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You Have to Feel It

mitchellh.com

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Re: You Have to Feel It

#71

Post by sneak »

benreesman wrote: post #70
kookamamie wrote: post #5

> You have to feel it. The corporate machine does not feel it. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead.

It comes and goes in seasons. There is always a tension between the needs of the many and the pathological acquisitiveness of the few, but this is the worst in the West in living memory. The last remotely compatible situation was the late USSR, and a dysfunctional Soviet corpse plundering by middling oligarchs to even more pathic notional leadership is precisely what it is. Be of good cheer, it collapses under its ow…

A lot of people suffer greatly and die to cause that mess.

A perfect example is the terrible mismanagement of the epidemic in the USA; over a million people dead, many (most?) of them unnecessarily for the active rejection of basic infection control measures. A perfect example of the corruption of which you speak: many countries got €1-2 rapid tests (I bought a 50 pack) where the US only approved the $30 two-pack. Thousands died unnecessarily so the state could funnel money to their buddies.

This is just one of a million examples. The rate of degeneration seems to be increasing further.

You’re right about it getting close, but unfortunately “almost over” in this context usually means a generation or two. Children born today might only know a lifetime of suffering only for their own adult children to finally emerge in the spring.

This is why I don’t like takes like this. It is impossible to be in good cheer when there will be millions of preventable and utterly unnecessary deaths and hundreds of millions of lives and bodies damaged and stunted irreparably due to lack of access to medicine and education and equal protection of law. Preventable diseases not being prevented, treatable conditions going intreated. Forced and unnecessary poverty costs lives. It is no different than any other genocide or intentional mass murder.

Re: You Have to Feel It

#72

Post by goopypoop »

sarreph wrote: post #39
nine_k wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feeling some moderate positive emotion as a result of your work is not incompatible with 9 to 5 work. The bigger problem is usually the opposite: nagging negative emotions, feeling annoyed, feeling contempt towards some parts of the work that one is bound to do. These emotions are unbecoming, so the psychological defenses hide them, as if there's no feeling at all. This is what "mind-numbing" work often is.

Yeah, do not disagree with either of those statements.

you're not my supervisor

Re: You Have to Feel It

#73

Post by Aurornis »

mcdeltat wrote: post #51

I've learnt that just about everything in life boils down to feelings, which is interesting. No matter how rational a person or people claim to be, usually it comes down to feelings... Life choices? Business decisions? Who gets promoted? It's all vibes and feelings. People will deliberate and argue over facts but ultimately there will be some "weighting" factor which is feelings and will make or break the outcome. Yo…

> You can have a perfectly argued decision that fails some vibe check and is hence discarded

One of the worst hires I ever worked with was excellent on paper, came with good credentials, had an impressive resume, and did objectively well on the interview questions.

However, everyone who interviewed him felt uneasy about him. He failed the vibe check, even though he checked all of the boxes and knew all the right things to say. At the time there was a big push for eliminating bias and being and as objective as possible in hiring, so we were lightly admonished for raising questions based on vibes.

When he was hired, it turned out our vibes were justified. He was someone who played games and manipulated his way through his career. He could say the right things and navigate his way through office politics unscathed while causing damage to everything he touched.

Since then I’ve observed a number of situations where decisions that seemed objectively good but came with weird vibes were later revealed to be bad. Some of the most skilled grifters I’ve encountered were brilliant at appearing objectively good but couldn’t pass vibe checks of experienced business people. Some of the most objectively good deals on paper that came with weird vibes later turned out to be hugely problematic.

I think the trap is thinking that vibes and feelings are wrong and should be ignored in favor of pre-selected objective measures. This is good practice when doing a scientific study, but it’s not a good practice when you’re entering a real world situation where an adversarial party can root out those criteria, fake them, and use your objectivity against you.

