6 ms·

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 th

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.
- jahewson 2y ago
  Ironically, most of what you’ve said here is false because it’s government in the driving seat, not business. The infamous avocado toast incident was regarding a mortgage down payment, not rent. That’s due to the post-2008 asset bubble created by central banks. If you think fentanyl is not a critical component of the US’ homelessness crisis I don’t know what to say - go to Europe, the homeless there are not in a zombie-like state. There’s no compassion in ignoring people’s real problems and instead blaming them on our own political gripes. The festering of this problem is a product of bad government. As for retirement savings - are you kidding me? Pensions are the most protected assets on this planet - no matter how hard they fail they will be bailed out. That inflation you speak of is, again, due to all that post-2008 money from the government. Interest rates are set by the central bank. (No doubt some unfortunate people had to draw-down their retirement savings but they’re the exception that proves the rule). For the first time in history we will have an economy where money is flowing up from the young to the old, rather than downwards - it is the young people who are being exploited! The children who will pay for this don’t even get a vote. The real problem I see here is that people vote themselves all the money whenever they get the chance, with governments able to pile on more and more debt to be paid by future generations. Plus a government that is more interested in ideological posturing than solving problems - unless the solution is more government.
  - nemothekid 2y ago
    It's strange to absolve "business" and then blame the government for problems caused by business. First the post-2008 asset bubble; why does that exist? Lenders became extremely lax with credit requirements and created an incredibly toxic debt bubble. Sure you can argue the bailouts and subsequent low interest rate environment maybe have been the wrong medicine, but it's easy to say that in hindsight when at the time several people had been wiped out. >If you think fentanyl is not a critical component of the US’ homelessness crisis I don’t know what to say Why is fentanyl a problem in the US? I think it's insincere to pretend Purdue didn't have an outsized effect on this problem. They pushed opioids on doctors and flooded rural america with oxycontin. Once addicted Americans could no longer get oxycontin, they turned to heroin, and the increased demand of heroin created the conditions for fentanyl to flood the market. >Pensions are the most protected assets on this planet 401(k) were almost completely wiped out in 2008. Why focus on pensions when most people's retirement vehicles today are tax-deferred investment accounts? Businesses are free create deeply systemic issues and when those behind the issues are rich and the problems externalized onto the rest of the country, we are free to turn around and blame the "bad" government. It's like licking a door handle and blaming the human body in the "drivers seat" for cells dying when it raises the internal temperature to 102 degrees. How about instead of blaming the immune system for the 102 degree fever, we just don't lick door handles?
csbbbb 2y ago
"Just get more sleep."
- doubled112 2y ago
  I'm skipping avocado toast!
  - kevindamm 2y ago
    I've skipped skipping avocado toast, I just look for good deals on avocado and buy limes no matter what their price is.
    - jmbwell 2y ago
      No matter the price? No wonder we're drowning in limeflation!
      - kevindamm 2y ago
        I would sooner not buy the bread and just eat avocado+lime+salt! Limeflation be damned.
atoav 2y ago
As you say this can cut both ways. A good example would be the US where people constantly wonder whether $thing-that-29-out-of-30-developed-countries-do-since-decades could truly work. Yeah it works, we have seen it work, it is currently working. Now imagine you are a software developer entering the offices of a group of bueraucratic clercs that keep an intricate fax-and-scanner-based system of bullshit just barely afloat. Of course as a person that is specialized on thinking about the storage, transformation, santitizarion, transmission and deletion of data you are going to probably have a slightly more sophisticated take on information processing than them. They might know the law better or which combinations of checkboxes a person is allowed to tick on a form, but they suck at the meta task of organizing the efficient, fast and error free flow, storage, deletion, etc of information. And sure now one could argue about the merrits of paper (and I routinely argue it's merrits for democratic elections, where correctness and traceability are more important than speed), but that would be like arguing for making doctors use medival hand tools in the age of the scalpel. Now it is true that outsiders to a system won't see what reasons there are for a certain thing being shaped a certain way, but this can sometimes even happen to insiders if the information handover is bad enough.
- skybrian 2y ago
  The argument from what other countries have done can often be used simplistically. Yes, it’s important to learn from other countries. However, when you look into it, it sometimes turns out that the other 29 countries have all done things in somewhat different ways, that their solutions are somewhat path-dependent and culture-specific, that they have problems too, and your country has some unique problems of its own that are hard to overcome.
  - atoav 2y ago
    Yeah, sure. You cannot translate what works in Sweden one to one to the US and expect the same success. But here is what you could do: realize that the cultural differences between Turkey, France, Australia, Ireland, Japan, Finland, UK, Germany, Poland, Austria, Italy, Croatia, Belgium and so on are very likely not less than the difference between the US to all of these countries. And yet, some things US citizens claim can't ever work do so in very different cultures, under various right or left wing governments and in different climate zones. But keep on telling yourself the story that the US is so exceptional that reasonable conservative policies that work everywhere else can't work. This is likely just going to work out great in the long run.
Quimoniz 2y ago
> 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. That rings so true in my head. Being too open and transparent got me quite a lot of misery already. More than once, I got the work of months discarded, because some other (shiny or new) approach was deemed to provide a better solution -- only to the effect that it was later discovered that it was the worse approach. Apparently it is very easy to miss in the pursuit for the best solution, in unfortunate favor of one's preconceived notions.
methyl 2y ago
This is why it’s critical to provide new angles to the problem itself, not just a bunch of solutions many of which has obviously been considered already.
- flawn 2y ago
  You're so right. Thanks for this perspective
m463 2y ago
I dislike "other people's solutions", because frequently they are shallow. It's sort of like internet relationship advice. It tends to lack nuance, like "if you can't agree on a couch to buy, you should leave the relationship". > But maybe don’t lead with your advice. Unsolicited advice is a pretty big relationship friction generator.
ozim 2y ago
I tend to ask in rapid succession if obvious solutions were used. It gives me warmup time to think about more detail. Unfortunately people get annoyed when they ask for help and someone offers them 10 solutions they already have tried. But often one of the obvious was not tried or considered so the person gets quick solution. Otherwise warmup to think more in details and ask follow-up questions why some of “obvious” solutions did not work gives great intro to get up and fix something.
- tharkun__ 2y ago
  I think it very much depends on the how (as often). Very different to ask something along the lines of "Why didn't you just do X?" (the unwritten "duh!" being very implicitly present!) vs. "Interesting. Naively I would've have thought that doing X might solve this and seeing you didn't go with that solution I'd be interested to understand the constraints and reasons that make X unviable." With the first (type of) question you've disqualified yourself already, even though you didn't 'just give the solution' (which is even worse). After that kind of question we're already on adversarial grounds. The "5 whys" is a great technique but if literally just ask "Why" a lot, you'll get the boot more often than not ;)

