12 ms·

Other People’s Problems

194 points by pmzy 2y ago

yetihehe 2y ago
Tip: when your solution contains "just (do something)", it's never that simple.
- athenot 2y ago
  Yes! I'm always reminded of "Just is a Dangerous Word", from the original wiki: https://wiki.c2.com/?JustIsaDangerousWord https://wiki.c2.com/?JustIsaDangerousWord
- ChildOfChaos 2y ago
  And also a counter point, just because things are simple, doesn't mean it is easy. Those two things are separate and we often get them confused, when things are hard, we think it must be more complex than it is, which is not usually the case.
- arkh 2y ago
  When estimating time for a task, every occurrence of the word "just" doubles the estimate. "Just" always hide a lack of knowledge. Of the problem, of the environment, of the team, of what the future will be.
  - fargle 2y ago
    that's cute, and it is often true. but not "always". sometimes when a group gets "wrapped around the axle" and the proposed thing is spiraling out of control (usually due to hallucinated requirements or group anxiety feeding on itself), "Just <simple option>" is EXACTLY what is needed, especially from a confident leader.
    - yetihehe 2y ago
      Yes, but <simple option> is not <action>. "Just implement it" may be said in spite of required complexity, "Implement just this one option out of many" is typically already defined and is a narrowing of scope.
      - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
        I agree. Grammar matters. "Just do this one thing" is worthless blather while "do just this one thing, then consider next steps" is a necessary call to focus.
  - DavidPiper 2y ago
    My favourite take on this: > If your solution to some problem relies on “If everyone would just...” then you do not have a solution. Everyone is not going to just. At no time in the history of the universe has everyone just, and they’re not going to start now. https://squareallworthy.tumblr.com/post/163790039847/everyone-will-not-just https://squareallworthy.tumblr.com/post/163790039847/everyon...
- Swizec 2y ago
  As a person with problems: “just do the thing” would solve about 90% of them. Unfortunately I’m spending all my time on other priorities/problems that I also have. Just do the thing is a lot more powerful than people realize. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. But it is often simple.
  - mewpmewp2 2y ago
    That is Nike for you.
- cainxinth 2y ago
  Reddit advice threads are famous for this. Just quit your job and get a new one. Just divorce your SO of 10 years and try again. Just pick up sticks and move somewhere else. Easy-peasy, right?
  - ChildOfChaos 2y ago
    There was a thread yesterday which was on /r/getmotivated, the typical word spew from a teenager who had started a newsletter. Advising people that all they had to do is outlast everyone and that was easy because everyone else quit. They didn't seem to understand the difference between simple and easy, when I mentioned that was the hard part and the reason everyone else was quitting was because it was hard, there response was that 'they just needed discipline, which is easy'. So glad we have genius level thinking out there that has solved all of life's issues.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  The solution to being overweight is simple. Eat less. But it ain't easy.
- vonwoodson 2y ago
  YES! "just" means hours and hours and hours [...] and hours of work!
vouaobrasil 2y ago
Or, perhaps we could entertain a fantastical explanation: what if no one has free will and thus someone else's problems seem easy to us because our deterministic movements solve them easier than the deterministic movements of the person with the problem?
- JadeNB 2y ago
  But the claimed phenomenon here is that it's (almost) always easier for you to come up with a solution to someone else's problem than for them to do so, not just that some problems are easier for one person than another. There are problems with this claim, I think, but the absence of free will is not an explanation, or at best just reduces it to the question of why, granting the claim, the determinism (almost) always leads to this bias. (For that matter, nothing in the linked article depends on whether or not we have free will.)
  - detourdog 2y ago
    The outside with the solution doesn't have to live with the result and likely doesn't comprehend the un-stated nuances of the situation. That makes problem solving easy.
    - JadeNB 2y ago
      > The outside with the solution doesn't have to live with the result and likely doesn't comprehend the un-stated nuances of the situation. Yes, that's the kind of thing I had in mind by saying that I thought that there were problems with the claim.
- coldtea 2y ago
  That would just move the question *, not give an answer. * to: "OK, and why would our deterministic movements solve them easier than the deterministic movements of the person with the problem?"
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
bryanrasmussen 2y ago
My general experience is often people think problems are easy to solve from the outside because they just don't understand the problem. Thus you can often find communities of people with disabilities who understand the problems and the people from the outside who offer insulting and simple solutions to the problems. As soon as someone falls from group B into group A the problems stop becoming simple and easily soluble though.
- mft_ 2y ago
  I agree with you, although his first point is a subset of this, I think. In reality, it's something like "they don't understand the problem space", which includes not just not understanding the problem itself, but also understanding the history, context, and realistic daily details of the problem, and the real or imagined blocks that are created by personal philosophy, mindset, and psychology, plus the impact of relationships, biases, etc...
  - throwway120385 2y ago
    As an example of "not understanding the problem space" it's mind-blowing sometimes to think about how a disability is only a disability in the context of a particular way of living. If you're confined to a wheelchair and all the work surfaces and other affordances are above neck level for you, then it's a disability. But if those work surfaces are moved and extra space provided it's not a disability in that environment. It's just that people outside of a wheelchair can't identify the little assumptions and design features that accommodate them because they're the default in our culture.
