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The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class

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Re: The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class

#161

Post by niyikiza »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #64
redisman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The metaphor definitely breaks in the middle ladder. Why not just do labor, middle management, owners like in the first part of the piece? I get that everyone hates NYT opinion writers but that’s like 20 people - not a social class. Also do software engineers fall into upper middle class or high skilled labor? I think they’re in both. Or maybe I just don’t have any interactions with the middle ladder in real life and…

I'm convinced software engineers can be part of either of the 3 ladders, but most are in the upper middle class set.

Is it really the same person?

- Coder/programmer (L1) - Software Engineer (L2) - Entrepreneur [in the software industry] (L3)

Re: The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class

#162

Post by cbozeman »

croissants wrote: post #146
cbozeman wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I meant 3-in-4 are female, not 1-in-4. > A very confused sexism. To an uncritical thinker, it might definitely seem that way. To address the "liberal arts college" aspect, I mean specifically they're insulated from a lot of the reality of the rest of the world. I specifically mean the Dartmouths, Browns, etc. of the educational world. I mean people for whom a $200,000 education to have a $35,000 - $115,000 a y…

> I occasionally work with and consult for these people. Now I'm curious. The world you describe seems quite hostile to someone with your beliefs -- how and why are you in it?

> Now I'm curious. The world you describe seems quite hostile to someone with your beliefs

That's because I don't have beliefs, I have data. I'm not interested in "beliefs". I'm interested in being able to concretely prove something with varying degrees of certainty, and I won't present my findings and conclusions unless I have the strongest available data to back them up.

To autopsy your assertion even further, you could extrapolate to the entire world. Most people in the world don't really want to know why the world is the way it is, or even why they do the things they do. People don't like that they can be quantified, that they can be predicted if someone, somewhere, with enough knowledge and understanding has enough data about them. Yet Facebook and Google and Twitter and YouTube do this every day, fairly easily nowadays I might add. It only upsets people when its in their face and clearly visible. When they can't turn away from it and deny it.

The nearly wholesale rejection of evolutionary biology, psychology, and the Big Five personality traits by a subset of certain people is hilarious because 1) its anti-science, which is made even more ridiculous given the credence these groups place on science and 2) it not only can be, but often is used against them by researchers who have no moral misgivings about the nature of the science and accept it for what it is - its neither inherently good nor bad, its just how we evolved based on the selective pressures nature placed upon our species.

> how and why are you in it?

The why is probably easier to answer than the how. By their own admission, I bring value to their organizations. When someone asks me what I do, instead of going through a bunch of technobabble and mathematics/statistics jargon I just tell them, "I bring order to chaos." It usually sparks more interesting conversations than talking about R, K-means clustering, Bayesian inference, and all the other jargon surrounding data science that frankly almost no one besides mathematicians, statisticians, and other data scientists will understand anyway. The second part of the "why" is "enormous consulting fees". :)

The how is a very long post that I just don't have time to type up right now.

Re: The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class

#163

Post by subjectsigma »

One time somebody posted an article (whose name escapes me now that) which asserted that "Endurance sports are the domain of white people because they need artificial pain and struggle to make their otherwise meaningless lives meaningful." It was such a lazy and pompous ideological hit-and-run.

I'm getting a lot of the same vibes from this piece. If you have disposable income and want to collect Japanese cookware then that doesn't inherently make you ignorant or detached from reality. The model is kind of interesting, but it mostly sounds like a dig by the author leaning heavily on stereotyping groups of people.

Re: The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class

#164

Post by dash2 »

TameAntelope wrote: post #75
dash2 wrote: post #8

Meh.... This has a real "I'm 14 and this is deep" vibe. Like a teenager who thinks their dad is a loser, and that the real men are the guys at the bottom in tough blue collar jobs, or at the top in power suits being Wolves of Wall Street. Insights like this can be fun, but they're for the third beer with your buddies, not for writing down.

> they're for the third beer with your buddies, not for writing down. I would love to hear more about what you think the difference is.

Hmm, well, I'm a social scientist so perhaps I'm a bit elitist about what counts as seriously understanding the world.

It's not that there's no insight in what the guy says. Some of it is quite accurate. I think I would say that (nearly all) the insight was delivered by The Office in the first place. I never saw the US variant, but I LOVE the UK version. We like shows like that because they do speak to us - we do recognize the appalling awfulness of middle managers, or how decent people get stuck in dead ends.

