9 ms·
Creeping normality
- Torkel 7y agoInteresting, frogs boiling etc, but... What is up with all of these wikipedia entries making the front page of hacker news? Has it always been so and I’m mis remembering thinking this is something new?
- akhilcacharya 7y agoI’ve seen it for a while. My 2c. They’re usually off beat enough to be interesting.
- gpvos 7y agoThey have always been there, but in recent months the frequency has increased a little, and a lot in the last two weeks or so.
- Torkel 7y agoI guess I should mostly attribute it to the Baader-Meinhof effect [0] then. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader-Meinhof_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader-Meinhof_effect
- abathur 7y agoI suspect their record is incomplete since I don't see some pretty hot threads from the past few weeks, but https://hntrending.com/domains/all/index.html https://hntrending.com/domains/all/index.html does purport to accumulate domains/listings/score. Full English Wikipedia is 15 over both the past year and all-time, 6 over the last month, but back down to 12 over the past week.
- abathur 7y ago(This rank is just based on points, but it lists total points. I don't see a way to force it to re-sort, but it wouldn't be too hard to re-compare them by volume.)
- lrsjng 7y ago..creeping normality
- f2f 7y ago> What is up with all of these wikipedia entries making the front page of hacker news? Has it always been so and I’m mis remembering thinking this is something new? Hehe, there's another name for what you're describing: baader-meinhof effect... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader%E2%80%93Meinhof_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader%E2%80%93Meinhof_effect Everything has a name nowadays. Taxonomies are almost complete :)
- abalaji 7y agoAt least since I've been browsing HN, it's been this way and I quite enjoy it. Lot's of Wikipedia pages I would otherwise not stumble upon. Usually, they are quite relevant to something happening in current events.
- pweezy 7y agoSame for me. I've been conditioned in a way to expect Wikipedia posts on HN to be interesting, and I'm rarely let down. Probably my all time favorite: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider
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- kbutler 7y agoThe Easter Island narrative is probably wrong: http://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-easter-island-a-sustainable-society-has-been-falsely-blamed-for-its-own-demise-85563 http://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-easter-island-a-s... "It is generally agreed that Rapa Nui, once covered in large palm trees, was rapidly deforested soon after its initial colonisation around 1200 AD." "Throughout the 19th century, South American slave raids took away as much as half of the native population. By 1877, the Rapanui numbered just 111. Introduced disease, destruction of property and enforced migration by European traders further decimated the natives and lead to increased conflict among those remaining."
- mhb 7y agoThe Easter Island narrative is probably wrong So is the boiling frog story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
- akeck 7y agoFor example, the creeping normality of using employee burnout to finish AAA games.
- juliansoto 7y agoOr the creeping normality of focusing on game devs crunch when there are other project based jobs with close deadlines as well
- mwfunk 7y agoI don't know of any other industries that have normalized masochistic crunch to anywhere near the degree that most of the game industry has, and I've worked in some pretty freaking crunchy sausage factories. The game industry really takes it to the next level, in part because it's an employer's market- a lot more people love the idea of being a game dev than there are game dev positions available, so high turnover rates are actually sustainable for much of the game industry, leading to some horrific practices. If there are other industries that are up there with the game industry in terms of extreme crunch, I'd be very curious to hear about them. I don't doubt they exist, I just am not aware of them. There's also nightmares like 996 schedules in China, but I've heard that in many cases that's more pretend crunch for show than actual crunch. In some ways 996 is even lamer because it's so pointless and dystopian, but I bet many game devs would be jealous of people who only have to work 72 hours a week and only have to pretend to work for some of that time.
- vvanders 7y agoOnly place that I heard was cruncher from my time in gamedev was the animators who came to us from some of the VFX shops over in the movie industry. Still inclined to agree, the number of non-crunching gamedevs out there are shockingly small. It really is celebrated as a right of passage and 'part of the job' which is infuriating given all the data that backs overwork on cognitive ability.
- firethief 7y agoYeah, why would we talk about game dev when there are other unspecified examples we could be talking about? Shame on us.
- seltzered_ 7y agoInteresting to compare against Yurchak's term of 'hypernormalisation' ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Yurchak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Yurchak )
- Invictus0 7y agoSimilar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credentialism_and_educational_inflation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credentialism_and_educational_...
- Ididntdothis 7y agoThis is presented mainly in a negative context but from my experience almost all change happens this way. You slowly get used to it. I still remember when people were saying that a mobile phone was a luxury item normal people don't need or that they would never do online banking.
- jpindar 7y agoOh, there are still people who are indignant, or at least puzzled, that a poor person could possibly own such luxuries as a mobile phone or a flat screen TV.
