HN “Why Not Simply”(hn.algolia.com)
hn.algolia.com
HN “Why Not Simply”
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22why%20not%20simply%22&sort=byPopularity&type=comment
123 comments
The thing is, in one's peer group it's reasonable to give advice like "just sign up for faster internet", because you know the other person and can judge whether they "just" need a nudge to go check out cable and fibre internet, whether they can afford an extra $50 a month, whether it might be available in their area, whether their housemates would let them just pay for the whole damn thing, whether they'd get $50 of subjective value from reliable and fast internet, and so on.
Giving out advice like that on the internet is interesting because it's almost a problem of being too friendly with strangers, to the point of acting like you know them personally.
As a counterpoint, I'm several hundred thousand dollars richer and got to have a fun year and a half living in SF, because a friend told me to "just apply to big US tech companies and get an E-3 visa", and it actually worked.
Giving out advice like that on the internet is interesting because it's almost a problem of being too friendly with strangers, to the point of acting like you know them personally.
As a counterpoint, I'm several hundred thousand dollars richer and got to have a fun year and a half living in SF, because a friend told me to "just apply to big US tech companies and get an E-3 visa", and it actually worked.
You may well have simplified/stated things more absolutely for the sake of this point, but...
I think in this very post you make the exact mistake you're talking about. You yourself even identify a simple lack of knowledge as a possible cause of these statements. Yet immediately afterwards you jump straight to essentially writing this hypothetical person off, instead of giving them the empathy and understanding that they may be overlooking something, or even entirely unaware of relevant information.
It's very easy for people to over-generalize from their own experience. It's all anybody has. Thinking hard is also relatively expensive, so we can need some prompting to actually do it. I think it's worth having some empathy and consideration for people who've stumbled into these unfortunate tendencies of ours.
I think in this very post you make the exact mistake you're talking about. You yourself even identify a simple lack of knowledge as a possible cause of these statements. Yet immediately afterwards you jump straight to essentially writing this hypothetical person off, instead of giving them the empathy and understanding that they may be overlooking something, or even entirely unaware of relevant information.
It's very easy for people to over-generalize from their own experience. It's all anybody has. Thinking hard is also relatively expensive, so we can need some prompting to actually do it. I think it's worth having some empathy and consideration for people who've stumbled into these unfortunate tendencies of ours.
We've joked a bit like this at work, too. I'm a game developer, currently working on our performance squad, and in a recent discussion about visual quality I, our graphics programmer, suggested we simply transition to ray tracing for everything.
Trying to get into game lighting was pretty hard because of the "Just simply" style of teaching. There is so much assumed knowledge, and it can be hard to figure out exactly what your missing knowledge is.
Oh my mesh looks weird in engine, must be.. normal maps, materials, mesh isn't manifold, scene lighting isn't set up, global illumination.. skybox.. light not emitter.. you have to bake stuff? Oh but not in this mode.. Just light the damn cube!
Oh my mesh looks weird in engine, must be.. normal maps, materials, mesh isn't manifold, scene lighting isn't set up, global illumination.. skybox.. light not emitter.. you have to bake stuff? Oh but not in this mode.. Just light the damn cube!
Oh man, this has been on my mind lately. I’ve been considering writing a thinkpiece on the word “just” in software tutorials, as in “just install Python” or the worst offender, “just NPM install --save-dev” as if that, with no other information, is enough, when what they’re really saying is “just do this and then all that other complicated stuff you should have learned already”. I think it’s fine to preface a tutorial with “this assumes you’ll know x, y, and z” but wow do I see a lot of “installation instructions: npm install --save-dev” where the reality is two days of troubleshooting to get a thing working.
I have thought of writing the same article! Someone needs to do it.
I actually did not a long while ago https://pawelurbanek.com/dangerous-word-slack
I’ve just read it; now I’m curious: are you still using your original solution?
At some point you mention false positives; how annoying are these in practice?
At some point you mention false positives; how annoying are these in practice?
Honestly, it was a theoretical idea I've had after having been a "just police" in my previous team. I can imagine that setting trigger to "just" would probably be an overkill in many cases. If I were to implement it now I'd start with "let's just" and "why not simply" is also a good candidate.
As someone who spent a day figuring out that I need to downgrade node to make node-scss work, ant that’s the only way forward to boot up a rails app,… yea.
Why not just switch to libsass-asm ;)
I’d switch to dart-sass but I also know not to touch Rails’ default webpacker config. I know not to put my fingers in the sharp internals of the webpack configuration.
Oh, that's a cool package. I find it strange that the least compatible implementation of sass is used by default by so many packages.
I never install Node without NVM since I had that problem.