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.

jahewson 2y ago
Ironically, most of what you’ve said here is false because it’s government in the driving seat, not business. The infamous avocado toast incident was regarding a mortgage down payment, not rent. That’s due to the post-2008 asset bubble created by central banks. If you think fentanyl is not a critical component of the US’ homelessness crisis I don’t know what to say - go to Europe, the homeless there are not in a zombie-like state. There’s no compassion in ignoring people’s real problems and instead blaming them on our own political gripes. The festering of this problem is a product of bad government. As for retirement savings - are you kidding me? Pensions are the most protected assets on this planet - no matter how hard they fail they will be bailed out. That inflation you speak of is, again, due to all that post-2008 money from the government. Interest rates are set by the central bank. (No doubt some unfortunate people had to draw-down their retirement savings but they’re the exception that proves the rule). For the first time in history we will have an economy where money is flowing up from the young to the old, rather than downwards - it is the young people who are being exploited! The children who will pay for this don’t even get a vote. The real problem I see here is that people vote themselves all the money whenever they get the chance, with governments able to pile on more and more debt to be paid by future generations. Plus a government that is more interested in ideological posturing than solving problems - unless the solution is more government.
- nemothekid 2y ago
  It's strange to absolve "business" and then blame the government for problems caused by business. First the post-2008 asset bubble; why does that exist? Lenders became extremely lax with credit requirements and created an incredibly toxic debt bubble. Sure you can argue the bailouts and subsequent low interest rate environment maybe have been the wrong medicine, but it's easy to say that in hindsight when at the time several people had been wiped out. >If you think fentanyl is not a critical component of the US’ homelessness crisis I don’t know what to say Why is fentanyl a problem in the US? I think it's insincere to pretend Purdue didn't have an outsized effect on this problem. They pushed opioids on doctors and flooded rural america with oxycontin. Once addicted Americans could no longer get oxycontin, they turned to heroin, and the increased demand of heroin created the conditions for fentanyl to flood the market. >Pensions are the most protected assets on this planet 401(k) were almost completely wiped out in 2008. Why focus on pensions when most people's retirement vehicles today are tax-deferred investment accounts? Businesses are free create deeply systemic issues and when those behind the issues are rich and the problems externalized onto the rest of the country, we are free to turn around and blame the "bad" government. It's like licking a door handle and blaming the human body in the "drivers seat" for cells dying when it raises the internal temperature to 102 degrees. How about instead of blaming the immune system for the 102 degree fever, we just don't lick door handles?