The problem is the attempt to systematize and generalize and make some deep "theory" out of all this. It just isn't worthwhile. There's no sensible theory where everyone at the top is a sociopath, and everyone at the bottom is a realist, and every middle manager is an idiot. I mean, come on. And this "theory" isn't meant to be tested, and never will be... at best, it'll be written down in some kind of fun, pseudoscientific book like Bullshit Jobs.

To sum up, this guy mistakes ∃ for ∀.

Re: The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class

#165

Post by TameAntelope »

dash2 wrote: post #164
TameAntelope wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're for the third beer with your buddies, not for writing down. I would love to hear more about what you think the difference is.

Hmm, well, I'm a social scientist so perhaps I'm a bit elitist about what counts as seriously understanding the world. It's not that there's no insight in what the guy says. Some of it is quite accurate. I think I would say that (nearly all) the insight was delivered by The Office in the first place. I never saw the US variant, but I LOVE the UK version. We like shows like that because they do speak to us - we do rec…

On most points here I’m in complete agreement, the only nit I would pick is that there should be room for fun insights like this. Articles that wouldn’t hold up under academic scrutiny, and woe betide the fool who bases their life outlook on an Office-based theory, but are fun to muse about, and to overthink a little bit, as you say, over beers with friends.

How do we allow for work like that to be done? I would hate for this kind of silliness to be lost because it isn’t rigorous enough.

Besides, the very people who would take this seriously are the same people who aren’t actively thinking and applying insights on how society interacts in their daily lives anyway.

Re: The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class

#166

Post by croissants »

cheezburger wrote: post #159
croissants wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I occasionally work with and consult for these people. Now I'm curious. The world you describe seems quite hostile to someone with your beliefs -- how and why are you in it?

We choose the world we live in? Since when?

I assume most people on HN have some control over their professional lives. Part of the sibling comment's response is that part of their motivation is "enormous consulting fees", for example. There is a calculus there for weighing how annoying the world you choose is vs. how well it remunerates you.

Re: The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class

#167

Post by cbozeman »

croissants wrote: post #166
cheezburger wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We choose the world we live in? Since when?

I assume most people on HN have some control over their professional lives. Part of the sibling comment's response is that part of their motivation is "enormous consulting fees", for example. There is a calculus there for weighing how annoying the world you choose is vs. how well it remunerates you.

The annoyance is generated moreso from their certainty than who they are as people. I'm wary of people who little-to-no experience with a certain "thing" who are absolutely certain they understand that "thing".

But there seems to be this idea that I don't like working with these people, but that's not true. Most of these people are really good people who are good at their jobs, who want to be a force for good in the world, and they legitimately think they're on the side of righteousness. They're the modern day version of crusaders, frankly. And much like the crusaders of old their prejudices are borne from ignorance and their certainty is tempered by each other as they self-reinforce.

Re: The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class

#168

Post by ATsch »

cbozeman wrote: post #162
croissants wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I occasionally work with and consult for these people. Now I'm curious. The world you describe seems quite hostile to someone with your beliefs -- how and why are you in it?

> Now I'm curious. The world you describe seems quite hostile to someone with your beliefs That's because I don't have beliefs, I have data. I'm not interested in "beliefs". I'm interested in being able to concretely prove something with varying degrees of certainty, and I won't present my findings and conclusions unless I have the strongest available data to back them up. To autopsy your assertion even further, you…

Wow, this comment is truly incredible, although perhaps not in the way you intended.

Re: The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class

#169

Post by devilduck »

ATsch wrote: post #168
cbozeman wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now I'm curious. The world you describe seems quite hostile to someone with your beliefs That's because I don't have beliefs, I have data. I'm not interested in "beliefs". I'm interested in being able to concretely prove something with varying degrees of certainty, and I won't present my findings and conclusions unless I have the strongest available data to back them up. To autopsy your assertion even further, you…

Wow, this comment is truly incredible, although perhaps not in the way you intended.

Yes, truly astonishing.

Re: The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class

#170

Post by dw-im-here »

cbozeman wrote: post #162
croissants wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I occasionally work with and consult for these people. Now I'm curious. The world you describe seems quite hostile to someone with your beliefs -- how and why are you in it?

> Now I'm curious. The world you describe seems quite hostile to someone with your beliefs That's because I don't have beliefs, I have data. I'm not interested in "beliefs". I'm interested in being able to concretely prove something with varying degrees of certainty, and I won't present my findings and conclusions unless I have the strongest available data to back them up. To autopsy your assertion even further, you…

>The how is a very long post that I just don't have time to type up right now.

Please do, I'm very interested.

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