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This is so needed. This was a very encouraging article.

"Being a fan is all about bringing the enthusiasm. It’s being a champion of possibility. It’s believing in someone. And it’s contagious. When you’re around someone who is super excited about something, it washes over you. It feels good. You can’t help but want to bring the enthusiasm, too."

Stands in contrast to the Hemingway quote: "Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors."

It feels socially safe, easy, and destructive to be a critic.

I'd rather be a fan.

> It feels socially safe, easy, and destructive to be a critic. I'd rather be a fan.

Trotting out absolute statements does no one any good. I could just as easily spin this on its head and say that it feels socially safe to always show blind enthusiasm for the latest trend lest you be labelled a "hater".

It feels like we're just redefining critic to be synonymous with cynic. There's no reason that you can't simultaneously be both fan and a critic of X.

The absolute irony of this comment :)

The medium is hard to separate from the message; it is built in to threaded commenting by the voting system. People upvote the comments that best express ideas that they support and as a consequence it is usually hard to add to the most highly upvoted comment. But that is the most obvious comment to attach opposing views to. That leads to a predictable tick/tock thread structure where every 2nd post is thematically similar but every other post is contrary.

The irony here is present but better interpreted as the forum structure being biased towards criticism.

You have a very insightful comment here — one small caveat however: it’s the crowd that is biased towards criticism, not the forum structure.

And this just made me realize why I don’t like HN very much. We live in a bizarre state of mind here with a common interest of creation and furtherance, but simultaneously inside the belly of the beast, it is a forum of unconditional criticism.

It’s in good faith obviously. People see an idea and critique it to the edge of existence with the desire help or further an idea; but it becomes a tick/tock that pulls the original idea apart beyond recognition.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything productive come out of the comments on HN, ever. It’s just a slew of people who say you can always do better after taking a long look at your idea, assuming your intended goal is perfection.

The irony is present because of the poster. It is explained by the contents of the post, not by the thread order in which it resides.

:) This is nice closure for engaging less though, sincerely. I see I’ve fallen victim to this mindset with this very comment, in its own irony.

I am curious, if HN discussion too critical then what is better out there? HN is less cynical and critical than other mediums, X, Substack, Medium. On HN at least it’s more of an intellectual people who see criticising out of spite as waste. Criticism is constructive comparing to other platforms where it is mostly to make critic feel smart or belonging to some side or group. On HN every commenter stand on their own intellectual merit, so to speak.

It is miles better here for sure. If I were wanting to garner criticism from anywhere, this would be an intellectual and respectful crowd for it.

I like the tightly curated communities of discord, but that comes with its own obvious problems. I don’t have a great answer unfortunately.

Which is perhaps a hint that I ask for the impossible, lol.

The original comment already contained its own irony, directing unfair criticism at critics. Hemingway wasn't exactly some impartial observer of human behavior here. He was butthurt that a published commentator once said something bad about his writing.

The reality of military operations, which Hemingway himself probably knew having served himself (though maybe the situation has changed as I can't claim familiarity with the specifics of how it worked over a century ago), is that the biggest critic of any unit involved in a battle post-battle is the unit itself. Every action is always followed by an after-action review, in which you go over what went well, what went wrong, what you should continue, and what you should change. It's neither unrelentingly positive nor negative. It's honest.

But for whatever reason, much of the creative class seems to think anyone who isn't able to do something themselves is universally unqualified to comment on the work of others. Plenty of rather obvious examples show this to be ridiculous. The top coaches and trainers throughout history were rarely great athletes themselves.

[dead]

Irony is often the language of truth.

Often is the sometimes of never.

If you're a real critic, absolutely. But most of what passes for criticism today is just hindsight dressed up as insight. It ignores the fact that choices are made in a fog, assumes outcomes were inevitable, and retroactively assigns blame. It feels like scorekeeping not being a rational/fair critic.

In fact, the best critics of something are often its biggest fans. Roger Ebert, for example, wrote some pretty critical pieces, but nobody can deny that he was driven primarily by a love of cinema. Or take politics: I've seen people complain that left-wing commentators were too critical of Biden when they should have been criticising Trump, but often it's easier — and more useful — to criticise the things you like in the hope that they will improve, rather than spending all your time criticising something you don't like that will never listen to you.

That said, it's still important to take the time to sing the praises of something you like. If Ebert had spent all his time talking down bad films, reading his columns would have been painful drudgery (see also: CinemaSins, Nostalgia Critic, and similar attempts at film-criticism-by-cynicism). A good critic wants their target to succeed, and celebrates when that happens.

Very accurate description. I think this gets missed sometimes. Sometimes you’re criticizing because you know a subject well and want to see it improved.

See also: code review

Two things I try to do in every code review:

If I’m doing the review, I try to find at least one or two items to call out as great ideas/moves. Even if it’s as simple as refactoring a minor pain point.

