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Time is the only real currency we have

blog.theboringtech.io

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Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#221

Post by TeMPOraL »

zelly wrote: post #210

This article is a real failure in the rule of Profile Before Optimizing. Changing your editor or whatever is a micro-optimization. Among professions where typing is involved, programmers type the least number of keystrokes. Secretaries and data entry clerks type much more and often much faster than programmers. Also, a lot of typing is not even characters into the editor but keyboard shortcuts. The real time killers…

That's a great and underappreciated point. I'm really fond of my endless tinkering in Emacs, to optimize and automate away all kinds of repetition and tedium. But when I do a honest accounting I realize that, even though my newest tweak that took 30 minutes to make will probably save me a hundred hours in the long run, I'll blow more than a hundred hours over the next month procrastinating on HN because of anxiety about starting tasks. Like I'm doing right now - I was supposed to take an hour off for some personal "me and my thoughts time" an hour ago. But HN is just more immediately gratifying.

It's true for me and I guess for many (most?) programmers: the limiting factor is inadequate capacity to control my own emotional state.

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#222

Post by acituan »

idavidrein wrote: post #212
acituan wrote: post #186

I hate this framing. It is pressuring, dehumanizing as it contextualizes human endeavor in transactional terms, usually in a market. I know this goes against the ethos of high-tech, but humans don't have an imperative to be as productive as possible. They don't have to make the most use of their time. They don't have to get as efficient as they could. These are metrics that work fine for our machines, our code. But h…

You're not thinking broadly enough about the utility maximization framework. What's wrong with just including bread baking, hanging out with friends, etc. as things you find valuable, and then try and maximize those jointly with the value you find in productivity and working?

Because humans are complex emergent systems with inherent information asymmetry. We are not transparent to ourselves in that what will make us satisfied in life. Worse yet, our reward mechanisms have evolved as best-guess proximal reinforcers. For example we find food tasty (proximal force) because nutrition makes us survive (ultimate force). But our taste can be and is hijacked by hyperpalatable food that now we are divorced from our ultimate goal of survival, in fact working against it if we’re obese. This makes it incredibly hard to come up with an objective utility maximization framework, that maximizes your lifetime utility.

This is the core of any addictive processes. Hyperstimulus (e.g. cocaine) will wreak havoc on your utility function to the point one narrows and narrows on that one local goal maximization at the expense of total life satisfaction.

But the problem is bigger than the reward mechanisms. People were not able to say “I bet bread baking will make me satisfied” and go ahead and do it. Only after necessity pushed them to participate in doing it, they were able to realize its value. They had to gather this participatory knowledge before making any prediction on its utility. This inherent information asymmetry makes broadening the utility maximization framework very very hard for an individual.

This is not true for the market; market optimizes the shit out of what they will take out of the worker and the consumer, because market’s objective function is clear. And by them I mean us because it is us who made the market and who treat that objective function of the market is good enough to be objective function of all humanness. It is not, and that is why I’m against using the language of market (currency, utility, productivity etc) in general for all human activity and why I find it inherently dehumanizing; it simply cannot capture all that is human and that is valuable.

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#223

Post by TeMPOraL »

WalterBright wrote: post #218
TeMPOraL wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpick section: > We went to agriculture because otherwise we'd starve. (...) If you think their lives were better because of no machines, I frankly cannot understand that. It's not like that. We were forced to start doing agriculture by competitive pressure; the people who did could conquer the people who didn't. Agriculture essentially gave us everything we consider achievements and civilization, so I'm glad that…

Hunter-gatherers regularly starve, because food resources are inconsistent. When you get too old to follow the herd with the tribe, you get left behind to die. You get a crippling injury, you get left behind to die. Hunting and killing game is always a high risk activity for injury and death. Starvation greatly limited the number of humans. Me, I like consistent, varied, cheap food. I like living in a heated dwelling…

The way I see it, those are orthogonal concerns. I love the modern world, there isn't a time and place in past history I'd prefer to live in to where and when I'm now. But at the same time, the way how new technology modifies the environment[0] is very interesting and worth a separate consideration. It sometimes does go too far - technology can be dehumanizing, if we're forced to lose some cherished values to accommodate a simpler/cheaper design of a machine / process.

--

[0] - As it must. Technology that doesn't modify its surrounding context is just too hard. Humans have built roads since forever, so that they didn't have to build off-road vehicles. Bureaucracy has to fit everything into its square holes, because otherwise it would be impossible.

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#225

Post by waingake »

acituan wrote: post #186

I hate this framing. It is pressuring, dehumanizing as it contextualizes human endeavor in transactional terms, usually in a market. I know this goes against the ethos of high-tech, but humans don't have an imperative to be as productive as possible. They don't have to make the most use of their time. They don't have to get as efficient as they could. These are metrics that work fine for our machines, our code. But h…

Yes! Please track down this book "This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom" it examines time and the value of it in the way your seeing it. Long but great write up on it here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/20/if-god-is-dead...

