alpaylan4d ago

Hypothesis, Antithesis, synthesis

https://antithesis.com/blog/2026/hegel/

Hypothesis, Antithesis, synthesis

Introducing Hegel, our new family of property-based testing libraries.

Show threadhugeBirb4d ago
Not that it matters at this point but the hegelian dialectic is not thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Usually attributed to Hegel but as I understand it he actually pushed back on this mechanical view of it all and his views on these transitory states was much more nuanced.
Show threadDRMacIver

Conversation with Will (Antithesis CEO) a couple months ago, heavily paraphrased:

Will: "Apparently Hegel actually hated the whole Hegelian dialectic and it's falsely attributed to him."

Me: "Oh, hm. But the name is funny and I'm attached to it now. How much of a problem is that?"

Will: "Well someone will definitely complain about it on hacker news."

Me: "That's true. Is that a problem?"

Will: "No, probably not."

(Which is to say: You're entirely right. But we thought the name was funny so we kept it. Sorry for the philosophical inaccuracy)

Mar 24 at 4:06pmWeb
Show threadwwilson4d ago

If I had been wearing my fiendish CEO hat at the time, I might have even said something like: "somebody pointing this out will be a great way to jumpstart discussion in the comments."

One of the evilest tricks in marketing to developers is to ensure your post contains one small inaccuracy so somebody gets nerdsniped... not that I have ever done that.

Show threadjpadkins4d ago

Seth Godin made the case that its more important for people to make remarks than to be favorable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Cow:_Transform_Your_Bus...)

Trump did this a lot with the legacy media in his first term. He would make inaccurate statements to the media on the topic he wanted to be in the spotlight, and the media would jump to "fact check" him. Guess what, now everyone is talking about illegal immigration, tariffs, or whatever subject Trump thought was to their advantage.

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable - Wikipedia

Show threadamalcon4d ago
"No such thing as bad publicity" is a very old idea. That quote is usually attributed to PT Barnum, but the idea is much older than him.
Show threaddfabulich4d ago
If that's not motivation enough for you to rename it, well, TypeScript already has a static type checker called Hegel. https://hegel.js.org/ (It's a stronger type system than TypeScript.)
Index

Feel power of types

Show threadDRMacIver4d ago
We looked at it and given that the repo was archived nearly two years ago decided it wasn't a problem.
Show threadcmrdporcupine4d ago

I think it's more that Hegel was fine with "dialectics" but that the antithesis/synthesis stuff is not actually what's going on in his dialectic. It's a bit of a popular misconception about the role of negation and "movement" in Hegel.

I believe (unless my memory is broken) they get into this a bunch in Ep 15 of my favourite podcast "What's Left Of Philosophy": https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/15-what-is-dialectics-...

Also if you're not being complained about on HN, are you even really nerd-ing?

15 | What is Dialectics? Part II: We Need to Talk about Hegel

Podcast Episode · What's Left of Philosophy · 4 June 2021 · 1h 16m

Apple Podcasts