If I’m being reviewed I always make sure to thank/compliment comments that either suggest something I genuinely didn’t consider or catch a dumb move that isn’t wrong but would be a minor pain point in the future.

As you note, code reviews can be largely “negative feedback” systems, and I find encouraging even a small amount of positivity in the process keeps it from becoming soul sucking

In some companies, (ahem… Amazon), engineers are judged by their code review/comment ratio. Especially L4 engineers trying to make it to L5.

So actually putting positive comments in the code review isn’t really much appreciated.

I gained this habit and now for me, a comment is a suggestion of improvement, I deliver praise out-of-band.

> engineers are judged by their code review/comment ratio

It's a horrible practice with adverse incentives, and one of the reasons I'm glad I no longer work there

(and easily gameable, anyways - people would just DM each other patches they were unsure of, before submitting an actual CR)

The more I learn about how the bigger companies do business, the happier I am my dreams of working for them never materialized. I encounter enough stupid things caused by businesses trying to measure difficult things. I would hate to work in a place where the proper mode of conduct – praise in public, criticize in private – is flipped on its head for the purposes of someone's spreadsheet.

It was definitely a bad system that leads to wrong incentives.

Due to this, a lot of the time, leaving a comment would lead to friction with the owner of the CR, thus disincentivizing leaving comments, which leads to worse code being merged.

It is a real skill to critique a thing and not come off as complaining about it.

Instead of statements, I favor questions. Instead of "I, me, you, etc,", I favor communal "we, the code, the team." Be specific when possible. I try to focus on what should be done vs what shouldn't be done.

"Why did you not handle $situation" -> "how does this code handle $situation?"

"You shouldn't do $thing" -> "$thing has sharp edges, see $link-to-more-info. The general approach used in the code base is to $alternative."

Good observation: The biggest critics are indeed often the biggest fans — but funnily enough often just in a consumerist way.

If you listen to interviees with great writers, musicians, painters or actors you will often find it surprising when they tell you which other arrists they like. That is because the people making the stuff often have a much more open mind about what constitutes interesting and/or good writing, music, paintings or acting.

To me as an practitioner it feels at time that these "enthusiastic consumer critics" are incredibly bitter about not being able to live from the art they love like the ones they critique, so they carve out their niche and give themselves self-worth by playing a strong role in the field they love.

With good critics this love is the predominant message, with bad critics it is the bitterness.

The truth is that for many people criticism and contrarianism serves an extremely simple function: It allows them to sound smart and distinguish themselves from others.

And that explains 90% of all the criticism that has ever been given.

Oh the irony - Sometimes people need to stfu and root for something without pointing out how it could be better. "Awesome! Did you think about..... STFU!"

> Oh the irony - Sometimes people need to stfu and root for something without pointing out how it could be better. "Awesome! Did you think about..... STFU!"

There are many such people already, there are also many haters, and many people in the middle. This diversity is how humanity managed to get this far, we need all of them.

Feels like engaging with the logic and content of an argument is more in the spirit of this website than replying “stfu”.

"You should...."

I really believe in the importance of praising people and acknowledging their efforts, when they are kind and good human beings and (to much lesser degree) their successes.

But, and I mean their without snark: What value is your praise for what is good if I cannot trust that you will be critical of what is bad? Note that critique can be unpleasant but kind, and I don't care for "brutal honesty" (which is much more about the brutality than the honesty in most cases).

But whether it's the joint Slavic-german culture or something else, I much prefer for things to be _appropriate_, _kind_ and _earnest_ instead of just supportive or positive. Real love is despite a flaw, in full cognizance if it, not ignoring them.

Yeah, I live in sweden and a compliment by a swede about how I play music is completely meaningless to me. On the other hand a compliment from my bosnian or croatian friends is a big deal.

> I really believe in the importance of praising people and acknowledging their efforts, when they are...

alive!

At a funeral of a controversial activist, where all the living activist sang their praise, I watch their child stand up and say "...where were you all when my dad was alive"

I now go out of my way to tell people I admire them, if I do, while they are still here.

I always liked Brendan Behan's quote:

“Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.”

Critics could be experts of past era who have seen it all and are now seeing the same mistakes being repeated.

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again. -- André Gide

Love that quote!

Thanks!

Behan's criticism of critics then makes him an eunuch who's criticizing eunuchs... according to his own "logic".

Harems did not had much of heterosexual sex going on in them. Whole point was gender segregation. Eunuch in harem have seen women, but did not seen them having sex with men.

I agree but, doesn’t the world need critics?

I think of a company where young inspired engineers want to build new things all the time.

Their heart is in the right place but they need someone(s) to be respectfully critical since their efforts and time spent have very real impacts on the company.

I think the key distinction is between critics and cynics. Critics serve a purpose that provides value, whereas cynics are just all-around bummers who negatively impact the world around them.

Critics maybe. Antagonists no.

I can't agree with this at all. There's something deeply wrong with the world if any form of opposition is considered problematic.

