We've made the world too complicated • Hacker News Board

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#111

Post by generic92034 » Sat, May 16, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #49

I think this feeling of everything being too complex is a natural consequence of work that is done for long-term abstract ends, rather than immediate and local ones. At least I think it is for me. Working remotely for an international software company is great for its lifestyle flexibility, but sometimes I just want to be a baker, chef, bike repairman, etc. that solves an immediate problem for a real person standing…

You could try it with some development support work, doing customer tickets. At times there is complexity but you have real people asking for help and usually a limited scope. It is a (nowadays rather small) part of my job and it often gives me that kind of satisfaction you are alluding to.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#112

Post by collingreen » Sat, May 16, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

rrgok wrote: post #94

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't the whole point, to get so good at things we got back to that eventually? I don't even understand what the point/goal/target is anymore? Like we forgot society should be getting better every year. Or it used to be the conservative towns that had beautiful tree lined streets, but now it's conservative to NOT plant anything for the future. What is it all for at this point?

Man that's what I've been asking people all the time: what is our end goal? When will we say "this is enough", we can stop here? If we don't know the answers for these question, then we better find answers before going "forward" blindly.

There is no collective goal, just emergent behavior. It might be our greatest strength and our greatest weakness. We're technologically capable of shaping our world for the better and incapable of cooperating or even agreeing enough to pull it off.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#113

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 16, 2026, 9:25 PM UTC

globnomulous wrote: post #106

Extinctions followed homo sapiens across the planet millennia before the emergence of the technologies that you seem to think make the world 'complicated.' The Greek work biblos, for book, derives from the name of the region of the Levant (Bublos) that produces much of the best paper in the ancient world, until people denuded it, turning it into a desert. Iran and Afghanistan were green when the Hittites and Babyloni…

[deleted]

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#114

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Sat, May 16, 2026, 9:28 PM UTC

GeoAtreides wrote: post #69

> I'm writing this with technology I will never fully understand that's on you. It takes just a bit of effort, and I suppose time, to have a very good idea of what happens, at all levels, between the moment i had this comment in mind and you the reader conceptualizing it in your mind. Are some details missing? Sure. We still don't know where thoughts come from and I, personally, don't have the mathematically training…

It's not about understanding. The understanding part is a red herring.

It's about lack of agency. Because most people have very little actual freedom, and many have to deal with constant stressors, some of which are existential.

In the US freedom is defined as "the ability to earn money and buy things to consume." The advanced level is "the ability to play status games around money and ownership."

Neither of those are real freedom.

Absolute freedom means being able to do whatever you can imagine.

If your imagination is so constrained that goal collapses to "Make more money", a multibillionaire oligarch barely has more freedom than the peasants.

The West - for all of its flaws - used to be able to imagine a better future, and attempt to steer towards it.

At some point - I think it was around 9/11 - we lost that. The future stopped being an enticing place of possibility and started becoming a frightening place of threats and general diminishment.

Now we're in a churn phase where the old Cult of Tech is still running, and still has followers, but it's become increasingly clear that faith was never enough, and we're not going anywhere unless we develop true collective intelligence.

AI is a kind of attempted simulacrum of that, but it's a poor substitute for the real thing.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#115

Post by patcon » Sat, May 16, 2026, 9:32 PM UTC

globnomulous wrote: post #106

Extinctions followed homo sapiens across the planet millennia before the emergence of the technologies that you seem to think make the world 'complicated.' The Greek work biblos, for book, derives from the name of the region of the Levant (Bublos) that produces much of the best paper in the ancient world, until people denuded it, turning it into a desert. Iran and Afghanistan were green when the Hittites and Babyloni…

I say this with respect and appreciation for your thoughtful framing, as I also feel for the author:

I'm not a young man, but I believe your this-has-always-been-the-way-ism, is equally clueless, in shared lineage with all the old-dog elders of past who've been helpless to stop what's happening, as the naive fools do the work of imagining it might be otherwise

Blindness goes both ways (a certain type from the end, as from the beginning), and truth is likely somewhere in the middle

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#116

Post by zdragnar » Sat, May 16, 2026, 9:38 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #96

keiferski wrote: post #49

I think this feeling of everything being too complex is a natural consequence of work that is done for long-term abstract ends, rather than immediate and local ones. At least I think it is for me. Working remotely for an international software company is great for its lifestyle flexibility, but sometimes I just want to be a baker, chef, bike repairman, etc. that solves an immediate problem for a real person standing…

Hmmm… when you put it that way it seems almost tautological. If complex work could be graspable to the common man, it would no longer be considered as such. Some new, even more sophisticated work would arise and take its place.

I think it demonstrates that OP isn't in a team that has any autonomy or meets with anyone outside their team.

I've worked on a large, complex project for a large company, but the whole time I knew what the purpose of the project was, who would benefit from it, why the company was willing to spend money on it.

Even if you don't actually meet end customers, having someone who does put together proper user stories at least takes away some of the busy-work feel.

After all, it doesn't really matter how complex the tool is, what matters is why and how someone will benefit from it existing.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#117

Post by copx » Sat, May 16, 2026, 9:39 PM UTC

tardedmeme wrote: post #99

squidbeak wrote: post #59

I won't guess at the age of the author, but this feeling seems to creep over people as they age, and always has. Today's complexity seems simple for fresh minds that have grown up alongside it. Meanwhile the simplicity that tired, bewildered older minds hark back to as a golden norm appalled the older minds at the time. Almost universally, the response in older generations seems to be to look for simple solutions and…

Could this be because older people have more memories of when certain things were better than they are now?

The issue is that "better" is subjective and the subjects are shaped by the environment they grow up in.

Most people thus naturally prefer the world as it was during their formative years.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#118

Post by aspenmayer » Sat, May 16, 2026, 9:39 PM UTC

Procrastes wrote: post #104

This reminds me of the central ideas in Adam Curtis's Hypernormalization[1]. I feel the pressure of the complexity, too, but attempting to oversimplify complex things has consequences. "Politicians, financiers and technological utopians, rather than face up to the real complexities of the world, retreated. Instead, they constructed a simpler version of the world in order to hang on to power. And as this fake world gr…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS_c2qqA-6Y

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#119

Post by pfannkuchen » Sat, May 16, 2026, 9:40 PM UTC

globnomulous wrote: post #106

Extinctions followed homo sapiens across the planet millennia before the emergence of the technologies that you seem to think make the world 'complicated.' The Greek work biblos, for book, derives from the name of the region of the Levant (Bublos) that produces much of the best paper in the ancient world, until people denuded it, turning it into a desert. Iran and Afghanistan were green when the Hittites and Babyloni…

> Iran and Afghanistan were green when the Hittites and Babylonians were in charge

I thought this was due to natural climate change?

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#120

Post by retired » Sat, May 16, 2026, 9:41 PM UTC

I'm paying someone €500 a year to file my taxes and I just want to go back to trading sea shells. Why do systems have to be so complicated. I have to pay my road tax in bills and I get my change in coins what is that about.