Ask HN: What is your strongest contrarian opinion?

Patriotism is a dumb idea most of the time. For example, seeing people shouting their country names in sports events etc for no reason is just plain weird - it is just sporting event, why not just enjoy the sport, have a beer, have fun and go home?<p>We are almost at 2022 - a virus originating in one country spread across the world within months. We are dependent on each other much more than any other generation. Unless the human race acts united, huge problems like climate change aren&#x27;t going away. Instead of classifying problems based on borders, we should look at all problems as human problems, not Chinese, American, Russian or whatever.

The web is a collection of terrible, short-sighted engineering mistakes that all compound each other unnecessarily. HTTP, HTML, CSS, and Javascript could probably all be scrapped and replaced with better standards. The only problem is that Google is probably the only organization capable of pulling that off, but Google&#x27;s interests do not really overlap with the interests of most web users.

Software created using taxpayers’ money must be released as Free Software: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;publiccode.eu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;publiccode.eu</a>.

Is this contrarian?<p>Immigration should be massively increased in the US. The surest way for the US and west to grow its international influence, economy, and live up to its values is through immigration. It’s not a zero sum game: immigrants create jobs for everyone. They increase many forms of diversity and expose us to may PoVs. Multiculturalism works, as exhibited by the higher social capital in major cities compared to the ethnically homogenous rural areas. The West would increase its economic competitiveness with other powers (ie China) that are less likely to increase immigration. This will strengthen the security and influence of western powers, giving them also a worldly outlook compared to those with much less immigration.<p>Faux immigration like H1B and other guest worker visas cruelly create a second class workforce. It would be more humane to allow more actual immigration.<p>It’s an obvious policy win, I wish more people would vocally support radically increased immigration.

&gt; What is your strongest contrarian opinion?<p>That it is pointless to ask that question on HN or any social site because actual contrarian opinions will be downvoted and hidden.<p>The most popular &quot;edgy&quot; opinions will be voted as the most contrarian and be rise to the top.

Package managers are a terrible paradigm for distributing software.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28407598" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28407598</a> - Recent overview of the argument against<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17441773" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17441773</a> - I come away appropriately looking like an idiot in this one because I made many wrong assumptions about Haiku&#x27;s package system, however I still maintain it was a bad decision<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17268775" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17268775</a> - Some more argumentation about how to do things better<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24776127" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24776127</a> - Related<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19937228" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19937228</a> - Vaguely related<p>I know I have several more, but there doesn&#x27;t seem to be a good way to search one&#x27;s own post history on HN. (This statement has since been made obsolete by CRConrad)

The more a language or paradigm is touted as some amazing revelation by a small group of people, the less likely I am to like it. Rust, Julia, Haskell, pure functional programming, lisp-for-lisp&#x27;s sake etc. I develop an instant negative reaction to what looks like a cult from the outside.

Since corporations are legally people with rights of free speech, like individuals have...then they should be taxed like the average person is, on revenue.<p>If a corporation is responsible for the death of a person, the CEO, CFO, COO, and members of the board should serve prison time.<p>If the corporation is a repeat offender, then the corporation should suffer the death penalty. The assets liquidated a public auction. Also Corp Officers and board members go to jail and are forbidden from ever holding such position again.<p>I look forward to your down votes.

Computer science degrees are a waste of time and money unless you want to go into academia. If you ignore FAANGs you can get a very comfortable job as a developer after a bootcamp &amp; internship.

I&#x27;m working on my own programming language since 2013 so I am thinking about programming quite a bit. So here is the summary of those years:<p>* All programming languages suck. We are not there yet as humanity. I can not think outside of the box enough to make the breakthrough that should be made, at least as of now. While looking at other programming languages, I see the same issue: inability to express thoughts in concise <i>and</i> straightforward manner. Unsolved issue.<p>* The only idea in programming that I consider definitely good is pattern matching. Note that I&#x27;m talking about the concept here. No particular implementation strikes me as &quot;yep, this is it&quot;: be it limitation to strings only (regex) or syntax-only implementation (preventing composability of the patterns) or some other sh*t.<p>Have a nice weekend!

Automatic software updates are a terrible idea. Not only do they make systems and devices less reliable but they are a vector for a malicious entity (Maybe even the vendor themselves, see Apple &amp; CSAM)

The best thing you can do for a beginner is to train them into being an expert, not make beginner-grade tools. Climbing a high learning curve is good because they end up being more capable of solving harder problems. We shouldn’t shy away from things like domain-specific languages in the name of approachability; if you want a competitive advantage you have to do something not everyone else can.