Some variant of "the customer is always right" applies in the marketplace of ideas as well. People are allowed to have different preferences.

I’ve learned that there isn’t a “magic bullet” policy that we can enact, that always ensures that we do things correctly. Human nature is messy and varied. A word of praise can be weaponized.

I often encounter people that use praise as a domination tool. They praise you in a manner that suggests that, if they did not recognize and note something, you would not have it. They use praise to “declare ownership” of your good traits.

I encounter this, because I have highly valuable skills, that can make others a great deal of money, and have an aspect that predatory people think is “weakness.” They believe I have low self-esteem, because I am not always tubthumping.

Also, we have to be careful of saying things like “Don’t complain, if you don’t have a solution.”[0]

[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/problems-and-solutions/

it's easier to image a dystopia than an eutopia, or even utopia, depending how you see it

[flagged]

There is a big difference between thoughtful critics, and mindless cynics.

I would argue that the latter accelerate enshitification.

Criticism and Cynicism isnt restricted to change, but is also applied to the current state. Thinking the current state is shit and change is shit leads to decay.

Yes, but .. there is no worse critic than a scorned fan. There's a lot of fandoms all around the world, and while they're mostly harmless fun the edges can get weird and dangerous. Or when fandoms collide.

Not entirely sure what you mean. Care to expound?

Are you talking about people who act out on their fandom by criticizing others? "Oh I'm a fan of X, therefore I'm a vocal critic of Y". I agree that such things are toxic -- fandom doesn't need to be a polemic.

I want to cultivate the kind of fandom that builds up without feeling a need to tear down others.

They're referring to "anti fans". You see it with online personalities especially; the most rabid fans (often parasocial, think online streaming) are the ones who will become the biggest detractors or anti fans.

Most people are "oh that's fun to watch ok" and then when they don't like it anymore, they get bored and forget about it entirely.

The anti-fans continue to follow it, but rabidly hate it.

Think Syndrome from Incredibles. He's always been the biggest fan.

I rather think he or she means gamers for example, who send out death threats, because the developers introduced a new thing they don't like.

Wasn't Selena killed by a scorned fan?

Not quite. She was killed by someone who started out as a fan but then became one of Selena’s employees, who was then caught embezzling.

That's an amazing quote. I recently just started going to some LA Kings hockey games with my family for the first time, so this hits close to home.

I played high school sports (with a three day hospital stay for a serious concussion to show for it - thanks, football), but I've never been a fan of watching sportsball on TV unless it's a social gathering like Superbowl parties. I've generally had a low opinion of people who cared about their city's teams and all the useless competitiveness that goes along with it.

But being there, in the stadium around all the other fans? Fucking electrifying. I celebrated, I jeered, I cried, I booed Edmonton, I cursed the refs, I complained about the stadium food and the line for the men's bathroom, and I was probably the loudest person in the 318 section of the Staples center. I almost fell over the glass boards onto the ESPN newscasters during Wednesday's game on the fourth goal. Too much overpriced beer plus standing up to wave the "Built for This" towels too fast.

I still don't give a flying fuck about the Kings or Lakers or Clippers or whatever, but I am definitely going to enjoy going to their games and feeling the energy. The exact words my mom used were "I've never seen this side of you."

WE WANT SKINNER!!!

I advocate for going to a Hurricanes game :) loudest barn in the NHL, baby!

I feel like every fanbase thinks they have the loudest barn.

I'm saving myself for the Cleveland dawg pound. They are notorious (there's even a wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawg_Pound ).

(Womp womp, the Kings just lost 7-4 with two goals on an open net)

Not only is "it" not needed, "being a fan" is pervasive to a detrimental extent. "posio-paths" are everywhere and are basically the default. In order to say something correct, make a correction, or present a counter-factual you have to layer your tone with a thousand feel-goodism's and niceties.

Otherwise you just get labeled as a hater, a contrarian, or worse - a critic. It's exhausting. People confuse being direct, dry, or taking a level-tone with dispassion, disinterest, or again being a "hater."

I would even say I've seen so many people being "super excited" about something that it's the opposite of contagious for me, it causes me to doubt how knowledgeable or sincere they are about the subject (whether it's a general topic or even a person).

We have too much fake-niceness, and we are over-enthused quite often on things that turn out to be nothing, at least in the U.S. We don't need more of it, at least IMO.

> We have too much fake-niceness, and we are over-enthused quite often on things that turn out to be nothing, at least in the U.S. We don't need more of it, at least IMO.

I don't think the original article is advocating for "fake niceness". It's advocating for enthusiastic uplift. That spirit that tends to pervade small hobbyist communities, where everyone is iterating and building on everyone else. If you've been in the 3d printing space over the last decade or so, there's plenty of honest criticism and knowledgable discussion. But it's also infectiously enthusiastic and there's a sense of exploration and desire to see everyone* succeed that's very genuine. Things don't always succeed or work out, but it's pretty rare to encounter hard "that's stupid, you're stupid and you should feel bad" sort of commentary.