This has been written: https://justsimply.dev
"Running NPM install --save-dev is left as an exercise to the reader".
Why Not Simply, collective action edition:
> If your solution to some problem relies on “If everyone would just…” then you do not have a solution. Everyone is not going to just. At not time in the history of the universe has everyone just, and they’re not going to start now.
(https://squareallworthy.tumblr.com/post/163790039847/everyon...)
> If your solution to some problem relies on “If everyone would just…” then you do not have a solution. Everyone is not going to just. At not time in the history of the universe has everyone just, and they’re not going to start now.
(https://squareallworthy.tumblr.com/post/163790039847/everyon...)
There is the negative equivalent, when people want to prevent you to do something. "Don't do this! Imagine if everybody would just do like you?". No, everyone is not going to just do like me, there's room for most people's actions.
But absolute moral standards do make sense, in a Kantian way.
In particular, imagine a world where everyone has to make some sort of sacrifice to avoid harming everyone (e.g. wearing a mask, not polluting, not overfishing etc).
If _most_ people make the sacrifice, you can have freeloaders not follow the rules and the world would still survive:
you can have a small number people not staying at home during the pandemic and still keep R<1.
you can have a small number of people polluting as much as they want and still stop global warming.
you can have a small number of boats fish where they shouldn't and still maintain not fully exhaust fish supplies.
Criticising those actors for doing something that doesn't work if everyone would do is perfectly valid (and it's correctly pointing out the reason why their actions are wrong).
"I'm not going to stay at home during the pandemic because I don't want to"
"Don't do this! Imagine if everybody would just do like you?"
"No, everyone is not going to just do like me, there's room for most people's actions"
In particular, imagine a world where everyone has to make some sort of sacrifice to avoid harming everyone (e.g. wearing a mask, not polluting, not overfishing etc).
If _most_ people make the sacrifice, you can have freeloaders not follow the rules and the world would still survive:
you can have a small number people not staying at home during the pandemic and still keep R<1.
you can have a small number of people polluting as much as they want and still stop global warming.
you can have a small number of boats fish where they shouldn't and still maintain not fully exhaust fish supplies.
Criticising those actors for doing something that doesn't work if everyone would do is perfectly valid (and it's correctly pointing out the reason why their actions are wrong).
"I'm not going to stay at home during the pandemic because I don't want to"
"Don't do this! Imagine if everybody would just do like you?"
"No, everyone is not going to just do like me, there's room for most people's actions"
That's basically just a restatement of the problem of the commons, and it can definitely be extremely problematic. There are countless examples around us where problems are created because people think themselves to be special.
I'm proud of both my contributions:
Article: Should social networks tell you if you’ve been following a fake account?
Me: Why not simply delete the fake account?
Article: Show HN: Webpage to PDF Microservice
Me: Why not simply press Ctrl+p and print to PDF
Edit: damn, now there are 3 contributions. I cannot post it here, it would cause infinite recursion.
Article: Should social networks tell you if you’ve been following a fake account?
Me: Why not simply delete the fake account?
Article: Show HN: Webpage to PDF Microservice
Me: Why not simply press Ctrl+p and print to PDF
Edit: damn, now there are 3 contributions. I cannot post it here, it would cause infinite recursion.
> Article: Show HN: Webpage to PDF Microservice
> Me: Why not simply press Ctrl+p and print to PDF
It would be fun observing you do that with my bookmark collection.
> Me: Why not simply press Ctrl+p and print to PDF
It would be fun observing you do that with my bookmark collection.
Not sure I follow your first comment. Why would deleting a fake account [edit: without also telling its followers] solve the issue? Most people probably would never notice that the account vanished and would go on believing whatever nonsense it was spreading.
More effective to delete the account before it spreads said nonsense to even more people?
and it then feeds the persecution complex of "see, BIGTECH is SILENCING all the voices THEY don't want YOU to READ!" :/
Not if we delete that account too....
[deleted]
You mean:
Why not simply delete that account too?
Why not simply delete that account too?
The practice reduces repeat offences.
Where follower-recruitment is expensive, it increases trust-attack costs.
Where account-creation is expensive (through verification, reputation, financial costs, validation tokens (e.g., SIMs, phone numbers, external vouchers)), it again increases attack costs.
Note that both remedies might be more effective than either separately: notify the reader of the false data (in the even the offending account hadn't already been removed) and remove the offending account.
Where follower-recruitment is expensive, it increases trust-attack costs.
Where account-creation is expensive (through verification, reputation, financial costs, validation tokens (e.g., SIMs, phone numbers, external vouchers)), it again increases attack costs.
