My interpretation is that you just do what you do, regardless of whether the conditions are comfortable, and regardless of whether people will notice There's d

My interpretation is that you just do what you do, regardless of whether the conditions are comfortable, and regardless of whether people will notice There's definitely something Chinese to it (me being Chinese-American too) -- you have a duty to do your job, and you don't ask why. You just do it, period. (Now picking your job is something that's left out here, and that's a fair confusion/criticism. But once you pick it, do a good job.) --- I do think there is something to this -- I have noticed that many aspects of life have become more "optimized" and "incentivized" lately. Ted Gioia has some good thoughts on music and movies, and the drastic ways those have changed in ~20 years due to business practices. But it's happened with the food industry and the tech industry too. Everything is driven by incentives -- i.e. capitalism as "paper clip maximizer" -- you don't need AI for that (and yes this is ironic, given the subject) And it lowers quality, to the point that I'd argue it's poisoned our bodies (Ozempic being evidence of this) and brains (e.g. people think social media has caused mood disorders in millions of young people; I tend to think there's something to that). --- It's basically the opposite of asking "Is this going to be easy for me, and am I going to get a lot out of it?" I do think rejecting that philosophy opens doors that you couldn't have seen beforehand. That is, Jensen's work definitely compounded in unique ways over 30 years. It's literally impossible otherwise --- In some ways this is similar to the Steve Jobs meme of "why do you make the circuit board look nice if nobody is going to see it?" Although it's funny that this page sort of pours cold water on that - https://folklore.org/PC_Board_Esthetics.html https://folklore.org/PC_Board_Esthetics.html Steve responded strongly. "I'm gonna see it! I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it's inside the box. A great carpenter isn't going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody's going to see it."