- Aeolun 7y agoI was amazed when seeing this in India. Until I learned that a phone plan with unlimited data costs the equivalent of $3 a month there. Suddenly it becomes like the best investment ever. Even if you have nothing else, you can still be connected to the internet and all it’s joys.
- bibyte 7y agoWhat ? The cheapest flat LCD TV plus cable service costs about 100 dollars. And the monthly subscription is about another 2 dollars. That's not enough to buy the cheapest smart phone. People in India certainly can afford that. In fact many teenagers these days buy $250-300 (average) smart phones. Also keep in mind I am talking about rural India.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y agoThis is what I don't get. If the median income is about ~$1600, how does almost everyone have a $200 phone? If you assume a phone gets replaced every 3 years -- with service -- that's about $110 per year, or close to 7% of a person's total income. In the US, median income is ~$32k -- $26k after taxes. If you make the same assumptions, a phone would cost about $580, or close to ~2% of a person's total income. So it seems like not so big of a deal, especially for something so valuable. But the teen part is what piqued my interest. India is MUCH younger than the US. Women participate in the workforce at a MUCH lower rate. And household size is MUCH larger. If you factor all of those things together, it means that for like 60% of families with children, you have a single earner with a spouse and 2.9 children. If everyone's got a phone, that's more than 40% of your household income. THAT seems insane.
- bo1024 7y agoIt's fun to contrast with the opposite phenomenon, which I think also rings true. As said in Terry Pratchett's book "Making Money": > People don't like change. But make the change fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.
- jeremyperson 7y agoThis reminds me of the frog in the pot/pan concept. Note: the frog did not get hurt so watch until the end without worrying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svpsLZDgFK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svpsLZDgFK4
- darth_skywalker 7y agoIt's an interesting concept, but the "frog in the pan" fable has no scientific merit. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#Experiments_and_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#Experiments_and_a...
- firethief 7y agoIt doesn't have to work on a literal level. It's a fable, not a recipe.
- imjasonmiller 7y agoAlong the same line, it reminded me of salami tactics [1], where not sudden but gradual change appears to be more effective. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_tactics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_tactics
- primordialsoup 7y agoAnother example: people walking around looking at their mobile phones.
- onemoresoop 7y agoThis goes both ways. When we progress to a new technology, after the wow factor we take it for granted. We dont often think what life was like before artificial lighting, electricity, mass transportation, etc. So whatever it is that is changing we eventually get used to it, it becomes the new normal. Will the same thing happen with global warming as it’s slowly creeping on us?
- deevolution 7y agoThe standard american meat based diet is a good example. Centuries ago the absurd scale of meat production and consumption could never have been imagined.
- fatso784 7y agoCould just call it... normalization? There's already a word for that.
- KuhlMensch 7y agoI agree. But for a different reason: I am wary of the originating author. I personally find Jack Diamond a compelling writer, but it has been pointed out to me that he tends to play fast and loose when mixing in ideas from outside of his domain. Thus, I prefer my Jack Diamond, like my Jack Daniels, dry, and without ornamentation. Which is why I would personally prefer it's safer for his nomenclature to stay in his books.
- rhacker 7y agoRandom mass shootings :(
- Animats 7y agoFlooding in Miami and Venice.
- techer 7y ago“In late November of 1968, I spent a few days in a hotel just off the Piazza San Marco in Venice. At 6 one morning, hearing the loud warning bells, I jumped out of bed, grabbed my camera and rushed to see the famous Venetian flood. I stood in the empty and as yet dry Piazza and looked out toward the Gulf, for I expected the flood tides to come in from the open water. Many minutes passed before to see that the Piazza was flooding, not directly from the Gulf, but up through its own sewers. The indented gratings in the pavement had all but disappeared under the calm, flat silver puddles, which grew slowly and silently until their peripheries touched and the Piazza became a lake. That morning I experienced vividly, if almost subliminally, the reality of change itself: how it fools our sentinels and undermines our defences, how careful we are to look for it in the wrong places, how it does not reveal itself until it is beyond redress, how vainly we search for it around us and find too late that it has occurred within us.” The under-appreciated Robert Grudin in Time and Art of Living.
- Animats 7y agoYes, Venice has had flooding since at least 1900. But now it's 60 times a year.[1] [1] https://theconversation.com/venice-flooding-is-getting-worse-and-the-citys-grand-plan-wont-save-it-106197 https://theconversation.com/venice-flooding-is-getting-worse...
- badrabbit 7y agoThis is how we ended up living in surveillance state.