Note that both remedies might be more effective than either separately: notify the reader of the false data (in the even the offending account hadn't already been removed) and remove the offending account.
the second one makes sense and is useful, non-obvious advice
the first one doesn’t add anything to the discussion. I would go as far as to say that it detracts from the discussion
I can’t imagine any of SIFT allow genuine impersonation in their ToCs and there isn’t really a middle ground punishment. If the account has been found to be fake, then they can’t just give it a warning and move on. The account was in flagrante from the beginning and will remain in flagrante in the future, and will have to be removed. I know for a fact that this is facebook’s policy
The “simply” implies that they wouldn’t have thought of this, and that it’s a be-all and end-all solution, when it’s very clearly the obvious solution and done alone would leave users unaware they’ve been duped
the first one doesn’t add anything to the discussion. I would go as far as to say that it detracts from the discussion
I can’t imagine any of SIFT allow genuine impersonation in their ToCs and there isn’t really a middle ground punishment. If the account has been found to be fake, then they can’t just give it a warning and move on. The account was in flagrante from the beginning and will remain in flagrante in the future, and will have to be removed. I know for a fact that this is facebook’s policy
The “simply” implies that they wouldn’t have thought of this, and that it’s a be-all and end-all solution, when it’s very clearly the obvious solution and done alone would leave users unaware they’ve been duped
To echo a comment I made a couple of months ago: "why not simply..." is a way of thinking out loud and providing an opening for someone more knowledgeable to explain what is being overlooked. It makes for interesting threads.
Agreed. I like the use of "why not" as a good faith question for this reason; it's a good segue into an interesting discussion, and there's also the off chance you'll actually produce a novel idea that inspires someone.
I've found that some interpret "Why not ..." in a way that puts them on the defensive, which is almost never my intent. To avoid this, I tend to use "Would it work to ..." instead.
"Would it work" sounds like you are on the same team as the other party and trying to concede something with them. I think that's why it's received better than "Why not" which sounds like you are surprised and don't understand why the other party doesn't want to use your solution or worse it suggests that you think the other party is stupid and it's not understandable why they use another solution but you are sill trying not to say it out loud in suggesting the good solution.
Pretty sure there are subtle differences between speakers of different languages once English is translated/understood.
Pretty sure there are subtle differences between speakers of different languages once English is translated/understood.
I found that "have you considered" is better at communicating a genuine intent. It avoids painting the original problem as trivial ("simply"), doesn't imply that it's a new idea, and in the case where it is new to them it gives them space to explore with it instead of being forced into a defensive position.
> I found that "have you considered" is better at communicating a genuine intent.
Be careful about your tone or this will be far worse than "why not simply?" ever could be.
Be careful about your tone or this will be far worse than "why not simply?" ever could be.
I like "what would happen if we" in a team situation.
I think it works when people speak out loud but it doesn't when it's a written conversation.
It’s interesting to me that this works for you. The way I understand English, the “simply” makes the question rhetorical and implies that you’re about to enlighten the person you’re talking to with something obvious that they’ve missed, which generally gets people’s hackles up and provides adversarial answers
I’d imagine the context you use it in matters a lot, especially if you follow it up with another question or a clarification (e.g. “I’m genuinely asking”/“I’m really not sure”), but if I wanted to express the meaning you’re using it for, I might just leave out the simply, or if I wanted to it come across less confrontationally, phrase it sans the “not”, as it’s a little negative
I’d imagine the context you use it in matters a lot, especially if you follow it up with another question or a clarification (e.g. “I’m genuinely asking”/“I’m really not sure”), but if I wanted to express the meaning you’re using it for, I might just leave out the simply, or if I wanted to it come across less confrontationally, phrase it sans the “not”, as it’s a little negative
"Why not simply" has strong implication that the other party is stupid not being able to come to a "simple" solution.
The worst are always video game discussions. A studio releases a product they worked on for 5 years, with thousands of features and moving parts, and the comments are usually full of suggestions like: It's great, but I don't understand why they simply won't do X instead of Y, then it would be perfect!
That is usually accompanied with "They need to spend more time optimising" or "Clearly they haven't optimised this yet" with a clear subtext that many believe game developers just have a dial or slider marked "Optimisation" and that the devs were just too lazy to crank it.
Probably my favorite comment of that genre, on a video which contained a pathing bug causing an NPC to walk in a circle endlessly,
"Seriously, how hard is it to just check if a path is infinite and stop the NPC from moving if it is?"
"Seriously, how hard is it to just check if a path is infinite and stop the NPC from moving if it is?"
I mean, we solved the problem in the context of reference cycles during garbage collection.
Why do you need to do garbage collection at all, why don't you just delete the garbage?
