4 ms·

What I'm suggesting is that there are many, many ways to untie gordian knots. Building bigger * is already happening - it's probably why your expectations are

by bpchaps 11y ago

What I'm suggesting is that there are many, many ways to untie gordian knots. Building bigger * is already happening - it's probably why your expectations are so low! Solving enormous social problems using complexity is a meme that needs to die - this is where bureaucracies and the like come from. Social situations are just too complex to write a complex system that addresses everything. Simple answers to complex problems that come close to the nuance as possible because of their "mediocreness" (think unix, x86, etc). My high expectations are in others' ability to find those simple "do one thing and do it well" solutions together.

argonaut 11y ago
Aside from vague platitudes, you haven't actually proposed any ways in which a tech hackathon would be able to help.
- bpchaps 11y ago
  Ultimately it doesn't. They're effectively useless. What does help is getting a small group together to simply solve a small problem over time. Complete one project that should have a small improvement within a city, then do another, then do another. It's something that takes a lot of time, is unbearably iterative, but if enough folks do it, then it has large impact. Since you keep calling me vague, I'll give you an example.. I'm working with a small group in trying to force the city of Chicago to validate parking tickets before they write them. We're very, very slowly finding all invalid parking tickets with the intention of raising a class action lawsuit. It's been surprisingly challenging, but we think we'll be able to do it. The reason I try to be vague on these things is so that others can dive down the rabbit hole at whatever pace they want to and fix whatever they want in their own way. By telling someone what to do, you inhibit their creativity for discovery and to some level, their confidence. That rabbit hole just leads towards some very, very interesting things that intellectual constraints would fuck over. For example, this ticketing project landed me in Rahm's competitor's office and handing them my analysis for their campaign. After zero contact from them and a lot in between, this led (in a roundabout way) to a lawsuit against the mayor of Chicago for his phone records, which happens in April. At that point, it'll be almost a year and 5 months since the initial FOIA request. I normally hate TED talks, but this is what got me started. It sums up decently well what kind of attitude and thought process is needed: https://www.ted.com/talks/eric_liu_why_ordinary_people_need_to_understand_power https://www.ted.com/talks/eric_liu_why_ordinary_people_need_...

by bpchaps 11y ago

argonaut 11y ago

Aside from vague platitudes, you haven't actually proposed any ways in which a tech hackathon would be able to help.

bpchaps 11y ago
Ultimately it doesn't. They're effectively useless. What does help is getting a small group together to simply solve a small problem over time. Complete one project that should have a small improvement within a city, then do another, then do another. It's something that takes a lot of time, is unbearably iterative, but if enough folks do it, then it has large impact. Since you keep calling me vague, I'll give you an example.. I'm working with a small group in trying to force the city of Chicago to validate parking tickets before they write them. We're very, very slowly finding all invalid parking tickets with the intention of raising a class action lawsuit. It's been surprisingly challenging, but we think we'll be able to do it. The reason I try to be vague on these things is so that others can dive down the rabbit hole at whatever pace they want to and fix whatever they want in their own way. By telling someone what to do, you inhibit their creativity for discovery and to some level, their confidence. That rabbit hole just leads towards some very, very interesting things that intellectual constraints would fuck over. For example, this ticketing project landed me in Rahm's competitor's office and handing them my analysis for their campaign. After zero contact from them and a lot in between, this led (in a roundabout way) to a lawsuit against the mayor of Chicago for his phone records, which happens in April. At that point, it'll be almost a year and 5 months since the initial FOIA request. I normally hate TED talks, but this is what got me started. It sums up decently well what kind of attitude and thought process is needed: https://www.ted.com/talks/eric_liu_why_ordinary_people_need_to_understand_power https://www.ted.com/talks/eric_liu_why_ordinary_people_need_...