Dan Luu
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Some ironic rebuttals
🕑 Added 2022-02-08 13:04:01 +0000 UTCI really enjoy ironic, self-refuting, rebuttals. One that really sticks in my mind are these comments from Uncle Bob and a supporter of Uncle Bob to Hillel Wayne: https://twitter.com/hillelogram/status/917242771253145600.
In the thread, Hillel is arguing against Uncle Bob's position that "defects are never the fault of our languages. Defects are the fault of programmers. It is programmers who create defects, not languages".
Hillel asks Uncle Bob, "So using 'mysql_escape_string' instead of ' mysqli_escape_string' is the programmers fault?". Uncle Bob responds in the affirmative and a supporter of his says "I'm not understanding your point. I knew the difference between those two at age 12. I think any competent programmer ought to know".
Hillel notes that the trick is that both of those functions are wrong and the programmer is supposed to use 'mysqli_real_escape_string'. This Uncle Bob supporter is saying that anyone competent would know what the right thing is when he himself doesn't know what the right thing is!
Lately, I've been missing these kinds of comments because I've generally been avoiding internet comments from people I don't know because internet comments are low enough quality that I don't think they're really worth the time to read. But I happened to be in a mood to read some silly comments the other day, so I turned off my filter for silly comments (I have literally thousands of Twitter accounts muted and I liberally mute people who leave uninformed comments) and I immediately ran into a bunch of silly comments.
My favorite set of silly comments came out of publishing https://danluu.com/cocktail-ideas/, which packages up the idea of people with a superficial understanding of something assuming the topic is as superficial as their understanding under the name "cocktail party idea". Ben Kuhn noted that the prevalence of this in SF is why, after visiting SF with the intention to move there (this isn't noted in the tweet, but it was his #1 candidate for a place to live until he visited), he decided not to move there: https://twitter.com/benskuhn/status/1489105190661853184.
Ben noted (in private, but with permission to republish this on Patreon), "The number of SF residents responding to that tweet with variants of 'what else could you even do at a party?!' is amazing. I kind of want to tweet that but I don't want to lose all my SF friends...". Similarly, Hillel Wayne said "I am FLOORED by how many people seem to think your post was about literal cocktail parties. We need humanities in STEM because people can't recognize metaphors".
IMO, the "best" response is a famous SF thought leader (FSFTL), who said, "Going to cocktail parties for deep expert advice is a bit like using fortune cookies for therapy. What on earth was he expecting? A good question seems to be: what kinds of conversation or group do I desire? And how can I find or create it? Luu seems to simply be trying out one easily accessible thing, finding a mismatch, and then claiming the thing is _wrong_.", which I think is great on three levels.
One, the post isn't really about cocktail parties, but FSFTL either didn't read or didn't understand the post and responded to the opening paragraph, basically assuming that the post is about cocktail parties and then running with a hot take based on an uninformed guess about what the post is about, i.e., he did the exact thing the post is about.
Two, as Ben noted, he and other responders appear to be so enmeshed in a party scene where people just give superficial hot takes that he's incredulous that someone would expect something else at a party. While I've obviously been to parties like that, most parties I attend aren't like that because I generally don't go back when I encounter a social scene like that (and Ben said something similar in a reply to FSFTL). But these responders from SF can't seem to even conceive of the idea that a party wouldn't be full of people who state superficial and obviously incorrect hot takes?
Three, seemingly without having read the post and without having any idea how I operate, he suggests I should, instead, think about a different question which is one I have actually thought a lot about. Of course, I didn't mention that in the post since the post isn't about how to meet interesting people, so a detailed explanation of how I meet interesting people would be off topic, but I actually already do exactly what FSFTL suggests. Interesting, in response to a comment from Ben correcting some misconceptions FSFTL had, he doubled down on this point that I'm obviously just going to the wrong parties (while simultaneously re-asserting that parties are generally like this and no one should expect anything different from parties).
Like Ben, I've lived in SF as well as a handful of other cities (8 cities for me). Ben gives his opinion in the linked thread and, as for myself, I'll say that SF, despite having a lot of great qualities, beats every other city I've lived in with respect to the highest density of people who can't resist stating superficial hot takes and then doubling down on their position when they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. The replies to Ben on that Twitter thread are really great representations of precisely the thing discussed in https://danluu.com/cocktail-ideas/,where (some) people seem to feel really compelled to confidently broadcast their ideas about topics they know nothing about. I think I'm more bullish than Ben about living in SF myself, in that I'd probably live there if it weren't for some other constraints but, unlike the people who responded to Ben's comments, I'm not blind to this fault in SF's various social scenes (also see https://www.patreon.com/posts/surprising-thing-27316256).
Despite the entertainment value that these kinds of delightfully ironic comments provide, I should probably go back to browsing Twitter with my account (as opposed to using an incognito window, which effectively throws my mute list out the window) and spend my time reading more productive things. I originally had a second set of silly comments I was going to write up, but I see that I'm already at about 1000 words on this post, which is probably enough time spent on this topic for the year. Maybe I'll check back in a year or two to collect a few more comments into a post.
Edited in bonus items: Ben Kuhn noted https://twitter.com/benskuhn/status/1491032481566695429 as another great "rebuttal".
That reminded me of https://twitter.com/altluu/status/1449285907790458883 combined with later responses from the same people, where the people who are saying that basically no one makes $X in SV and it's basically all just lying braggarts who think that you can make that much, years later, are bitter that they can't afford the house they want without having a very long commute because only people who are fabulously wealthy can afford a reasonable lifestyle in SV, when they could've had that lifestyle if they would've just listened to the people telling them that they can make $X if they just go to a company that pays well. This isn't really in the same class as the one above in that it took quite a few years for the irony to become apparent, but it's still there.
Comments
Yeah that was a weird argument
"cocktail party ideas" reminds me of https://xkcd.com/793/
