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I use this as something of a meme/joke myself when talking with friends. I think it was widely used on Twitter in the form "I would simply just". For example wh

I use this as something of a meme/joke myself when talking with friends. I think it was widely used on Twitter in the form "I would simply just". For example when a friend is complaining about their job "I would simply just choose from multiple high quality jobs available at the job market, selecting one that both pays more and is more fulfilling". It's usually a strong indicator the speaker lacks empathy or any real-world understanding of the constraints. Not all the time but it can be a good sign that the speaker has no ability to understand other viewpoints. A good one from here recently on the subject of poor teleconference connections was (paraphrasing) "I would simply just get faster working internet, it would be simple to me, I would just do it". Because people don't live in crappy shared accommodation or get fucked over repeatedly by local internet monopolies, or move houses and wait months for providers to connect them or live in rural areas or struggle for money for reason or, or, etc. I think it's also common in software because we have this need to solve issues rather than empathise and understand the struggles of people. Scott Hanselman writes about this with respect to relationships, how he has to disable "engineer mode" when his wife is venting about a problem. Sometimes stuff just sucks for people and trying to provide 'obvious' solutions, as if the recipient is incapable of that thought process themselves is demeaning and trivialises things.

Agentlien 5y ago
We've joked a bit like this at work, too. I'm a game developer, currently working on our performance squad, and in a recent discussion about visual quality I, our graphics programmer, suggested we simply transition to ray tracing for everything.
- ehnto 5y ago
  Trying to get into game lighting was pretty hard because of the "Just simply" style of teaching. There is so much assumed knowledge, and it can be hard to figure out exactly what your missing knowledge is. Oh my mesh looks weird in engine, must be.. normal maps, materials, mesh isn't manifold, scene lighting isn't set up, global illumination.. skybox.. light not emitter.. you have to bake stuff? Oh but not in this mode.. Just light the damn cube!
strken 5y ago
The thing is, in one's peer group it's reasonable to give advice like "just sign up for faster internet", because you know the other person and can judge whether they "just" need a nudge to go check out cable and fibre internet, whether they can afford an extra $50 a month, whether it might be available in their area, whether their housemates would let them just pay for the whole damn thing, whether they'd get $50 of subjective value from reliable and fast internet, and so on. Giving out advice like that on the internet is interesting because it's almost a problem of being too friendly with strangers, to the point of acting like you know them personally. As a counterpoint, I'm several hundred thousand dollars richer and got to have a fun year and a half living in SF, because a friend told me to "just apply to big US tech companies and get an E-3 visa", and it actually worked.
foerbert 5y ago
You may well have simplified/stated things more absolutely for the sake of this point, but... I think in this very post you make the exact mistake you're talking about. You yourself even identify a simple lack of knowledge as a possible cause of these statements. Yet immediately afterwards you jump straight to essentially writing this hypothetical person off, instead of giving them the empathy and understanding that they may be overlooking something, or even entirely unaware of relevant information. It's very easy for people to over-generalize from their own experience. It's all anybody has. Thinking hard is also relatively expensive, so we can need some prompting to actually do it. I think it's worth having some empathy and consideration for people who've stumbled into these unfortunate tendencies of ours.

Agentlien 5y ago

We've joked a bit like this at work, too. I'm a game developer, currently working on our performance squad, and in a recent discussion about visual quality I, our graphics programmer, suggested we simply transition to ray tracing for everything.

ehnto 5y ago
Trying to get into game lighting was pretty hard because of the "Just simply" style of teaching. There is so much assumed knowledge, and it can be hard to figure out exactly what your missing knowledge is. Oh my mesh looks weird in engine, must be.. normal maps, materials, mesh isn't manifold, scene lighting isn't set up, global illumination.. skybox.. light not emitter.. you have to bake stuff? Oh but not in this mode.. Just light the damn cube!

strken 5y ago

The thing is, in one's peer group it's reasonable to give advice like "just sign up for faster internet", because you know the other person and can judge whether they "just" need a nudge to go check out cable and fibre internet, whether they can afford an extra $50 a month, whether it might be available in their area, whether their housemates would let them just pay for the whole damn thing, whether they'd get $50 of subjective value from reliable and fast internet, and so on. Giving out advice like that on the internet is interesting because it's almost a problem of being too friendly with strangers, to the point of acting like you know them personally. As a counterpoint, I'm several hundred thousand dollars richer and got to have a fun year and a half living in SF, because a friend told me to "just apply to big US tech companies and get an E-3 visa", and it actually worked.

foerbert 5y ago

You may well have simplified/stated things more absolutely for the sake of this point, but... I think in this very post you make the exact mistake you're talking about. You yourself even identify a simple lack of knowledge as a possible cause of these statements. Yet immediately afterwards you jump straight to essentially writing this hypothetical person off, instead of giving them the empathy and understanding that they may be overlooking something, or even entirely unaware of relevant information. It's very easy for people to over-generalize from their own experience. It's all anybody has. Thinking hard is also relatively expensive, so we can need some prompting to actually do it. I think it's worth having some empathy and consideration for people who've stumbled into these unfortunate tendencies of ours.