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Care Doesn't Scale

stevenscrawls.com

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Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#321

Post by renewiltord »

com2kid wrote: post #307
dkarl wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The food system is different from homecooked meals This is a good point, and everything I've heard from parents says that it's parents, not children, who identify home-cooked meals with care. Children notoriously prefer prepackaged industrially processed food over whole foods prepared with care and love. In order to feel cared for, all children need is to trust that the person caring for them will make sure they ge…

> Children notoriously prefer prepackaged industrially processed food over whole foods prepared with care and love. Nearly all people do, food scientists are really damn good at their job. It isn't even that the stuff tastes better, it just triggers more of the pleasure centers in the brain and causes people to want more. No one eats an entire bag of doritos because they taste better than a good steak.

That’s something I hate about other people. They just type out comments. I prefer to trigger the control centers of my brain to cause movement of my peripheral actuators to depress buttons on a purpose built device to compose textual information for transfer across the Internet.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#322

Post by erikvanoosten »

Another non scaling field is making houses ready for the energy transition. Here in the Netherlands there is a lot of uncertainty and distrust which requires an almost one-on-one approach for each (owned) house. Only powerful neighborhood initiatives can do this and do well.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#323

Post by baq »

com2kid wrote: post #305
flappyeagle wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your engineers want to do that This is not true, I can confidently say, most of the time. Engineers generally want to build software they think is a good trade off between fulfilling the spec and not being too hard to build. This does not generally translate to good software. It’s not a detriment of character or anything like that. They’re just lazy like most people are

You need to work with better engineers. Classically people got into software engineering because they liked writing code and they needed a way to pay the bills. Plenty of retired software engineers still code because it is part of who they are.

These people are the minority now. Everybody wants to hire them and they’re usually happily employed. Good luck.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#324

Post by baq »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #257
bunderbunder wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also where I really dislike a lot of this more recent push toward automating communication. One person deciding what needs to be said, to whom, and when, can have a LOT of leverage in the productivity department, by reducing the time that tens or even hundreds or thousands of other people lose to coping with the fire hose. Microsoft Copilot has been yet another downgrade in this department. Since it got adopt…

At my company we are aggressively rolling out policies to forbid the use of AI. I'm one of the bigger folks behind it. I just see no benefits. I have no desire to debug AI generated code, I have no desire to read pages and pages of AI generated fluff, I have no desire to look at AI generated images. Either put the work in or don't.

Do you also ban Google?

Working with AI is like working with Google. You shouldn’t be banning AI, you should be banning copy pasting AI slop.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#325

Post by baq »

mlsu wrote: post #312
bunderbunder wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also where I really dislike a lot of this more recent push toward automating communication. One person deciding what needs to be said, to whom, and when, can have a LOT of leverage in the productivity department, by reducing the time that tens or even hundreds or thousands of other people lose to coping with the fire hose. Microsoft Copilot has been yet another downgrade in this department. Since it got adopt…

Pretty funny to see the solution to the paperwork morass is twofold: an AI to generate paperwork and an AI to understand it. Can we just... not do that at all?

We can’t. Paperwork exists to be able to transfer knowledge and liability. It isn’t meant for you and it is mostly cost for your company. It’s for lawyers, insurers, investigators, auditors, your future replacement, etc.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#326

Post by com2kid »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #319
com2kid wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Children notoriously prefer prepackaged industrially processed food over whole foods prepared with care and love. Nearly all people do, food scientists are really damn good at their job. It isn't even that the stuff tastes better, it just triggers more of the pleasure centers in the brain and causes people to want more. No one eats an entire bag of doritos because they taste better than a good steak.

> It isn't even that the stuff tastes better, it just triggers more of the pleasure centers in the brain... What exactly do you think "tastes better" means? If it's triggering more of the pleasure centers of the brain, then it tastes better.

This is trivial to prove false.

During fine dining, a meal may consist of small portions that even when added up together total less calories than a large bag of theater popcorn which many people are quite capable of going through.

No one will argue that the popcorn taste "better".

Simply put the popcorn is less satiating but more addictive to eat.

Meanwhile the fine dining meal, if done well, will be incredibly satiating and not leave one wanting for more.

Hyper-palitability is a thing. There are foods that are hard to stop eating (e.g. potato chips), and that do not fill people up no matter the caloric content.

Starbucks frappes are another example. They can easily have over 1000 calories, barely be satiating, and yet people desire them again and again.

I hope no one claims frappes or potato chips are the best tasting foods in the world. But they are both addictive as hell to consume.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#327

Post by com2kid »

baq wrote: post #323
com2kid wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to work with better engineers. Classically people got into software engineering because they liked writing code and they needed a way to pay the bills. Plenty of retired software engineers still code because it is part of who they are.

These people are the minority now. Everybody wants to hire them and they’re usually happily employed. Good luck.

When I graduated (2006) it was still mostly that way, a few kids in it for the money tried to get a CS degree and failed out and changed majors.

Most of the people I've had the pleasure of working with have a love for the craft.

Sadly I understand that with how messed to the economy is now days, making a good living in a US costal city doing anything else but software is rather unrealistic...

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#328

Post by AStonesThrow »

dang wrote: post #250
AStonesThrow wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting flamewar- and ideological-battle-style comments to HN? Your account has been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately, and it's not what HN is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[flagged]

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#329

Post by hardlianotion »

intended wrote: post #235
hardlianotion wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment comes from reading the article, then wondering how can societies make things scale? We make things scale by delegating our concerns to people who know and care more about specific outcomes, and helping them to make the differences that are required. Scale comes from people learning that things around them matter and that they are responsible for making them good.

Ok. In that case i'll ask for a clarificaiton on the link. From the article it seemed quite a clear cut case about activity types that dont scale. Outsourcing the responsibility doesn't mean it scale, which seems contradicted by what you are saying. People learning that things matter and that they are responsible, doesn't change this does it?

The article noted that, when you care for someone, you give of yourself and your attention and you cannot spread this to a significant number of people. If you outsource the activity, then whoever you outsource it to has to pay attention in the same way. But the world is full of people that were cared for, and mostly quite well. So in that sense, care scales.

I am only really suggesting that scalable care schemes might be those that help people to support those they already have a connection with, and that organisation/coordination be managed on that level.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#330

Post by hardlianotion »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #66
hardlianotion wrote: post #55

Care does scale and the human race is evidence of that. It is centralisation that doesn't scale well.

but centralization is in many ways the thing that is needed to scale all sorts of other things.

I was mainly thinking of care when I wrote this, but I think there is generally a trade off between centralisation and increases in efficiency, in some part given by standardisation, and increased fragility as more comes to depend on fewer things that aren’t a complete fit for what you are trying to do, or that might fail.
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