Why “handwave” is being discussed
The most recent Hacker News stories and comments contributing to this topic's mentions.
Again, engineers know what needs to be tested, how, to what degree, with which materials, and with what safety margin. Your widget that mankind may never understand. Well, that'…
by _carbyau_ · Sep 1, 2026
Safe Haskell is just a worst version of Rust's unsafe. What it actually does is equivalent to Rust's #![forbid(unsafe_code)] which immediately lead to a question: so Haskell has…
by nextaccountic · Aug 31, 2026
The thing people tend to handwave about China's manufacturing prowess is that they have spent the last 25-ish years getting really good at 'making things to a spec' at a cost in…
by to11mtm · Aug 28, 2026
> Your argument would be more reasonable if you didn't handwave genuine and difficult moral and ethical decisions under those dismissive terms. Anthropic willingly got itself in…
by ExoticPearTree · Aug 28, 2026
>because they don't feel like it Your argument would be more reasonable if you didn't handwave genuine and difficult moral and ethical decisions under those dismissive terms. Ci…
by Arodex · Aug 28, 2026
I love it when people handwave tech developments of a truly gargantuan scale
by alansaber · Aug 28, 2026
Interest
Proportion of Hacker News items mentioning "handwave" over time.
Mentions
Total number of Hacker News items mentioning "handwave" over time.
Hand-waving is a pejorative label for attempting to be seen as effective in word, reasoning, or deed, while actually doing nothing effective or substantial. It is often applied to debating techniques that involve fallacies, misdirection and the glossing over of details. It is also used academically to indicate unproven claims and skipped steps in proofs, with some specific meanings in particular fields, including literary criticism, speculative fiction, mathematics, logic, science and engineering. Read more on Wikipedia