Compare this to the broader tech community as it appears in places like HN. Open any thread on someone's new project or experiment here and count the number of comments that are genuinely positive and encouraging vs the number that are nit-picking for the sake of nit-picking, dismissive and just generally unhappy or are outright actively tearing down the item in question. Even the ones that are "Oh this is nice, but hey you could do XYZ to improve it" very rarely have any follow up that submits the suggested improvements, even when the original item is an open source project that they clearly could submit improvements to. People love to talk about the shortcomings, but unlike "fans" rarely tend to put out the time and effort to make it better.

It's bad enough that my general approach to HN these days is to only read the articles and make an effort to avoid the comment threads or at a minimum make sure I've read the original link in its entirety and thought about my own opinions of it before heading into the comments. And when I find something in a project that I think could be improved, I make an effort to ensure that I'm putting proper effort into trying to improve it, either with a patch/fix or if I'm incapable of patching/fixing, as much detail and testing as I can document in order to have contributed more than just a drive by criticism.

Also, I'm not sure a "too much niceness", fake or otherwise, is the problem in the US right now.

>If you've been in the 3d printing space over the last decade or so, there's plenty of honest criticism and knowledgable discussion. But it's also infectiously enthusiastic and there's a sense of exploration and desire to see everyone* succeed that's very genuine. Things don't always succeed or work out, but it's pretty rare to encounter hard "that's stupid, you're stupid and you should feel bad" sort of commentary.

> And when I find something in a project that I think could be improved, I make an effort to ensure that I'm putting proper effort into trying to improve it, either with a patch/fix or if I'm incapable of patching/fixing, as much detail and testing as I can document in order to have contributed more than just a drive by criticism.

This is an amazing way of putting it / viewing it. In hindsight I feel like my comment was probably a bit misplaced.

Thanks for the response!

> It feels socially safe, easy, and destructive to be a critic.

It also feels very socially safe to be group of rabid fans.

A top-of-thread subthread complaining about critics on the topic of believing in people.

We didn’t last long.

There's a healthy way to be a critic, which is helping people find and enjoy works they didn't notice.

There are also unhealthy ways of being a fan, for example if you admire someone there's probably someone else you despise. It's much better to follow the title of the post and believe in people in general.

I imagine being a healthy critic is a skill, something personal to be worked on.

It’s just so easy to be critical and even if you have good intentions, being critical can take the wind out of a dreamers sails.

As a practicing musician of 2 decades I of course have opinions on what good music is and what isn't on multiple layers. So I will critique music (the thing) but not musicians (the people). Receiving good criticism by other musicians is really good way to get better, as they will notice things you wont — provided they are open for the type of music you're making.

However I noticed a peculiar thing. In every field you will find people who are really enthusiastic for the field without doing it themselves. Maybe we could call them "enthusiastic consumers". These are very often the people giving the harshest, most unfair, least constructive critiques for some reason and the closer your thing is to the thing they love the harsher they can become. To them consuming that thing is their identity, so which thing they consume is existentially important to then. To me music is much more about the making, and while listening about countless things. Musicians tend to be more open about what constitutes good mhsic than these enthusiasts.

As a former art student one important leason I have learned in countless group reviews is that criticism based purely on taste are utterly worthless. If a classical music nerd dislikes your noiserock piece purely because of taste that just tells you something about them. This is what the criticism of most entusiastic consumers looks like. Another thing I have learned is that people are usually correct something feels wrong to them if they are really going into the thing with open eyes and an open heart. But people totally suck at telling you how to fix it.

So my advice on how to deal with criticsm is:

1. Figure out the nature of the criticism and judge accordingly. Is it purely a matter of taste? Is the root cause of observation valid?

2. Most criticism can help you getting better or worse, which one depends a lot on how you deal with it. You can reframe criticism to not be about you, but about the thing you do (and try to do well!). In that case every valid point someone makes will now no longer be an attack on your person, but a chance to make your work even better

3. Do things for their own sake and you're somewhat immune to criticism. If you enjoy playing guitar, it should not matter to you that you suck while doing it. Everybody good sucked for a long time before they were good and many of the most innovative new developements were made by people who did not care they were "doing it wrong"

4. There is no single correct way to do a thing and thus there are always people who will hate your stuff for a various number of reasons. This means nothing unless they got a valid point be it in terms of craft or emotion.

5. In German there is the notion of "Wer macht hat recht", which very loosely translates to "those who do are in the right". Action beats opinion. Talking is cheap.

Thanks for posting this. I learn some about the topic as I am not very good receiving criticism.

Feeling good about shit all the time isn’t practical and it indicates a lack of individual, refined taste. Its ok to like things that you like and dislike things others like and one should be able to hold their own opinions without influence from the crowd.