- richrichie 2y ago
  It goes both ways. And some times it is simple that the insider cannot see for a host of reasons. Outsider can spot a simple solution because they dont have self imposed constraints that come from being on the inside for long.
  - jprete 2y ago
    The insider constraints are real, though. Sometimes they're self-imposed, and that can be for good reasons (value system, long-term goals) or bad reasons (emotionally stuck, a disproportionate fear of small risks, etc.).
coldtea 2y ago
He forgot one of the most obvious reasons: we, as a third party, don't have the extra stress associated with having the problem (or having to deal with the consequences of any potential solution). So we can think without those anxieties and more impartially.
- n4r9 2y ago
  Nailed it. That's why imagining what you'd say if someone else had the same problem - or what they would suggest if you explained your problem - are effective problem-solbing techniques.
- datadrivenangel 2y ago
  It is easier to help someone else organize their house than to organize your own.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Sure, like my sister in law who moved all the yellow books together. Fiction, all different non-fiction, different series - all over the place, but the shelf looks nice by color even though I can't find anything without reading every title.
    - d0mine 2y ago
      Can chatgpt help you find the book on the photo of your shelf?
      - bluGill 2y ago
        Maybe, but that is a lot of overhead vs a well organized bookshelf where I don't need reach for some app(s) on my phone just to find a book. This story is from several years before chatgpt, I've organized my bookshelf since so I won't have to find out.
richrichie 2y ago
Outsider (to the novice swimmer): Just breathe, you are not breathing. Novice swimmer to himself: Yeah right, but thats the problem, i have no idea how to breathe.
scblock 2y ago
This is amazing. It starts with rightly understanding that problems aren't actually as simple as they might seem from outside. But then it bizarrely seems to take that to conclude that our friends aren't trying for inertia or fear or something else, and so they just need to get unstuck. It seems to me that the far more reasonable and understandable conclusion is that our friends are much like us. Things aren't as easy as they may seem from the outside.
sebastianconcpt 2y ago
The ramifications of dependencies and the trivial and hidden costs of modifying (refactoring) these are why is "easy" for one and "hard" for the other one.
m3kw9 2y ago
Because when you try to solve people’s problems, you imagine this simplified rule set, but in reality the rules you don’t see is what makes it difficult for the actual bearer. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, but make sure you are not insulting someone’s intelligence by over simplifying the problem. This means you need to really get to understand their issue before chirping.
jmbwell 2y ago
It’s true that sometimes an outsider can offer a fresh perspective. From where you sit, there might be a solution you can’t see. The nearest exit might be in the row behind you. Maybe this applies more often when the one giving advice has more experience than the one receiving it, or when the person who is stuck has habituated a narrow perspective or some form of learned helplessness. But I recoil at something I think I see more often, which is when several people stand around pointing out the obvious and congratulating each other on their fresh ideas and wondering what’s so hard for the guy who has lived the situation and would love to find a way forward if there were the right resources or the right change in policies or the right change in politics. The peanut gallery loses interest pretty quickly when faced with questions about the real constraints and it turns out their answers are not fresh at all. But now we have someone who’s “marinating in the stuck,” surrounded by people who still agree with each other that they know how it should all be done but have now also been embarrassed. It’s an ugly, toxic cycle that bottoms out at everyone constantly having their knowledge and competence questioned over things they know and can do, by people who don’t and can’t. If someone is stuck, ask if you can help, sure. Ask what seems to be the trouble. Ask what has been tried so far. But maybe don’t lead with your advice.
- zackmorris 2y ago
  Ya the blogger falls for a fallacy that I often see from people who consider themselves smart, especially in tech: that they are somehow more clever/insightful/effective than other people and know how everything should work. But as I've gotten older and more experienced, I've come to understand that everyone is uniquely talented and brilliant in some way. The vast majority of people are just vulnerable to becoming trapped in situations that are nontrivial to change, due to their own life choices yes, but just as often due to external circumstances and empathy for how following their desires might impact those around them. This phenomenon presents as survivorship bias, the epitome of which is some rich person or billionaire telling young people that they could afford rent or a mortgage by giving up avocado toast. When the truth is that companies like RealPage formed a price-fixing cartel using algorithms to set rents in most major cities in the US, despite dwellings sitting empty, because it's more profitable to capitalize on a smaller number of high rents. Now they are being sued by attorneys general around the country. This othering/prejudice extends to homelessness where people blame drugs instead of economic injustice, or mistreatment of the elderly where they think they should have paid more into their retirement rather than seeing that 30% of their life savings got wiped out after the pandemic due to corporate greed inflation and soon stagflation. This isn't the tech dystopia I signed up for. In my experience, people are wealthy due to their ruthlessness, not their business acumen, but maybe those are the same thing. I think often now about how to stop this algorithm-driven late stage capitalism, but by definition it may be too late. Going off grid via solarpunk might be a great individual strategy, but it's similar to not voting, in that the people profiting from the decline in the human condition do better without the innovators. I feel now that eternal vigilance, mainly through organizing, is the only way that we'll actually reclaim the economic liberty that we used to enjoy. These broad connections are what I see any time I read these truthy/quippy essays now.
