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In the movie Primer, a group of four friends start a small computer business on the side. Two of them later invent a sci-fi box and then dramatic shenanigans e

by Verdex 3y ago

In the movie Primer, a group of four friends start a small computer business on the side. Two of them later invent a sci-fi box and then dramatic shenanigans ensue. Something I missed at first [1] was the significance of an event that happens early in the movie. They need to buy a $50 router because their existing one is broken. They have an impromptu meeting where one of the characters gives suggestions on how they could try to fix the existing router. The suggestions are all half spoken before being answered: "Did you try the ..." : "yes"; "well , how about resetting the ..." : "I tried that too". Clearly they're basically reading each other's minds because of how well they know each other and how much time they spend with each other. But then comes the 'punchline'. One character says 'yes' to buying the new router. The other response with "I need an 'aye'". Their side business apparently has very strict rules about what words they need to use for voting on decisions. It doesn't matter that they all know each other so well that they're finishing each other's sentences. It doesn't matter that this is a $50 router. And it doesn't matter that their income from this side business is inconsequential. The rules say that they need an 'aye'. My own theory with "Right Way Guys" is that some people have been able to find a lot of success by leveraging the knowledge that's stored in the hivemind of society. They don't really know what they're doing when you consider what's going on inside their skull. But they have successfully copied success up till now. The plus side is that they're able to inherit successful methodologies that have survived over time without having to do all the hard work themselves. The down side is that they literally don't understand when they're in a scenario where it will lead to failure. [2] [1] - I didn't think much of this until I watched the director commentary. Where they explicitly talk about how they intentionally setup this interaction to showcase how certain characters took the rules too seriously and which ones didn't take them seriously enough. [2] - My theory on my theory is that this is also why so many people encourage others to join in their favored cargo cult practice (be it software development or anything else). Social behaviors may or may not work, but the more people you can convince to follow them the greater the chance that when they fail catastrophically and/or fatally they're failing for someone who isn't you.

