Tell HN: Thanks for All the Fish

15 points by neilv 8 days ago | 8 comments

Dear fellow HNers: I said my account has a max karma of 32767, and I'm about to hit that limit. So, for my final post, I'd like to share some of my individual aspirations:

* Be honest. We shouldn't lie, manipulate, dark-pattern, etc. We should invest towards a society that can trust each other, and the first step is our own behavior.

* Be reliable. We should make things that work, follow through on promises, represent prospects in good faith, etc.

* Be helpful. We should help colleagues, random strangers, and society in general. Not maneuver to exploit them.

* Be smart. We're not as smart as we think we are, and we are often dumb. Especially when it comes to topics in which we actually have little experience. Also when we're overconfident about something we "know".

* Be humble. We can make mistakes about even the things we know best, and we should always be learning.

* Be constructive. Others make mistakes, too, and we should help them when they do, as we'd want them to help us or our friends&family, when we make mistakes.

* Be decent. No one person deserves a billion dollars of humanity's wealth. Few people agreed to the rules that enable that: it's not a game that we are winning; it's collusion against the masses, which some people hop onto. Also applies to some smaller sums.

* Be sane. If we find ourselves with way more money than our share, then we say, "oops, how embarrassing", and spread it back around, to everyone. We shouldn't be like the billionaire who instead decides all the poors or immigrants or feminists or trans people or artists or kindergarten teachers or whoever are somehow shortchanging billionaires.

* Be introspective. See sane, above.

That's it for now. See you around. I'll continue to be in the world and in tech industry, but it's time for me to take an HN break. If I come back, it might as well be a new account.

didgetmaster 7 days ago |

>If we find ourselves with way more money than our share, then we say, "oops, how embarrassing",

And just who gets to decide when someone has more than their 'share'? Is it just money that people are not allowed to have too much of, or do you have the same feeling about other things like intelligence, friends, talents, looks, etc.?

vunderba 8 days ago |

As a long-time HN user, sorry to see you go. It’s always hard to see people leave when they’re genuinely contributing and participating in the community.

skyberrys 8 days ago |

May you find yourself in a future situation saying "opps, how embarrassing". So long!

Sidenote: would it help you out if we all go and down vote your comments/posts so you get more headroom to max karma? I know probably not what you intended but it would let you stay around longer.

mikewarot 8 days ago |

I've never strongly agreed with the max karma thing, but I do know I stopped paying attention once I reached 10k, so I know it has subtle persistent nudging effects. I don't know what I would use as a handle if I tried to reset things, as my name seems to work well for remembering my ID. It's nice to have a fairly Internet Unique name... I've only found one other Mike Warot so far. (He works at the British Museum)

I'm retired, with long Covid, so personally, I'm going to be here until I age out, or get kicked out for banging on about data diodes one too many times.

Good luck with your future endeavors.

vunderba 8 days ago | |

> I'm retired, with long Covid

Sorry to hear that~ a family friend was basically patient zero in the state of Georgia here in the U.S. and permanently lost their sense of smell as a result so I have at least an inkling of how serious the long-term effects of covid can be.

> I've never strongly agreed with the max karma thing, but I do know I stopped paying attention once I reached 10k

Agree. I actually made a Tampermonkey (well ViolentMonkey script) a while back that deliberately hides my karma rating from all pages/menus on HN because I don't want it to even subtly influence how I express myself here.

kazinator 6 days ago |

I had an idea along similar lines, around exactly the same integer. Like what if I hit 32767 and then started acting like a part-time ass so that the downvotes would keep it around that figure. :) That integer came and went though, and I didn't even notice. "Be sane" and all that ...