Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by stavros 152 days ago
I need a name for people who dismiss an entirely new and revolutionary class of technology without even trying it, so much so that they'll not even read about any new ideas that involve it.
3 comments

The HN guidelines include the term "curmudgeonly", which IMO is fair.
I've of course seen this note many times, but am inspired to seek the word's source. "Curmudgeon" has an interesting etymology --- unknown origin though a few possibilities and false starts:

<https://www.etymonline.com/word/curmudgeon>

we call them luddites
I'm not entirely sure that's a fair association. The Luddites weren't against technology in general, they were fighting for their livelihoods. There very well could be a fresh luddite movement centered around the use of AI tools, but I don't think "luddite" is the right term in this specific case.
No that was a labor issue, abusive factory owners got targeted.
And I need a name for shills that handwave the whole magic thinking in a blog post and conclude with "oh my claude code pointed out correlations between atlas shrugged and steve jobs" I'm so much smarter and ready for the future that's coming.

You are damn right I didn't try it out. I try things published in journals, vetted by peers, with clear explanations and instructions. On the other hand, when the tone is "It's All Magic Sprinkle(TM)" my pseudoscience alarm goes off.

Why are you reading this comment section? Nothing here has been peer reviewed. In fact, all my comments here are written by an LLM, because I can't be bothered arguing with closed-minded people.
> Nothing here has been peer reviewed

Oh but everything here is peer reviewed all right: it's sheep-reviewed. All sheep singing the same note. Where's the explosion of groundbreaking, uber-creative, world-shattering, reliable software from MagicDust LLMs that turn you into a 10x engineer? If anything, it generates a lot of noise. Tell you what: being 10x more productive with a statistical engine that will only bring out the most normal of normal solutions is the dream of the incompetent.