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The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

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Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#871

Post by silvestrov »

dvh wrote: post #864
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #859

In pondering the mindset of these people, I was reminded of a very different submission on hn yesterday [1]. Quote: "Avoid, at all costs, arriving at a scenario where the ground-up rewrite starts to look attractive" Seems to me that in their narrow, reckless arrogance they're doing something similar to the mechanisms of government. This is all broken and people who built it were idiots. Lets just scrap it and built i…

I think rewrites are popular in part because during rewrite it is possible to drop features, either voluntarily or because of deadlines, while it would probably never fly to drop feature from working, existing implementation. Also your theory doesn't hold up for cases when you rewrite your own code. I've rewritten my old code hundreds of time because I was "idiot" in a sense that it was unmaintainable with new change…

Rewrites of other peoples code/laws also allows you to think "I'm much smarter than they are".

Governance has a lot more "unknown unknowns" than you expect.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#872

Post by Denkverbot »

simianparrot wrote: post #790
niceice wrote: post #440

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

It’s good to read a comment of sanity amidst all this instinctual bellyaching whenever T or E do anything. But in particular when a formerly well respected publication writes a hit piece like this… I used to scoff when people said “TDS” was a real thing, but having observed the same with Elon over the years and then listening to hours long talks between him and others, I realised “EDS” is clearly also a thing. And lo…

[flagged]

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#874

Post by DrScientist »

niceice wrote: post #440

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

You need a mix of naive enthusiasm and grizzled experience.

It feels a bit like that famous Joel on Software post - when faced with an existing code base - it looks over complex and you can't understand it - so you decide to re-write - only to discover during the process why it's so complex in the first place.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

Sure it's important to challenge the status quo - but it's really important to approach it with humility and to seek to understand why things are the way they are, not just to assume you know it all.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#876

Post by [deleted] »

kamaal wrote: post #639
niceice wrote: post #440

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

>>Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. As some one who just turned 40. This does make sense. Perhaps the biggest deal about aging especially in the downswing is the countdown to death keeps getting closer as you go. You do tend to care less about things around you. Im beyond the point I would take offence on anything, but Im also beyond t…

[deleted]

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#877

Post by indigo945 »

dvh wrote: post #864
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #859

In pondering the mindset of these people, I was reminded of a very different submission on hn yesterday [1]. Quote: "Avoid, at all costs, arriving at a scenario where the ground-up rewrite starts to look attractive" Seems to me that in their narrow, reckless arrogance they're doing something similar to the mechanisms of government. This is all broken and people who built it were idiots. Lets just scrap it and built i…

I think rewrites are popular in part because during rewrite it is possible to drop features, either voluntarily or because of deadlines, while it would probably never fly to drop feature from working, existing implementation. Also your theory doesn't hold up for cases when you rewrite your own code. I've rewritten my old code hundreds of time because I was "idiot" in a sense that it was unmaintainable with new change…

A rewrite enables dropping features including, but not limited to: checks and balances, due process, a government for and by the people, and certain inalienable rights.

And just to make it clear: I am not being facetious, I am very concerned that all of these are under serious attack.

Checks and balances are already broken because of DOGE, because the Department of Justice simply ignored a court order to stop the funding freeze, and because the firing of FBI career employees was probably illegal [1].

Due process is coming under serious threat due to the building of camps in Guantanamo and El Salvador, where detainees will likely have insufficient access to legal counsel.

A government for and by the people will be replaced by fascist "network states", sovereign territorial entities under authoritarian control by a "CEO", i.e. dictator [2]. The goal is to enable ultra-wealthy individuals to freely "exit" democracies, to live and govern without any rules.

Inalienable rights are explicitly under attack by the ultra-libertarians in Musk's circles. Nick Land, one of the main thinkers behind this neo-fascist brand of thought (branding it as "Dark Enlightenment"), quotes Patri Friedman, who runs Pronomos Capital, the corporation that builds these network states for Peter Thiel and others:

> Patri Friedman remarks: “we think that free exit is so important that we’ve called it the only Universal Human Right.” [3]

Id est, building a privately-owned, corporate-controlled, dictatorial "network state", which is exactly what "free exit" means, justifies abolishing all human rights.

The worst thing is that this all sounds like an insane conspiracy theory, but this is operating completely in the open. The statements of Peter Thiel, Patri Friedman and others are freely available, and they make very clear (Peter Thiel):

> Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. [4]

[1]: https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/-totally-il...

[2]: https://www.vcinfodocs.com/venture-capital-extremism

[3]: https://keithanyan.github.io/TheDarkEnlightenment.epub/TheDa...

[4]: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#878

Post by jalapenos »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #859

In pondering the mindset of these people, I was reminded of a very different submission on hn yesterday [1]. Quote: "Avoid, at all costs, arriving at a scenario where the ground-up rewrite starts to look attractive" Seems to me that in their narrow, reckless arrogance they're doing something similar to the mechanisms of government. This is all broken and people who built it were idiots. Lets just scrap it and built i…

A more likely scenario is they're now fully aware how little time they have versus how long things take and how much heal dragging they're going to face every day of it.

So they've decided this time to rampage straight out of the gates and sustain it as long as they can.

This is a key weakness of central planners - the centralization and the slow rate of development of the bureaucracy. It takes far more effort to develop an invasive and parasitic bureaucracy than it does to blow it to pieces.

So this is a natural strategic asymmetry that makes perfect sense to exploit. Enjoy!

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#879

Post by rokkamokka »

mkoubaa wrote: post #866
boplicity wrote: post #484

Remember, if you can vote, vote the next time you can. Convince your friends and neighbors to vote, too. Apathy has real consequences.

I don't know anyone that voted democrat in this election. If you're looking someone to blame, blame the idiots who engineered the blue ticket, not the voters who couldn't stomach it

Blame is generally unproductive. What is productive is realizing wrongs and doing what you can to right them. That said, I was raised that it is the responsibility of a citizen to always vote. If more people had voted, I believe the US would be in a better place.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#880

Post by bjourne »

niceice wrote: post #440

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

The Cultural Revolution was led by China's smartest students too.
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