cat_plus_plus 2y ago
Local maxima and sunk costs should not in reality be ignored. For example, I could find a better job, but with opportunity costs of paying less attention to my health or my family for a couple of years, and it may be difficult to fully recapture these opportunities later. Or say, I made an effort to get to know my current coworkers well. New job may have better pay and more respect from higher ups, but that's still one thing where I would have to start from scratch with no guarantee of equally good results. It's one thing to look at each problem in isolation, it's another to live a good life overall, which may entail many tradeoffs between different problems.
- Tijdreiziger 2y ago
  The way I’ve been thinking about this is that you shouldn’t jump on every idea you have. You can acknowledge the ideas, but if you jump on every one that comes to mind, your life ends up being extremely chaotic. However, if you find yourself thinking about a certain idea a lot of times, it might be worth considering it, because your subconscious might be trying to tell you something.
Amorymeltzer 2y ago
I'll forever think of Douglas Adams and the Somebody Else's Problem (SEP) field[1]: >An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_else%27s_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_else%27s_problem
deleted 2y ago
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nate 2y ago
Relatedly, there's interesting research on "self-distancing". Like https://selfcontrol.psych.lsa.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/SD.pdf https://selfcontrol.psych.lsa.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/2... Talking to yourself by Name or in second person like you are talking to a friend seems to have a positive way of changing your perspective and allowing you to regulate your emotions and deal with something more rationally.
- chasd00 2y ago
  > Talking to yourself by Name or in second person but that guy is crazy and never listens to anything i say! ;)
JeremyJaydan 2y ago
I've also seen this phenomenon. I wonder if hopelessness and hopefulness is relevant since the focus seems to be the difficulty of coming up with solutions. I suppose this just shifts the question to.. are we typically more hopeful for others than of ourselves and if so why? Hopeful = helpful?
- nuancebydefault 2y ago
  If we have a problem ourselves, we sometimes block out, often obvious, solutions! I read somewhere : what can help is, ask yourself, what advice would I give if that problem were a problem of a friend. And that works! Suddenly you have, at least, a less biased view on the problem, or even the solution!
loa_in_ 2y ago
It's like we're not designed or supposed to be alone with the burden of anything
reify 2y ago
[flagged]
- generic92034 2y ago
  > In the UK you do not get any extra benefits after the second child, meaning that if you are poor you only get support for your first 2 children. With a total fertility rate of 1.74 (2017 figure) that seems to be a strange regulation.
watwut 2y ago
Yet other reason is that it is super easy to imagine you solved your friends problem and that the friend is just stupid or weak for not trying. You just simplify the situation in your head, apply simple solution and it works - in your head. It is much harder to actually solve that problem back in the real world.
navane 2y ago
"Loosening the constraints always makes a problem easier to solve." Due to job deformation, I cannot agree. Tight constraints make for easy solving. However, loose constraints allow more change. And ultimately, change is what people are looking for. Additionally, when looking at others we see them as their own free agent, but looking at ourselves we see us as constrained in a system.
js8 2y ago
I love solving other people's problems. If I succeed, they are usually happy. If I fail, it is, after all, someone else's problem. It's a proposition you cannot lose.
RobRivera 2y ago
I am so down with OPP
marviel 2y ago
tangential, but this reminds me of the "Somebody Else's Problem field" in the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: > An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. > The Somebody Else's Problem field... relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else’s Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_else%27s_problem?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_else%27s_problem?wpro...
chasd00 2y ago
The devil is in the details and, at the end of the day, the person with the problem is the one who has to solve it. Even armed with great advice that's not an easy task or it wouldn't be a problem to begin with.
macintux 2y ago
Related: volunteering is a good way to get out of your own head. Putting your concerns to the side and helping the community can do wonders for your mental health (not to mention gain new friends with similar interests).
AlbertCory 2y ago
As Steve Goodman sang: And I saw the boss come a-walkin' down along that factory line He said, "We all have to tighten up our belts." But he didn't look any thinner than he did a year ago And I wonder just how hungry that man felt But he knows it ain't too hard to get along with somebody else's troubles And they don't make you lose any sleep at night Just as long as fate is out there bustin' somebody' else's bubbles Everything is gonna be alright
deathanatos 2y ago
