alt Hacker News> today's high culture all seems to be predicated upon feigning enlightenment
That must be the marker of "high" culture throughout history generally, right?
I like this quote from a funny video on ancient Greek philosophy (although I'd probably be less amused by the layers of nonsense if the people around me were deep into it):
> Philosophy is known for being equal-parts Pretentious and Needlessly Confusing, and that’s definitely true, especially after Descartes shows up, but there is one thing that Philosophy is not, and that is “Boring”, because it is WAY too stupid. Anybody who tells you that Philosophy is the unflinching pursuit of objective truth is lying to you and to themselves — Philosophy is a mess where everyone is competing for the most galaxy-brained take on the world, and that’s why I Love It, dammit.
n+1 painted itself into a corner by escaping from this failure mode of philosophy.
That's why it's biggest discernible audience-class was lower-middle to "blue-collar" grad students in architecture or design. Who knew this was a great place to learn the form=function* of the writing that they need, but not feel so strongly about it that they'd push it on their colleagues.
I think the early editors should have marketed it to compiler engineers, like a reverse-Wired
@DuaneMclemore, help me out here
*Appeal to the most discerning of [ie old money] aristocrats while being painfully aware that the writing has to distance itself from "champagne socialists"