I've been in SWE in non-enterprise for decades and right now I'm seated with IT and operations because our two teams total less than 15. The amount of users who open tickets with "I have this issue" and then send a screenshot of some error in a browser with absolutely no context... Not even the full browser image, just a small snapshot of the completely meaningless error... As though they expect the IT support people to just know what they were doing? My twin todlers who haven't learned to speak yet are still somehow better at telling me what is wrong when something is wrong.
I'm always amazed at how friendly the IT support people manage these things.
What am I meant to think the experience of providing IT support shares with that of the bodhisattva nature, such that quoting the ever tiresome Watts at paragraph length is meant to aid understanding of either? It's just a lot of self-aggrandizing humblebragging nonsense, "look whose name I drop and you don't." Good grief, in this millennium having had an encounter with Watts doesn't even really qualify anyone as being familiar with the literature.
If one means to say it's not people's fault that computers suck to use and they shouldn't be blamed for exhibiting some emotional dismay when forced to do so anyway, then one may say so clearly and concisely, and without insisting on oneself even by implication.
Your reading comprehension seems to be lacking. Maybe you should read more books?
What I meant to convey, seven years ago, when writing that comment making the analogy to Zen Buddhism (as described by Alan Watts at least) was that there are those who come to understand technology and immediately go off and despise and belittle all the people who don’t understand it. There are also those who come to understand technology and can explain the relevant parts to those who don’t understand it, and help them handle technology to help them in their lives, without belittling them or even secretly/silently looking down on or feeling superior to them in any way. This dichotomy seemed to me to be very similar to what Alan Watts once described about Zen Buddhism.
But sure, you keep berating people for daring to quote something by someone so plebeian as Alan Watts, in a seven year old comment. I’m sure it will help you get along with people.
I have no idea what you are talking about. I certainly did not bring up Alan Watts again; you did. It also takes a lot of words to convey my thoughts accurately to someone who seems bent on misunderstanding them.
I restated them yesterday in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44757634, assuming at the time that if you found any error there you would say so. Here's another chance to explain where I've actually failed to grasp your thesis, rather than that I'm pointing out you have overdressed a triviality with pretentious overcomplication.
But it's less interesting to me that you brought up Alan Watts seven years ago than that you did so again yesterday. What do you need from him? Why bring him up if you don't want to talk about him? Or is it that no one is allowed to have an opinion that contradicts yours, including when that involves looking askance at needless reference to dead prophets?
> you have overdressed a triviality with pretentious overcomplication.
Well, possibly. What is interesting and subtle to some is obvious and clichéd to others. Much like how technology is mysterious and ineffable to some, but obvious and plain to others.
> But it's less interesting to me that you brought up Alan Watts seven years ago than that you did so again yesterday. What do you need from him? Why bring him up if you don't want to talk about him?
Now you’re being delusory. You brough up Alan Watts again, after I quoted him seven years ago. I simply responded to you.
> Or is it that no one is allowed to have an opinion that contradicts yours, including when that involves looking askance at needless reference to dead prophets?
I think that, outside purely literary criticism, criticizing a “needless” reference is useless unless the reference itself is incorrect in a way which invalidates the point which the reference is meant to illuminate.
I just checked again, and it does look like you posted [1] the relevant links. Are you seeing something different? My experience has been that people who use apps or scripts which purport to "improve" on HN's interface do sometimes run into such bugs.
I bring it up because I feel like if we're not working from similar sets of facts, that would be a reasonable explanation for what otherwise is seeming very much like you doing everything you possibly can to avoid acknowledging I called bullshit, on the naked appeal to authority to which you resorted, in order to try to lend your words a weight you lack the ability to give them yourself.
Three days ago, I did post the link to an seven-year-old post of mine, which in turn contained two links to other old posts of mine (ten and seven years old, respectively), where only the second of those linked posts contained a quote from Alan Watts. I do not count this as “bringing up” Alan Watts again three days ago.
Especially since I certainly did not use the quote of Alan Watts as a “naked appeal to authority”. Alan Watts does not describe anything in my point directly, and I do not, in the seven year old post, use the quote as an authoritative argument. It was merely an analogy. I claimed no knowledge of whether what Alan Watts describes is true or not. I used his description to explain what I thought was a similar phenomena to his description, nothing more.
> you doing everything you possibly can to avoid acknowledging I called bullshit, on the naked appeal to authority to which you resorted, in order to try to lend your words a weight you lack the ability to give them yourself.
I think you’re coming dangerously close, if not past, the forum guidelines, here. Please argue the point, not the person. I have asked you, repeatedly, why the Alan Watts quote is wrong, and why this fact would invalidate the point I was making. I even restated my point without referring to Alan Watts at all, to allow you to criticize it directly. But you have ignored all this, and your entire parent comment is instead about me, not about any point I was making, or even any point you are trying to make. Your entire argument seems to lack any point or counterpoint, and is instead only attacking me, personally.