Feeling good about things has nothing to do with liking or disliking something though. I dislike things about the Rust language and the larger ecosystem around it (things like async/await as the dominant concurrency model, or the separate and very different macro syntaxes), but I'm still a fan of seeing rust projects and things people do in and with Rust. If someone builds a database driver built on Tokio, no one (not eve me) benefits from me doing drive by "async/await is complex and annoying, you should have done this differently" criticism. I may think that, and I may not like a Tokio based driver. But I don't have to "feel bad" about it, and neither do the creators. Feeling bad about it won't make a non Tokio driver appear. Nor will just criticizing Tokio and Async/Await. For something different and better to appear, I have build enthusiasm for an alternative and I have to engage with the parts I do like. Spending a hour building the starts of a a non Tokio driver and giving it to other enthusiastic people would be a far more effective use of my time than spending an hour writing a take down of async/await and giving it to other like minded critics. The phrase "preaching to the choir" comes to mind, and too often these days I feel like criticism online is largely geared towards exactly that. Polemics for people who already agree with the author, about some thing that the author dislikes.

Chiming in to add Bierce:

CRITIC: n. A man who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.

Lots of Trump fans out there.

It's so hard to to believe in people or have a positive opinion of them when much of my interactions are negative. Or when people who embody the opposite of goodness are promoted and have status. It's like we live in a society in which mediocrity, borderline sociopathy, and meanness are rewarded. Unless you're Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, but there is a huge middle where people who are competent, smart, and do the right things do not get the promotion or recognition they deserve or are entitled to. It's like you have to super-brilliant to have any hope , or just lucky. No room for the hard-working middle.

I feel this is a culture problem that can be localized on a per organization basis. If people are getting promoted for be douche bags you're working at the wrong organization. We feed sociopathy by our choices.

> It's so hard to to believe in people or have a positive opinion of them when much of my interactions are negative. Or when people who embody the opposite of goodness are promoted and have status. It's like we live in a society in which mediocrity, borderline sociopathy, and meanness are rewarded.

Which I think is why the original article has an important idea. We need to be fans more and encourage that as a way of thinking. If mediocrity and borderline sociopathy are rewarded by society at large, it must mean that mediocrity and borderline sociopathy are rewarded by society in the small. And sure enough, take a look around (and look at pop culture over the last couple decades) and you'll see that's true:

* American "Kitchen Nightmares" took what was an often genuinely heartfelt show about struggling restaurants in its UK incarnation and turned it into a circus side show complete with jeering at the freaks.

* Reality competition shows thrive on marketing terrible performances and smug take downs by Simon Cowell and his various low rent knockoffs.

* The Daily Show / John Oliver thrives on the sort of smug "I'm better than these obvious idiots, and wink wink you are too because you watch me and we know we're very smart" behavior that ironically also powers the Glenn Beck / Rush Limbaugh contingent on the other side of the spectrum.

* Trump himself made his own reality TV show where the entire premise was just firing people for not being sufficiently subservient.

* And remember things like "The Weakest Link"?

We've built a culture over the years, that has turned large swaths of the internet from small communities of fans and enthusiasts to large communities of "take down" artists and drive by clap backs a la twitter. We promote criticism and boarderline sociopathy on a daily basis and hold it up as an ideal to strive for, and turn to "You just can't handle the truth" whenever someone calls it out. Is it any wonder then that the people that are rising to the top in a world that promotes crab bucket mentality are the biggest and meanest crabs?

But if we don't work to be different in the small. If we don't try in our day to day efforts even when it's extremely difficult to do so, to be kind, positive, and enthusiastic, where do we expect that behavior to come from in our leaders and the people we promote? If "harsh truth" people who "say what they want" and "don't care about your feels" are the sort of people we lift up at the bottom, why do we expect it to be any different the higher up we go?

What we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert—himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt—the Divine Reason. Huxley preached a humility content to learn from Nature. But the new sceptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. Thus we should be wrong if we had said hastily that there is no humility typical of our time. The truth is that there is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it is practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

(quoted)

> But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether

Chesterton is just giving clever voice to the eternal prediction that the decline of traditional morals will produce a fundamental degeneration of humanity. T.H. Huxley, who had been dead for over ten years when Chesterton wrote this, was a wildly successful person, an eminent scientist, prolific author, and public figure. But these predictions are eternally about a coming collapse. It didn't matter that Chesterton's exemplar of the "new humility" had been one of the most shining examples of ambition and fruitful labor of the 19th century. He could still predict that Huxley's ideas would reduce the next generation to helpless ineffectualness. And even after three of Huxley's grandchildren became eminent public figures in the 20th century, there will be people who read this and find it a compelling prediction about the 21st century.

> Chesterton is just giving clever voice to the eternal prediction that the decline of traditional morals will produce a fundamental degeneration of humanity.

No.

