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I get the idea, and it's a pretty good one. But the headline is really bad. It's not a commodity and it's not valuable. It is what creates value; it's what mak

I get the idea, and it's a pretty good one. But the headline is really bad. It's not a commodity and it's not valuable. It is what creates value; it's what makes value meaningful. Don't get hung up on the headline. It's a thesis equivalent to the notion that art comes from struggle against some kind of limitation. That limitation is usually arbitrary (the form of poetry, the rules of a game, the difficulty of oil paint and brush), but the result is meaningful despite and because of it.

klysm 1y ago
I’ve had this in my head as well “constraints yield art”. But it’s also required to engineering
- DiscourseFan 1y ago
  Τέχνη, as the Greeks called it.
  - rambambram 1y ago
    Texel, as the Dutch call it.
    - mikrl 1y ago
      I had a beer by that name last time I was in NL. No friction in consuming it 9.5/10
  - rendaw 1y ago
    That seems to just mean "art" AFAICT? I couldn't find anything about constraints
    - HenryBemis 1y ago
      I think that it doesn't mean "art" but also has "crafts", and the labour that comes with it, in it. You wouldn't call a 'tech-nician' an 'artist', but "tech" is the part of that "ΤΕΧΝΗ". ("ΤΕΧ" being translated/converted to "TECH"). I would put thins in a sequence and say (1) Imagination, (2) Implementation. I bring over a TECHnician to assess the damage in the plumbing-stuff-thingies, and he/she will use (1) imagination to come up with the solution, and (2) pull out his/her tools and fix the darn thing. Now.. the 50yo guy with low cut jeans flashing a hairy butt-crack from under the kitchen sink, is not an 'artist' (in its typical/expected format - painter, sculptor, etc.) but he will use imagination (and/or experience) to fix the thing. Just as a painter would use the imagination (and/or experience in the types of paper/canvas/oil paint/water paint/etc.) to make one-more-painting (I am thinking for the similarities of Van Gogh's starry night, and similar paintings)
chipsrafferty 1y ago
[dead]
ffsm8 1y ago
Heh, from the headline I expected this to be another blog post about how to find your market niche and what you can monetize, ultimately. Instead I got a pretty interesting article about human nature and the economy as a whole.
fundaThree 1y ago
> It's not a commodity and it's not valuable. Commodities only have the commodity-value (i.e. price); actual value (i.e. something's worth/weight/utility/what something means to you) is unrelated to commodification. Most valuable things in your life likely have no meaningful commodity value. Very much including the concept of friction. If only commodities are "valuable", the word has lost all value.
- jillesvangurp 1y ago
  There is such a thing as negative value, if you do something that is a commodity poorly, then you are actively less valuable relative to competitors that do a good job of the same thing. Most software development is a lot of low value commodity stuff that you just have to do properly just in order to do whatever it is that makes whatever it is you do valuable/unique/desirable. You can' charge anyone extra for doing this commodity stuff right. But if you do it wrong, your product becomes less valuable. A good example of something that is both a commodity and a common source of friction is all the signup and security friction that a lot of software providers have to do. If you do it poorly, it creates a lot of friction, hassle, and frustration. And support overhead. It's literally costing you money and customers. Doing it right isn't necessarily directly appreciated but it results in less friction, frustration, and overhead. That's why good UX is so important. It's a commodity. But there's plenty of opportunity for turning that into friction by doing a poor job of it.
  - eru 1y ago
    > Most software development is a lot of low value commodity stuff that you just have to do properly just in order to do whatever it is that makes whatever it is you do valuable/unique/desirable. You can' charge anyone extra for doing this commodity stuff right. But if you do it wrong, your product becomes less valuable. To give a non-software example: think of wearing a clean shirt in a job interview. Nobody will hire you for the clean shirt, but plenty of people will reject you for stains.
  - fundaThree 1y ago
    > There is such a thing as negative value, if you do something that is a commodity poorly, then you are actively less valuable relative to competitors that do a good job of the same thing. I think negative value would look something like bombing someone. Negative relative-[commodity-]value does not imply negative value. Also, software is not a commodity at all. There's no cost to reproducing it. > You can' charge anyone extra for doing this commodity stuff right. I'm not sure what you mean by "commodity". I think you mean "commonplace" or something like that.
eviks 1y ago
The art in poetry is poetry, which includes all forms of it, so the poet isn't limited to any specific form, and many did write in different forms. Similarly unclear what was arbitrary about oil paints, what was a similarly colorful alternative without such limits?
- coldtea 1y ago
  >The art in poetry is poetry, which includes all forms of it Only in abstract - before you get to do it. When you do start to write a specific poem this doesn't hold anymore, and a big part of the art is fitting the form you chose.
  - eviks 1y ago
    Not just in abstract - mixed poetry exists in reality, so it holds at the level of an individual poem as well.
  - HenryBemis 1y ago
    > >The art in poetry is poetry, which includes all forms of it Imho the "art in poetry" begins when I had that dinner with that fascinating woman, and I had the "porch test" and in that test it was raining, and I came up with a haiku. But not (only) on the haiku itself.
- Affric 1y ago
  I mean poetry is an arrangement of symbols, generally symbols that are related in their representation: assonance, dissonance, rhyme, meter, stress, meaning… The poet is limited to symbols. And every poet comes up against these limitations.
  - eviks 1y ago
    But the symbols aren't an arbitrary limitation - for example, using non-language symbols would mean that he will simply not be understood, so the understanding is drive by the need to communicate
riehwvfbk 1y ago
What is the idea of the article? It's all over the place. Zuck is bad, Trump is bad, a degree in basket weaving can be obtained by a chatbot, it's who you know, the Fed held rates, Uber drivers are somehow related to friction, we need change but we also need things to go back to how they were.