It's sort of related, but too often other people's problems end up forced into being my problem. Other people's problems are fun to solve when you're like "hey, I've seen that before / I know something about your problem", and I think I can advance you in your pursuit of a solution. Fun, win/win for everybody. But too often you try to use some product or service, either of another company, or of another team at your company, and it doesn't work. And the other team is just "but I don't waaaaannnna" about figuring out why their shit is broken. And so it becomes your problem, because you're probably trying to do something that isn't shaving this teams yak, but here you are, blocked on them. So it's either "do their job for them" or be blocked by them. And managerial chains are just, IME, utterly ineffective at dealing with this. My current boss does not want to handle these, ever. He wants me to fix the problem. Problem is I have no authority over others teams, so I can't get them to act, and so … now it's my problem! And soon I'm doing the work of 3 teams, it feels like, and shaving yaks all day. Google, internally — at least way back in the day; I've got no idea if this is still a thing — had a philosophy at several levels of "it's our problem", and in internal team-to-team stuff, that meant if a customer of your team's junk was having a bad time, that was your problem. Not your "customers'", internal or external. One of the many things I think that led them to being a FAANG.
al_borland 2y ago
It’s easy to tell people how to solve their problem, as it doesn’t include the burden of actually doing the work. The classic example would be that it’s easy to solve someone else’s weight problem. Tell them to eat a proper diet of X, get enough sleep, get to the gym X times per week, etc. Saying all these things is very easy, but overcoming the barriers to actually implement each one in a life isn’t already doing these things, is much harder. Providing a path is much more difficult than walking the path.
- EnigmaFlare 2y ago
  I'd generalize burden to cost. Difficult problems usually have no good solution. Every option has some cost. Sometimes the cost of continuing to suffer from the problem is (or appears to be) lower than that of solving it.
throwaway2562 2y ago
I swear this guy is the pinnacle of cheap wisdom. There are VC’s who are worse, but Seth never fails to disappoint.
tonymet 2y ago
There are funny videos of Swedish people advocating for immigrants and then balking when being asked to commit to taking an immigrant into their home. I've found people are long on advice and short on actual help. When people offer me advice, I usually turn it back around on them to see if they are willing to help. Recently I was taking care of some shared property repairs and received a lot of complaints that the cost was too high. I asked people for their help on finding a better price and , just as expected, they couldn't. Everything seems trivial and deterministic until you actually embark on the solution. The hard part is actually completing the task. Lesson: the world is short on help. If you want to help, pick up a broom. Lead, follow or get out of the way.
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  It's always some undefined "somebody". Somebody should do something. Somebody should pay the costs. They never suppose that they might be that somebody though. Challenge them to actually be somebody, they disappear into thin air.
aaron695 2y ago
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vonwoodson 2y ago
Aww! Cute picture! Look at those Cargo pants/shorts... wait... Why does home-boy have a f-ing machete?!
probably_jesus 2y ago
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ta2112 2y ago
And THIRD. Real problems are really hard to solve. If they weren't, then everyone would solve them and you couldn't make any money on your solution. So while I'm midway working my way through a solution, everyone decides to stop by my desk and say, "Why don't you just do X? Problem solved!" Funny, X is the very first thing I thought of myself, but it's more complicated than that. So I keep working through my solution, casually nodding at the peanut gallery as it cycles by.
6510 2y ago
My experience was that if you successfully help people they will come back with new problems. Hell, they wont come back until they have new problems for you. Helping people is hard, I found a much easier approach. You have to make it worse for them: You won't solve your problem because it isn't in your nature. I'm convinced you will never find a new partner or a new job, you wont be able to pay your bills, you will be out on the street soon! If they are old I go with: If only you paid more attention in school. Then they run out the door in rage and go do all of the things they should have done years ago. Ill pay for stuff if money gets in their way but ill remind them it is pointless, I might as well set fire to the money. Sometimes they come back to pay me and to tell me what an asshole I am. Sometimes they come back with new problems for me to make fun of and to tell me what an asshole I am but then I at least know they need help since there is nothing convenient about my "help".
- joshuahutt 2y ago
  That's one way to do it!
thefaux 2y ago
> Loosening the constraints always makes a problem easier to solve. In a vacuum, I disagree quite strongly with this although I understand what the author is getting at. It is easy to get stuck with arbitrary and unnecessary constraints. Dropping those is great. On the other hand, I find that adding constraints is one of the absolute best things you can do to enhance creativity. True freedom can only be found in the presence of immutable constraints.
vjeantet 2y ago
Other people's problems become mine as soon as I get involved. I haven't had a problem since.
mjklin 2y ago
In Chinese: “当局者迷，旁观者清”. The players are confused, but the audience sees clearly.
joshuahutt 2y ago
Most problems are hard to "solve" because we entertain the delusion of solutions that don't exist — solutions which tie everything together with a nice bow and require no discomfort or negative emotions of any kind. Alex Hormozi says "the life you want is on the other side of a few hard conversations." I would channel that to say, "the solution you're looking for is on the other side of a few uncomfortable feelings." And usually, it's just the fear of the feelings, not the feelings themselves.