1. Taxes should be for a MVP minimum viable product for government.<p>2. Government should be 100% transparent in time of peace and offset by 1 year in time of war.<p>3. All government content creation should be public domain.

- Tor has done more harm than good for human rights<p>- Alcohol does not make people more aggressive to a large extent. In the vast majority of clubs&#x2F;festivals almost everybody is inebriated but violence is fairly rare (in my experience). (I&#x27;m a non-drinker btw so I have no horse in this race).<p>- David Bowie&#x27;s music is unremarkable.<p>- We should keep Linux unpopular because the more users it gets, the more malware&#x2F;spyware&#x2F;advertising&#x2F;telemetry it will attract. It is fine where it is now in terms of its userbase.

This thread is supposed to be for strong contrarian opinions - stuff that you actually believe, that you think others don&#x27;t. Most replies aren&#x27;t really doing that. (Yes, this is my actual answer. I do expect that others will object to it.)

C is a good language, Rust is overengineered and rarely the right tool (in contrast to how often it&#x27;s used), Go is a dumb language.<p>Fight me.

Realpolitik is all there is. I often see comments about how people should behave rather than understanding how they actually do. Fundamental human nature is nigh immutable; people will always be greedy, will always want to compete, will always wage war, and so on. To think that another social system would change that is a flaw of understanding humans. I see this most often in people espousing communism over capitalism, for example, but people will be people even under communism, the social system won&#x27;t change that.<p>Sinularly, many people are mad about countries doing &quot;unethical&quot; things, but countries do not have ethical norms, they merely have interests, and that&#x27;s what they&#x27;ll advance towards. To think that countries for example shouldn&#x27;t spy on each other or assassinate their enemy leaders is also a misunderstanding of human nature, and more largely of geopolitics.

Most of societal problems can be fixed by focusing early education solely on philosophy, logic, art.<p>We are pushed thru the ed system as future labor, but lack the tools to coexist in a very large and complex society.

The moment you turn 18 your parents owe you nothing. For better or worse I was kicked out multiple times as a teenager, and evicted, all before turning 18.<p>I&#x27;m well aware that I&#x27;m simply not owed anything. However the worst human beings I&#x27;ve ever met are the 20 to 30 year olds who are still being taken care of by their parents, but don&#x27;t appreciate it. They relentlessly complain about how poorly their being treated. A free place to live at 25 is great treatment as far as I&#x27;m concerned.<p>I learned the hard way these folks just think everyone in the world owes them. They treat having a job as optional. They create endless amounts of unneeded chaos.<p>As a related point, you need to set extremely high standards for anyone you enter into a relationship. You can&#x27;t think oh it&#x27;s okay, I really like this person, it&#x27;s fine that they don&#x27;t want to work. Nothing good comes from associating with people like this.<p>With that said I&#x27;ve been exceptionally lucky in the last few years. Almost everyone I&#x27;ve dated recently has been independent and career driven. The girl I&#x27;m currently dating is easily everything I&#x27;ve ever wanted in a partner, she has a master&#x27;s, knows 3 languages, and has a great job.

Compulsory education that assumes each kid is a uniform widget to be produced is a terrible way to develop people. People think so little of children and their capacity to learn, engage, and understand that they compel them to spend some of the most dynamic years of their life learning about things they don’t care about that they promptly forget in adulthood. Kids are natural learning machines and we murder that natural curiosity and capacity for mastery through school.<p>I think there are better ways. We cannot, for example, teach kids about democracy in environments that give kids often less agency than prisoners in prisons. Democratic schools like Summerhill, Sudbury or unschooling are good starts. Kids at those schools have control over their schedule: if they want to keep a more structured schedule, they can, if they want a more relaxed schedule, sure. Each kid also has a vote in how the school is run, including in a judicial system for administering discipline.<p>At the very minimum, ending age segregation policies at schools would be a good start for more dynamic learning.

Freedom of speech is problematic. The spread of covid misinformation today is as bad as shouting &quot;fire&quot; in a crowded theater and the people doing it on social media or in public should be held criminally culpable.