Besides the "infinite" part, another problem with this is that the NPC's path isn't necessarily created all at once, but updated as the NPC gets closer to its target / obstacles in it path move around / etc, so there isn't anything to actually check for cycles.
Also: people who have never read a line of code in their life, complaining about "spaghetti code" in a game with emergent gameplay and complex interactions where some of the interactions are a bit weird or unintuitive.
I've seen this in discussions about games I've worked on where people suggest we simply do that one obvious gameplay tweak which we tried a year before release and it wasn't any fun in practice.
"one does not simply"
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
when i read "why not simply", this suggest two things
either I have made an overly complicated analysis and provided unessecarily complex solution, or someone else has made analysis based on incomplete or generalized information with respect to the problem.
then comes the task of determining which is the actual case.
either I have made an overly complicated analysis and provided unessecarily complex solution, or someone else has made analysis based on incomplete or generalized information with respect to the problem.
then comes the task of determining which is the actual case.
Basically this. And then a lot of people forget that both of those possibilities are, well, possible.
The same reasoning should apply when someone says to 'just do' such and such, but more often it's not so simple.
This is a recurring joke with my brother. One day he was giving me an advice that was technically true but absolutely impossible to follow.
I told him: "You know how to win a race again Usain Bolt? Just run faster!".
Now we regularly use "just run faster" as a punchline.
I told him: "You know how to win a race again Usain Bolt? Just run faster!".
Now we regularly use "just run faster" as a punchline.
I wish we had 2 phrases, one for "you have overlooked this obvious thing, you idiot!" and one for "could someone explain what's wrong with the naive solution?"
We do! They are:
- "You have overlooked this obvious thing, you idiot!", and
- "Could someone explain what's wrong with the naive solution?"Well... your second phrase seems perfect for that job.
(let me try it)
Could you/someone explain what's wrong with simply using the second phrase?
(To be fair, you probably meant that you wish one commonly used phrase wasn't doing both jobs, which I agree with completely.)
(let me try it)
Could you/someone explain what's wrong with simply using the second phrase?
(To be fair, you probably meant that you wish one commonly used phrase wasn't doing both jobs, which I agree with completely.)
I recently quit a job and the reasons could be summed up as having a boss who asked "why not simply" too often.
There are 935 results out of 2.14 million that match. This leaves us with only .00004% of comments, which doesn't appear to be very frequent given the perception.
Mild horror at finding myself at the top of the results set.
Mild relief on realising I was quoting someone else's use of the phrase.
That said: Is there a word or term for this practice? I'm leaning to "oversimplification" or "trivialiisation".
Mild relief on realising I was quoting someone else's use of the phrase.
That said: Is there a word or term for this practice? I'm leaning to "oversimplification" or "trivialiisation".
I’ve always used the term trivialization to describe this. I once gave a manager feedback to stop doing it, granted theirs could be characterized as being overly optimistic in their report’s capabilities.
In response they bought a shock bracelet to negatively reinforce the behavior. They adjusted really quickly. Haha. I really miss that manager.
In response they bought a shock bracelet to negatively reinforce the behavior. They adjusted really quickly. Haha. I really miss that manager.
Trivialisation is certainly one possible classification.
Though occasionally such suggestions may serve a role in lifting one's mind out of a rut. Something of a mental reset.
(The latter case is, in my experience, far rarer.)
Though occasionally such suggestions may serve a role in lifting one's mind out of a rut. Something of a mental reset.
(The latter case is, in my experience, far rarer.)
Why not simply link to the google result filtered by domain?
Because it's a worse experience 3 ways: you can't search for only comments or only stories, you get one result let page not per comment, it's ordered by Google not HN popularity.
Also interesting: "Couldn't you just": https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
"Why wouldn't you just" is a good one too
This brings to mind a Twitter bot I created years ago: https://mobile.twitter.com/ifeveryonewould
I really like doing this kind of search on Twitter and seeing what comes up.
One of my favs is searching “stunning x” to see the sad responses to attractive people posting selfies (NSFW if you choose to do it)
One of my favs is searching “stunning x” to see the sad responses to attractive people posting selfies (NSFW if you choose to do it)
Wow, I literally just replied to a 'simply just' comment on another thread a moment ago and came straight to this.
One good thing here though is, if you politely explain why it's not that simple you're actually quite likely to get a nice thank you and an upvote in return. That's useful to bear in mind before escalating the rhetoric any further. Sometimes people just genuinely don't know why it's not that simple.
One good thing here though is, if you politely explain why it's not that simple you're actually quite likely to get a nice thank you and an upvote in return. That's useful to bear in mind before escalating the rhetoric any further. Sometimes people just genuinely don't know why it's not that simple.