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#226

Post by dluan »

acituan wrote: post #186

I hate this framing. It is pressuring, dehumanizing as it contextualizes human endeavor in transactional terms, usually in a market. I know this goes against the ethos of high-tech, but humans don't have an imperative to be as productive as possible. They don't have to make the most use of their time. They don't have to get as efficient as they could. These are metrics that work fine for our machines, our code. But h…

"All these consequences are implied in the statement that the worker is related to the product of labor as to an alien object. For on this premise it is clear that the more the worker spends himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over and against himself, the poorer he himself – his inner world – becomes, the less belongs to him as his own.

The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its own confronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien."

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#227

Post by downshun »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #219
downshun wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No computer can beat a chess grandmaster"

It's not that. I can easily believe a good DNN could today generate better (by any kind of objective standard) music than one created by top composers. But here is where we discover another component of value that exists in arts: the connection to human mind. Given a piece of music you like that you don't know the provenance of, you'll probably value it different after learning it was composed by a human vs. generate…

It's like a defense mechanism. You value the work less because it was computer made rather than to admit to your flawed value assignment and vanity or human supremacism.

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#228

Post by lsorber »

acituan wrote: post #222
idavidrein wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not thinking broadly enough about the utility maximization framework. What's wrong with just including bread baking, hanging out with friends, etc. as things you find valuable, and then try and maximize those jointly with the value you find in productivity and working?

Because humans are complex emergent systems with inherent information asymmetry. We are not transparent to ourselves in that what will make us satisfied in life. Worse yet, our reward mechanisms have evolved as best-guess proximal reinforcers. For example we find food tasty (proximal force) because nutrition makes us survive (ultimate force). But our taste can be and is hijacked by hyperpalatable food that now we are…

I sympathize with your views in that a formalisation of meaning in life would seem to take away from it somewhat. However, your response also comes across as putting a stake in the ground and thereby closing your mind as to what the utility framework has to offer.

These are some of the problems with utility I took away from your comment:

1. Short term utility maximisation does not necessarily align with long term utility maximisation. 2. The utility is difficult to define because we don't know what can contribute to it and how much those components would contribute. 3. The utility, even if defined, can only be partially observed.

While these are certainly valid and interesting observations, that doesn't mean there isn't a latent utility that describes your lifetime's value. If you live a thousand lives and had access to a device to measure the (latent) utility, surely you could it to rank lives as more meaningful or valuable than others.

Looking at it this way, the problems you raise could be seen as opportunities: how should we align short term utility with long term utility? How can we find out which utility components there are and how much they would contribute? And how can we make the utility observable, so that it can be maximised?

Interestingly, attempting to maximise the utility may itself lower the utility as a result of spending time on the maximisation task and the dehumanisation of life as a result of its formalisation.

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#229

Post by zelly »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #221
zelly wrote: post #210

This article is a real failure in the rule of Profile Before Optimizing. Changing your editor or whatever is a micro-optimization. Among professions where typing is involved, programmers type the least number of keystrokes. Secretaries and data entry clerks type much more and often much faster than programmers. Also, a lot of typing is not even characters into the editor but keyboard shortcuts. The real time killers…

That's a great and underappreciated point. I'm really fond of my endless tinkering in Emacs, to optimize and automate away all kinds of repetition and tedium. But when I do a honest accounting I realize that, even though my newest tweak that took 30 minutes to make will probably save me a hundred hours in the long run, I'll blow more than a hundred hours over the next month procrastinating on HN because of anxiety ab…

> I'm really fond of my endless tinkering in Emacs, to optimize and automate away all kinds of repetition and tedium

Me too, my .emacs.d directory has thousands of commits. It's fun. All procrastination is fun. It feels mischievous and therefore exhilarating.

Re: Time is the only real currency we have

#230

Post by subhobroto »

noiv wrote: post #194

Check out the work of Carlo Rovelli and start considering time as a human construct. It is not needed to explain the world and physics around us. Isn't framing time as a currency while proposing it as part of the universe just an attempt of fraud? It feels like getting offered shiny glass beads while taking things of real value.

> It feels like getting offered shiny glass beads while taking things of real value

It indeed is if you consider majority of work is not time sensetive even if the person explicitly telling you so, absolutely convinces you that's the case.

This becomes clearer when you move on from an employee to a business owner and the only person you answer to is your customer.

Unless there's a literal environmental disaster, like when my community went up in flames during the California fires - everything else can wait.

Even during the flames burning, houses that were almost on fire were in a waiting line behind houses on fire.

The only reason why "it was due yesterday" works is because the employee believes their value is worth less than what the employer values them at.

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