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The Who Cares Era

dansinker.com

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Re: The Who Cares Era

#3
Sadly, this seems to be the case, but I'm not so sure that it's new.

I think "If it's worth doing; it's worth doing half-assed." is a personal working philosophy that is probably thousands of years old.

It's just that now, we have better tools for half-assing it.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#4

Sadly, this seems to be the case, but I'm not so sure that it's new. I think "If it's worth doing; it's worth doing half-assed." is a personal working philosophy that is probably thousands of years old. It's just that now, we have better tools for half-assing it.

We have better tools but are usually forced to stay for the same 8 hours it used to take

Re: The Who Cares Era

#5
I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs.

The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left.

The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?)

Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.

Where I live, it seems like half the streets don't have street signs (this isn't a backwater where you'd expect this, it's Boston).

I made acquaintance to a city worker who, to her non-professional friends, is very proud that she takes home a salary for about two hours of work per day following up with contractors, then heading to the gym and making social plans.

There's a culture of indifference, an embrace of mediocrity. I don't think it's new, but I do think perhaps AI has given the lazy and prideless an even lower energy route to... I'm not sure. What is the goal?

Re: The Who Cares Era

#6
>Until I read an application written entirely by a person. And then another. And another. They glowed with delight and joy and sadness and with the unexpected at every turn.

These are the people who had their applications rejected elsewhere since the AI didn't like them. I use ChatGPT to create my resume since it gives me at least a chance I'll get a response. Manually written resumes get ignored.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#7
For me, the who cares part started with the latest election cycle and current president. The zone has been flooded, I quit reading the news and cannot be bothered to care about any of it.

Additionally, AI generated content, AI pictures and deepfakes have a numbing effect. I guess I can say "who cares?"

Re: The Who Cares Era

#9
post #5

I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…

An embrace of mediocrity in one's work, specifically, though.

In many countries, the UK for example, wages have become stagnant over the last 15 years and "getting on in life", "social mobility", whatever you want to call it, appears to have stalled entirely.

Maybe "Who cares?" is the correct response for many people.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#10
On the one hand I’m nodding along and have a bunch of links bookmarked about the - for want of a better phrase - “trend to mediocrity”. It’s true that the median is where everything goes if you feed the beast the most average stuff you can find, there’s no doubt about it.

On the other, there are many, many examples of artists and musicians and museums and galleries and others who are - still, always have been, always will be - making extraordinary, brilliant, unique, beautiful things. There’s not a day goes by on HN that I don’t see stuff that fits this mold.

I think there’s actually extraordinary opportunity here, to continue making things that are great and unique and rough around the edges and cared for. The author sums it up well: but I’m not sure the scene is quite as dire as he’s making out at the beginning of the article.

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