4 ms·

Why be sentimental about hiring or firing when tech is so fundamentally unsentimental about optimizing everything else?

by jstummbillig 5y ago

prower 5y ago
I can accept "un-sentimentality" only in the case we're hiring and firing robots.
- ngvrnd 5y ago
  patience
- tremon 5y ago
  hiring-and-firing robots are probably the next business innovation.
JulianMorrison 5y ago
Why care about anything at all? Wouldn't it be simpler just to carve a wake of ruin and suffering through life in pursuit of ever more perfect optimization?
- glogla 5y ago
  I mean it is what the bilionaires do and look where it got them. Seems our ancestors built a society that rewards it - and maybe we're in a place where it is unfixable due to the inertia of power. So yeah.
EveYoung 5y ago
Because it effects people's lives and mental health. I wouldn't want to live in a society or work for an organisation where a person's value is only measured by their output. If that means accepting (temporary) inefficiencies, so be it.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  If you're in the US, you very likely already live in a society that only values lives based on their output as given to someone else (unless you're in the capital holder class and happen to be on the other side of the table). I think the tech industry is especially susceptible to arguments based on efficiency because after all, that's what technology provides at a fundamental basis. We need to realize, as with many aspects within technology itself, there are tradeoffs to efficiency itself. You still have educated people who will tout efficiency above all else. I'm all for progress and improving efficiency but it has costs (and benefits) on the human condition and we need to understand and factor those costs in instead of only looking at benefits from efficiency gains. As a kid I was naive and believed this same philosophy of efficiency and didn't understand why we didn't always push to technology to improve situations. As I've grown over the years I realize life is a lot more than obsessing over efficiency. Obsessing over efficiency only brought me misery while accepting a reasonable degree of inefficiency in my life in strategic areas brought me a lot of happiness. It's always important to think about what you're optimizing on and what the costs are. Imagine going to a restaurant and making your dinner purchase decision based on a metric like: $/calorie. It's probably the most economically efficient way to look at food (perhaps with a nutritional distribution factor as well), but who wants to live like that out of choice?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - trey-jones 5y ago
    I see your decision to accept "a reasonable degree of ineffiency... in strategic areas" as an optimization as well. I'm thinking that it could be seen as improving your long-term efficiency. I think we can distinguish between them: Long-term efficiency, where we get the most output over time by not burning anybody out, and by keeping morale high And short-term efficiency, which is what everybody focuses on, because that's all shareholders care about (gains now!) and it results in the kind of soul-sucking capitalist rat race that you seem to think the entire country lives in. I'm thinking also that this is a very city-minded view, or maybe a corporate-minded one, and if you were to make the decision to sacrifice some (a lot) of potential earnings and go found or work for a small business in a small town, you might find that not all parts of America value people only based on their contribution to the GDP.
smcg 5y ago
yeah turning a blind eye to suffering IS easier, wow!
wcarss 5y ago
pretty consistent/simple line here: a matter impacting human lives -> sentimental, i.e. cognizant of human cost a matter impacting my program's performance -> not very sentimental, i.e no human cost to be cognizant of
- pjmorris 5y ago
  But what if your program's performance is to 'determine when a worker has outlived their usefulness and needs to be let go?' (FTA)
  - trey-jones 5y ago
    Just like any other program: How good it is will depend upon the quality of decisions that are made in designing it, starting with: What is the definition of "usefulness"? I definitely think there is a room here to design a program that is more just in firing than a person would be. I guess it depends a lot on the benevolence or malevolence of our new computer overlords.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gentleman11 5y ago
That unsentimental optimization created the depression and anxiety inducing pits of social media with all its manipulation of feelings and opinions and fake news leading to a mistaken attempt to overthrow the us government
tomjen3 5y ago
Same reason I don't care about eating meat, but wouldn't be able to kill a cow (or at least would feel bad about it): emotions are low-intelligence. I can visualize the unemployment caused by some optimization that I wrote, but emotions don't engage with abstractions. Until that means that Jared will have to go home and tell Laura that he has been fired and now they can't afford their house it doesn't engage emotions. And my logic says, why should I care about a person I have never met? I am strictly worse of for having them in the first place.