194 points by pmzy 2y ago

yetihehe 2y ago

Tip: when your solution contains "just (do something)", it's never that simple.

athenot 2y ago
Yes! I'm always reminded of "Just is a Dangerous Word", from the original wiki: https://wiki.c2.com/?JustIsaDangerousWord https://wiki.c2.com/?JustIsaDangerousWord
ChildOfChaos 2y ago
And also a counter point, just because things are simple, doesn't mean it is easy. Those two things are separate and we often get them confused, when things are hard, we think it must be more complex than it is, which is not usually the case.
arkh 2y ago
When estimating time for a task, every occurrence of the word "just" doubles the estimate. "Just" always hide a lack of knowledge. Of the problem, of the environment, of the team, of what the future will be.
- fargle 2y ago
  that's cute, and it is often true. but not "always". sometimes when a group gets "wrapped around the axle" and the proposed thing is spiraling out of control (usually due to hallucinated requirements or group anxiety feeding on itself), "Just <simple option>" is EXACTLY what is needed, especially from a confident leader.
  - yetihehe 2y ago
    Yes, but <simple option> is not <action>. "Just implement it" may be said in spite of required complexity, "Implement just this one option out of many" is typically already defined and is a narrowing of scope.
    - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
      I agree. Grammar matters. "Just do this one thing" is worthless blather while "do just this one thing, then consider next steps" is a necessary call to focus.
- DavidPiper 2y ago
  My favourite take on this: > If your solution to some problem relies on “If everyone would just...” then you do not have a solution. Everyone is not going to just. At no time in the history of the universe has everyone just, and they’re not going to start now. https://squareallworthy.tumblr.com/post/163790039847/everyone-will-not-just https://squareallworthy.tumblr.com/post/163790039847/everyon...
Swizec 2y ago
As a person with problems: “just do the thing” would solve about 90% of them. Unfortunately I’m spending all my time on other priorities/problems that I also have. Just do the thing is a lot more powerful than people realize. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. But it is often simple.
- mewpmewp2 2y ago
  That is Nike for you.
cainxinth 2y ago
Reddit advice threads are famous for this. Just quit your job and get a new one. Just divorce your SO of 10 years and try again. Just pick up sticks and move somewhere else. Easy-peasy, right?
- ChildOfChaos 2y ago
  There was a thread yesterday which was on /r/getmotivated, the typical word spew from a teenager who had started a newsletter. Advising people that all they had to do is outlast everyone and that was easy because everyone else quit. They didn't seem to understand the difference between simple and easy, when I mentioned that was the hard part and the reason everyone else was quitting was because it was hard, there response was that 'they just needed discipline, which is easy'. So glad we have genius level thinking out there that has solved all of life's issues.
WalterBright 2y ago
The solution to being overweight is simple. Eat less. But it ain't easy.
vonwoodson 2y ago
YES! "just" means hours and hours and hours [...] and hours of work!

vouaobrasil 2y ago

Or, perhaps we could entertain a fantastical explanation: what if no one has free will and thus someone else's problems seem easy to us because our deterministic movements solve them easier than the deterministic movements of the person with the problem?

JadeNB 2y ago
But the claimed phenomenon here is that it's (almost) always easier for you to come up with a solution to someone else's problem than for them to do so, not just that some problems are easier for one person than another. There are problems with this claim, I think, but the absence of free will is not an explanation, or at best just reduces it to the question of why, granting the claim, the determinism (almost) always leads to this bias. (For that matter, nothing in the linked article depends on whether or not we have free will.)
- detourdog 2y ago
  The outside with the solution doesn't have to live with the result and likely doesn't comprehend the un-stated nuances of the situation. That makes problem solving easy.
  - JadeNB 2y ago
    > The outside with the solution doesn't have to live with the result and likely doesn't comprehend the un-stated nuances of the situation. Yes, that's the kind of thing I had in mind by saying that I thought that there were problems with the claim.
coldtea 2y ago
That would just move the question *, not give an answer. * to: "OK, and why would our deterministic movements solve them easier than the deterministic movements of the person with the problem?"
- vouaobrasil 2y ago

bryanrasmussen 2y ago

My general experience is often people think problems are easy to solve from the outside because they just don't understand the problem. Thus you can often find communities of people with disabilities who understand the problems and the people from the outside who offer insulting and simple solutions to the problems. As soon as someone falls from group B into group A the problems stop becoming simple and easily soluble though.