IT-related opinion: if you gratuitously perform blocking operations (disk IO, network calls, taking locks blocked on the same) on the UI thread, in a commercial product that has a close button (i.e. not an ATM UI or a nuclear reactor control), you should be forever barred from doing software development for money.<p>If I could redesign popular OSes in god mode, blocking the UI thread for more than a few 100s of ms would crash the app with no workarounds.<p>I have to admit GC is a grey area...

strongest: - Anyone (Male or Female) that hurts kids should be executed no matter what country they are in. Hunt them down like animals if needed.<p>Others that would cause some heated debates.<p>- All transportation should have a weight multiplier to the base price since every kg adds to the fuel usage. Nobody should have to pay out of their own pockets for you.<p>- Social welfare should not be free. There are low skilled jobs that can be done by most. Missing both arms and other serious things are valid reasons not to do anything. Arachnophobia is not- I can vouch for this one personally. Panic attacks and all.<p>- Immigrants (like me in UK) should not have a right to vote until they get citizenship. This is the proof that you actually understand the country you live in.<p>- Election campain &quot;propaganda&quot; should be legally binding<p>- Voting should be done with &quot;personal&quot; digital security certificate. Anyone involved in electrion fraud should have all assets confiscated and put in prison<p>- Prisons should not be &quot;free meals&quot;. You either work or study for a qualification in a field where there is a skill shortage.<p>- Internet should be declared public utility and nobody should have the right to kick anyone off it. In most civilized countries you&#x27;re as good as dead without it.<p>- All platforms that reach the level of google search in peoples life should be declared public utility and punished for biases and manipulation of any kind.<p>- All big + small taxes should be merged into one (for example 50%)

Climate models should not be relied upon as much as everyone thinks they should.

Pair Programming as a first-class citizen is stupid.

Everyone should be using Qubes OS [0] to get a reasonable security on desktop.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qubes-os.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qubes-os.org</a>

Software developers are not as smart as they think. The most disastrous technical decisions I have seen have all come from developers, not from clueless non-technical managers. Things like &quot;lets rewrite everything in foo-language, this will solve all our problems.&quot;

(anonymous for obvious reasons)<p>Psychological therapy is the snake oil of the 21st century. See an actual doctor instead.<p>I say this having recovered from a suicide attempt.

It&#x27;s a misallocation of resources for the state to try to save adults who don&#x27;t want saving. If a drug addict doesn&#x27;t specifically request help to beat their addiction, it would be simpler and cheaper for the legal system to give them as much of the drug as they want. They&#x27;ll either become functional addicts or just finish their slow-motion suicides. Either is less wasteful than forcing them into rehab or incarceration.

- space is overrated - the last time that people lost interest was 40 years ago, the new generations missed that, and now they are about to lose interest again. humans are made by earth , for earth. real progress requires post-humans, genetically modified<p>- we don&#x27;t want flying cars, it was a brainfart of sci-fi of the 60s, a linear combination of what was cool at the time, planes and cars. we dont want faster planes either - people happily spend the majority of their trip in airport waiting lines and getting to&#x2F;from the airport<p>- we instead want our 140 characters because we are informational creatures. We are basically an entity living inside a brain with extra legs. it doesn&#x27;t matter if we can&#x27;t travel across the world if we can &#x27;travel&#x27; instead. The real world doesn&#x27;t matter much when our basic needs are covered, instead we get our rewards swimming in the sea of information and ideas. Therefore there are 2 worthy goals for humanity now: longevity or brain computer interfaces. either fullfills the ultimate desire of a conscious mind: to &#x27;live&#x27; forever.

You lose a day off your life everytime you declare a String variable.

Nearly all misery in the modern world is caused by the invention of agriculture.

Contrarian you say.... Brexit is about introducing friction so that Tory party donors etc can have the opportunity to create companies that aim to &#x27;make things and more frictionless&#x27; and then profit.

this isn&#x27;t contrarian, but all these people on here think they have contrarian opinions but they&#x27;re pretty widespread opinions.

Most high school students shouldn&#x27;t go to college. It&#x27;s not very contrarian here, but outside of tech circles in the US it&#x27;s very unpopular. Hated even.

Sticking to tech, I differ from the HN consensus on:<p>* Small UI changes (eg moving a button) don’t make me have to relearn the UI from scratch.<p>* If an app developer has a way were I can get my work done faster, I want to know about it. Getting shit done is more sacred to me than the workflow I built myself.<p>* Related: devs do achieve the above.<p>* Most documentation doesn’t explain anything that can’t be learned from a code completion engine. When I do have questions, Stack Overflow is more likely to have a concise explanation that the official docs.<p>* Native apps are something only us devs give a shit about.<p>* Functional programming isn’t catching on for two reasons: the on boarding experience is missing things (mostly the big picture aspects of structuring an app) and b) Haskell is the post child of functional Languages.

