Your post script Seems to be a reaction to some quality of finger wagging you may have received from this article. Everything you said was true, it also was true that strategically it is generally outside the realm of most people’s risk tolerance to abandon civilization of life. But you were right about the harmfulness, the alienness, etc. It is not incumbent on you just because you state how you feel to then also mitigate that feeling with the practical obligations one has to protect protecting themselves in their loved ones in their communities and helping steer humanity in which ever best direction we may be able to reach. The idea that it’s naive to speak a pure and simple fact sounded to me like shame being deployed to silence critique.
We've made the world too complicated
281–290 of 496 posts
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember the story of the man who sued his parents for being born because he didn't consent to being born[0]. While as absurd as it is, as I navigate life, I legitimately ponder the question whether it is ethical to have children or not. In my aging, I am more unsure of the answer. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47154287
There is also the reverse - is it ethical not to have children? Maybe the hypothetical children want to exist.
That doesn’t work, on multiple levels. Existing is a prerequisite to wanting; you cannot want if you do not exist. But even if you ignore that, it’s not immediately ethical or unethical to do or not do something just because someone else wants it. But even if you ignore that too, there’s no way of knowing that child won’t be the next genocidal despot. And even if you ignore all that, you could never birth even a fraction of everyone who could ever be born, since those depend on genetics and you can never have every combination of human mating with the other half.
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 l…
I work for a small startup and really enjoy my job, honestly. Definitely have a ton of autonomy.
And yeah I do know our customers and how we help them, but again it’s a bit of a second-step thing.
My point was more that white collar work is inherently less immediate and direct than some other professions, in the sense of doing an end thing for an actual human being, not a company.
When you work as a cook, you make a meal and someone eats it (a really fundamental human activity) immediately. Compare to say, working on a software feature that a few people at a company on the other side of the world uses to decrease their monthly churn rate. Not quite the same level of directness.
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative. Could you explain how this applies? I don't mean to be difficult -- really. I appreciate that Hacker News is a great place for discussion, and I very much appreciate that's partly because of the work you're doing. I'd just like to think that my criticism is thoughtful and is neither rigidly nor generically nega…
No worries, here are the words/phrases that set off alarms for me: > a profound absence of (historical) awareness > weird, presumptuous, sophomoric sanctimoniousness > strange insistence > [the whole Jonestown (?) bit as a metaphor – at least a little disproportionate, no?] > I hear the same cluelessness in this piece I guess the issue is the number of negative terms and characterizations all crammed into one paragra…
Ah, that actually makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining. I'll try to tone it down -- and work on a more neutral brevity. Thanks!
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn’t entirely true. A stylus is easy to understand, as is paper. Buildings of stone are relatively easy to grasp as well. Being a polymath was once doable. Today to truly master anything requires a lifetime of dedication.
Being a polymath was once doable. Any reasonably intelligent child who can write some poetry, understand basic calculus, and has a working knowledge of chemistry would be heralded as a polymath if you dropped them into the Victorian era. The breadth of human knowledge is just bigger now.
You’re stretching it way too far. Most adults don’t have all those, let alone “reasonably intelligent” children. There were child geniuses before, too.
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#286I 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.
It’s funny I actually initially got into tech from parlaying a food service job into a customer service one at a software company.
You’re definitely right that it has more direct problem-solving satisfaction than a lot of other software adjacent tasks.
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have to stretch the meaning of words in order to try to paint the present as comparable to the past, you've already lost the argument. I'm sorry but an statement like: >There is nothing that I can feed my children without worrying how many poisons and microplastics or some endocrine disrupting shit it contains. Is an obscene display of ignorance. Do you know what dysentery is? Do you have any idea of the immen…
What? we don't have sickness now? Or an ever increasing amount of sickness? We now have kids with diabetes now! Childhood cancer anyone? We don't have Dysentry for kids, but we have diabetes, and cancer for them now. They can now happily live a 100 years in a hospital! Congratulations! What a win!
What's your point? The fact that we still have sickness means things are worse?
What I find fascinating is how people like you, who reference a "pure" and "analog" world, have very "binary" views. Nature is complex, everything is continuous and lives on a spectrum, nothing is binary (not even death). Things can be way better, slightly better, worse etc. There's no such thing as "good" or "bad", everything exists somewhere in between.
But your thinking is so simple and naive, it's a travesty of the nature you appeal to.
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
We aren't?
There are plenty if you don't mind what colour or socio economic background they are.
Not for long [1].
[1]: https://openthemagazine.com/india/the-baby-slump-the-fear-of...
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn’t entirely true. A stylus is easy to understand, as is paper. Buildings of stone are relatively easy to grasp as well. Being a polymath was once doable. Today to truly master anything requires a lifetime of dedication.
Do you know how to make paper? Can you? Is it any good? Do you really understand it then?
You’re stretching the meaning of understanding to ridiculous levels of uselessness. If you’re slapped across the face, do you need to understand physics and biology to know how the movement and speed of a hand interacting with the tissue of your face and interpreted by your brain and nervous system makes it hurt?
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
No worries, here are the words/phrases that set off alarms for me: > a profound absence of (historical) awareness > weird, presumptuous, sophomoric sanctimoniousness > strange insistence > [the whole Jonestown (?) bit as a metaphor – at least a little disproportionate, no?] > I hear the same cluelessness in this piece I guess the issue is the number of negative terms and characterizations all crammed into one paragra…
Ah, that actually makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining. I'll try to tone it down -- and work on a more neutral brevity. Thanks!
Great to hear, thank you!