Why be sentimental about hiring or firing when tech is so fundamentally unsentimental about optimizing everything else?

prower 5y ago

I can accept "un-sentimentality" only in the case we're hiring and firing robots.

ngvrnd 5y ago
patience
tremon 5y ago
hiring-and-firing robots are probably the next business innovation.

JulianMorrison 5y ago

Why care about anything at all? Wouldn't it be simpler just to carve a wake of ruin and suffering through life in pursuit of ever more perfect optimization?

glogla 5y ago
I mean it is what the bilionaires do and look where it got them. Seems our ancestors built a society that rewards it - and maybe we're in a place where it is unfixable due to the inertia of power. So yeah.

EveYoung 5y ago

Because it effects people's lives and mental health. I wouldn't want to live in a society or work for an organisation where a person's value is only measured by their output. If that means accepting (temporary) inefficiencies, so be it.

Frost1x 5y ago
If you're in the US, you very likely already live in a society that only values lives based on their output as given to someone else (unless you're in the capital holder class and happen to be on the other side of the table). I think the tech industry is especially susceptible to arguments based on efficiency because after all, that's what technology provides at a fundamental basis. We need to realize, as with many aspects within technology itself, there are tradeoffs to efficiency itself. You still have educated people who will tout efficiency above all else. I'm all for progress and improving efficiency but it has costs (and benefits) on the human condition and we need to understand and factor those costs in instead of only looking at benefits from efficiency gains. As a kid I was naive and believed this same philosophy of efficiency and didn't understand why we didn't always push to technology to improve situations. As I've grown over the years I realize life is a lot more than obsessing over efficiency. Obsessing over efficiency only brought me misery while accepting a reasonable degree of inefficiency in my life in strategic areas brought me a lot of happiness. It's always important to think about what you're optimizing on and what the costs are. Imagine going to a restaurant and making your dinner purchase decision based on a metric like: $/calorie. It's probably the most economically efficient way to look at food (perhaps with a nutritional distribution factor as well), but who wants to live like that out of choice?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- trey-jones 5y ago
  I see your decision to accept "a reasonable degree of ineffiency... in strategic areas" as an optimization as well. I'm thinking that it could be seen as improving your long-term efficiency. I think we can distinguish between them: Long-term efficiency, where we get the most output over time by not burning anybody out, and by keeping morale high And short-term efficiency, which is what everybody focuses on, because that's all shareholders care about (gains now!) and it results in the kind of soul-sucking capitalist rat race that you seem to think the entire country lives in. I'm thinking also that this is a very city-minded view, or maybe a corporate-minded one, and if you were to make the decision to sacrifice some (a lot) of potential earnings and go found or work for a small business in a small town, you might find that not all parts of America value people only based on their contribution to the GDP.

smcg 5y ago

yeah turning a blind eye to suffering IS easier, wow!

wcarss 5y ago

pretty consistent/simple line here: a matter impacting human lives -> sentimental, i.e. cognizant of human cost a matter impacting my program's performance -> not very sentimental, i.e no human cost to be cognizant of

pjmorris 5y ago
But what if your program's performance is to 'determine when a worker has outlived their usefulness and needs to be let go?' (FTA)
- trey-jones 5y ago
  Just like any other program: How good it is will depend upon the quality of decisions that are made in designing it, starting with: What is the definition of "usefulness"? I definitely think there is a room here to design a program that is more just in firing than a person would be. I guess it depends a lot on the benevolence or malevolence of our new computer overlords.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

gentleman11 5y ago

That unsentimental optimization created the depression and anxiety inducing pits of social media with all its manipulation of feelings and opinions and fake news leading to a mistaken attempt to overthrow the us government

tomjen3 5y ago

Same reason I don't care about eating meat, but wouldn't be able to kill a cow (or at least would feel bad about it): emotions are low-intelligence. I can visualize the unemployment caused by some optimization that I wrote, but emotions don't engage with abstractions. Until that means that Jared will have to go home and tell Laura that he has been fired and now they can't afford their house it doesn't engage emotions. And my logic says, why should I care about a person I have never met? I am strictly worse of for having them in the first place.