hinkley 3y ago
I over-analyze everything and if I actually explained all the reasons the screwdriver should be put away, you would be bored, possibly to death. If you persist in arguing you might hear half of it. And yet my toolbox is still full of things I do because someone I respect did them, or someone I disrespect didn’t, and the outcomes were dramatic. I know the expected outcomes, I have half an idea how they actually work, I just know it’s a magic spell that gets me into or out of problems. We don’t know why asking dad for ice cream works more often than mom, but empirically it does. There are areas dictated by human factors like errors, or overconfidence. There are areas I will sweat blood to do a mindful task to avoid a mindless one, and vice versa. And there are things I do because it improves outcomes with neurodivergent people, and sometimes neurotypical ones. There’s a concept in chronic illness circles called spoons. It is a metaphor that acknowledges that it’s not time that’s the constrained resource, it’s energy. A wake up call that software desperately needs. When you have used all your physical or emotional energy you are “out of spoons” for the day. You can’t do anything but veg. This is slowly being replaced in psychology circles with metaphors that are more like deck building card games, because they speak also to many other groups of non-extroverts. If you aren’t prepared for a task like calling tech support or dealing with a toxic relative, being forced to do it now burns all the other tasks you might have done cheaply today. These people want to know they have a dentist appointment or a date in two days because they need to psych themselves up. Spend energy today and tomorrow making sure they have that card available. And if there’s a cancellation, they are out all that energy and have to spend it again. There’s a lot of this in our work too. The old joke aphorism about, “why spend a day doing something you can spend a week automating?” falls under this umbrella.
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  I call this effect “sand in the gears”. Some things are low friction and effortless, others less so. Too much friction and the “machine” seizes. Psychological aspects are a big part of this. My pet peeve is overzealous security trolls making IT staff use four layers of VPNs and remote access solutions with multiple glacially slow MFA authentication prompts. I watched one guy typing into a console with a two second lag on each key press. That’s the round trip time to the Moon and back! I felt bad every time I had to ask him to do something for me, because his shoulders would slump and he’d have this depressed look on his face as he forced himself to jump through the hoops… again.
thadt 3y ago
Had a conversation with a friend yesterday about a case [1] where students at Oxford spent 500 years swearing irreconciliation with a guy from the 1200s as a part of their graduation vows. When it was reviewed in the 1600s, someone suggested removing the clause, but it was turned down. Rules and traditions have reasons, but it is interesting to think about how many we follow all the time without really understanding why. Cultural DNA (traditions, rules, and the 'right way') encode a lot of useful experience - but environment and circumstances change. And sometimes it just picks up weird things along the way. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38710661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38710661
- bmicraft 3y ago
  There was a moment when the cultural equivalent to genes was called memes
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League_nude_posture_photos https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League_nude_posture_phot... Insanity.
juped 3y ago
You sound like you saw the phrase "Right Way Guy", felt it sounded pejorative (it's more gently poking fun at a common thing), and decided it must mean That Type Of Guy I Don't Like. The article is referring to the foibles common to someone who's just had their first experience with not being a cargo cultist, i.e., getting overexcited about their first taste of real understanding. Mostly these foibles involve having somewhat cringey one-sided conversations. I have no idea how the Primer anecdote relates to anything at all.
- Verdex 3y ago
  | You sound like you saw the phrase "Right Way Guy", felt it sounded pejorative I'm not sure what it sounded like, but I'm pretty sure I didn't feel that way. | decided it must mean That Type Of Guy I Don't Like. ... huh. That escalated kind of quickly. | I have no idea how the Primer anecdote relates to anything at all. Well, I had hoped the paragraph following the anecdote explained that, but I guess I can't win them all can I. EDIT: What I find super interesting is that my original comment was that there are some interesting success and failure modes associated with "Right Way Guy". And I follow it up with a musing that social pressure to conform is a way for the social hivemind to protect adherents via statistics. THEN one of the comments looks suspiciously like it's chiding my social disharmonious actions. Very cool.
  - wcarss 3y ago
    From your original comment, I learned some new things about a movie I enjoyed but haven't thought about in a while. I felt it connected fine to the topic, and made for a really interesting contribution to the discussion. I've always been intrigued by how the representation of those characters instantly connected so well with my engineer-identifying brain, and little details like that must have been a big part of it. It's a neat little nuance on the idea that what bits of cargo cult a person exhibits _now_ can sometimes give insight to their current place in life, and perhaps even to their deeper character and heart.
  - juped 3y ago
    I'm sorry I replied; I thought you were confusedly misinterpreting the article by reading something about cargo-cult practices into it, but I now think you're just sort of emitting nonsense, and so it turned out to have been pointless. edit: Actually, on reflection, >THEN one of the comments looks suspiciously like it's chiding my social disharmonious actions. I consider this extremely aggressive, rude, and to bear no relation whatsoever to anything I typed. I don't understand what causes people to talk in bad faith like that.

by Verdex 3y ago

hinkley 3y ago

I over-analyze everything and if I actually explained all the reasons the screwdriver should be put away, you would be bored, possibly to death. If you persist in arguing you might hear half of it. And yet my toolbox is still full of things I do because someone I respect did them, or someone I disrespect didn’t, and the outcomes were dramatic. I know the expected outcomes, I have half an idea how they actually work, I just know it’s a magic spell that gets me into or out of problems. We don’t know why asking dad for ice cream works more often than mom, but empirically it does. There are areas dictated by human factors like errors, or overconfidence. There are areas I will sweat blood to do a mindful task to avoid a mindless one, and vice versa. And there are things I do because it improves outcomes with neurodivergent people, and sometimes neurotypical ones. There’s a concept in chronic illness circles called spoons. It is a metaphor that acknowledges that it’s not time that’s the constrained resource, it’s energy. A wake up call that software desperately needs. When you have used all your physical or emotional energy you are “out of spoons” for the day. You can’t do anything but veg. This is slowly being replaced in psychology circles with metaphors that are more like deck building card games, because they speak also to many other groups of non-extroverts. If you aren’t prepared for a task like calling tech support or dealing with a toxic relative, being forced to do it now burns all the other tasks you might have done cheaply today. These people want to know they have a dentist appointment or a date in two days because they need to psych themselves up. Spend energy today and tomorrow making sure they have that card available. And if there’s a cancellation, they are out all that energy and have to spend it again. There’s a lot of this in our work too. The old joke aphorism about, “why spend a day doing something you can spend a week automating?” falls under this umbrella.

