A bigger concern for me is the grating cheerfulness in what is a very critical article.
Don't pretend you're not fighting fire with fire with this article. You're mad and you're showing it. When you say stuff like...
>>To sum up, I love that you brought up these concerns in an article.
I don't believe you! Disingenuous.
(You should also think about whether or not the Riot.js author is worth responding to. Just because he's a framework author doesn't mean that framework has ever been held in high regard.)
My motivation was to address common misconceptions around React ecosystem. I'm genuinely happy people bring them up (since that's how we learn about the issues).
To me, reading posts filled with frustration serves as a motivation to improve things. I didn't reply to "fight with fire": I see these kinds of posts every week or two. But I replied this time because I think it was also important to separate real issues from the factual inaccuracies (that get a life of their own once somebody writes an article).
Some bitterness did come through, and I removed it. But I'm not lying when I tell you I'm happy people are sharing their concerns with React. It's all for the best. :-)
as a leftist... I can only feel the left is fucked.
on the other hand, I am arguing in a thread that contains that complete altrightgarbletwat banned below.
on the other other hand, your aggrieved-on-behalf-of-my-lady-friends stance is just so freaking overwrought and gross.
you're attacking a position that no one has advocated for, with the exception of the altrightgarbletwat. go bug him.
and final edit: by the way, the moral imperative I advocate for is to burn these companies to the ground and to scald capitalists with their own failures. it wouldn't matter to me if Uber managed a PR save here because Uber's shitty heart will not change and nothing of value will be lost when it dies.
do you get it? a system will do the bare minimum to exonerate itself and continue perpetuating the SV failures of greed and misplaced tech idealism: there's no story here because it doesn't fucking surprise anyone clued when someone comes out with yet another harassment story in tech and it doesn't fucking mean anything when some token firings take place over the next few weeks.
Uber will still be a piece of shit unsustainable company in a tech world coopted by greedy would-be visionaries, hopefully destined for the scrap heap in the near future.
my lady friends don't need you here. read up on performative allyship and then check a mirror.
I still haven't gotten any assistance from Google after losing my YouTube account when my f#@!ing plus account (which I didn't even want) spawned another account from the gmail address I'd signed up before Google bought them.
Plus was the real turning point where I went from loving Google to tolerating them.
YouTube was used as leverage to boost Google+. They backed off soon enough to save things (or perhaps YouTube is just too big to kill with such a mistake) but it was badly messed up IMO.
you know, I've come to like you dang. I still detest this place and everything it stands for, but seeing you chipper (if somewhat resentful about having to be chipper) towards the kind of problems that come with your job has a way of cheering me up. Like you know the check will clear, but even so, no one works for money.
not that you asked, but both as a clearer moderation policy than we've seen before and as an experiment, I think this is a good move. there is some regret that you're lagging well behind Reddit's knowledgebase, as this sort of thing has been done many times there, and there's not much new information to be found.
That said, it does exacerbate the filter bubble of this place: based on how subreddits' experiments have gone, expect the moderate center to support you and press to make it permanent, expect a little bit of grumbling that might make you think that you've made your point and don't need to make it permanent, and expect... a few more people to leave silently.
You're a prop for the VC establishment, but damn if you aren't an earnest human, too.
I wouldn't describe myself as a dang fan, but egotistic? Sure, he's just a low-ranking enforcer used to shield YC from criticism, but he's just doing his job. It's not exactly his fault, as a pawn, if the overall system is poisoned.
But as to the rest of it, yeah, the HN hivemind is insane in exactly the same way Startup Culture is a sick, greedy mess.
It would be more accurate and insightful, I think, to note that psychiatry is the attempt at a verified track record. It's not so much that it is the only game in town as it is the result of recording our attempts in a coherent fashion.
Its failures point to the difficulty of the problem more than anything.
I don't think it's particular to the tech crowd, and I think it's a stumbling block even for psychiatry.
The problem is that psychiatry as practiced is an attempt to solve people, and people can't be solved; or if they can, it is unique (as you say) to the individual.
And really you're no different: you're giving out advice to people on how to manage their mental health. Your advice is harmless from a societal perspective in that it's literally what psychiatrists want you to be saying.
That doesn't mean you're not one of the misinformed internet commenters. It's not universally applicable. Most people don't have the time and money to shop around, even if the actual problems of their mental state allow them to seek help.
You can't come up with the words that are going to make people better. Nor should you be expected to!
Recognizing that psychiatrists are the ones we pay to be expected to act to make people better and they are themselves human and subject to human failures: this, I think, is why criticism of psychiatry emerges in topics like these.
I'm not disagreeing with your general advice, just criticizing your smugness and certainty in your opening lines. You're not better at this than we are just because you're giving the generic safe advice.
I think the real issue is that whether they are psychologists or psychiatrists, there seems to be no accountability in the field (outside of extremes like malpractice) in terms of whether or not they actually provide any value to the patient. If someone goes to a psychologist for 20 years and at the end of it they're still just as bad as when they started, there's no, "I'd like my money back from the last 20 years". Sometimes a professional might not know if they can help, but even if it becomes obvious to them that this is someone they can't help, they don't say, "I'm unable to help you. Stop being a customer." They just continue down the path. This isn't to say that most mental health professionals are taking people's money without actually doing anything (I have no idea if that's the case), but rather it's difficult for the patient to know if they are actually getting any help, it is difficult for the patient to hold the person accountable if they don't get the help they expected, and it is difficult for the patient to even know if they're right or wrong about the matter (since they are not the expert). This makes it easy for the patient to doubt and blame the mental health professional or the entire field, there's just so much grey area.
It's pretty simple: focus on the flaws of the EFF instead of the problems the EFF points out. If you want to be against the establishment, you have to be perfect in pedigree, politics, and poise. Your arguments must not only be factually correct on every level (which by itself would be fine to point out) but must also be in obeisance to the status quo by explicitly recognizing the good intentions of the establishment.
All of this will be prefaced with "I'm no fan of the TPP, but..."
Here's how you write as an establishment equivocator:
---
There are certainly parts of the TPP which overreach. But the EFF is well known for taking things out of proportion [ignoring the absurd proportions of the actual situation]. Here we see another example: [point out something from the current EFF statement that is alarmist or not quite relevant to the TPP specifically, for instance...] a lot of what the EFF describes about copyright is specific to US law and copyright. The EFF is really just hitting its usual talking points and very little of this relates to the TPP; the TPP is just an excuse to talk about what they always talk about.