"You'd think that.." is my pet peeve, as in...
"Why did the user press delete? You'd think that they'd know that would erase the document"
"You'd think that they'd put the 'clear form' button further away from the 'submit' button"
..it implies you're getting irritated by a perceived failing that's obvious to you. But the world isn't perfect, so chill, carry on and get it sorted!
"Why did the user press delete? You'd think that they'd know that would erase the document"
"You'd think that they'd put the 'clear form' button further away from the 'submit' button"
..it implies you're getting irritated by a perceived failing that's obvious to you. But the world isn't perfect, so chill, carry on and get it sorted!
Why are we like this
[deleted]
And why don’t we just stop?
Why not simply not be like this?
simpler HN search. why not.
text-only, no Javascript required, no SNI, unnecessary HTTP headers, DNS, etc.
json_reformat is from https://github.com/lloyd/yajl/
^M is Ctrl-v+Ctrl-m
example usage:
1.sh query > 1.json
json_reformat < 1.json|sed 's/ *//;s/\\n/ /g'|less
text-only, no Javascript required, no SNI, unnecessary HTTP headers, DNS, etc.
json_reformat is from https://github.com/lloyd/yajl/
^M is Ctrl-v+Ctrl-m
example usage:
1.sh query > 1.json
json_reformat < 1.json|sed 's/ *//;s/\\n/ /g'|less
stunnel -fd 0 <<eof1
debug=debug
pid=$HOME/1.pid
foreground=no
[ $$ ]
accept=127.0.0.7:80
client=yes
connect=54.217.76.129:443
options=NO_TICKET
options=NO_RENEGOTIATION
renegotiation=no
sni=
sslVersion=TLSv1.3
sslVersionMin=TLSv1.2
eof1
nc -vvn 127.7 80 <<eof2
POST /1/indexes/Item_production_ordered/query?x-algolia-agent=Algolia%20for%20JavaScript%20(4.0.2)%3B%20Browser%20(lite)&x-algolia-api-key=8ece23f8eb07cd25d40262a1764599b1&x-algolia-application-id=UJ5WYC0L7X HTTP/1.1^M
Host: uj5wyc0l7x-dsn.algolia.net^M
Connection: close^M
Content-Type: x-www-form-urlencoded^M
Content-Length: $((${#@}+393))^M
^M
{"query":"$@","analyticsTags":["web"],"page":0,"hitsPerPage":30,"minWordSizefor1Typo":4,"minWordSizefor2Typos":8,"advancedSyntax":true,"ignorePlurals":false,"clickAnalytics":true,"minProximity":8,"numericFilters":[],"tagFilters":["story",[]],"typoTolerance":true,"queryType":"prefixNone","restrictSearchableAttributes":["title","comment_text","url","story_text","author"],"getRankingInfo":true}
eof2
cd;kill $(cat 1.pid);small correction
example usage:
sed -n '/{\"hits\":/p' 1.json|json_reformat|sed 's/ //;s/\\n/ /g'|less
also
instead of entering ^M, we can use something like djb's "addcr" from ucspi-tcp, a simple program that adds a carriage return ("\r") to each line
here is a simple shell version of addcr that also removes indention
example usage:
sed -n '/{\"hits\":/p' 1.json|json_reformat|sed 's/ //;s/\\n/ /g'|less
also
instead of entering ^M, we can use something like djb's "addcr" from ucspi-tcp, a simple program that adds a carriage return ("\r") to each line
here is a simple shell version of addcr that also removes indention
x=$(echo x|tr x '\r');
exec sed "s/ *//;s/$/$x/";
stunnel -fd 0 <<eof1
pid=$HOME/1.pid
foreground=no
[ $$ ]
accept=127.0.0.21:80
client=yes
connect=graphql.example.com:443
sslVersion=TLSv1.3
eof1
addcr <<eof2|nc -vvn 127.21 80
POST /v1/api HTTP/1.1
Host: graphql.example.com
Connection: close
Content-Type: x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: $((${#@}+141))
{"query":"$@"}
eof2
cd;kill $(cat 1.pid);**Why not just use a web browser?
(sorry)
(sorry)
Why not simply post this xkcd-Comic instead of linking to an overly complicated search engine result? https://xkcd.com/793/
"why not just" could be aliased
I find it interesting that so many of the results are very long. I suppose it makes sense, a post that contains a lot of words is more likely to contain any individual phrase than a post with fewer words. Or is it just the case that HN comments were longer on average 5-9 years ago?
What is the point being made here? That all the comments in the first six pages are from 7+ years ago?
