[some_furry]

> Why?

Because promoting ESR's work to people has the unfortunate side-effect of elevating ESR's prestige.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15513086 for more on why ESR is bad.

> Do you have some problem with his advice on how to ask questions[1]?

No, I think he's a bad person and we do our entire industry a disservice by continuing to elevate his status.

Find better heroes, should you even want heroes.

[derefr]

It does our industry an even-greater disservice to base prestige on great works rather than on character. We can get past the halo effect, if we try.

If I recall, there's a Buddhist proverb, where a pig is held up as a good example of enlightenment: it will happily pick truffles out of mud, taking the truffle and leaving the mud behind. It doesn't develop an opinion on the mud in the process; the truffle grew from the mud, but the mud isn't relevant to the truffle. It doesn't venerate/privilege/respect the mud—but nor does it find it disgusting. It's just mud. Irrelevant. Not food. The truffle, clean of mud, stands on its own. The truffle is a necessary part of a creature's mental model, insofar as it experiences hunger; but the mud is not.

[fouric]

You think the side-effect of elevating ESR's status outweighs the value of the ideas themselves?

[some_furry]

It does. Especially since there are a lot of hackers in the world who can articulate the same ideas better and with less racism.