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Yeah, but I'm only cynical in relation to what I see as the orthodoxies of the kind of people who post on HN.

When I say it like that, it sounds pathetic. And in fact, it is. Yet, here we are.

I love human creativity. I don't like pseudo-science, especially coming from people who believe they are above it (and fall prey to it anyway).

It is creative as long as you acknowledge it's unobtainable. But in threads like this, fantasy and reality tend to blur.

I generally see myself as an earnest person, but some kinds of earnestness read as cynical to me.

No, it doesn't seem very creative to me.

I don't think I've ever sounded so cynical in my life, but something about the way sci-fi fandom bleeds into real science really makes me deeply uncomfortable.

I'm always so alienated (sorry) by the excitement around things like this. People start fantasizing about FTL and space arks and there is just no evidence that any of that is possible, desirable, effective, anything really.

I know I'm a killjoy, but I do think there's something negative about the impact of science fiction on engineers. Like, the people who tend (no offense) to be the most literal, black and white thinkers get exposed to art and instead of processing it as the output of human creativity, they start to imagine that it's desirable or even real.

There is a fourth that the author would never mention:

Hire consultants about the problem

You don't have to wait 100 years. You can build a bridge to alleviate traffic without any understanding that the bridge will in fact generate more traffic, and then you have to widen it a few years later (which also doesn't help). I know this has happened several times in NYC and I'm sure it has happened many other places where engineering know-how far outstrips knowledge of urban planning.

How do you know that? What do you know about prehistory? Nothing. You might as well be picturing the Flintstones in your head.

You're using broadly shared but totally unsubstantiated about past humans just to argue that things are good right now.

My grandmother used to give me mix CDs as gifts. One time I asked her where she found all the music and she told me "Oh there's this amazing app called Limewire." She then taught me how to pirate music.

Am I crazy or does this just real like secular eschatology? What evidence do you have of any of this?

I don't remember Dr. Tobias Funke being into Hindutva, but it's a funny image.

That's an absurd false dichotomy. I'm assuming the historians are the cucks in your analogy? As the author points out, many of the "chuds" haven't even read translations of Greek or Latin texts, while historians can read the text in the original. The main skill historians have is exactly the strawman you've set up to knock down. They understand the limits of our knowledge of ancient societies, and the "chuds" do not.

You are holding historians to an epistemological standard that I am confident you don't hold anybody else to. Whether intentionally or not, you're muddying the waters to undermine their expertise. Why?

You should work on the ability to distinguish respect from charitability.

One can be charitable to views that one does not respect. And if one ends up being disrespectful it does not mean that they were insufficiently charitable.

I did a pandemic project of reading Dredd from the start for as long as I could. I made it through about 25 case files volumes, which took me from 1977 to the late 90s (I think).

Is Judge Dredd cyberpunk? I don't care. It's an incredible run of comics, that touches on many of the same themes as cyberpunk.

There are many people involved in Dredd over the years, but I do think John Wagner has had the rare opportunity among work for hire creators to shepherd a fictional universe over decades of real and in universe time.