(quoted)

We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact. But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post. But this which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and terrible sense true of all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old. It is the custom in passing romance and journalism to talk of men suffering under old tyrannies. But, as a fact, men have almost always suffered under new tyrannies; under tyrannies that had been public liberties hardly twenty years before. Thus England went mad with joy over the patriotic monarchy of Elizabeth; and then (almost immediately afterwards) went mad with rage in the trap of the tyranny of Charles the First. So, again, in France the monarchy became intolerable, not just after it had been tolerated, but just after it had been adored. The son of Louis the well-beloved was Louis the guillotined. So in the same way in England in the nineteenth century the Radical manufacturer was entirely trusted as a mere tribune of the people, until suddenly we heard the cry of the Socialist that he was a tyrant eating the people like bread. So again, we have almost up to the last instant trusted the newspapers as organs of public opinion. Just recently some of us have seen (not slowly, but with a start) that they are obviously nothing of the kind. They are, by the nature of the case, the hobbies of a few rich men. We have not any need to rebel against antiquity; we have to rebel against novelty. It is the new rulers, the capitalist or the editor, who really hold up the modern world. There is no fear that a modern king will attempt to override the constitution; it is more likely that he will ignore the constitution and work behind its back; he will take no advantage of his kingly power; it is more likely that he will take advantage of his kingly powerlessness, of the fact that he is free from criticism and publicity. For the king is the most private person of our time. It will not be necessary for any one to fight again against the proposal of a censorship of the press. We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press.

---

The pagans had always adored purity: Athena, Artemis, Vesta. It was when the virgin martyrs began defiantly to practice purity that they rent them with wild beasts, and rolled them on red-hot coals. The world had always loved the notion of the poor man uppermost; it can be proved by every legend from Cinderella to Whittington, by every poem from the Magnificat to the Marseillaise. The kings went mad against France not because she idealized this ideal, but because she realized it. Joseph of Austria and Catherine of Russia quite agreed that the people should rule; what horrified them was that the people did. The French Revolution, therefore, is the type of all true revolutions, because its ideal is as old as the Old Adam, but its fulfilment almost as fresh, as miraculous, and as new as the New Jerusalem.

This seems like Chesterton to me. Good writer, but I take exception to his world view. We should simply doubt that which is warranted to doubt and be confident in that which warrants confidence. If modern people doubt truths more than people used to, perhaps its because those so-called truths aren't so obvious as some people would have you believe.

"But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether."

This just fundamentally misunderstands what aims are. They can neither be doubted or correct. I can doubt empirically, or epistemologically, but I can't doubt that I want to eat a doughnut or that I want to be healthy or that I want a world with less cruelty in it. It's a waste of time and energy to doubt these things, although I can try to line up all my desires and figure out how they stack up with one another when I try to make plans, the efficacy of which is in the realm of the believable. I can look at other people's actions, try to determine their desires, and decide whether to assist them or interfere with them or fight them, but when I do this its not a cosmic battle about truths. Its just two people acting out on their desires in a shared world.

> I can't doubt that I want to eat a doughnut or that I want to be healthy or that I want a world with less cruelty in it.

The common case of the smoker (or someone around them) doubting whether they "really" want to quit cigarettes or not, after claiming they do want to quit and will quit, and then failing to do so, shows this is coherent though. It's just not applicable to the two examples you gave, because that's not what is meant.

Having quit nicotine, I can say that it's simply a matter of wanting to quit. I do love smoking still, and have a pipe or a cigar roughly every two weeks, but my half-a-tin of 12mg nicotine pouches a day habit is gone.

I miss it, and I didn't want to quit, but it was financially a little silly and that much nicotine causes health effects. You can desire to stop something but also not want to. It seems fair to allow both to be true.

“Just say ‘no.’”

Where have I heard that, before?

In my experience, compulsive people can often be totally unable to quit; no matter how hard they want to.

That’s one reason that I don’t dis fat people (I could stand to lose some weight, myself, and I’m working on it).

Drugs like Ozempic, have been making big differences, here, as they attack that reptile-brain compulsion that makes quitting so difficult.

I think its better to say that people can have multiple, competing, desires, especially at different time scales. Nothing about the human condition as I can understand it makes this unreasonable, since I don't subscribe really to the idea that people really are a singular, coherent, entity.

The thing that makes you different from the beasts is that you believe that there is a way things ought to be, regardless of how they are. You can view your desire to eat a doughnut separate from your prescriptive belief of whether you ought to eat the donut. You can beliefe that you ought not to eat the donut even though you want to, you can beleive that you ought to eat the donut even if you don't want to. You can even believe that you ought not hold any beliefs regarding what you ought to eat based on your desires to eat it.

Accepting that prescriptive beliefs exists, the claim by Chesterton is quite simply factual. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness.

The question as to what prescriptive beliefs we ought to hold is another matter, and one Chesterton has dealt with masterfully.