klysm 1y ago

I’ve had this in my head as well “constraints yield art”. But it’s also required to engineering

DiscourseFan 1y ago
Τέχνη, as the Greeks called it.
- rambambram 1y ago
  Texel, as the Dutch call it.
  - mikrl 1y ago
    I had a beer by that name last time I was in NL. No friction in consuming it 9.5/10
- rendaw 1y ago
  That seems to just mean "art" AFAICT? I couldn't find anything about constraints
  - HenryBemis 1y ago
    I think that it doesn't mean "art" but also has "crafts", and the labour that comes with it, in it. You wouldn't call a 'tech-nician' an 'artist', but "tech" is the part of that "ΤΕΧΝΗ". ("ΤΕΧ" being translated/converted to "TECH"). I would put thins in a sequence and say (1) Imagination, (2) Implementation. I bring over a TECHnician to assess the damage in the plumbing-stuff-thingies, and he/she will use (1) imagination to come up with the solution, and (2) pull out his/her tools and fix the darn thing. Now.. the 50yo guy with low cut jeans flashing a hairy butt-crack from under the kitchen sink, is not an 'artist' (in its typical/expected format - painter, sculptor, etc.) but he will use imagination (and/or experience) to fix the thing. Just as a painter would use the imagination (and/or experience in the types of paper/canvas/oil paint/water paint/etc.) to make one-more-painting (I am thinking for the similarities of Van Gogh's starry night, and similar paintings)

chipsrafferty 1y ago

[dead]

ffsm8 1y ago

Heh, from the headline I expected this to be another blog post about how to find your market niche and what you can monetize, ultimately. Instead I got a pretty interesting article about human nature and the economy as a whole.

fundaThree 1y ago

> It's not a commodity and it's not valuable. Commodities only have the commodity-value (i.e. price); actual value (i.e. something's worth/weight/utility/what something means to you) is unrelated to commodification. Most valuable things in your life likely have no meaningful commodity value. Very much including the concept of friction. If only commodities are "valuable", the word has lost all value.

jillesvangurp 1y ago
There is such a thing as negative value, if you do something that is a commodity poorly, then you are actively less valuable relative to competitors that do a good job of the same thing. Most software development is a lot of low value commodity stuff that you just have to do properly just in order to do whatever it is that makes whatever it is you do valuable/unique/desirable. You can' charge anyone extra for doing this commodity stuff right. But if you do it wrong, your product becomes less valuable. A good example of something that is both a commodity and a common source of friction is all the signup and security friction that a lot of software providers have to do. If you do it poorly, it creates a lot of friction, hassle, and frustration. And support overhead. It's literally costing you money and customers. Doing it right isn't necessarily directly appreciated but it results in less friction, frustration, and overhead. That's why good UX is so important. It's a commodity. But there's plenty of opportunity for turning that into friction by doing a poor job of it.
- eru 1y ago
  > Most software development is a lot of low value commodity stuff that you just have to do properly just in order to do whatever it is that makes whatever it is you do valuable/unique/desirable. You can' charge anyone extra for doing this commodity stuff right. But if you do it wrong, your product becomes less valuable. To give a non-software example: think of wearing a clean shirt in a job interview. Nobody will hire you for the clean shirt, but plenty of people will reject you for stains.
- fundaThree 1y ago
  > There is such a thing as negative value, if you do something that is a commodity poorly, then you are actively less valuable relative to competitors that do a good job of the same thing. I think negative value would look something like bombing someone. Negative relative-[commodity-]value does not imply negative value. Also, software is not a commodity at all. There's no cost to reproducing it. > You can' charge anyone extra for doing this commodity stuff right. I'm not sure what you mean by "commodity". I think you mean "commonplace" or something like that.

eviks 1y ago

The art in poetry is poetry, which includes all forms of it, so the poet isn't limited to any specific form, and many did write in different forms. Similarly unclear what was arbitrary about oil paints, what was a similarly colorful alternative without such limits?

coldtea 1y ago
>The art in poetry is poetry, which includes all forms of it Only in abstract - before you get to do it. When you do start to write a specific poem this doesn't hold anymore, and a big part of the art is fitting the form you chose.
- eviks 1y ago
  Not just in abstract - mixed poetry exists in reality, so it holds at the level of an individual poem as well.
- HenryBemis 1y ago
  > >The art in poetry is poetry, which includes all forms of it Imho the "art in poetry" begins when I had that dinner with that fascinating woman, and I had the "porch test" and in that test it was raining, and I came up with a haiku. But not (only) on the haiku itself.
Affric 1y ago
I mean poetry is an arrangement of symbols, generally symbols that are related in their representation: assonance, dissonance, rhyme, meter, stress, meaning… The poet is limited to symbols. And every poet comes up against these limitations.
- eviks 1y ago
  But the symbols aren't an arbitrary limitation - for example, using non-language symbols would mean that he will simply not be understood, so the understanding is drive by the need to communicate

riehwvfbk 1y ago

What is the idea of the article? It's all over the place. Zuck is bad, Trump is bad, a degree in basket weaving can be obtained by a chatbot, it's who you know, the Fed held rates, Uber drivers are somehow related to friction, we need change but we also need things to go back to how they were.