mft_ 2y ago
I agree with you, although his first point is a subset of this, I think. In reality, it's something like "they don't understand the problem space", which includes not just not understanding the problem itself, but also understanding the history, context, and realistic daily details of the problem, and the real or imagined blocks that are created by personal philosophy, mindset, and psychology, plus the impact of relationships, biases, etc...
- throwway120385 2y ago
  As an example of "not understanding the problem space" it's mind-blowing sometimes to think about how a disability is only a disability in the context of a particular way of living. If you're confined to a wheelchair and all the work surfaces and other affordances are above neck level for you, then it's a disability. But if those work surfaces are moved and extra space provided it's not a disability in that environment. It's just that people outside of a wheelchair can't identify the little assumptions and design features that accommodate them because they're the default in our culture.
richrichie 2y ago
It goes both ways. And some times it is simple that the insider cannot see for a host of reasons. Outsider can spot a simple solution because they dont have self imposed constraints that come from being on the inside for long.
- jprete 2y ago
  The insider constraints are real, though. Sometimes they're self-imposed, and that can be for good reasons (value system, long-term goals) or bad reasons (emotionally stuck, a disproportionate fear of small risks, etc.).

coldtea 2y ago

He forgot one of the most obvious reasons: we, as a third party, don't have the extra stress associated with having the problem (or having to deal with the consequences of any potential solution). So we can think without those anxieties and more impartially.

n4r9 2y ago
Nailed it. That's why imagining what you'd say if someone else had the same problem - or what they would suggest if you explained your problem - are effective problem-solbing techniques.
datadrivenangel 2y ago
It is easier to help someone else organize their house than to organize your own.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Sure, like my sister in law who moved all the yellow books together. Fiction, all different non-fiction, different series - all over the place, but the shelf looks nice by color even though I can't find anything without reading every title.
  - d0mine 2y ago
    Can chatgpt help you find the book on the photo of your shelf?
    - bluGill 2y ago
      Maybe, but that is a lot of overhead vs a well organized bookshelf where I don't need reach for some app(s) on my phone just to find a book. This story is from several years before chatgpt, I've organized my bookshelf since so I won't have to find out.

richrichie 2y ago

Outsider (to the novice swimmer): Just breathe, you are not breathing. Novice swimmer to himself: Yeah right, but thats the problem, i have no idea how to breathe.

scblock 2y ago

This is amazing. It starts with rightly understanding that problems aren't actually as simple as they might seem from outside. But then it bizarrely seems to take that to conclude that our friends aren't trying for inertia or fear or something else, and so they just need to get unstuck. It seems to me that the far more reasonable and understandable conclusion is that our friends are much like us. Things aren't as easy as they may seem from the outside.

sebastianconcpt 2y ago

The ramifications of dependencies and the trivial and hidden costs of modifying (refactoring) these are why is "easy" for one and "hard" for the other one.

m3kw9 2y ago

Because when you try to solve people’s problems, you imagine this simplified rule set, but in reality the rules you don’t see is what makes it difficult for the actual bearer. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, but make sure you are not insulting someone’s intelligence by over simplifying the problem. This means you need to really get to understand their issue before chirping.

jmbwell 2y ago

It’s true that sometimes an outsider can offer a fresh perspective. From where you sit, there might be a solution you can’t see. The nearest exit might be in the row behind you. Maybe this applies more often when the one giving advice has more experience than the one receiving it, or when the person who is stuck has habituated a narrow perspective or some form of learned helplessness. But I recoil at something I think I see more often, which is when several people stand around pointing out the obvious and congratulating each other on their fresh ideas and wondering what’s so hard for the guy who has lived the situation and would love to find a way forward if there were the right resources or the right change in policies or the right change in politics. The peanut gallery loses interest pretty quickly when faced with questions about the real constraints and it turns out their answers are not fresh at all. But now we have someone who’s “marinating in the stuck,” surrounded by people who still agree with each other that they know how it should all be done but have now also been embarrassed. It’s an ugly, toxic cycle that bottoms out at everyone constantly having their knowledge and competence questioned over things they know and can do, by people who don’t and can’t. If someone is stuck, ask if you can help, sure. Ask what seems to be the trouble. Ask what has been tried so far. But maybe don’t lead with your advice.

zackmorris 2y ago
Ya the blogger falls for a fallacy that I often see from people who consider themselves smart, especially in tech: that they are somehow more clever/insightful/effective than other people and know how everything should work. But as I've gotten older and more experienced, I've come to understand that everyone is uniquely talented and brilliant in some way. The vast majority of people are just vulnerable to becoming trapped in situations that are nontrivial to change, due to their own life choices yes, but just as often due to external circumstances and empathy for how following their desires might impact those around them. This phenomenon presents as survivorship bias, the epitome of which is some rich person or billionaire telling young people that they could afford rent or a mortgage by giving up avocado toast. When the truth is that companies like RealPage formed a price-fixing cartel using algorithms to set rents in most major cities in the US, despite dwellings sitting empty, because it's more profitable to capitalize on a smaller number of high rents. Now they are being sued by attorneys general around the country. This othering/prejudice extends to homelessness where people blame drugs instead of economic injustice, or mistreatment of the elderly where they think they should have paid more into their retirement rather than seeing that 30% of their life savings got wiped out after the pandemic due to corporate greed inflation and soon stagflation. This isn't the tech dystopia I signed up for. In my experience, people are wealthy due to their ruthlessness, not their business acumen, but maybe those are the same thing. I think often now about how to stop this algorithm-driven late stage capitalism, but by definition it may be too late. Going off grid via solarpunk might be a great individual strategy, but it's similar to not voting, in that the people profiting from the decline in the human condition do better without the innovators. I feel now that eternal vigilance, mainly through organizing, is the only way that we'll actually reclaim the economic liberty that we used to enjoy. These broad connections are what I see any time I read these truthy/quippy essays now.

