widjit

Denial/wishful thinking are extremely powerful.

That said, body positivity shouldn't be thought of as having anything to say about objective physical health: there is zero reason a person who is obese should necessarily feel bad about themselves. Shame is a useless or detrimental approach to changing behavior; shame is oftentimes the reason people engage in unhealthy behaviors like overeating in the first place. Being overweight is an obvious health danger, but it does not make you a bad person.

Somewhere in the idiot echo chamber of social media the idea of a healthy sense of self worth got conflated with a healthy body.

at the very least people would stop stealing catalytic converters, that's a win

Where does this strawman of art commentating come from? Loud people at parties?

Have you ever read a good book on art theory or art history? By whom? Have you ever, as an artist, sat around with someone in the same practice and wanted to talk about the meat of what it is you're doing? 'I like the colour' is a fine thing to say, but anyone who is even slightly curious will follow it up with I wonder why? or I wonder if there are any colors I don't like or any of a million other questions. Letting it sit at 'I like the colour' is kind of lame.

Or maybe all discussion of art is 'a gussied up version of "I like the colour";' in that case, then all software engineering is making colored lights blink in patterns--see how useless it is to ignore complexity?

I would ask if throwing out unfounded opinions normally works well for you in society, but I suspect it probably does. For the record, I reserve rude comments for the internet.

I don't want to have a phone call with you about your boring, detrimental attitudes towards art and other people's appreciation of it. I go out of my way to inject myself into discussions exactly like this one because, as I said, I repeatedly see engineering-brained people (who have a lot of sway) going out of their way to deride Other People's Good Time, and I want you to stop doing it.

Let people enjoy things, it doesn't hurt you. Leave them alone.

Does it give you pause at all that this is, historically, a common way of thinking among authoritarians and fascists?

a slippery slope to significantly reduced gun deaths

oh no

genuinely doing a bad job and sabotage look very similar

the only significant difference I've seen in brand-new devs from bootcamps vs CS programs is the devs from bootcamps are somewhat aware that they have a lot of learning to do

"Hell is my own code" still works in my case

FB/Google/etc. don't actually need to make correct inferences, they just need to provide infographics that say they are correct so that marketing departments can report to their superiors that they are responsibly spending advertising dollars and getting "impressions" from the right people

it's a multi-tier confidence game

clearly this article is not meant for you

a big chunk of the people who read HN are the exact people responsible for the systems and algorithms that create (and perpetuate) the solipsistic hell-mirror described in the article

my least favorite part of engineering is that it is led by smart, capable humans who diligently build systems to destroy the best things about being a human

Discussions involve reading and considering and responding to people, not whatever it is you're doing