Egoless Engineering

> What we are witnessing across the Earth's societies is nothing less than the apotheosis of the masses' majorities exercising their free will to choose ignorance over wisdom

There is a mismatch between your observations about humans as a whole, and the appeal to individuals and their individual values.

I am all for individual ethics, but half the people on the planet could have great ethics, and things could still devolve.

The way to scalable net-positive gains starts with oneself, but also requires finding ways to pull others into net-positive arrangements, in a way that generates value back to you. Then repeat on larger scales.

If a fraction of the planet worked hard from that standpoint, things would improve markedly. Even a lot of failures and a few successes would make a lot of positive difference.

Applying game theory, psychology and local conditions toward scaling up positive sum games, is another form of engineering.

Perhaps the highest form.

I think the right balance here is to have ownership of the outcome rather than the thing. E.g. you have ownership of making sure the feature you’re working on makes it to production and works properly

With that ownership comes there responsibility and accountability of making sure it happens. The level of responsibility and autonomy that comes with that is what I’ve found people react positively to

> A well-designed system will align individual self-interest with what's beneficial collectively.

A well-evolved human being will fit into the team in the optimal way, so long as the team is constructed by a well-evolved human being, who will do what you suggest without interference from their ego.

> What does compassion look like towards someone who's trying to mug me?

To beat the everliving sh_t out of them to keep them from earning more negative karma in the future, while earning positive karma from helping protect other innocents. Remember, letting the oppressors run rampant is not helping anyone, so you can earn good karma by selflessly preventing. And God does not want innocents harmed, so protecting yourself (and other innocents) is God's Will.

> Feeling positively towards others, and acting beneficially to others, are not the same thing.

You're right, the feeling of love is of little importance if one does nothing to benefit them. The key is action, not warm fuzzies.

> I do not subscribe to your religion.

That's your right, just as it is mine to love you anyway and try to educate you out of your ignorance. If you don't want me to, then I'll not bother you, but this is a public forum, so we can post so long as we remain within the guidelines.

That said, I'm not advertising for any specific religion, but to the core of all of God's religions, because they each have compassion at their core, or they have gone horribly astray. You must find your own path within the umbrella of God's Loving self-evolution. Seek and ye shall find what is perfect for you.

When you tire of your unhappiness, you can pray that God help you out of your ignorance and guide you to a suitable teacher. You don't have to do anything like that in your life, just like you don't have to wear clothes at the mall or drive on the correct side of the road. I do suggest, however, that you do what's best for both you and others, for you and those around you will be happier that way.

This is how human life works: you don't have to follow the guidelines, but there's hell to pay if you're an ahole about it. Imagine a world where compassion for all those around us was the norm, instead of this idiotic, wasteful, strifeful competition that is spoiling the Earth and causing so much misery.

Part of me wants to say that it's best to work in a 'low-ego' environment as opposed to a 'high-ego' one - or to avoid working with people who have 'huge egos'... but I honesty find any discussion about 'egos' relatively devoid of meaning. As someone else said, it's difficult to find people who work without ego (whatever working without ego would mean). Most of my professional experience is as a working musician, and it goes without saying that artists have egos, in the sense that they try to bring something from their inner selves to the outer world, and that they invest a lot of effort in learning how to do so properly. Sometimes I've felt that the best musicians I've worked with were "low ego" but this could be just that they are supremely confident and also not lacking in affirmation from their audiences - and if they are kind, from their fellow musicians. The worst people I've worked with are talented people who can't seem to find the affirmation they crave, but feel they deserve. They feel constantly slighted and left behind. As a band leader, I realized I simply have to stroke these people's egos - no matter how confident, skilled, or amazing some people seem they are riddled with self doubt and absolutely need outside affirmation. I used to fight it, but eventually learned it was my job as a manager of sorts to do so...

There is no mismatch, friend. "Pulling others in", as you put it, requires two ends of the leveling-up: first, the initiate explains how to begin the self-evolution, and second, the newcomer accepts the challenge and begins their own path to self-evolution.

For those who invite, we are to do so with loving kindness, because the result is wholly dependent upon the receiver opening and then walking through the door we present. There is no compulsion in religion, and we must understand and remember that it is everyone's choice, and we cannot be negative about their declination. No badgering, no negativity whatsoever, period. We are to keep being kind with the hope that they will catch on eventually, as the events of their lives surface the negativity that they, themselves, have sown into the world via their willful ignorance. Perhaps they will reach a point where they've had enough of ignorance and are willing to give the Path of Love a try.

And this is no game, though systems theory is the proper model of our situation, where there in an intrinsic gravity we each face to the idea of overcoming our intrinsic negative traits (the vices of the heart/mind). Now, construct the model with cooperating verses competing individuals in the population, positive contributors verses negative contributors. Of course, you already correctly intuit the fact that the more of us that viewed our aggregate impact upon the Earth (and each other) this way (that we can actually change things by being a part of the positive force), things could improve quite rapidly. The fact is that we are moving in such a diametrically opposite direction to cooperative compassion that we are literally destroying the Earth for our future generations.

And it is our choice, each of us, individually, but with billions of us aggregating into a miserable mass of selfish f_cks who are causing unnecessary strife, unhappiness, and destruction via our willful ignorance of what is possible for us both individually and collectively.