Partly, what you're noticing is a reaction to the vast quantity of baloney that the tech industry generates. (Which baloney might be interesting to taxonomize into techno-utopianism, marketing hype, DilbertCo PHBism, ...)<p>Partly, it's because HN's stereotypical user is an engineer. Engineers are <i>supposed</i> to tend critical / cynical / pessimistic - otherwise stuff just doesn't work, and Sales gets away with pre-selling "production starts next quarter" pedal-powered supersonic flying cars.<p>Partly, it's because folks here recognize that the world has <i>huge</i> problems (injustice, wars, climate change, etc.) which neither their stereotypical skills nor personal aspirations (write awesome code, engineer a cloud solution, scale a startup, take their unicorn public) do anything meaningful to address. And that if things really go to sh*t...then all their 1337 skillz, achievements, money, and possessions will be worth far less than some old Luddite geezer's bunker in Montana.<p>(I've noticed for a while that I have a pretty critical / cynical / pessimistic tone here on HN. <i>For me</i>, that's partly because many HNer's feels like they're a fraction of my age, with a rather narrow education and worldview - so they can need reminding that a whole lot of actually-relevant stuff happened before the web was a thing, and the world doesn't "just work" because of {optimistic generalities & hand-waves that a parent might use in explaining society & economics to a kid}):