Yeah, enumerating why something sucks is trivial. Anyone can do that about anything. Yet for some reason it's tempting to do it. Maybe because it makes us feel like a critic?
For some reason it takes more effort to see the positives in something or someone, even ourselves.
It's often a good practice to stop and think of the positives of something. Maybe it's not so obvious. Why did someone decide to build it this way? They probably are well aware of the downsides (after all, they're the one who built it) yet they saw some upsides. They must have thought the upsides outweighed the downsides. What were they? The harder that question is to answer, I think the more useful the practice is.
Internet (and HN) discourse would be a lot better if we did more of that.
I know it's a challenge for me -- it's really easy to get stuck in a negative thought loop, especially while spending so much time on social media (incl Twitter, Reddit, and HN) where we like to award ourselves points for being critical.
This was actually explored in this Cracked article [0] which I heard about on the Cracked Podcast. Basically, being cynical and negative is one of the easiest ways of appearing smart because you don't need to back up any of your assertions and people are less likely to be called out for shitting on something.
I don't see how being negative allow one to not back anything, I can say something sucks, but I'd have to explain why. And people will get called for shitting on something, see the GP comment.
I'd even say you're less likely to be called out for being negative without giving an explanation than being positive without giving an explanation.
Though it's usually easier to explain why something sucks than why something is great, since a negative explanation has only to find which part don't work, rather than explaining why something is globally good.
This isn't about being negative or critical. It's about being negative all the time. It's about labelling yourself as cynical and making all of your schtick be about that negativity.
I see plenty of well-thought out criticism on hacker news and reddit. I see excellent deconstructions and refutations which show excellent balance and are clearly the work of a lot of thought and rumination. This isn't about those posts.
The 'cynical is an easy way to appear smart' comment will apply most to daily conversation and low-effort drive-by comments on forums. In an everyday example, think about how people will make a joke or comment about how they dislike certain bands or pieces of technology. Do they always follow up with a bullet pointed list of what it is that they found disagreeable? No. I mean, sometimes, but if I were to take a clicker with me throughout my day and count every time someone made a casual negative comment, it would be higher than those presented with backing evidence, justification or even explanation. So to counter this comment:
>I don't see how being negative allow one to not back anything, I can say something sucks, but I'd have to explain why.
I disagree. You absolutely don't have to say why something sucks and most people don't most of the time.
But this is ok, though, because people are mostly just expressing their opinion. There may be some signalling that you have a better taste in music or that you have a more refined taste in technology, but most people won't even consciously register that that is the intent that you are trying to signal. So I'd say that this covers this:
>I'd even say you're less likely to be called out for being negative without giving an explanation than being positive without giving an explanation.
I will agree with you if the comment is negative and controversial but most of the time people are negative, it passes most people's internal 'controversiality test', it doesn't get challenged and nothing further happens.
>And people will get called for shitting on something, see the GP comment.
They will. Sometimes. However, we're not talking here about nobody ever being called out for being overly negative. We're talking about how overall it is easier to appear to be coming from a place of authority by taking a negative stand point.
Hacker News is rife with this. A new technology is posted and the first things that will be commented will be picking holes in it, finding obvious flaws, decrying or otherwise.
Statistically, this would seem to be fine and you're likely to be on the winning side of history most of the time. New stuff is more likely to be either undeveloped or unstable, ignore or duplicate work or be so forward looking that it isn't viable in the near term. However, this then also becomes the intellectually lazy stance to take. 'This is probably going to be bad, so let's find all the flaws first and then we can call it a day'. You will see many comments which will include lots of technical flaws without themselves saying what experience their criticism is based on. And the cost would appear to be minor: some things that become good and viable ideas eventually get shot down, but so what? If they become good then that person can just change their mind and no harm no foul.
Overall, this means that the 'cynical' mindset appears to be a stable one, one that means that you're right more often than you're wrong and one that means that you can appear to be talking from a position of authority without actually having to back that up.
So, sure, I see what you mean to an extent, but I think your point grossly misses the point of what my post (and indeed the two parents) were really getting at.
For some reason it takes more effort to see the positives in something or someone, even ourselves.
It's often a good practice to stop and think of the positives of something. Maybe it's not so obvious. Why did someone decide to build it this way? They probably are well aware of the downsides (after all, they're the one who built it) yet they saw some upsides. They must have thought the upsides outweighed the downsides. What were they? The harder that question is to answer, I think the more useful the practice is.
Internet (and HN) discourse would be a lot better if we did more of that.
I know it's a challenge for me -- it's really easy to get stuck in a negative thought loop, especially while spending so much time on social media (incl Twitter, Reddit, and HN) where we like to award ourselves points for being critical.