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What it really means you have to have a policy that sounds more humanistic, but in the end is the same as a hard deadline: For example, if you are arriving for

by novok 7y ago

What it really means you have to have a policy that sounds more humanistic, but in the end is the same as a hard deadline: For example, if you are arriving for a family dinner, if you are 10 minutes late, it's NBD, but if you are 3-4 hours late you have just pissed everyone off. If you constantly ask for slack from your friends, to the point where it becomes common, your friend's internal & informal credit rating of you would go down, and they start reducing the amount of slack they gave you. So a policy that reproduces the above would be: Deadline is 4pm, plus a 30 minute 'slack time' for extenuating circumstances (which everyone will put as 4:30). If a problem has come up, then come to me and we will talk about an extension. I won't give you many extensions although if you show a pattern of relying on them.

esotericn 7y ago
It's not the same, because you're ignoring the human factor and focusing on one narrow part of the result. Imagine a real family that applies these deadlines. You walk in the door and your mother starts talking about applying for an 'extension' for your lateness. Perhaps at the end of all of this you have the same outcome, that every family member feels the same way about you. But you don't feel the same way about them in both cases, because in one, they act like robots, and in the other, they act like the imperfect people we all are. In one, they're strange threats, in another, they're lovable human beings. I can't express strongly enough how nefarious this trend towards engineering all aspect of the human experience into 'process' is. Theoretically, me having this conversation with you on HN is the same as real life. Practically, it's completely different and the latter would be far preferable if we could do it in the same amount of time, because we're not computers, we have real emotional and physical needs that are unsatisfied if everything is reduced to the most "optimal/efficient" interaction. It feels like you treat others as threats. Your employer, your professor, the police etc, all threats. The better model is to create a society in which they are your equals - many countries have achieved that - not fence them off as some sort of 'different class of human' and then mitigate the damages.

by novok 7y ago

esotericn 7y ago

It's not the same, because you're ignoring the human factor and focusing on one narrow part of the result. Imagine a real family that applies these deadlines. You walk in the door and your mother starts talking about applying for an 'extension' for your lateness. Perhaps at the end of all of this you have the same outcome, that every family member feels the same way about you. But you don't feel the same way about them in both cases, because in one, they act like robots, and in the other, they act like the imperfect people we all are. In one, they're strange threats, in another, they're lovable human beings. I can't express strongly enough how nefarious this trend towards engineering all aspect of the human experience into 'process' is. Theoretically, me having this conversation with you on HN is the same as real life. Practically, it's completely different and the latter would be far preferable if we could do it in the same amount of time, because we're not computers, we have real emotional and physical needs that are unsatisfied if everything is reduced to the most "optimal/efficient" interaction. It feels like you treat others as threats. Your employer, your professor, the police etc, all threats. The better model is to create a society in which they are your equals - many countries have achieved that - not fence them off as some sort of 'different class of human' and then mitigate the damages.