My take: This is the second post I’ve come upon recently wherein it reminds you of the power of search; i.e. filtering on
power phrases that may create combinations of thoughts and ideas otherwise never had.
The other post of similar essence is this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27060816
I’ve begun keeping a log of such power phrases. Does anyone know if there’s an open public repository for such phrases? That’d be useful. If not, I’m happy to set up a Google Doc or Github Repo or whatever is best (if there’s significant interest).
The other post of similar essence is this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27060816
I’ve begun keeping a log of such power phrases. Does anyone know if there’s an open public repository for such phrases? That’d be useful. If not, I’m happy to set up a Google Doc or Github Repo or whatever is best (if there’s significant interest).
I'm not familiar with the, er, phrase "power phrase" in this context.
I note you're the person using the phrase in both this thread and in the comment you link. What's your source of the phrase?
I note you're the person using the phrase in both this thread and in the comment you link. What's your source of the phrase?
My source is self :) It’s inspired from books and concepts in the field of copywriting.
For instance, this book (no affiliate link): https://www.amazon.com/Phrases-That-Sell-Ultimate-Products/d...
And this article uses similar language: https://www.verticalresponse.com/blog/20-powerful-marketing-...
Is your point that I should have first defined “power phrase”? Or cited a source? I’m not familiar with appropriate convention.
For instance, this book (no affiliate link): https://www.amazon.com/Phrases-That-Sell-Ultimate-Products/d...
And this article uses similar language: https://www.verticalresponse.com/blog/20-powerful-marketing-...
Is your point that I should have first defined “power phrase”? Or cited a source? I’m not familiar with appropriate convention.
Thanks.
My own usual practice when using a phrase I've coined (or think I've coined) is to reference it with "what I call", to indicate that this is a (possibly) non-standard or novel useage. That's a practice I've encountered by numerous others in writing, and serves both to claim credit and give notice to the reader that the usage may not be widespread.
Some examples appear in my HN history: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
And if it's not clear what the phrase means, then yes, giving a brief definition or noting its inspiration can be quite useful.
Now that you've clarified all of that ....
I'm not sure "power phase" does much here. Or maybe that it doesn't do what you'd like it to do.
You wrote:
"This is the second post I’ve come upon recently wherein it reminds you of the power of search; i.e. filtering on power phrases that may create combinations of thoughts and ideas otherwise never had."
The first part, "the power of search", doesn't rely on "power phrases" at all, but simply full-text search, a/k/a phrase search. (As opposed, say, to simply listing words which might be joined by AND or OR logic without respect to position within the string.)
The second bit, "create combinations of thoughts and ideas otherwise never had", gives more potency, but:
1. All language creates thoughts and ideas in the mind of the reader or listener at the initiative of the writer or speaker.
2. "Power" carries strong implications of coercion or manipulation. Themselves common practices in sales and marketing.
3. There's a room for the notion of inspiring or motivating or unlocking new thoughts in a discussion, and some of the more productive uses of "why don't you just" might land in this region. (The less-productive uses tend to display lazy thinking or ignorance.) The classic example (mentioned by someone else in this thread) is of the Gordian Knot: solving a complex problem by shifting the solution domain entirely. Again, "power' seems to me a poor choice here as it suggests to me merely increasing the effort as opposed to seeking a different route.
I'd look for a word with meaning more along the lines of "inspiration" or "muse" or "stimulating" or "unlocking".
Just my view.
My own usual practice when using a phrase I've coined (or think I've coined) is to reference it with "what I call", to indicate that this is a (possibly) non-standard or novel useage. That's a practice I've encountered by numerous others in writing, and serves both to claim credit and give notice to the reader that the usage may not be widespread.
Some examples appear in my HN history: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
And if it's not clear what the phrase means, then yes, giving a brief definition or noting its inspiration can be quite useful.
Now that you've clarified all of that ....
I'm not sure "power phase" does much here. Or maybe that it doesn't do what you'd like it to do.
You wrote:
"This is the second post I’ve come upon recently wherein it reminds you of the power of search; i.e. filtering on power phrases that may create combinations of thoughts and ideas otherwise never had."
The first part, "the power of search", doesn't rely on "power phrases" at all, but simply full-text search, a/k/a phrase search. (As opposed, say, to simply listing words which might be joined by AND or OR logic without respect to position within the string.)
The second bit, "create combinations of thoughts and ideas otherwise never had", gives more potency, but:
1. All language creates thoughts and ideas in the mind of the reader or listener at the initiative of the writer or speaker.
2. "Power" carries strong implications of coercion or manipulation. Themselves common practices in sales and marketing.
