> A lot of arguments in this HN discussion boil down to "It's not that bad and it doesn't matter because this will earn Saint Elon enough money will fix it!"
This is a forum for engineers (for a broad sense of engineer). We like to talk about technology. We like to speculate about the future and about politics. Starlink is a cool idea, so it's not surprising there's enthusiasm for it.
We should not be put in control of anything, ever. If that weren't already common sense, you'd just need to put half a dozen policy threads from Hacker News in front of a congressional committee to have them warning of the dire effects of engineer influence. Stuff we create should be heavily regulated when it attempts to "disrupt" society, like Uber or a lot of Silicon Valley startups.
Uncharitably, you might say HN has a ton of Dunning-Kruger about anything not directly technology related. I wouldn't put it that way: it's everyone's right to speculate about politics, the future, and values, but most people here don't actually think they should be put in charge of anything.
> Uncharitably, you might say HN has a ton of Dunning-Kruger about anything not directly technology related.
It's even worse. It is people thinking that because they are brilliant in some technical field (JS frameworks, or compilers, or machine learning or whatever) they are also brilliant in every other technical field (be it astronomy, high performance computing or medicine).
This is a forum for engineers (for a broad sense of engineer). We like to talk about technology. We like to speculate about the future and about politics. Starlink is a cool idea, so it's not surprising there's enthusiasm for it.
We should not be put in control of anything, ever. If that weren't already common sense, you'd just need to put half a dozen policy threads from Hacker News in front of a congressional committee to have them warning of the dire effects of engineer influence. Stuff we create should be heavily regulated when it attempts to "disrupt" society, like Uber or a lot of Silicon Valley startups.
Uncharitably, you might say HN has a ton of Dunning-Kruger about anything not directly technology related. I wouldn't put it that way: it's everyone's right to speculate about politics, the future, and values, but most people here don't actually think they should be put in charge of anything.