That we&#x27;re just meat machines with no free will? Not exactly contrarian perhaps (just per laws of physics), but probably a one-percenter opinion.

- Contemporary feminism hurts most women and encourages relationship-sabotaging behavior.<p>- The narrative that the US and other Western nations&#x27; participation in white supremacy and slavery&#x2F;colonialism is the main societal influence today is overblown and is likely leading to unnecessary political violence and turmoil.<p>- I don&#x27;t think abortions should be banned, but generally speaking, it is incredibly easy to not get pregnant. Don&#x27;t have sex. Unless you were raped, no one is &#x27;forcing&#x27; anything on you, those were your decisions. It is baffling to me that no one says this out loud.<p>- There are only two genders.<p>- Kyle Rittenhouse acted in legitimate self-defense. The popular understanding of the case is beset with misinformation about what happened.

God exists - not just as a word or an idea; He is Someone who is actually there.<p>Go is a good language for many uses (contra junon). C++ is also a good language for at least some uses, but requires more care to use well.<p>Cheap food is killing us.<p>AGI is a mirage, and the singularity is a fantasy.

Note to readers: scroll down, the actual contrarian opinions are at the bottom.

I don&#x27;t agree with &quot;No Silver Bullet&quot;. The idea that no single advance in software engineering can make an order or more magnitude of difference in productivity.<p>Software, like every other area of endeavor, contains no inherent barriers to major advances relative to regular advances.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;No_Silver_Bullet" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;No_Silver_Bullet</a><p>Many laws of &quot;can&#x27;t&quot; are just dressed up pessimism. Many things never happened before they did.<p>I am not saying such an advance will happen. Just that it could.

Very few people are cut out to be &quot;book-smart.&quot; The education system must find and nurture those with the aptitude and the inclination, but should not try to force it on the rest.

Computer security can be solved by using capability based security. Virtual Machines and containers are just improvised crude versions of it.<p>We&#x27;ve got about 5 more years before everyone catches on to that fact, and things start to get better.<p>The insecurity of general purpose computing has been a major factor in the walled gardens that most people stick to when using the internet.<p>People don&#x27;t realize the freedom we had back in the MS-DOS days when you could write protect your OS and try ANYTHING in almost perfect safety.

I like The Prequels.

We can’t know if climate change models are correct - it’s way too much code, solid bug-checking of it would cost many billions, and without it, the models are more scientism than science.<p>The core problem here is that it’s hard to test if you don’t know what is the expected outcome (we don’t know how much the temperature is supposed to increase - we expect the model to tell us that…). In such cases, you don’t do black-box testing (i.e. just writing a bunch of test-cases), but rather have to resort to doing a painstaking and rigorous analysis of the code itself. We’ve done it in the past (e.g. on early space flight code), but the scope of the codebase was way smaller.<p>Also, I suspect that, a lot of the time, people work on the model (tweak parameters, find and fix numerical problems etc) until it starts giving responses which match their apriori expectations. That’s pure scientism (bs masquerading as science).

I fear we overcomplicated everything software&#x2F;infrastructure IT related, and in the no so far future we will completely be dominated by huge mega corps. We already see something of that since the last 20 years, but also because of hubris and ego we continue making things harder and harder for new comers new hackers.

I could go on for days …<p>A - The majority of data science insights is kinda useless for guiding software product direction. Much better to have a well defined strategy and just execute on that, tradeoffs and all. I have to engage in the game because that’s what my boss expects.<p>B - In 100 years we are going to look back at pet ownership with disdain, especially cats, because how could we keep these animals in an environment that’s so restrictive if they are indoors, and how could we unleash them on the ecology if they are outdoors?<p>C - If you want to help the poor, and save money on prison expenses, then funding public defenders is really the way to go.<p>D - I love the US and what it stands for, but if there hadn’t been a revolution then no big deal, we’d probably be in the same place more or less.<p>E - Govermentment intervention didn’t solve the great depression, it made it worse.<p>I hold these all equally strongly.

Watch &quot;Yes Minister&quot; and &quot;Yes Prime Minister&quot; and you can get a lot of contrarian opinions.

