It's not just that comments that vent denunciatory feelings are lower-quality themselves, though usually they are. It's that they exert a degrading influence on the rest of the thread, for a couple reasons: (1) people tend to respond in kind, and (2) these comments always veer towards the generic (e.g. "lack of true care for anything and anyone", "just another type of stupidity"), which is bad for curious conversation. Generic stuff is repetitive, and indignant-generic stuff doubly so.

By the time we get further downthread, the original topic is completely gone and we're into "glorification of management over ICs" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43346257). Veering offtopic can be ok when the tangent is even more interesting (or whimsical) than the starting point, but most tangents aren't like that—mostly what they do is replace a more-interesting-and-in-the-key-of-curiosity thing with a more-repetitive-and-in-the-key-of-indignation thing, which is a losing trade for HN.

This is the part I don't get honestly

Are people just very shortsighted and don't see how these changes are potentially going to cause upheaval?

Do they think the upheaval is simply going to be worth it?

Do they think they will simply be wealthy enough that it won't affect them much, they will be insulated from it?

Do they just never think about consequences at all?

I am trying not to be extremely negative about all of this, but the speed of which things are moving makes me think we'll hit the cliff before even realizing it is in front of us

That's the part I find unnerving

Yes, partly that. Mostly they only care about their rank. Many people would burn down the country if it meant they could be king of the ashes. Even purely self-interested people should welcome a better society for all, because a rising tide lifts all boats. But not only are they selfish, they're also very stupid, at least in this aspect. They can't see the world as anything but zero sum, and themselves as either winning or losing, so they must win at all costs. And those costs are huge.

Yes, I think this is it. Frequently using social media and being “online” leads to less critical thought, less thinking overall, smaller window that you allow yourself to think in, thoughts that are merely sound bites not fully fleshed out thoughts, and so on. Ones thoughts can easily become a milieu of memes and falsehoods. A person whose mind is in the state will do whatever anyone suggests for that next dopamine hit!

I am guilty of it all myself which is how I can make this claim. I too fear for humanity’s future.

> Do they think the upheaval is simply going to be worth it?

All technology causes upheaval. We've benefited from many of these upheavals to the point where it's impossible for most to imagine a world without the proliferation of movable type, the internal combustion engine, the computer, or the internet. All of your criticisms could have easily been made word for word by the Catholic Church during the medieval era. The "society" of today is no more of a sacred cow than its antecedent incarnations were half a millenium ago. As history has shown, it must either adapt, disperse, or die.

I am not concerned about some kind of "sacred cow" that I want to preserve

I am concerned about a future where those with power no longer need 90% of the population so they deploy autonomous weaponry that grinds most of the population into fertilizer

And I'm concerned there are a bunch of short sighted idiots gleefully building autonomous weaponry for them, thinking they will either be spared from mulching, or be the mulchers

Edit: The thing about appealing to history is that it also shows that when upper classes get too powerful they start to lose touch with everyone else, and this often leads to turmoil that affects the common folk most

As one of the common folk, I'm pretty against that

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

aka optimization-for-its-own-sake, aka pathological optimization.

It's basically meatspace internalizing and adopting the paperclip problem as a "good thing" to pursue, screw externalities and consequences.

And, lo-and-behold, my read for why it gets downvoted here is that a lot of folks on HN ascribe to this mentality, as it is part of the HN ethos to optimize , often pathologically.

You flatten the heap

You decrease or eliminate the reward for being at the top

You decrease or eliminate the penalty for being at the bottom

The main problem is that we haven't figured out a good way to do this without creating a whole bunch of other problems

I worked in an organization afflicted by this and still have friends there. In the case of that organization, it was caused by an exaggerated glorification of management over ICs. Managers truly did act according to the belief, and show every evidence of sincerely believing in it, that their understanding of every problem was superior to the sum of the knowledge and intelligence of every engineer under them in the org chart, not because they respected their engineers and worked to collect and understand information from them, but because managers are a higher form of humanity than ICs, and org chart hierarchy reflects natural superiority. Every conversation had to be couched in terms that didn't contradict those assumptions, so the culture had an extremely high tolerance for hand-waving and BS. Naturally this created cover for all kinds of selfish decisions based on politics, bonuses, and vendor perks. I'm very glad I got out of there.

I wouldn't paint all of tech with the same brush, though. There are many companies that are better, much better. Not because they serve higher ideals, but because they can't afford to get so detached from reality, because they'd fail if they didn't respect technical considerations and respect their ICs.