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Re:Technologies I thought my son would never use by crubier on Monday April 12, 2021 @03:42AM (#26776879)
Wow, given the answers to that thread, it seems that the HN crowd has either no notion of conditional probabilities or that their “future is better” mindset is clouding their rational judgement.

The Lindy effect makes perfect sense has an heuristic to evaluate the remaining lifetime of technologies and species at a given point in time. It’s trivial to prove that it works for anything whose survival curve is convex.

Despite its apparent love for rationality (which I enjoy), it seems like a large part of HN is just as subjective as anyone and unable to accept things that don’t fit their mental model.

Re:Technologies I thought my son would never use by EliRivers on Monday April 12, 2021 @07:30AM (#26778198)
This field also seems to attract (or foster) a particular mindset that we might call "I am smart and hyper-rational", which then adds an additional set of blinkers and an enhanced ability to discard and ignore evidence, and an enhanced faith in one's own powers of deduction.

All people have that skill, of course, but this field seems to have more than its fair share of such.

Re:Technologies I thought my son would never use by blaser-waffle on Monday April 12, 2021 @12:50PM (#26781739)
> Wow, given the answers to that thread, it seems that the HN crowd has either no notion of conditional probabilities or that their “future is better” mindset is clouding their rational judgement.

I mean it's a tech entrepreneurial news aggregator on a tech incubator's website. Their whole raison d'etre is that "future is better buy my technology so I can get $$$" -- that's why this site exists.

Is it that it doesn't fit the mental model, or is it failing to read the room?

Re:Technologies I thought my son would never use by crubier on Monday April 12, 2021 @08:01PM (#26786626)
I believe that scientific rationality and engineering are part of YC’s DNA. This thread seems to prove I’m partly wrong indeed.
Re:Technologies I thought my son would never use by RHSman2 on Monday April 12, 2021 @03:53AM (#26776938)
Humans.
Re:Technologies I thought my son would never use by pkdpic_y9k on Monday April 12, 2021 @04:02AM (#26776983)
humans...