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It's underrated how great Steve Jobs's taste was, and how sincere the "liberal arts + technology" line is
by trevmckendrick 2y ago
It's underrated how great Steve Jobs's taste was, and how sincere the "liberal arts + technology" line is
- karaterobot 2y agoI don't disagree that it's important, but I don't think it's underrated. I think it's very highly rated.
- cynicalkane 2y agoThere's a puzzle in philosophy, where a philosopher points to a bear and says, "That's a bear". Except it's only a life-size cardboard cutout of a bear. But behind the cutout is a real bear. Is the philosopher speaking the truth when he points and says there's a bear there? Steve Jobs is appropriately highly praised, but by many people who don't know why he should be praised -- to them he's like a movie sort of figure, Elon Musk in his post-Twitter phase, a larger-than-life jerk who says smart words and allegedly does things. But Jobs actually is that sort of genius that a lot of wannabes pretend to be. So is he highly praised? Is the philosopher telling the truth when he points to the fake bear, having confused it for a real one but not knowing there's a real one behind it?
- lxgr 2y agoDoes the philosopher know that there’s a bear behind it? If not, it probably depends on your take on the Gettier problem :)
- defrost 2y agoThe modern take on that dilemma; What if it's a man hiding behind a bear cutout to appear less threatening?
- dumbo-octopus 2y agoVarious non falsified interpretations of quantum theory say there both is and isn’t a bear there until it is observed. So I say he’s right. And watch out, there’s a bear behind you.
- lxgr 2y agoI think most philosophers would be fine with treating "there is no bear there" and "the amplitude of the probability density function of a bear is negligibly low there" as the same statement for this discussion :) An entire bear spontaneously tunneling across a large distance or spontaneously forming out of vacuum fluctuations is really, really quite unlikely.
- dumbo-octopus 2y agoDon’t confuse the event with the distribution. An event always either has or hasn’t occurred, no further statement can be made. It’s only in bulk that one can talk about distributions. But in this contrived anecdote, there is only one observation, one event.
- lxgr 2y agoSome distributions are definitely relatively stable over time, so you can absolutely make predictive statements about the future given past observations. That's true for both biological bear population dynamics and movement patterns and for quantum tunneling bears :)
- dumbo-octopus 2y ago> you can absolutely make predictive statements about the future given past observations Only if you accept that as true axiomatically.
- hoseja 2y agoAnd then he tried curing cancer with fruit juice.
- lll-o-lll 2y agoI’m not sure “underrated” is exactly the best term here. He’s pretty much lauded as the greatest “visionary for design and innovation in the technology industry”, ever. I agree that every time one of these anecdotes comes up, it’s a shock to remember. Of all the narcissists we have running the world, he’s the one I’ll most fondly remember.
- zenlikethat 2y agoThat’s a great way to put it, ha ha. Toxic human, but hard to deny the results.
- 1-more 2y agoSuccess like he had is a filter. To be there you have to go through a lot of “sure you’ve done well so far, but you’ll never make it to the next level” conversations in your life. By the time you’re Steve Jobs, you’ve been right in the face of doubt thousands of times. Type of thing that makes someone think they can cure easily treatable pancreatic cancer with crystals or whatever.
- icehawk 2y agoMaybe not "underrated" but "Jobs only did marketing, Woz did all the technical work" is a very persistent comment I see on the internet when he's brought up.
- Turing_Machine 2y agoWoz is a technical genius, no doubt about it. But Jobs is who made the boxes something that non-nerds wanted to have in their homes. There were dozens of computer companies at the time, some (not many, but some) of which had Woz-level engineers (e.g. Jay Miner and team at Atari). But only Apple survived. Someone once said there would never have been an Apple if there had been only one Steve, and I agree. Was he a jerk sometimes? Yeah, definitely. But he's not the first genius who's been a jerk. At the extreme, Isaac Newton was a horrible person.
- jonstewart 2y agoWho’s perhaps underrated is Bill Atkinson. He famously left it all behind, but QuickDraw, MacPaint, and HyperCard are a helluva hat trick.
- doubloon 2y agohis girl friend and child's mother Chrisann Brennan was an artist. its all in her book.