[_8j50]

You would like to find a community where cynicism is banned? I think your perspective is flawed. In tech, being correct or incorrect matters much more than optimism or cynicism. The best optimism is the kind that can withstand critical thinking.

When someone says "that's not possible" it's a challenge for you to prove otherwise not a discouragement to give up. Adversarial thinking is a fundamental component of critical thinking.

It's not others' sentiment that is toxic, it is your lack of perspective and willingness to subject your views and convictions to negative, critical and adversarial opposition and come out unscathed because not only is you optimism that strong, it is correct (hopefully).

It's like those people on sharktank that get wound up over Kevin O'Leary. I mean, he does lack tact and manners but that aside they should have anticipated his cynical and critical response and prepared a counter argument every single time. At worst their idea sounds better to other sharks and the tv audience, at best you can convince him by showing he can be wrong and you do know more than him and your confidence is not founded in wishful thinking but in facts, reason and reality.

In the end my friend, you can only have one priority and your success should be that priority. Thinking wishful thinking and unfounded and unquestioned optimism will get you there is a fool's errand in my opinion.

[muzani]

Sam Altman wrote a post on this and HN: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/new-hacker-news-guideline

"Critical thinking is good; shallow cynicism, on the other hand, adds nothing of value to the community. It is unpleasant to read and detracts from actual work. If you have something important but negative to say, that’s fine, but say it in a respectful way.

Negativity isn’t the problem–gratuitous negativity is. By that we mean negativity that adds nothing of substance to a comment. This includes all forms of meanness."

[_8j50]

Well I don't see what part of my post disagrees with that. You don't need to lack manners or be unconstructive to offer critical or adversarial input. negativity without merit is hostility with extra steps. That said, if negative comments lack substance, I think it should be easy to call them out and discredit them.

[muzani]

You seem to be addressing a different type of cynicism. Sam's post appears to be talking about the exact same thing as OP, but articulated better.

The problem OP speaks of is probably more accurately stated as "gratituous negativity". Not simply being critical, adversarial, or negative, but indulging in it. When people find satisfaction is seeing others fail, it biases discussions towards false negatives.

HN tried to make gratituous negativity bannable. I don't know how that turned out but it's not in the guidelines anymore.