[DasIch]

Assuming this refers to Jennifer Morgan:

  * Germany has no prime minister, Germany has a chancellor.
  * The prime minister didn't appoint her, the cabinet did.
  * She is not head of climate policy, she is a special envoy for climate policy as part of the federal foreign office. This is a diplomatic position. That means such decisions are out of scope here entirely.

[_ph_]

Almost. The chancellor proposes the ministers, the president appoints them (never not followed the proposal of the chancellor). But she isn't heading a ministry, but reports to the foreign minister, which probably proposed her. She might or might not have the administrative rank as a minister, but she isn't a member of the cabinet.

[DasIch]

https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2022-02/klimabeauftr... for example mentions that the cabinet appointed her. Of course she isn't part of the cabinet but that is also not what I claimed.

[sveme]

Thanks for the clarifications, it's always shocking to see the amount of bullshit on hackernews (and reddit) when it comes to Germany, renewable/nuclear energy and the like. Makes me want to question everything else that is posted here where I know less of. Reminder of the Gell-Mann Amnesia.

[colechristensen]

There is a lot of overconfidence on HN for non-core subjects of the HN crowd.

Non-computer sciences and engineering comment sections are full of people speaking their guesses with authority.

[Archelaos]

> Non-computer sciences and engineering comment sections are full of people speaking their guesses with authority.

Any idea why this is the case? I wonder, because I would expect most engineers to have had a university education that taught them respect for the complexity of things around us in the first place. The realisation alone of how little one really knows about one's own subject after several years of study should make one very cautious when it comes to subjects one has only heard about in passing. Or is it simply that an overwhelming majority of modest people simply remain silent, and that is why a few uninformed who rush to judgement stick out?

[colechristensen]

As always, there's a webcomic for that: https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2475

Technical people with some knowledge of a topic will often find themselves on the peak of mount stupid (see comic).

In other words, knowing just enough to feel like you know a lot, not knowing enough to realize how much you don't know.

And... well university education often doesn't succeed in teaching people to estimate their knowledge on a subject appropriately. "I don't know but I want to know more!" isn't a very common outcome when a topic comes up. I think it really has to do with people who spend a lot of time being the most knowledgable one on most topics around getting used to just having an answer whether or not it's correct.

[DasIch]

There is a lot of overconfidence on core subjects also. Think of the rsync dropbox thing or any thread about kubernetes (I don't need it, so nobody does!)

[honkler]

tbh, you probably don't need kubernetes

[DasIch]

True but frequently people claim that it is bad and nobody needs it. Whereas I would say Kubernetes is a bit like a bucket excavator, you probably don't need it and a shovel would do you just fine but that doesn't mean nobody needs bucket excavators.

[sdoering]

I currently need (to know) it and would rather not.

Especially in a multi cluster, kustomize, istio, argocd, Jenkins on bare metal over multiple physical data centers.

To me with intermediate data dev ops knowledge this is quite a level of complexity.