The emperor's new clothes

What Hacker News says

1. ranting-mothMar 2023
   Reminds me of a story, The Emperor's New Clothes (H.C. Andersen, 1837).

   The emperor gets tricked into buying new extraordinary clothes. They are incredibly fancy, but invisible to anyone "who was unfit for his office, or who was unusually stupid".

   The emperor didn't see them, but of course he didn't want to admit that. The whole lot of townspeople didn't see them either, but likewise, no one wanted to admit that.

   In the end, the emperor goes to town, naked. Everyone praises his new clothes. Until finally a little boy utters: "But he hasn't got anything on!" and the truth unfolds.

   https://andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheEmperorsNewClothes...

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2. Stranger43Feb 2020
   It's not just incompetence, what we are seeing is far to systemic to be the fault of mere individuals it have to be rooted in the way modern business culture deals with IT.

   Almost every real world security post mortem i have ever seen ends up as untimely application of patches due to the business either rejecting downtime/changes or simply not having the tools and staffing in place to keep up with changing vendor recommendation and security updates.

   And despite every evidence based report placing the blame for our current mess on "systematic maintenance failures" the only thing we heer hear from the MBA mills and business leaders is a call for more snakeoil products that can, do what nobody have yet to demonstrate under real world conditions, and add security to an insecure environment.

   This is not incompetence/ignorance it's denial likely caused by an "prisoners dilemma" explained elegantly in H.C. Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes" where nobody wants to be the first to admit that they aren't keeping up with best practices for fear of ridicule or worse.

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3. kickFeb 2020
   Do you not know the story The Emperor's New Clothes? It's a classic where I'm from. From the Wikipedia page:

   "The Emperor's New Clothes" (Danish: Kejserens nye klæder) is a short tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, about two weavers who promise an emperor a new suit of clothes that they say is invisible to those who are unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent – while in reality, they make no clothes at all, making everyone believe the clothes are invisible to them. When the emperor parades before his subjects in his new "clothes", no one dares to say that they do not see any suit of clothes on him for fear that they will be seen as stupid. Finally a child cries out, "But he isn't wearing anything at all!" The tale has been translated into over 100 languages.[1]

   The point isn't...whatever you're talking about, it's that the people do value it a lot, they're just shooting themselves in the foot.

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4. logfromblammoMar 2018
   ~King David didn't record Head Like a Hole. Your argument is invalid.~

   Quotations are usually the result of either some serious distillation of individual philosophical thought beforehand, or selection pressure from those who propagate it afterward.

   The insertion of a quote into an argument isn't appealing to the authority of the author, but recognizing that they were the first to formulate it. It is suggesting that those currently in the discussion are reinventing the wheel. Other people have already considered the problem and published their findings in more succinct form. In this case, Reznor is apparently calling out the religious on justifying their antisocial or nonsensical behaviors with the ultimate appeal to authority: the fictional character that is better than everyone else by definition.

   As such, responding to one quote from a famous person with a quote from another famous person is only productive if the quote could otherwise stand alone without the attribution. To close the argument, I'll reference The Emperor's New Clothes, which is a parable that suggests children and fools are immune to the allure of sophisticated fictions. The fool wonders why he should believe in God, but he is foolish not for that doubt, but for failing to see the profit in playing along. The foolish parent tells their child that Santa Claus is not real, because they could otherwise have better-behaved children all December long. It is the same with God. What priest would admit to doubt when it is the tithes from believers that keep him warm, dry, and fed? For him, God is an excuse for freeloading upon the largesse of others.

   "God is dead, and no one cares; if there is a Hell, I'll see you there." --Nietzsche

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