Re: You Have to Feel It

#74

Post by benreesman »

sneak wrote: post #71
benreesman wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It comes and goes in seasons. There is always a tension between the needs of the many and the pathological acquisitiveness of the few, but this is the worst in the West in living memory. The last remotely compatible situation was the late USSR, and a dysfunctional Soviet corpse plundering by middling oligarchs to even more pathic notional leadership is precisely what it is. Be of good cheer, it collapses under its ow…

A lot of people suffer greatly and die to cause that mess. A perfect example is the terrible mismanagement of the epidemic in the USA; over a million people dead, many (most?) of them unnecessarily for the active rejection of basic infection control measures. A perfect example of the corruption of which you speak: many countries got €1-2 rapid tests (I bought a 50 pack) where the US only approved the $30 two-pack. Th…

Take it up with the people who could easily prevent it by instituting reforms, not with me, that's shooting the messenger because I'm easier to get to. But I'm fighting those people tooth and nail precisely because every small victory however symbolic is one pebble in the scale and there are degrees of "mess": plenty of corrupt elites make a deal, let's pray these do.

If there's a genocide level event it won't have my endorsement, I'm still mourning a kid brother who would still be here if it weren't for a lot of the factors killing men his age in stupendous numbers. That genocide? It's been happening for a minimum of 5 years, more like ten.

I appreciate the merits and gravity of your complaint (to put it mildly) but mine is the wrong complaint box for it.

Re: You Have to Feel It

#75

Post by marcelr »

feeling is something developed by evolution, not by accident

my best guess is that it is far easier to deeply feel complex concepts rather than to arrive to similar conclusions purely based on reason/logic

Re: You Have to Feel It

#76

Post by paulryanrogers »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #63
kookamamie wrote: post #5

> You have to feel it. The corporate machine does not feel it. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead.

Whatever you think about Apple, I find it hard to believe that the team that developed the original iPhone could have done so without feeling it. Perhaps that was just the magic of Jobs, who definitely felt things . But he didn't make the iPhone single handedly.

I think there is some survival bias in the analysis, and that something like the iPhone was inevitable given all the experimentation going on in the market.

Apple also made the Newton. But folks don't call back to it or praise its makers very often.

Re: You Have to Feel It

#77

Post by accrual »

mcdeltat wrote: post #51

I've learnt that just about everything in life boils down to feelings, which is interesting. No matter how rational a person or people claim to be, usually it comes down to feelings... Life choices? Business decisions? Who gets promoted? It's all vibes and feelings. People will deliberate and argue over facts but ultimately there will be some "weighting" factor which is feelings and will make or break the outcome. Yo…

This can apply on the personal level too. Almost everything we want is less about the thing, and more about the feeling we think the thing will give us.

Re: You Have to Feel It

#78

Post by cjk »

neuralkoi wrote: post #43
cjk wrote: post #33

This is one of the things that I’ve tried really hard to impress upon engineers new and old while working on various projects, and IMO it applies to just about every layer of the stack; ultimately everything flows up into the UX. This vibe was pervasive at Apple and could be taken more or less for granted, but elsewhere it’s all over the place. And, like, sure, there are projects and industries where this doesn’t mat…

The vibe WAS pervasive at Apple during Steve's time. He understood the importance of asking "what is this?"[0]. The current vibe at Apple is "we want you to be an obedient worker". [0] https://systems-souls-society.com/what-is-this-the-case-for-...

I believe it. It had started to wane even by the time I left in 2015.

I know there are still a ton of good people there, but it's a way, way different company now.

Re: You Have to Feel It

#79

Post by cjk »

Aurornis wrote: post #73
mcdeltat wrote: post #51

I've learnt that just about everything in life boils down to feelings, which is interesting. No matter how rational a person or people claim to be, usually it comes down to feelings... Life choices? Business decisions? Who gets promoted? It's all vibes and feelings. People will deliberate and argue over facts but ultimately there will be some "weighting" factor which is feelings and will make or break the outcome. Yo…

> You can have a perfectly argued decision that fails some vibe check and is hence discarded One of the worst hires I ever worked with was excellent on paper, came with good credentials, had an impressive resume, and did objectively well on the interview questions. However, everyone who interviewed him felt uneasy about him. He failed the vibe check, even though he checked all of the boxes and knew all the right thin…

This exact same phenomenon bit me at a previous job. We hired a couple of really smooth-talking grifters, and it took a tremendous amount of time to get rid of them. Vibes matter.

Re: You Have to Feel It

#80

Post by senko »

kookamamie wrote: post #5

> You have to feel it. The corporate machine does not feel it. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead.

That’s Austrian economics for you.
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