
Ask HN: Where do conservative, pro-military software engineers hang out online? - throwaway15392
Looking to find more like-minded peers.
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jmspring
Interesting article from about 5 years ago —

[https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/390048/](https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/390048/)

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chishaku
Please define conservative. Also, pro-military.

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downerending
Here's a hand-wavy analogy from the ML world. When searching for "better"
under uncertainty, one has to decide how quickly to "learn", which is
basically updating one's learned information (parameters) in a way that one
hopes will ultimately lead to better results.

A "conservative" strategy updates that information more slowly, while a
"progressive" strategy updates faster. The tradeoff is that if one updates too
slowly, one loses the possibility to improve more quickly and perhaps to adapt
more quickly to changing circumstance. If one updates too quickly, one can
actually "forget" hard-learned lessons, leading to poor outcomes.

Looked at that way, a conservative is someone who is more wary of change, for
fear of losing important societal knowledge.

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burfog
thedonald.win has a couple posts about software development:

[https://thedonald.win/p/4AjIzHU/im-a-coder--there-are-
many-o...](https://thedonald.win/p/4AjIzHU/im-a-coder--there-are-many-of-
us/c/)

[https://thedonald.win/p/46BjSob/want-me-to-build-a-mobile-
ap...](https://thedonald.win/p/46BjSob/want-me-to-build-a-mobile-app-fo/c/)

Other than that, mostly they endure soylentnews.org and news.ycombinator.com
as best as possible.

In real life, they tend to have families that suck up lots of time. If you
want to meet them in real life, work for a defense contractor. They might also
be found working for relatively industrial companies all across the middle of
the USA.

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throwaway15392
soylentnews.org lol

ya it totally makes sense those with more traditional family values spend more
of their life in real life. working for a defense contractor is an interesting
idea. thanks for the links i'm going to check them out

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sendbitcoins
Follow twitterers, look at their bios, some will point to social spaces:
telegram, discord, fb page.

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throwaway15392
Do you have any specific recommendations?

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sendbitcoins
Sorry, I don't have anything specific, but I empathize with your situation

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throwaway15392
Thanks anyways, and cheers

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remarkEon
I suspect if there is such a place, they would not divulge its location on
Hacker News.

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jmspring
The interesting thing is there are technology intersections, like drones,
radio, etc.

Discussion here are always interesting in that interesting forms of
libertarianism come through, some discussions even what would be moderate
positions on things like homelessness get attacked, etc.

The question and responses are certainly interesting.

An example where a discussion can be neutral but go very left or right - off
grid living, homesteading, etc - off gridder or prepper? Same topic in many
discussions, but different flavor of discussion.

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remarkEon
I'm having a hard time parsing what a "conservative" discussion of these
topics would mean though. Like the left right now, the right doesn't really
seem to have a coherent take on these technologies, except maybe some
hostility to those who run the companies that make them. It's a grab bag of
techno-libertarians, leftover neocons, traditionalists, and some statists.
None of these people agree on much of anything anymore.

So, insofar as there's any interesting discussion to be had at all it would
just be a mirror version of the left's own infighting on these topics.

>Discussion here are always interesting in that interesting forms of
libertarianism come through, some discussions even what would be moderate
positions on things like homelessness get attacked, etc.

I assume you mention this because you'd think it interesting to see _less_
libertarianism leak through in the discussion. I'll admit, yeah, that does
sound like an idea I haven't really explored too much.

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535188B17C93743
What do you mean by pro-military? Pro-conflict, pro-weapons technology?

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jacquesm
Why? Echo chambers are the best way to stop your education.

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actbsh
or maybe that's why they want to visit the conservative, pro-military forums -
to keep educating themselves.

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jgwil2
It says, "Looking for like-minded peers," so I don't think they're trying to
challenge themselves.

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krapp
Probably Voat, Gab and 8Chan.

