversity and expose us to may PoVs. Multiculturalism works, as exhibited by the higher social capital in major cities compared to the ethnically homogenous rural areas. The West would increase its economic competitiveness with other powers (ie China) that are less likely to increase immigration. This will strengthen the security and influence of western powers, giving them also a worldly outlook compared to those with much less immigration.

Faux immigration like H1B and other guest worker visas cruelly create a second class workforce. It would be more humane to allow more actual immigration.

It’s an obvious policy win, I wish more people would vocally support radically increased immigration.

ozzythecat• 5 years ago

Faux immigration like H1B and other guest worker visas cruelly create a second class workforce.

More importantly, it increases the labor pool without giving immigrants the right to vote.

Multiculturalism works, as exhibited by the higher social capital in major cities compared to the ethnically homogenous rural areas.

The major cities also have significant infrastructure, crime, and affordability issues. Some of them also have major homelessness problems. I'm not saying that's because of immigrants, but saying that immigrants live in cities and those cities are "better" is kind of non-sensical. If anything, COVID showed us that people want to get away from cities.

Is the higher social capital bit really true? My own family immigrated many years ago to the US. From my parents' home country, there are millions of other people in the US. Many of them don't care to assimilate. They have a romanticized view of this home country, and have outright anti-semitic and other intolerant beliefs.

This will strengthen the security and influence of western powers, giving them also a worldly outlook compared to those with much less immigration.

If you're bringing in the best and brightest minds, sure. The US, for example, is fairly bogged down with a significant, inefficient government apparatus. Taxes seem to go up without quality of life enhancements. I could see an increased labor pool increasing revenue, but how about housing affordability and healthcare? We don't have "quality" jobs for the folks who are already in this country. How do we increase immigration while lifting everyone up?

I am not necessarily disagreeing with your ideas, but I think you're simplifying some very hard problems.

ixacto• 5 years ago

We should stop having a military that does anything outside the United States.

oldsklgdfth• 5 years ago

This is an opinion I used to hold.

Humans are an apex invasive species at this point. We are all plugged into a *-industrial complex. We sell dissatisfaction to each other to promote consumption to keep the whole thing going.

There is no nobility in bearing children or even in continuing living.

mapster• 5 years ago

Most of societal problems can be fixed by focusing early education solely on philosophy, logic, art.

We are pushed thru the ed system as future labor, but lack the tools to coexist in a very large and complex society.

rufus_foreman5• 5 years ago

Note to readers: scroll down, the actual contrarian opinions are at the bottom.

rufus_foreman5• 5 years ago

DeNiro wasn't an antihero in Raging Bull, he was a hero. Same with Taxi Driver. Same with John Wayne in The Searchers.

cloudbonsai• 5 years ago

Despite the popular belief, if you are a non-professional investor with a smallish capital (~$5-10mm), you can relatively easily beat the market.

badpun• 5 years ago

We can’t know if climate change models are correct - it’s way too much code, solid bug-checking of it would cost many billions, and without it, the models are more scientism than science.

The core problem here is that it’s hard to test if you don’t know what is the expected outcome (we don’t know how much the temperature is supposed to increase - we expect the model to tell us that…). In such cases, you don’t do black-box testing (i.e. just writing a bunch of test-cases), but rather have to resort to doing a painstaking and rigorous analysis of the code itself. We’ve done it in the past (e.g. on early space flight code), but the scope of the codebase was way smaller.

Also, I suspect that, a lot of the time, people work on the model (tweak parameters, find and fix numerical problems etc) until it starts giving responses which match their apriori expectations. That’s pure scientism (bs masquerading as science).

cblconfederate3• 5 years ago

- space is overrated - the last time that people lost interest was 40 years ago, the new generations missed that, and now they are about to lose interest again. humans are made by earth , for earth. real progress requires post-humans, genetically modified

- we don't want flying cars, it was a brainfart of sci-fi of the 60s, a linear combination of what was cool at the time, planes and cars. we dont want faster planes either - people happily spend the majority of their trip in airport waiting lines and getting to/from the airport

- we instead want our 140 characters because we are informational creatures. We are basically an entity living inside a brain with extra legs. it doesn't matter if we can't travel across the world if we can 'travel' instead. The real world doesn't matter much when our basic needs are covered, instead we get our rewards swimming in the sea of information and ideas. Therefore there are 2 worthy goals for humanity now: longevity or brain computer interfaces. either fullfills the ultimate desire of a conscious mind: to 'live' forever.

rzach• 5 years ago

* Abortion is wrong in all cases (angers the liberals) but * We need broad socialized healthcare, paid parental leave, etc to help the mothers (angers the conservatives) * Money is contributing to systemic racism - let's get rid of it and just be good people

nokya• 5 years ago

I can't write it here :)

Ask HN: What is your strongest contrarian opinion?

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