cat_plus_plus 2y ago

Local maxima and sunk costs should not in reality be ignored. For example, I could find a better job, but with opportunity costs of paying less attention to my health or my family for a couple of years, and it may be difficult to fully recapture these opportunities later. Or say, I made an effort to get to know my current coworkers well. New job may have better pay and more respect from higher ups, but that's still one thing where I would have to start from scratch with no guarantee of equally good results. It's one thing to look at each problem in isolation, it's another to live a good life overall, which may entail many tradeoffs between different problems.

Tijdreiziger 2y ago
The way I’ve been thinking about this is that you shouldn’t jump on every idea you have. You can acknowledge the ideas, but if you jump on every one that comes to mind, your life ends up being extremely chaotic. However, if you find yourself thinking about a certain idea a lot of times, it might be worth considering it, because your subconscious might be trying to tell you something.

Amorymeltzer 2y ago

I'll forever think of Douglas Adams and the Somebody Else's Problem (SEP) field[1]: >An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_else%27s_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_else%27s_problem

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nate 2y ago

Relatedly, there's interesting research on "self-distancing". Like https://selfcontrol.psych.lsa.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/SD.pdf https://selfcontrol.psych.lsa.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/2... Talking to yourself by Name or in second person like you are talking to a friend seems to have a positive way of changing your perspective and allowing you to regulate your emotions and deal with something more rationally.

chasd00 2y ago
> Talking to yourself by Name or in second person but that guy is crazy and never listens to anything i say! ;)

JeremyJaydan 2y ago

I've also seen this phenomenon. I wonder if hopelessness and hopefulness is relevant since the focus seems to be the difficulty of coming up with solutions. I suppose this just shifts the question to.. are we typically more hopeful for others than of ourselves and if so why? Hopeful = helpful?

nuancebydefault 2y ago
If we have a problem ourselves, we sometimes block out, often obvious, solutions! I read somewhere : what can help is, ask yourself, what advice would I give if that problem were a problem of a friend. And that works! Suddenly you have, at least, a less biased view on the problem, or even the solution!

loa_in_ 2y ago

It's like we're not designed or supposed to be alone with the burden of anything

reify 2y ago

[flagged]

generic92034 2y ago
> In the UK you do not get any extra benefits after the second child, meaning that if you are poor you only get support for your first 2 children. With a total fertility rate of 1.74 (2017 figure) that seems to be a strange regulation.

watwut 2y ago

Yet other reason is that it is super easy to imagine you solved your friends problem and that the friend is just stupid or weak for not trying. You just simplify the situation in your head, apply simple solution and it works - in your head. It is much harder to actually solve that problem back in the real world.

navane 2y ago

"Loosening the constraints always makes a problem easier to solve." Due to job deformation, I cannot agree. Tight constraints make for easy solving. However, loose constraints allow more change. And ultimately, change is what people are looking for. Additionally, when looking at others we see them as their own free agent, but looking at ourselves we see us as constrained in a system.

js8 2y ago

I love solving other people's problems. If I succeed, they are usually happy. If I fail, it is, after all, someone else's problem. It's a proposition you cannot lose.

RobRivera 2y ago

I am so down with OPP

marviel 2y ago

tangential, but this reminds me of the "Somebody Else's Problem field" in the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: > An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. > The Somebody Else's Problem field... relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else’s Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_else%27s_problem?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_else%27s_problem?wpro...

chasd00 2y ago

The devil is in the details and, at the end of the day, the person with the problem is the one who has to solve it. Even armed with great advice that's not an easy task or it wouldn't be a problem to begin with.

macintux 2y ago

Related: volunteering is a good way to get out of your own head. Putting your concerns to the side and helping the community can do wonders for your mental health (not to mention gain new friends with similar interests).

