https://youtu.be/dZQ7x0-MZcI?t=8m33s 'our minds are like theaters. (...) we treat our beliefs as reality. that is the worst thing about human beings. and these theaters are tiny; we can only think of a few things at once, it's hard for us to take in larger things. (...) we grow up in whatever culture we were born into. (...) our conclusions tend to be societal—that's a disaster!'
https://youtu.be/dZQ7x0-MZcI?t=57m9s 'because our brains want to believe, rather than think, these can turn into something like a religion. the reason we don't want to come up with blind belief: there's always more, and what it is, is something that we can't imagine. so when we give a name to something, we (...) hurt our ability to think more about it, because it already has a set of properties, it already is the thing the word denotes.' (beautifully illustrated in the video)
https://youtu.be/dZQ7x0-MZcI?t=60m 'school is the best thing ever invented to keep you from thinking about something important for more than a few minutes'
perhaps unsurprisingly, when i explained this on here two days ago, it got downvoted to -2, because hn's comment section is kind of the intellectual antithesis of alan kay: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39586470
i keep being optimistic but you people make me so sad
Where are todays rocks?
This is so very true.
I am not a hippy, but I can't immediately thing of a better phrase than the immense toxic "negative energy" of HN comments.
And yet, when I say this to people outside of HN, they tend to react with astonishment. "But it's my favourite place online! I love it! I learn so much!" etc.
I don't think the site even realises, but its negative responses to this (deeply unwise and ill-considered) "Ask HN" question changed the direction of what was the most innovative company in the Linux space: