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Fair critique. I was thinking of an acquaintance who fits the mould I described. He lives in a shithole town where the are no jobs and no prospects. He compl

by saryant 10y ago

Fair critique. I was thinking of an acquaintance who fits the mould I described. He lives in a shithole town where the are no jobs and no prospects. He complains endlessly about how he'll never find a career. Why doesn't he take responsibility and move somewhere with an actual economy? I know he's not stupid. So why doesn't he try? And yes, I am more concerned about the results. Knowing how we got here is necessary but isn't going to change the future.

projektir 10y ago
> And yes, I am more concerned about the results. Knowing how we got here is necessary but isn't going to change the future. I see this pattern a lot. People always seem to be concerned about the results. It's drastically inefficient. How is this different from saying you can't fix bugs right now because you need to work on features? Then you'll never fix any bugs. And if you focus on results, you'll never even notice a cause. And you'll always be fixing the big difficult problem and wondering why you never have any time and why everything is always bad. The result is a natural extension of the cause. If you don't like the result, address the cause. If you fail to address the cause, you deserve the result (not you literally but the relevant collective). So late in the process is too late to complain. Instead, go find the next cause, before all you're left with is results. > I was thinking of an acquaintance who fits the mould I described. He lives in a shithole town where the are no jobs and no prospects. He complains endlessly about how he'll never find a career. Why doesn't he take responsibility and move somewhere with an actual economy? I know he's not stupid. So why doesn't he try? There's not enough information in this paragraph, yet I find it trivial to think of possible explanations but here you're asking "why?", as if that's an interesting question (maybe he developed learned helplessness?). I will say that if you focus on blaming the individual, their motivations will close up to you completely and you will have significant trouble understanding them. "This person is just inferior" is an infinite black hole that can eat any and all cause while providing you with zero solutions. I've seen many times when there were obvious explanations, but a person was so engrossed in blame they just couldn't see them. When you focus on results and turn to blame, you effectively blind yourself to how the world operates, because there's nothing keeping in check how far you can assign blame. And after a while, the sheer amount of blame becomes cause itself. I bring up blame because your original post was full of blame of people, yet little blame for the cause itself.
Endy 10y ago
Does he actually have the means with which to move to a new city? That's not an easy task, nor a cheap one. Once you're trapped into a situation without a stream of ongoing income, mobility trends rapidly towards nil.

by saryant 10y ago

projektir 10y ago

> And yes, I am more concerned about the results. Knowing how we got here is necessary but isn't going to change the future. I see this pattern a lot. People always seem to be concerned about the results. It's drastically inefficient. How is this different from saying you can't fix bugs right now because you need to work on features? Then you'll never fix any bugs. And if you focus on results, you'll never even notice a cause. And you'll always be fixing the big difficult problem and wondering why you never have any time and why everything is always bad. The result is a natural extension of the cause. If you don't like the result, address the cause. If you fail to address the cause, you deserve the result (not you literally but the relevant collective). So late in the process is too late to complain. Instead, go find the next cause, before all you're left with is results. > I was thinking of an acquaintance who fits the mould I described. He lives in a shithole town where the are no jobs and no prospects. He complains endlessly about how he'll never find a career. Why doesn't he take responsibility and move somewhere with an actual economy? I know he's not stupid. So why doesn't he try? There's not enough information in this paragraph, yet I find it trivial to think of possible explanations but here you're asking "why?", as if that's an interesting question (maybe he developed learned helplessness?). I will say that if you focus on blaming the individual, their motivations will close up to you completely and you will have significant trouble understanding them. "This person is just inferior" is an infinite black hole that can eat any and all cause while providing you with zero solutions. I've seen many times when there were obvious explanations, but a person was so engrossed in blame they just couldn't see them. When you focus on results and turn to blame, you effectively blind yourself to how the world operates, because there's nothing keeping in check how far you can assign blame. And after a while, the sheer amount of blame becomes cause itself. I bring up blame because your original post was full of blame of people, yet little blame for the cause itself.

Endy 10y ago

Does he actually have the means with which to move to a new city? That's not an easy task, nor a cheap one. Once you're trapped into a situation without a stream of ongoing income, mobility trends rapidly towards nil.