3. There's a room for the notion of inspiring or motivating or unlocking new thoughts in a discussion, and some of the more productive uses of "why don't you just" might land in this region. (The less-productive uses tend to display lazy thinking or ignorance.) The classic example (mentioned by someone else in this thread) is of the Gordian Knot: solving a complex problem by shifting the solution domain entirely. Again, "power' seems to me a poor choice here as it suggests to me merely increasing the effort as opposed to seeking a different route.
I'd look for a word with meaning more along the lines of "inspiration" or "muse" or "stimulating" or "unlocking".
Just my view.
Wow! Thank you for the feedback and taking the time to go into detail. I hope it helps others, as well. I’d like to take a closer look at this in the coming days when I have more energy to go through in detail. I’m just now seeing this at 12:26 am after working all day (much of it researching concepts related to philosophy and linguistics; which, I’m a complete noob in).
I’m very fortunate that the time I spent in my 20’s doing media buying and copywriting have allotted me funds to spend my 30’s researching and reading whatever the heck I want.
Anyway, I shall end the tired af post now.
I’m very fortunate that the time I spent in my 20’s doing media buying and copywriting have allotted me funds to spend my 30’s researching and reading whatever the heck I want.
Anyway, I shall end the tired af post now.
I've now read through your reply in detail. Thank you again for sharing.
> My own usual practice when using a phrase I've coined (or think I've coined) is to reference it with "what I call"
I will begin using this practice myself; I wish I had known about it 5 years ago, which is when it seems you first started using it on HN!
> All language creates thoughts and ideas in the mind of the reader or listener at the initiative of the writer or speaker.
Yes; however my point centers on the phenomenon of certain phrases that, when searched across different disciplinary fields, unlock or stimulate thoughts or ideas that would have otherwise been more difficult to link together. This is made possible because certain phrases are strongly correlated with invoking a specific concept. [1]
For instance, the use of the phrase "why don't you just" invokes the concept of cutting the Gordian Knot. [2]
> "Power" carries strong implications of coercion or manipulation. Themselves common practices in sales and marketing.
On this, we could go way down the rabbit hole and spend a lot of time discussing this. It touches on values, philosophy, ethics, and is really based on opinion. I will say, I agree with you in how you seem to present coercion and manipulation as distasteful. However, there are many people with incredible thoughts and ideas who will never be heard. There are many amazing products that will never be seen. The battle is for human attention. Marketers and salespeople are good at getting it. Yes, there are those who use coercive and manipulative means to do so. I did at one point in my career. But I've learned the hard way (Facebook/Google Ad Suspensions), that the best route is to not do such a thing. Many people learn the hard way, but don't learn, or course-correct. They devise new schemes and tactics for manipulating people (and in my opinion, these people can go to hell).
> "the power of search" [and] "power phrase"
I would refine my language and eliminate the term "power". The main point is that the parent post shows the utility of phrase search and regular expressions for unlocking general, global patterns in language, in that certain phrases are strongly correlated with invoking certain concepts ("why not just" <=> cutting Gordian Knot), and when one observes such phases shown side-by-side across different disciplinary fields, it stimulates thinking that otherwise would have been more difficult to link together.
It somewhat reminds me of Niklas Luhmann's philosophy with his Zettelkasten Note Box for research. He relies on randomness and patterns of concepts across different disciplinary fields, which otherwise wouldn't have been unlocked:
> for even the creation of random suggestions requires organization, and if only in order to be sufficient for the demands of speed, accumulation and probability of success, which are necessary within a dynamic society. [3]
Those are my thoughts.
Now... on how to simplify this concept, and/or what actual utility and value one mine from it... well... that's a whole other thing!
[1]: Thanks for this recommendation on unlock or stimulate
[2]: I had not heard of the Gordian Knot before; thanks for sharing. It was fun to research and learn about. If you see this, I'd love to know how you first came to learn about it?
[3]: “Communicating with Slip Boxes by Niklas Luhmann.” Accessed May 4, 2021. https://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes.
> My own usual practice when using a phrase I've coined (or think I've coined) is to reference it with "what I call"
I will begin using this practice myself; I wish I had known about it 5 years ago, which is when it seems you first started using it on HN!
> All language creates thoughts and ideas in the mind of the reader or listener at the initiative of the writer or speaker.
Yes; however my point centers on the phenomenon of certain phrases that, when searched across different disciplinary fields, unlock or stimulate thoughts or ideas that would have otherwise been more difficult to link together. This is made possible because certain phrases are strongly correlated with invoking a specific concept. [1]
For instance, the use of the phrase "why don't you just" invokes the concept of cutting the Gordian Knot. [2]
> "Power" carries strong implications of coercion or manipulation. Themselves common practices in sales and marketing.
