Wouldn’t a constructive comment be more useful than attacking an educated academic making an observation?

That they are educated has nothing to do with whether they are right or their points are useful broadly. It's a dramatic story from someone who themselves thinks they are more useful than they are.

A little tongue-in-cheek call out of the irony isn't necessarily an attack.

Bullshit jobs are an interesting phenomenon and I enjoyed the article. I also chuckled at the parent comment.

It doesn't have to be taken very seriously.

You’ve employed some sort of inverse ad hominem here. Credentials don’t mean we should take someone seriously. Their words should stand for themselves.

> Credentials don’t mean we should take someone seriously.

This is a level of cognitive dissonance I’m not prepared to commit to arguing against. I’m not capable of issuing the bar to every lawyer I require the services of, nor the board to every presumed doctor, nor a thesis defense to every academic.

Credentials aren’t perfect, but they are superior to the time required for everyone to judge everything on their own. For example, almost all scientists agree that climate change is human caused. Do I spend my time digging through climate data, verifying this? No. I rely on the expertise of experts.

You've just touched on why it's so hard to get a job in tech. As a culture, we've taken an attitude that credentials don't matter, and no matter what our past achievements are, we've got to prove ourselves over and over again. Maybe credentials should matter.

This makes sense for hiring a human. It doesn’t make sense for evaluating what they say in a general context. Credentials are fairly useless next to consensus for evaluating a given statement.

Credenials have use; just not in conversation.

An "inverse ad hominem" is called an appeal to authority[0]. I don't think gp was insinuating that the author's points were true because they are an academic, though. Only suggesting that they not be dismissed out of hand, and lobbying for more insightful commentary on hn.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

Wouldn't independent thought be more useful than proppping up some idea based on the credentials of the person who holds it?

You make a good and valid point. But I think I'm just refuting his/her authority, not establishing my own. Also, there's so much pushing and shoving lately it's hard not to get caught up in it. Lately HN has a very policed feel to it. I think I'm entitled to be honest about how I feel. (We all should.)

In this particular case, I felt the parent to my comment was basically invaliding the honest feedback of its own parent comment. To me, that comes off as "conversation shutdown" and that's somewhat unsettling.

As an aside, the more educated the arena, the worse conversation shutdown seems to feel to me. My city, for example, has a major upper-end university at its heart, and it's very on-edge right now. You can feel it, and people are talking about it (and fighting). It really affects me and seemingly the student population too. It's as if we're not allowed to be honest with each other, or audible about what's happening.

I'm also wondering if these forums are worth visiting these days, for the sake of conversation. It's hard to have open, honest discussions and sometimes I get frustrated and lash out. That's my own fault. (Moreover, I'm not sure if there's much constructive conversation to be had at the moment.)

Oh, the times we live in. Guess I'll log off and read some Dickens.

Even if the content of the article is entirely frivolous, isn't the existence of the discussion here proof that it has at the very least provided some entertainment?

And isn't discussing a potentially enormous societal inefficiency worth doing?

The article is quite provocative and could easily become a movement that eliminates thousands of jobs. Not at all pointless.

Calling for the elimination of the army and corporate lawyers is sophomoric, but probably deliberately so.

At first I found some humour in the irony, but the more I think about it the article isn't really pointless. The point of it is to point out the bullshit and get people talking about that. Not only does the article have a point, but it succeeds in its purpose quite well, we are, after all, talking about pointless jobs when we weren't really thinking about them much before.