csbbbb 2y ago

"Just get more sleep."

doubled112 2y ago
I'm skipping avocado toast!
- kevindamm 2y ago
  I've skipped skipping avocado toast, I just look for good deals on avocado and buy limes no matter what their price is.
  - jmbwell 2y ago
    No matter the price? No wonder we're drowning in limeflation!
    - kevindamm 2y ago
      I would sooner not buy the bread and just eat avocado+lime+salt! Limeflation be damned.

atoav 2y ago

As you say this can cut both ways. A good example would be the US where people constantly wonder whether $thing-that-29-out-of-30-developed-countries-do-since-decades could truly work. Yeah it works, we have seen it work, it is currently working. Now imagine you are a software developer entering the offices of a group of bueraucratic clercs that keep an intricate fax-and-scanner-based system of bullshit just barely afloat. Of course as a person that is specialized on thinking about the storage, transformation, santitizarion, transmission and deletion of data you are going to probably have a slightly more sophisticated take on information processing than them. They might know the law better or which combinations of checkboxes a person is allowed to tick on a form, but they suck at the meta task of organizing the efficient, fast and error free flow, storage, deletion, etc of information. And sure now one could argue about the merrits of paper (and I routinely argue it's merrits for democratic elections, where correctness and traceability are more important than speed), but that would be like arguing for making doctors use medival hand tools in the age of the scalpel. Now it is true that outsiders to a system won't see what reasons there are for a certain thing being shaped a certain way, but this can sometimes even happen to insiders if the information handover is bad enough.

skybrian 2y ago
The argument from what other countries have done can often be used simplistically. Yes, it’s important to learn from other countries. However, when you look into it, it sometimes turns out that the other 29 countries have all done things in somewhat different ways, that their solutions are somewhat path-dependent and culture-specific, that they have problems too, and your country has some unique problems of its own that are hard to overcome.
- atoav 2y ago
  Yeah, sure. You cannot translate what works in Sweden one to one to the US and expect the same success. But here is what you could do: realize that the cultural differences between Turkey, France, Australia, Ireland, Japan, Finland, UK, Germany, Poland, Austria, Italy, Croatia, Belgium and so on are very likely not less than the difference between the US to all of these countries. And yet, some things US citizens claim can't ever work do so in very different cultures, under various right or left wing governments and in different climate zones. But keep on telling yourself the story that the US is so exceptional that reasonable conservative policies that work everywhere else can't work. This is likely just going to work out great in the long run.

Quimoniz 2y ago

> 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. That rings so true in my head. Being too open and transparent got me quite a lot of misery already. More than once, I got the work of months discarded, because some other (shiny or new) approach was deemed to provide a better solution -- only to the effect that it was later discovered that it was the worse approach. Apparently it is very easy to miss in the pursuit for the best solution, in unfortunate favor of one's preconceived notions.

methyl 2y ago

This is why it’s critical to provide new angles to the problem itself, not just a bunch of solutions many of which has obviously been considered already.

flawn 2y ago
You're so right. Thanks for this perspective

m463 2y ago

I dislike "other people's solutions", because frequently they are shallow. It's sort of like internet relationship advice. It tends to lack nuance, like "if you can't agree on a couch to buy, you should leave the relationship". > But maybe don’t lead with your advice. Unsolicited advice is a pretty big relationship friction generator.

ozim 2y ago

I tend to ask in rapid succession if obvious solutions were used. It gives me warmup time to think about more detail. Unfortunately people get annoyed when they ask for help and someone offers them 10 solutions they already have tried. But often one of the obvious was not tried or considered so the person gets quick solution. Otherwise warmup to think more in details and ask follow-up questions why some of “obvious” solutions did not work gives great intro to get up and fix something.

tharkun__ 2y ago
I think it very much depends on the how (as often). Very different to ask something along the lines of "Why didn't you just do X?" (the unwritten "duh!" being very implicitly present!) vs. "Interesting. Naively I would've have thought that doing X might solve this and seeing you didn't go with that solution I'd be interested to understand the constraints and reasons that make X unviable." With the first (type of) question you've disqualified yourself already, even though you didn't 'just give the solution' (which is even worse). After that kind of question we're already on adversarial grounds. The "5 whys" is a great technique but if literally just ask "Why" a lot, you'll get the boot more often than not ;)