- Socialism (as in: actual socialism, not the European &#x2F; Scandinavian variety that for the most part still builds upon a free-market economy), when implemented, will inevitably fail. In most cases, because it&#x27;ll devolve into an authoritarian system fairly quickly. Those arguing in favour of socialism often will resort to a True Scotsman argument: &quot;Yes, but this wasn&#x27;t real socialism.&quot;<p>- The idea of &quot;limits to growth&quot; (as promoted by the Club of Rome) is a fallacy that - although since the time of Thomas Malthus it has been proven wrong time and again - remains bewilderingly popular.<p>- The EU is a cold war relic that&#x27;s ridiculously ill-equipped for the challenges of the 21st century. Though motivated by misguided ideas, petty nationalism, and selfishness, given time Brexit might prove to not have been such a bad idea after all.<p>- Nuclear power at least in the short term should be considered a vital component of combatting climate change.<p>Regarding software:<p>- Web standards are actually quite decent. The web and web technologies are great way of providing and distributing applications.<p>As for more some recent events:<p>- Lockdowns and civil rights restrictions in general are neither an effective, nor a reasonable or sustainable approach for dealing with a pandemic.<p>- Zero Covid &#x2F; No Covid &#x2F; a Covid elimination strategy is an unsustainable dead end.<p>- Negative COVID-19 test results, not vaccination passports, should be relied on as an access requirement.

I use the term &#x27;bien pensant&#x27; as an epithet. I think if you &quot;chew your food&quot; intellectually speaking, you&#x27;re going to come to some surprising conclusions that will not match conventional wisdom and that&#x27;s nothing to be afraid of.

The west lost the cold war, ideologically<p>As a corollary, western society peaked in the 80s

Sometimes apps are moving targets as if they were games.<p>I propose a grace period of maybe 250 ms after a visible change.<p>Let&#x27;s say I click a button but the window <i>poof!</i> disappeared just exactly then and revealed a different button beneath the closed window. Aargh! Now I caused something else!<p>My contrarian opinion is that we should try out this: if a button disappeared visually it is still there for 250 ms more. So we aren&#x27;t caught by the GUI change.<p>After 250 ms we can react and cancel the intention to click.<p>I am sure we need to experiment with the time needed and make it configurable.

One of my contrarian opinions (judging from the number of comments here) is that it is best to avoid posting <i>controversial</i> contrarian opinions on social media, including HN, in response to a question (e.g. Ask HN) especially if the OP asking the question is not a well established user. The OP could be a troll or maybe employed by a government looking for people that should be surveilled.<p>To be honest though, it is thought provoking to skim though all of these out of the ordinary ideas and responses.

The South should have been allowed to secede from the Union.<p>The US would be much better off today although that would have come at the expense of the new country.

Non-IT related opinion: compassion is vastly overrated. I think it is similar to tribalism and moralistic fervor; it&#x27;s good as an abstract motivator in small quantities, but if used continuously, it makes you feel great about yourself while always producing terrible results.

This is an opinion I used to hold.<p>Humans are an apex invasive species at this point. We are all plugged into a *-industrial complex. We sell dissatisfaction to each other to promote consumption to keep the whole thing going.<p>There is no nobility in bearing children or even in continuing living.

There is virtually no real diversity in experimentation on social decision making processes. (Governments, Economies, Science) So debates devolve into some form of e.g. capitalism vs. socialism, but both system are governed by similar variations of a sovereign nation state, which are adapted from monarchies. Compare this to the space of all possible government descriptions and we&#x27;re only looking at a weird narrow slice.<p>Because evolutionary pressures on governments produce stability and power instead of &#x27;goodness of people&#x27;, I suspect any random system that sounds remotely sensible would probably be superior to anything we have now. If we actually designed something that took into account new knowledge and technology, we could do <i>much better</i>.<p>Expectation of future profits is equivalent to belief that markets are inefficient. (Which of course they often are.) Open source economic planning could yield massive economic gains and doesn&#x27;t require centralized power or use of force. (Pacifist governance is one of those unexplored spaces) An open public ledger would allow for resource allocation and incentivizing work without needing a monetization strategy.<p>If we track and account for externalities doing a good thing funds itself. You don&#x27;t need a way to take money from the people you&#x27;re helping. This also disincentivizes negative externalities.<p>As an example of how bad things are: We still debate on natural language forums instead of using structured arguments that link to common datasets and simulations. These comments get &#x27;points&#x27; instead of bayesian probabilities, and there&#x27;s no way to filter or rescore anything based on it&#x27;s epistemological support or new data.

That X amount of years or Y amount of certifications will get you anywhere on its own.<p>See that 12-year-old kid killing it in the NFTs? See that AI startup IPO&#x27;ing?<p>Just offer the market what it wants.

