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mrpsbrk's comments

mrpsbrk | 9 years ago | on: Crockford

Totally agreed. Also feel this feeling of "moral superiority" is at play even when the complainers are not in a position to exert any power -- otherwise worthless people throwing mud just to feel worthy. That probably counts as practice for when they can get the upper hand.

mrpsbrk | 9 years ago | on: Crockford

"It's not that power corrupts, but that power attracts the corruptible", said mr. Frank Herbert...

mrpsbrk | 9 years ago | on: Crockford

A point i didn't see mentioned is that the talk about "having the balls" is all about the fear-of-monads being overblown and unjustified, and in this context making unfunny jokes about overblown and unjustified bravado conveys a point -- and does so in a way that no amount of explaining that "it's not so bad really" would. I actually think saying he was being exclusionary in this instance is downright bad faith.

mrpsbrk | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: How to avoid being arrogant?

Not exactly answering the question, but: Many times "You're so arrogant!" is just a way to stop an argument. It is a way to derail the topic into some unmeasurable subjective trait. And some times the part doing the accusation is the one who does not want to negotiate.

mrpsbrk | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: How to avoid being arrogant?

Regarding (3) -- To grasp someone else's approach or point of view is inherently difficult. Thus we are all arrogant by default.

Even though every person has their own way of expressing this, i believe in this sense arrogance is pretty much a given, and overcoming it to some level (which is never completely) is the challenge. In other words, you don't become arrogant, you're born this way, but you can change.

To listen is something you can learn. You can practice. It might not seem so at first sight.

mrpsbrk | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: How do I stop comparing myself to others?

Dance.

I'm serious. In dancing your bodily similarities and dissimilarities to your partner are in your face all the time, the fitting of them is (in a way) all there is to dancing. You both have to be aware of it and not fight it, you have to work with it. You have to learn to let the differences flow (so it is not enough to learn the choreography, you need to be able to enjoy the dance).

Words do not make justice to the experience.

2ยข

mrpsbrk | 12 years ago | on: Facebook without the News Feed

I think the whole issue is that Facebook prioritizes the "addictive" nature of the feed. That is, their number 1 metric is clicking, so they have a very very narrow idea of what "engagement" means. But, as far as i see it, that is unavoidable...

mrpsbrk | 13 years ago | on: The Simple Truth (2008)

To me, it all his arguments about "truth" boil down to "I'm into AI and don't bother me with Sociology", which is a terrible shame once he actually tries going into sociology. Since, you know, his own advice of following who has done the research is contradicted here. All he does is dismissing every argument he does not like as "discussing politics". Which is fine if you are an AI researcher, but very very poor advice to the other 99.999% of the world's population.

mrpsbrk | 13 years ago | on: Markdown: The Spec - it's coming and it's full of personalities

We all have pandoc, and <3, and we can all choose between RST and Markdown, and we all know RST is a better spec (as in, there is one), but we keep on coming back to MD.

I suspect the reason is that MD does conform to the end-to-end principle. Having a spec is, itself, putting too much intelligence in the pipes. Not having a spec leaves all the intelligence into the ends: The person who's writing (which is very bad at following rules and specs) and the parser program (which can be as elaborate as needed).

That is why no spec (and Gruber's attitude) is a feature.

mrpsbrk | 13 years ago | on: The innovations of Internet Explorer

Having been involved in something like web development around 99-2001, then living under a rock for some years, then coming back around the time mozilla "phoenix" thing started rolling, i remember how odd it sounded that people would hate IE and love the others, it was exactly the opposite of my expectations...

mrpsbrk | 13 years ago | on: Philosopher Flusser about 2 kinds of complexity

Structural complexity (the internals) against functional complexity (the use) reminds me that worse is better because overengineering selects orthogonality into unimportant problem-dimensions, that is tends to enhance the structure while hindering the use.
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