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Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

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Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#91

Post by theprop »

maxerickson wrote: post #88
theprop wrote: post #87

No, it's precisely the opposite! Maintainers (using whale oil for energy) would have driven every whale to extinction and left the world without an energy source a century ago. Maintainers (using horses for travel) would have drowned Manhattan in horse shit a century ago. Innovation is if anything under-rated and under-funded and under-supported. The homes of hundreds of millions of people and energy itself is threat…

Wouldn't maintainers just be in small social groups, eating fruit and whatever else they happened to collect?

That's hunter-gatherers! That's more than 10,000 years ago before agriculture developed...

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#92

Post by maxerickson »

theprop wrote: post #91
maxerickson wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't maintainers just be in small social groups, eating fruit and whatever else they happened to collect?

That's hunter-gatherers! That's more than 10,000 years ago before agriculture developed...

Sure. How do you get from there to a city without any innovation?

How do you even get to a sharp stick without innovation?

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#93

Post by bigtunacan »

somethingsimple wrote: post #82
stonogo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sitting quietly ...what does this mean? Is this something that children can do?

Of course. Both my wife and I have taken our kid to our respective offices and it was fine. She just sat there drawing and playing on her tablet. This was when she was 6-7 years old. Not all kids are brats.

And not all kids are content with sitting inactive, quietly, in a chair for 8+ hours. The fact that they are energetic, inquisitive, and have a need for attention from their parents does not make them "brats".

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#94

Post by Nomentatus »

mee_too wrote: post #47
AcerbicZero wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hoffer is wrong. He's confusing different military philosophies with this mixed up idea about national identity regarding "maintenance". I don't think anyone would suggest Germany didn't perform a minor miracle by rebuilding as quickly as they did (with massive support), but the Russians went from having half their country burned to the ground, to a world superpower (also with a large amount of support), in a shorter…

Who supported Russia after the war?

The conquered countries that were stripped of a good part of what they had, largely.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#95

Post by nine_k »

Animats wrote: post #2

"If the President had picked me to predict which country [in postwar Europe] would recover first, I would say, 'Bring me the records of maintenance.' The nation with the best maintenance will recover first. Maintenance is something very, very specifically Western. They haven't got it in Russia. If I got in there in the warehouse, let's say, and I saw that the broom had a special nail, I would say, 'This is the nail o…

But this measure, Japan proved to be utterly Western. They also recovered brilliantly, as predicted.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#97

Post by justicezyx »

whack wrote: post #50

You could say the same thing about any non-glamorous/lucrative position. "Garbagemen make the world go round. Without them, we would drown in our own filth" "Nannies make the world go round. Without them, half the workforce would be stuck at home" "Auto mechanics make the world go round. Without them, we would have no way of getting places" Ultimately, all such arguments are inane and pointless because every single j…

I think there is a major flaw in the analogy.

Basically, maintenance of complex systems or assets, are intellectually demanding tasks. All your examples, however, are completely the opposite. I am not saying that the jobs do not require skills, it's just that these skills are not that valuable.

Also maintainer adds value in the positive way. Where all your example is to prevent value loss. The 2 are fundamentally different.

Contrary to common knowledge, maintainer is not needed to make the system running, if nothing changes. Maintainer is necessary to make the system running in changing environment. Real-world software or any valuable assets require change to keep up with the world surrounding it. A great mental bias is to implicitly think maintenance is about "keep it running", where at the same time conveniently omit the part about changing environment.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#98

Post by maehwasu »

This is like saying LeBron James is less important than Cleveland's role players, because you need five people on a side to have a basketball team.

The question isn't who's "necessary", since everyone who is necessary, no matter in what way, is necessary; necessity is a tautology.

The question is whose contributions are more replaceable.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#99

Post by theprop »

maxerickson wrote: post #92
theprop wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's hunter-gatherers! That's more than 10,000 years ago before agriculture developed...

Sure. How do you get from there to a city without any innovation? How do you even get to a sharp stick without innovation?

Great point!! Yes, exactly!!

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#100

Post by flukus »

maxerickson wrote: post #92
theprop wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's hunter-gatherers! That's more than 10,000 years ago before agriculture developed...

Sure. How do you get from there to a city without any innovation? How do you even get to a sharp stick without innovation?

> How do you even get to a sharp stick without innovation?

Evolution? That's how agriculture and many of our earliest tools were created. I don't think there were many/any single steps that we would consider innovative.

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