- tunesmith 7y agoI think the bulwark against it is a society being clear on what its moral axioms are. Like in the US, "all men are created equal", where we understand "men" to mean "people". There are certainly forces in the US that do not want to accept this as true, but the existence of the stated value and national identity helps to defend it. Same with the bill of rights. And on a personal level, identifying ones own values and principles explicitly and reviewing them periodically can help guide one's path as society changes.
- nabla9 7y agoSmoking in the public places was just few decades ago, very common and it seemed like impossible to move. Now even thinking about going back is absurd idea. Today people defend 'basically harmless stuff like: 1. Force physical mutilation of children crazy reasons is OK if there is not much physical harm. Circumcision of boys is seen as OK in countries where it's common and normal. Others can see it as crazy cultural thing. 2. Physical punishment of children is OK because I turned out just fine.
- Fnoord 7y ago> Today people defend 'basically harmless stuff like: I'm sure there are people (where n > 1) in the world who defend that, but here in The Netherlands this is not OK except for Jewish boy circumcision. Which is in a different league than the removal of the clitoris. Physical punishment of children went from 'normal' before 1970 to 'not acceptable' throughout 1980 and 1990. It is now 'very much not acceptable'. In fact, I'd argue this one, like smoking, fits the 'creeping normality' definition although keep in mind I talk about The Netherlands only. I do not know how this developed throughout the rest of the world.
- nabla9 7y agoI'm speaking to HN audience that is not similar to north European audience. https://www.brookings.edu/research/hitting-kids-american-parenting-and-physical-punishment/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/hitting-kids-american-par... > More than 70% of Americans agreed in 2012 that, “it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking.” I was talking about boy circumcision and why in a different league than the removal of the clitoris. Infant body modification for religious reasons is barbaric custom even if it is mostly harmless. You would only few decades of banning boy circumcision and Jews would recognize it as a normal and new generations would think it was silly stupid practice not deeply related to Jewish identity after all.
- jpswade 7y agoSeems related to hypernormalisation... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation
- vezycash 7y agoBoiling Frog experiment. Real frog used - no prop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRWL8-dn_Uk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRWL8-dn_Uk
- meuk 7y agoThis is also why it's useful to hire new people once in a while and pay attention to what they think. A new, junior hire will note many of the same things as an expensive consultany. With the difference that people actually listen to the observations of the consultant , while they expect the junior dev to get used to things.
- thinkingkong 7y agoAgreed. A helpful exercise is to ask them to keep a log for the first 30 days. Ive always found incredibly useful information in there.
- iforgotpassword 7y ago+9000 I'm "using" our interns for this. First task is to create a document where they're supposed to write down everything that seems odd, overly complicated or broken. Even though they're sometimes in their third semester only, this pretty much always brings up something that can be improved on the spot without refactoring a dozen components. But also for all the things that were actually just a case of the intern being inexperienced or too naive it's great for them to go back to this document after three months and see how their understanding changed over time.
- ssivark 7y ago> But also for all the things that were actually just a case of the intern being inexperienced or too naive it's great for them to go back to this document after three months and see how their understanding changed over time. Seems like a fantastic exercise, with benefits both ways. In hindsight, this seems so simple and powerful that I wonder whether it's a commonly accepted onboarding exercise for new team members, especially junior ones. If not, it probably should become.
- torvald 7y agoDocker!
- aaron695 7y agoThis is SHIT. No one in HN can be bothered re-writing it so it's not BS badly written anecdotal evidence? It doesn't even seem to state what it actually is CORRECTLY. Which I thought involved fluctuations . "which states that when a phenomenon evolves very slowly, as a general trend, with important fluctuations from one year to the next, the fluctuations hide the trend and what is seen as normal is modified from one year to another." But it's all made up anyway as far as I can see. People get used to things, yep, we know that. Define it more tightly and have some proper examples if you have something to add to what we all know.
- kristianp 7y agoI was going to add a link to normalization of deviance [1] here, but there is a list of related concepts on the page: Boiling frog Camel's nose Gaslighting Defeat in detail "First they came ..." Foot-in-the-door technique Moving the goalposts Normalisation of deviance Overton window ''Principiis obsta'' Salami tactics Shifting baseline Slippery slope Technological change as a social process Tyranny of small decisions Change blindness [1] https://danluu.com/wat/ https://danluu.com/wat/
- bastawhiz 7y agoI'm reminded of ebay's relaunch: https://theuxblog.com/blog/redesigning-user-experience https://theuxblog.com/blog/redesigning-user-experience
- deepbreath 7y agoMakes me think of the gradual increase of identity politics in mainstream media, politics and liberal circles, to the point it's driving me insane. Most people around me seem undisturbed by it though.