We shouldn’t downvote contrarian views in general, no matter how much we oppose them. Only when they get preachy or smarmy should we consider it.

Humans are inherently evil tribalistic creatures.

Repeat violent criminals should have the option (and be encouraged) to have elective castration to reduce their sentencing. This will hopefully reduce their violent impulses and reduce their progeny.<p>Relatives should be somewhat culpable for the repeat violent crimes of their parents&#x2F;children&#x2F;siblings, anyone who shares at least 50% of their genes. With, of course, escape clauses if they&#x27;re distant, estranged, or never heard of them.<p>Religion should be as personal as sexual behaviour.

DeNiro wasn&#x27;t an antihero in Raging Bull, he was a hero. Same with Taxi Driver. Same with John Wayne in The Searchers.

There&#x27;s something deeply ironic about asking this question on a forum where answers are sorted by votes.

Everyone is happier, women included when we stick to household chores and raising children.

We should stop having a military that does anything outside the United States.

The internet was a bad idea.

We&#x27;ve proven we don&#x27;t deserve the freedom of speech and we will be censored and regulated by private corporations. The Internet made people worse humans and not better.

As the artificial facade of supposed shared values, propped up by global capitalism and pop culture, dissolves, it becomes quite apparent that while the internet connects us, we definitely do not share the same culture or held beliefs.<p>Case in point, look at this thread - &quot;what grinds your gears?&quot; is the theme, and while some come through with what one might expect from HN (programming hot takes, critiques of entrenched systems), we&#x27;re also getting quick responses espousing castration, the death penalty, imperialism, Trumpism, etc.<p>We, my friends, are a cluster.

Despite the popular belief, if you are a non-professional investor with a smallish capital (~$5-10mm), you can relatively easily beat the market.

American Capitalism will end the same way Soviet Communism ended.

I can&#x27;t write it here :)

Freedom of speech should have specific limitations around hate speech. Hate speech should be defined as racism and sexism.

The world was better in 1999.

* Abortion is wrong in all cases (angers the liberals) but * We need broad socialized healthcare, paid parental leave, etc to help the mothers (angers the conservatives) * Money is contributing to systemic racism - let&#x27;s get rid of it and just be good people

And you people consider yourselves contrarians. Let me show you amateurs how to upset an apple cart.<p>Donald Trump, raging narcissist, charlatan and fascistic bigot that he was, was also the most authentically American President America has ever had. He embodied the American spirit - it&#x27;s <i>true</i> spirit - unmasked and exposed in its full lunatic glory, and it should surprise no one that some Americans loved him enough to form an actual cult around him.

RISC-V’s success won’t benefit the end user, only spare designers a licensing fee they can well afford. After recompiling everyone’s software and dividing a huge unified ecosystem the end result will be some political victory with no material value.

Critical Race theory is absolute crackpot nonsense. That’s only contrarian though because the silent majority are cowards

Expertise is overrated

Donald Trump was a president with good intentions.

Covid pandemic is a sham. The impact of the virus is being overblown. The virus was created&#x2F;altered in a lab. The vaccination of most of the population has an ulterior motive

Communism would&#x27;ve been the better choice for the world, not for the people of the 20th century themselves but for the following generations. We are destroying the world with our consumerism (capitalism) and we just can&#x27;t stop although most of us know that what we do is wrong. We are all complicit and guilty. Everyone with a consciousness, when old, will look back to these days and know that s&#x2F;he has done too little [or rather: consumed too much], full of regret and sadness. [Unless...]<p>edit: yes, I&#x27;m talking about climate change.

I have hundreds of them. Watch this post get blasted into &#x2F;dev&#x2F;nullian.<p>1a) There never should have been a Covid lock-down, nor should there have ever been a vaccine created.<p>1b) People&#x27;s income tax rates should be based on how healthy they keep themselves and how healthy they eat, their lack of smoking and drinking and if they are parents, how healthy their children eat and how much exercise all of them get.

Judging by how often this gets slammed when I’ve discussed it in the past, I’ll assume it’s contrarian enough.<p>On HN, downvotes serve little purpose, assuming that the user base actually believes the notions of superiority and quality of discussion here compared to other sites on the internet.<p>For explicitly off-topic or guideline violating comments, flags exist. Downvotes seem to serve no other purpose than as a low effort “I disagree” or “I don’t like this” which wouldn’t be an acceptable reply if it were a comment.