(quoted)

When I had written this down, I felt once again the presence of something else in the discussion: as a man hears a church bell above the sound of the street. Something seemed to be saying, "My ideal at least is fixed; for it was fixed before the foundations of the world. My vision of perfection assuredly cannot be altered; for it is called Eden. You may alter the place to which you are going; but you cannot alter the place from which you have come. To the orthodox there must always be a case for revolution; for in the hearts of men God has been put under the feet of Satan. In the upper world hell once rebelled against heaven. But in this world heaven is rebelling against hell. For the orthodox there can always be a revolution; for a revolution is a restoration. At any instant you may strike a blow for the perfection which no man has seen since Adam. No unchanging custom, no changing evolution can make the original good any thing but good. Man may have had concubines as long as cows have had horns: still they are not a part of him if they are sinful. Men may have been under oppression ever since fish were under water; still they ought not to be, if oppression is sinful. The chain may seem as natural to the slave, or the paint to the harlot, as does the plume to the bird or the burrow to the fox; still they are not, if they are sinful. I lift my prehistoric legend to defy all your history. Your vision is not merely a fixture: it is a fact." I paused to note the new coincidence of Christianity: but I passed on.

I just don't think prescriptive beliefs exist.

I think the best thing I get out of social media such as Mastodon and Bluesky is finding people who get enthusiastic about me -- when somebody discovers my profile and then I see they read everything I've posted in the last month and they favorite 20% of it, I know I have a fan.

I know those folks exist on HN but HNers are more reserved and I only find out about them when they stand up for me against the haters.

I stand with Houle

I am a fan of both of you, and now a have to find his writing.

The simple act of voicing the true recognition of brilliance.

I am going to ...

I had a manager and mentor who was a fan of me. It felt amazing having someone who is actually rooting for you. Him cheering me on and giving me constructive feedback and building me up in a way no one did before that has fundamentally changed my professional and private personality, hopefully in a good way.

I had too, and it was the only reason I was with that company.

This sort of situation doesn't occur often, at least in my experience, but is so good when it does.

Always be a mentor as if your own life and community depend on it.

Because they do.

“Having more people say, “We just want to make sure you can do your magic,” is what the world needs.“

Amen to that!

I’ve found early enthusiasm hard to come by. It really seems to pick up once others are onboard. But the initial 1-2 people make all the difference.

This is true.

I have a fairly senior presence, in an organization that I participate in, and my voice often carries a bit of extra weight (just like me).

I have found that opening my mouth, early in a silent meeting, will often “break the ice,” and get things flowing. I don’t have to say anything particularly earth-shattering. Just the talking, is all that is necessary.

This is a trick for event planning btw. Put up a “hey anyone wanna go to x?” Crickets. Quietly one on one find two or three people and then say “hey the four of us are doing x anyone else want in?” works a lot better. Most people want to know something is gonna succeed and avoid the risk of failure.

Also, people that don't have an adversarial bone in their body. They just want everyone to be happy and succeed.

A lot of people reckon that applies to them, but the real deal is pretty scarce in my experience.

Always find people like that inspiring.

I am not competitive. That’s a deliberate stance, and comes as a result of my life experiences (long story, get your hanky).

In order to “win,” someone else needs to “lose.”

That’s not something that I am personally comfortable with, but I totally understand that it’s not reasonable to expect others, to have the same attitude.

I’m also quite capable of preventing others from treating my attitude as “weakness,” and trying to make me the “loser.”

Kindness is not weakness.

> In order to “win,” someone else needs to “lose.”

Only in zero sum. I don't think many things are really zero sum. The reason why both parties say thank you in a financial transaction is because the first party values the thing more than the money and the other party values the money more than the thing. Win-win.

I prefer winning as a team. I also like significantly contributing to that, but never at someone else's expense. I am the first to say "we did this" vs "i did this."

I worked for a Japanese company, and they explicitly discouraged individual recognition. It was always the team; even if one person was the keystone.

I had a boss that authored a book on how to use some of our software. It was a good book, and he busted his ass, writing it (alone).

His bosses made him completely remove any mention of his name.

I feel that was going a bit too far, but I understand why.

They used to say "The nail that sticks up, gets hammered down."

The Japanese have the strongest teams I've ever seen, but it is difficult to get individual recognition.

I like people like that too, but surely the world and more narrowly the human experience also benefit from having people that are competitive or even disagreeable?

Mostly, yes, but I think at its core, the world benefits from honesty more than out right agreeable- or disagreeableness. We should speak up when we feel the need to agree or disagree, but we shouldn't play devil's advocate for the sake of it.

We absolutely should play devil's advocate. It is the attempt to think about a situation from a different angle and usually is understood to be such. Not an attack; a shake up to see if the structure stands to opposition.

That's a purpose beyond "for the sake of it"...

You can be competitive and supportive of your enemies.

I'm sure it's a lot easier if you're a rich woman living in NYC.

This woman founded Creative Mornings, which has been one of my most well-respected and beloved quasi-centralised organizations (I tend to have a bias for loving humane decentralized/horizontal orgs/movements, and Creative Mornings struck a delightful balance between order and chaos)

Very glad to see an active chapter near me - sounds awesome and I plan on checking it out.

