Comment by tptacek
12 years ago
Oh, interesting. It's the middlebrow dismissal. I thought it had become an endangered species, but here it is, stepping right out into a crowded thread and trying to take out Rob Pike of all people. Good show!
12 years ago
Oh, interesting. It's the middlebrow dismissal. I thought it had become an endangered species, but here it is, stepping right out into a crowded thread and trying to take out Rob Pike of all people. Good show!
Of course pg hates the "middle brow" dismissal. Part of his schtick is Malcolm Gladwell style 'intellectual porn' essays that ignore facts and complexity to paint an aesthetically pleasing (but false) narrative to people who are not subject experts. At this stage I'm not sure if PG does it deliberately like Gladwell admitted doing. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he does it inadvertently by writing about topics where he has no knowledge of previous study, coupled with a large ego born of being rich and constantly surrounded by sycophants trying to get funding.
The middle brow dismissal is apt/damaging in these situations because it saves everybody a lot of time by quickly demonstrating that the author ignored those pesky real world facts and complexities that spoilt the ideological narrative.
It's too bad The Master has departed, I'm going to miss his words being quoted to "settle any possible HN argument" in the words of this great comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1716028. Also going to miss all the pearl clutching about "this comment/thread is horrible", okay maybe not. I assume work was never finished on the Lisp AI that would block comments he disagrees with, any of the mods still working on that?