AlbertCory 2y ago

As Steve Goodman sang: And I saw the boss come a-walkin' down along that factory line He said, "We all have to tighten up our belts." But he didn't look any thinner than he did a year ago And I wonder just how hungry that man felt But he knows it ain't too hard to get along with somebody else's troubles And they don't make you lose any sleep at night Just as long as fate is out there bustin' somebody' else's bubbles Everything is gonna be alright

deathanatos 2y ago

It's sort of related, but too often other people's problems end up forced into being my problem. Other people's problems are fun to solve when you're like "hey, I've seen that before / I know something about your problem", and I think I can advance you in your pursuit of a solution. Fun, win/win for everybody. But too often you try to use some product or service, either of another company, or of another team at your company, and it doesn't work. And the other team is just "but I don't waaaaannnna" about figuring out why their shit is broken. And so it becomes your problem, because you're probably trying to do something that isn't shaving this teams yak, but here you are, blocked on them. So it's either "do their job for them" or be blocked by them. And managerial chains are just, IME, utterly ineffective at dealing with this. My current boss does not want to handle these, ever. He wants me to fix the problem. Problem is I have no authority over others teams, so I can't get them to act, and so … now it's my problem! And soon I'm doing the work of 3 teams, it feels like, and shaving yaks all day. Google, internally — at least way back in the day; I've got no idea if this is still a thing — had a philosophy at several levels of "it's our problem", and in internal team-to-team stuff, that meant if a customer of your team's junk was having a bad time, that was your problem. Not your "customers'", internal or external. One of the many things I think that led them to being a FAANG.

al_borland 2y ago

It’s easy to tell people how to solve their problem, as it doesn’t include the burden of actually doing the work. The classic example would be that it’s easy to solve someone else’s weight problem. Tell them to eat a proper diet of X, get enough sleep, get to the gym X times per week, etc. Saying all these things is very easy, but overcoming the barriers to actually implement each one in a life isn’t already doing these things, is much harder. Providing a path is much more difficult than walking the path.

EnigmaFlare 2y ago
I'd generalize burden to cost. Difficult problems usually have no good solution. Every option has some cost. Sometimes the cost of continuing to suffer from the problem is (or appears to be) lower than that of solving it.

throwaway2562 2y ago

I swear this guy is the pinnacle of cheap wisdom. There are VC’s who are worse, but Seth never fails to disappoint.

tonymet 2y ago

There are funny videos of Swedish people advocating for immigrants and then balking when being asked to commit to taking an immigrant into their home. I've found people are long on advice and short on actual help. When people offer me advice, I usually turn it back around on them to see if they are willing to help. Recently I was taking care of some shared property repairs and received a lot of complaints that the cost was too high. I asked people for their help on finding a better price and , just as expected, they couldn't. Everything seems trivial and deterministic until you actually embark on the solution. The hard part is actually completing the task. Lesson: the world is short on help. If you want to help, pick up a broom. Lead, follow or get out of the way.

matheusmoreira 2y ago
It's always some undefined "somebody". Somebody should do something. Somebody should pay the costs. They never suppose that they might be that somebody though. Challenge them to actually be somebody, they disappear into thin air.

aaron695 2y ago

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vonwoodson 2y ago

Aww! Cute picture! Look at those Cargo pants/shorts... wait... Why does home-boy have a f-ing machete?!

probably_jesus 2y ago

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ta2112 2y ago

And THIRD. Real problems are really hard to solve. If they weren't, then everyone would solve them and you couldn't make any money on your solution. So while I'm midway working my way through a solution, everyone decides to stop by my desk and say, "Why don't you just do X? Problem solved!" Funny, X is the very first thing I thought of myself, but it's more complicated than that. So I keep working through my solution, casually nodding at the peanut gallery as it cycles by.

6510 2y ago

My experience was that if you successfully help people they will come back with new problems. Hell, they wont come back until they have new problems for you. Helping people is hard, I found a much easier approach. You have to make it worse for them: You won't solve your problem because it isn't in your nature. I'm convinced you will never find a new partner or a new job, you wont be able to pay your bills, you will be out on the street soon! If they are old I go with: If only you paid more attention in school. Then they run out the door in rage and go do all of the things they should have done years ago. Ill pay for stuff if money gets in their way but ill remind them it is pointless, I might as well set fire to the money. Sometimes they come back to pay me and to tell me what an asshole I am. Sometimes they come back with new problems for me to make fun of and to tell me what an asshole I am but then I at least know they need help since there is nothing convenient about my "help".

joshuahutt 2y ago
That's one way to do it!

thefaux 2y ago

> Loosening the constraints always makes a problem easier to solve. In a vacuum, I disagree quite strongly with this although I understand what the author is getting at. It is easy to get stuck with arbitrary and unnecessary constraints. Dropping those is great. On the other hand, I find that adding constraints is one of the absolute best things you can do to enhance creativity. True freedom can only be found in the presence of immutable constraints.

vjeantet 2y ago

Other people's problems become mine as soon as I get involved. I haven't had a problem since.

mjklin 2y ago

In Chinese: “当局者迷，旁观者清”. The players are confused, but the audience sees clearly.

joshuahutt 2y ago

Most problems are hard to "solve" because we entertain the delusion of solutions that don't exist — solutions which tie everything together with a nice bow and require no discomfort or negative emotions of any kind. Alex Hormozi says "the life you want is on the other side of a few hard conversations." I would channel that to say, "the solution you're looking for is on the other side of a few uncomfortable feelings." And usually, it's just the fear of the feelings, not the feelings themselves.