Thought this was the Swiss Miss (hot chocolate powder) website for a second

Me too! I was like, what a weird timeline - wonder what a hot chocolate company leadership has to say in these “interesting” times.

Good read though, thanks to OP for sharing!

You can be a fan of that too if you want

Reminds me of the Pygmalion effect [0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect

I've always been a fan of enthusiasm. I find many people react badly to it, though; especially in tech. We have a lot of curmudgeons.

We've become jaded by phony enthusiasm or people hijacking it for their own purposes. I agree it's bad, but this industry does seem to run on the enthusiasm of naive 20-40 year olds, the end result of that is many jaded 40+ year old curmudgeons.

What I have encountered, is a bit different.

There’s a fetching shade of gray, to my well-coiffed pompadour, and I find many younger folks are almost immediately hostile, before I’ve even had a chance to give them a reason to be.

Speaking only for myself, I am very enthusiastic about all kinds of things, and devote a great deal of effort towards helping folks out. There’s reasons for that, which is a story for another time. Suffice it to say that I’ve seen darker times, and that can add a lot of shine, to what others take for granted.

That said, I’ve also seen quite a bit of life, and have learned where a lot of the claymores are planted, so some of that “helping folks out,” is mentioning things like “Are you sure you want to pet that rattling snake?”.

Apparently,many people are. I once was in an interview with an aquired company. ( We were aquired... I thanked the founders and only said a few words about the opportunity we had... )

Months later, I was taking to one of he founders, and he said that someone on the board of directors was sitting behind me. He said "keep THAT guy. He has more enthusiasm than the entire rest of your company."

Thanks Richard K and Jim V.

Sometimes that comes with most of the things you were enthusiastic for ending up far from fulfilling their promise.

I think it's the curse of being online. Most IRL based social groups in every culture I've been in subconsciously filter out cynics. These folks often feel disenfranchised IRL and congregate online instead. Their presence crowds out non-cynics, who then leave. These online communities then reorganize around cynical baselines.

Apparently Threads had made a decision earlier on to deprioritize negative and charged political topics because of Meta's belief in this negative flywheel.

(I'd rather not go into a discussion about Meta itself in replies here because I find those discussions on HN to be highly unproductive, and I won't respond to comments regarding them.)

EDIT: r/Coronavirus on Reddit was a great place to observe evidence of this flywheel. My partner started using it when she felt really depressed during lockdown restrictions. All the content on the sub was about how the world was irreparably broken and how society as we know it was about to come to an end. Commenters were clamoring for humanity to be cleansed. Then news of the vaccines came out. At first nobody on the sub believed it would work. But when efficacy numbers were released, the tone of the sub changed quickly and the sub started having a lot fewer people posting to it.

Huh, I was going to post the opposite. We have enough enthusiasm and True Believers in tech work, especially in the USA where even PR pieces read "We are so excited to announce..."

We may or may not have enough critics/curmudgeons, but whether they are there or not, they certainly don't seem to rise into leadership roles where they can use their discernment and wisdom to steer better and to stop terrible projects. I know in my company, the top ranks are all filed with beaming excitement and positivity about everything, and everything we are doing is great, and we are so confident in this, and excited about that...

I don’t consider that “real” enthusiasm, though.

It’s “cargo-cult enthusiasm,” where they believe that keeping an almost manic level of energy will magically transcend the bourgeoisie prison of reality, and poop out rainbow unicorn turds.

They often seem to me to be two sides of the same coin: fanaticism becomes curmudgeonly with what does not coincide with your fanaticism.

This was wonderful. The choice to be a fan is within us all.

Linked article above broken for me; this one works:

https://creativemornings.com/blog/a-love-letter-to-the-peopl...

I love the take on fandom, this is how I would want it. While this article portrays fandom as a pure, innocent and positive force, my experience shows it can have a darker side. In places like South India, fandom often evolves: fandom becomes factions, factions become gangs, gangs become political groups, and political groups become dynasties or kingdoms. This cycle limits leadership diversity and negatively impact governance and society. IMHO fandom isn’t always innocent; it can wield significant social and political influence, for better or worse. Note: written with gpt4o

These are two very different things here, I think. You're talking about celebrity and franchise fandom which is parasocial and exists because they are actively influencing you to become their fan. They're already famous or have made it.

What the article talks about is much more grounded – being excited about other people you know and believing in them. This "fandom" doesn't necessarily originate from admiration of achievements but from sincere belief. You're becoming a fan while they're just being themselves.

> Note: written with gpt4o

Good points, but I hope you had your own thoughts, and wrote your own words. And that this tacked on at the end was a joke.

What a beautiful tribute to the power of enthusiasm and belief in others

And the literal fountain of acknowledgment.

You can do a lot with a little enthusiasm, way to go Swiss Miss :)

so wholesome. what a great day to have found this blog.

Shared with my team. Lovely read.

Which people? It matters.

I am a fan.

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