On this, we could go way down the rabbit hole and spend a lot of time discussing this. It touches on values, philosophy, ethics, and is really based on opinion. I will say, I agree with you in how you seem to present coercion and manipulation as distasteful. However, there are many people with incredible thoughts and ideas who will never be heard. There are many amazing products that will never be seen. The battle is for human attention. Marketers and salespeople are good at getting it. Yes, there are those who use coercive and manipulative means to do so. I did at one point in my career. But I've learned the hard way (Facebook/Google Ad Suspensions), that the best route is to not do such a thing. Many people learn the hard way, but don't learn, or course-correct. They devise new schemes and tactics for manipulating people (and in my opinion, these people can go to hell).
> "the power of search" [and] "power phrase"
I would refine my language and eliminate the term "power". The main point is that the parent post shows the utility of phrase search and regular expressions for unlocking general, global patterns in language, in that certain phrases are strongly correlated with invoking certain concepts ("why not just" <=> cutting Gordian Knot), and when one observes such phases shown side-by-side across different disciplinary fields, it stimulates thinking that otherwise would have been more difficult to link together.
It somewhat reminds me of Niklas Luhmann's philosophy with his Zettelkasten Note Box for research. He relies on randomness and patterns of concepts across different disciplinary fields, which otherwise wouldn't have been unlocked:
> for even the creation of random suggestions requires organization, and if only in order to be sufficient for the demands of speed, accumulation and probability of success, which are necessary within a dynamic society. [3]
Those are my thoughts.
Now... on how to simplify this concept, and/or what actual utility and value one mine from it... well... that's a whole other thing!
[1]: Thanks for this recommendation on unlock or stimulate
[2]: I had not heard of the Gordian Knot before; thanks for sharing. It was fun to research and learn about. If you see this, I'd love to know how you first came to learn about it?
[3]: “Communicating with Slip Boxes by Niklas Luhmann.” Accessed May 4, 2021. https://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes.
The examples, as I would expect of the phrase in context, have a dismissive tone that reframes the question as an assertion. It's usually a pretty innocent faux pas, and can feel natural to say, so it can be hard to catch oneself in it, but I try not to say things like "simply X" or "just X" when explaining or asking things, in an effort to keep a neutral tone.
Is that the point being made here? I don't know.
Is that the point being made here? I don't know.
[deleted]
A question on the use of this phrase was made earlier today in another thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27414444
(I didn't submit this item, but suspect jgrahamc may have also seen that comment.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27414444
(I didn't submit this item, but suspect jgrahamc may have also seen that comment.)
They are sorted by popularity, but the API stopped revealing comment votes about 7 years ago, so no new comments will ever rank in popularity.
I've always wondered why the Algolia search has always been so dependent/focused on older results, always had to sort by date.
That makes a bit more sense, thanks.
That makes a bit more sense, thanks.
> That all the comments in the first six pages are from 7+ years ago?
Why not simply switch to the "past year" view or sort by time to see the more recent ones ;)
Why not simply switch to the "past year" view or sort by time to see the more recent ones ;)
The point is that "why not simply" is pretty patronizing and dismissive.
The use of "simply" implies that the counterpart failed to see a simple solution.
The use of "simply" implies that the counterpart failed to see a simple solution.
This reminds me of the Dropbox HN submission back in 2007: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
[deleted]
my favourite: "intuitive" for "I'm unable to explain but you better feel stupid if not knowing upfront."
Why not simply use no adjectives at all? If you strip out all the fluff, it really makes you think about what you’re writing.
Last time I said "we can simply do x", x took is 3 times longer than expected.
Did someone perhaps write "why not simply" to OP recently?
This is giving me ‘would you kindly’ vibes from Bioshock. :P
This one is a bit funnier ("this is dumb", mostly starting on page 2):
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
It's usually a strong indicator the speaker lacks empathy or any real-world understanding of the constraints. Not all the time but it can be a good sign that the speaker has no ability to understand other viewpoints.
A good one from here recently on the subject of poor teleconference connections was (paraphrasing) "I would simply just get faster working internet, it would be simple to me, I would just do it". Because people don't live in crappy shared accommodation or get fucked over repeatedly by local internet monopolies, or move houses and wait months for providers to connect them or live in rural areas or struggle for money for reason or, or, etc.
I think it's also common in software because we have this need to solve issues rather than empathise and understand the struggles of people. Scott Hanselman writes about this with respect to relationships, how he has to disable "engineer mode" when his wife is venting about a problem. Sometimes stuff just sucks for people and trying to provide 'obvious' solutions, as if the recipient is incapable of that thought process themselves is demeaning and trivialises things.