4 ms·

Sounds like engineers (and people in general) are good at optimizing locally (achieving what's good for me) and stink at optimizing globally (achieving what's g

• EdgarVerona 8y ago
  Aye, I definitely think it's a human thing. I apologize, because I'm going to use the word "addicting" in a non-scientific sense, but the normal use of the word that best conveys the situation in my opinion. Solving problems is addictive. Getting the rush of a job well done - regardless of what that job is - is addictive. Getting recognition is addictive. Having a comfortable salary is addictive. It's so easy for me to slip into those addictions and not pay attention to the bigger picture. And I feel like I'm not the only one suffering from this problem. In fact, I can see it empirically in the people who have worked at the aforementioned jobs with me. There needs to be a balance. A person doesn't need to be outright altruistic, but focusing exclusively on local optimization allows for a sort of hedonistic behavior set that can justify - and has historically justified - participation as a cog in larger and harmful systems.
• Nasrudith 8y ago
  Not to be a smartass but what group of people are actually good at optimizing globally? Tragedy of the commons and sociopathic exploiters make such a thing seem impossible to do - the best you can do is leave something with a positive legacy which is very different from optimizing and far more prone to backfire than local optimization. By definition less is known about the global - let alone the chaotic divergence over time which makes weather models diverge quickly even with massive processing power