Even on Hacker News, when you see debates like 'X technology is good' or 'X technology is bad,' most of it seems to be about identity. And that identity often originates from the community they belong to.
The first identity usually starts with a community or the person who created it. Once the community forms, people under it often forget the original reasons and just accept it as their identity.
This is especially true for technology related issues, because the market share of a technology is directly tied to one's career, which makes it even more prone to becoming an identity issue.
I also do some 'thinking' in certain areas, but most of the time I don't. As my field gets deeper, it becomes harder to allocate cognitive resources to other areas. So in general, most people follow the crowd's opinion, but only maintain deep, thoughtful thinking, including 'taste,' in a few specific technical domains.
Thank you for the human algorithm. But I read the article at the link you sent, and there are points where our thoughts differ significantly. However, since the context of my criticism here on Hacker News would be high-cost criticism (I'm an East Asian man, not the mainstream white Western male here), I find it difficult to comment there. I'm basically filtering myself to some degree, even if others don't see it that way. In other words, when I write, I only do so at points where I think I can sufficiently withstand the criticism at low cost from my perspective.
What I wanted to say in this post was essentially that I only do deep 'thinking' in a very narrow set of domains. For the rest, I outsource my thinking to the identity of the community I belong to.
Thank you for your kind comment, Redwood. However, commenting on that post would require deep engagement with others, and I'm a bit hesitant to do that.
That's fine. Kind of proves the point of the article tho, that the overwhelming mass room of everything is a scary place to be ourselves since what dominates in that room are base negative concepts that win precisely because base negatives are ubiquitous unlike niche community or personal positives. Anyway it resonated with me and makes me hold on to my pseudo anonymity
It's because we see things from different perspectives. Redwood, you seem to find your current reality quite satisfactory, and I imagine you have a career strong enough that you don't need to expose yourself to negative concepts. I've observed your previous comments, and you strike me as highly logical and composed in tone. In my experience, people like that tend to be socially successful men.
But I'm in a position that nobody wants as a programmer. Porting code from failed companies to run on different equipment, or building datasets for professors' papers. These things are necessary, but nobody wants to do them.
So even if it means putting myself out there in negative spaces, for me, the exposure itself is beneficial.
That's why this is always a difficult issue. It's a problem where the boundary keeps shifting depending on the situation. You, being a rational person, would understand that problems are always fluid and dynamic.
We tend to simplify problems to conserve cognitive resources, and that's what we call bias. The reason I assume you're a successful man is because of the ease and gentleness in your tone. That's a kind of bias. But in reality, you probably have your own struggles, and there are certainly points where your perspective differs from mine. In some situations, what's right in one context may not be in another. What was correct in the past may no longer be, and vice versa. Yet we always anchor ourselves to a fixed point when we 'think.' That's what makes it so difficult.
I've read your previous comments too, and I find our conversations quite enjoyable. Have a good day.
Even on Hacker News, when you see debates like 'X technology is good' or 'X technology is bad,' most of it seems to be about identity. And that identity often originates from the community they belong to.
The first identity usually starts with a community or the person who created it. Once the community forms, people under it often forget the original reasons and just accept it as their identity.
This is especially true for technology related issues, because the market share of a technology is directly tied to one's career, which makes it even more prone to becoming an identity issue.
I also do some 'thinking' in certain areas, but most of the time I don't. As my field gets deeper, it becomes harder to allocate cognitive resources to other areas. So in general, most people follow the crowd's opinion, but only maintain deep, thoughtful thinking, including 'taste,' in a few specific technical domains.