jiggawatts 3y ago
I call this effect “sand in the gears”. Some things are low friction and effortless, others less so. Too much friction and the “machine” seizes. Psychological aspects are a big part of this. My pet peeve is overzealous security trolls making IT staff use four layers of VPNs and remote access solutions with multiple glacially slow MFA authentication prompts. I watched one guy typing into a console with a two second lag on each key press. That’s the round trip time to the Moon and back! I felt bad every time I had to ask him to do something for me, because his shoulders would slump and he’d have this depressed look on his face as he forced himself to jump through the hoops… again.

thadt 3y ago

Had a conversation with a friend yesterday about a case [1] where students at Oxford spent 500 years swearing irreconciliation with a guy from the 1200s as a part of their graduation vows. When it was reviewed in the 1600s, someone suggested removing the clause, but it was turned down. Rules and traditions have reasons, but it is interesting to think about how many we follow all the time without really understanding why. Cultural DNA (traditions, rules, and the 'right way') encode a lot of useful experience - but environment and circumstances change. And sometimes it just picks up weird things along the way. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38710661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38710661

bmicraft 3y ago
There was a moment when the cultural equivalent to genes was called memes
jiggawatts 3y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League_nude_posture_photos https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League_nude_posture_phot... Insanity.

juped 3y ago

You sound like you saw the phrase "Right Way Guy", felt it sounded pejorative (it's more gently poking fun at a common thing), and decided it must mean That Type Of Guy I Don't Like. The article is referring to the foibles common to someone who's just had their first experience with not being a cargo cultist, i.e., getting overexcited about their first taste of real understanding. Mostly these foibles involve having somewhat cringey one-sided conversations. I have no idea how the Primer anecdote relates to anything at all.

Verdex 3y ago
| You sound like you saw the phrase "Right Way Guy", felt it sounded pejorative I'm not sure what it sounded like, but I'm pretty sure I didn't feel that way. | decided it must mean That Type Of Guy I Don't Like. ... huh. That escalated kind of quickly. | I have no idea how the Primer anecdote relates to anything at all. Well, I had hoped the paragraph following the anecdote explained that, but I guess I can't win them all can I. EDIT: What I find super interesting is that my original comment was that there are some interesting success and failure modes associated with "Right Way Guy". And I follow it up with a musing that social pressure to conform is a way for the social hivemind to protect adherents via statistics. THEN one of the comments looks suspiciously like it's chiding my social disharmonious actions. Very cool.
- wcarss 3y ago
  From your original comment, I learned some new things about a movie I enjoyed but haven't thought about in a while. I felt it connected fine to the topic, and made for a really interesting contribution to the discussion. I've always been intrigued by how the representation of those characters instantly connected so well with my engineer-identifying brain, and little details like that must have been a big part of it. It's a neat little nuance on the idea that what bits of cargo cult a person exhibits _now_ can sometimes give insight to their current place in life, and perhaps even to their deeper character and heart.
- juped 3y ago
  I'm sorry I replied; I thought you were confusedly misinterpreting the article by reading something about cargo-cult practices into it, but I now think you're just sort of emitting nonsense, and so it turned out to have been pointless. edit: Actually, on reflection, >THEN one of the comments looks suspiciously like it's chiding my social disharmonious actions. I consider this extremely aggressive, rude, and to bear no relation whatsoever to anything I typed. I don't understand what causes people to talk in bad faith like that.