21–27 of 27 posts
Great blog post. I think this has to do with the largest companies having the largest megaphones. When Google writes about how they saved a few bytes by designing their own serialization format and serialization, it makes me, as an engineer who never really cared about those things, feel insecure in my technical decision making. When AWS writes about how they invested tons of effort into improving the performance of…
I've developed a theory that qualities such as empathy, subjectivity, even aesthetic need to be cultivated. You need to exercise them or they will abandon you. And being a programmer is not always conducive to these qualities. When you spend your time in the land of bits and bytes, 1's and 0's, it's too easy to see the world through the lens of objectivity. But the world is not objective. As much as we try to claim o…
Great blog post. I think this has to do with the largest companies having the largest megaphones. When Google writes about how they saved a few bytes by designing their own serialization format and serialization, it makes me, as an engineer who never really cared about those things, feel insecure in my technical decision making. When AWS writes about how they invested tons of effort into improving the performance of…
I've developed a theory that qualities such as empathy, subjectivity, even aesthetic need to be cultivated. You need to exercise them or they will abandon you. And being a programmer is not always conducive to these qualities. When you spend your time in the land of bits and bytes, 1's and 0's, it's too easy to see the world through the lens of objectivity. But the world is not objective. As much as we try to claim o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish more engineers would look into mathematical constructions of systems. Take something like Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem and apply it to your own thought process - it shows that it is fallible. The recognition that you can be wrong, and that you might not be able to see how you are wrong, to me provokes a careful, thoughtful scepticism of self. We still need to face reality, so the sceptic can’t take over the…
I'm not sure Gödel's incompleteness theorems have anything to do with this. After all, they don't show that any system of reasoning is inconsistent - just that it can't prove its own consistency and that there are statements that can be neither true nor false. Even then, it only applies when your system is able to express arithmetic - for basic syllogisms (like "all men are mortal. socrates is a man. therefore socrat…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish more engineers would look into mathematical constructions of systems. Take something like Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem and apply it to your own thought process - it shows that it is fallible. The recognition that you can be wrong, and that you might not be able to see how you are wrong, to me provokes a careful, thoughtful scepticism of self. We still need to face reality, so the sceptic can’t take over the…
Honestly, anyone whose precision of knowledge is limited only by Godel's incompleteness theorem deserves to be a little bit arrogant. But no such person exists. Looking back on one's life tends to reveal many errors, blunders, and utterly moronic misconceptions. Plenty of material to provoke humility there. I should say that none of this means there's no such thing as objective reality. There (probably) is some kind…
I've developed a theory that qualities such as empathy, subjectivity, even aesthetic need to be cultivated. You need to exercise them or they will abandon you. And being a programmer is not always conducive to these qualities. When you spend your time in the land of bits and bytes, 1's and 0's, it's too easy to see the world through the lens of objectivity. But the world is not objective. As much as we try to claim o…
I believe in your theory. I wrote about it recently as it’s been a long-standing challenge for me to balance different creative/literary/social aspects of my self with those emphasized by programming all day. http://www.pcmaffey.com/how-programming-shapes-the-mind