5 ms·

This is the most important comment I've read in a while. It has become really easy to feel trapped in software as a trade even though I love working on software

This is the most important comment I've read in a while. It has become really easy to feel trapped in software as a trade even though I love working on software as much or more than ever in the details of the work. I'm fortunate that my current gig doesn't involve doing anything that I find directly objectionable in a Hippocratic Oath sense (though some might, its trading stuff which I long ago decided is about a 1.01 out of Meta on a scale of 1 to OpenAI). The thing is that the software business has discovered its Three Big Lies: - Everything is Exponential (Sigmoids are For The Small Thinkers) - Breaking The Law is Progress if You Do It With a Computer - Computer People Know What's Best Other industries that have become tentacled over the years have had similar Big Lies (High Finance has Price Movements are Gaussian Distributed for example, and Bailouts are The Business Cycle). I'm at the age both in life and career terms where its like, this could be a cyclic thing and these assholes are going to get thrown out soon, or it could be I came of age in an aberrant exceptionally good time, this is how it always ends up. What I do know is that that software is an effective tool for mitigating the damage of malware, excellent computers are cheap now, and so it might be possible to fund an effective resistance doing rewarding work for the greater good with frugality and some creativity about paying the bills, I'm still figuring out the details.

catlover76 1y ago
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cjs_ac 1y ago
Insightful comment. I think there's a dividing line in society between those who understand systems and those who don't. The systems people look at the non-systems people as stupid; the non-systems people look at the systems people as evil.
- benreesman 1y ago
  I think that my understanding of how systems work has had very differing degrees of effectively translating into other regimes. Math and the hard sciences? Very effective, doing stuff in biotech or something has always been a fruitful two way street. But for human systems? Eh... Yeah I struggle with agreeing there. I think much harm has come from trying to think about human systems like computer systems both in the small of my own immediate life and in larger regimes. No matter how you feel about Elon Musk and DOGE? That didn't look like it went great for either side of that equation to mention one recent high-profile exanple. That looked pretty lose/lose.
  - cjs_ac 1y ago
    I agree: systems thinkers' inability to fully represent the complexity of human systems is a large part of why non systems thinkers think systems thinkers are evil.
- pydry 1y ago
  Having systems thinking is a bit like being Cassandra: doomed to know the future yet doomed never to be believed. What's odd is that you'd think tribal thinkers would respond to a track record of being proven correct but they emphatically do not. Moreover they're invariably convinced that you too think tribally. As an example, I can think of one politician (edit: not trump) who is definitely a systems thinker (who is not nice, but is successful and generally outplays his opponents because of it) and ~80% of Hacker News is convinced beyond the shadow of any doubt that he's an evil idiot loser who invariably makes stupid mistakes.
  - rgreek42 1y ago
    Successfully leverages barbarism isn't a virtue of systems thinkers. You're proving GP's point.
    - pydry 1y ago
      I think you might be proving mine actually. "Vices and virtues" are pretty much irrelevant to systems thinking but they are the bread and butter of tribalism.
      - rgreek42 1y ago
        This is exactly that classic dril post https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/994/418/48b.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/994/418/48b...
        pydry 1y ago
        i was not making a normative statement at all. bizarre. tribal thinking doesnt seem to let you comprehend this.
  - nsingh2 1y ago
    > As an example, I can think of one politician who is definitely a systems thinker (who is not nice, but is successful and generally outplays his opponents because of it) and ~80% of Hacker News is convinced beyond the shadow of any doubt that he's an evil idiot loser who always makes stupid mistakes. Not sure whether you’re talking about the Orange Man, but calling him a systems thinker is a hard sell given the damage his tariffs, defunding, and other nonsense are causing.
- TeMPOraL 1y ago
  Some of those insights are overused cliches at this point. My pet peeve is the "S-curve argument": > Everything is Exponential (Sigmoids are For The Small Thinkers) Yes, that's technically true because universe is finite, yadda yadda, but in practice where you are on the curve and your time horizon matters. Plenty of things are still effectively exponential[0], and I feel some people bring up sigmoids specifically because they you squint hard enough, it seems nicely and comfortably linear. But it isn't. -- [0] - Random example from a recent HN discussion: total amount of all written text to date. It's obviously going to be a sigmoid (or worse, if disaster strikes), but right now, we're still before the inflection point, so I wouldn't short the stock of storage providers just yet. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44442770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44442770
  - benreesman 1y ago
    It is absolutely going to be a sigmoid, because population in high-literacy areas is crashing generally to name but one antecedent, and so your example is not even a particularly good one. But really what you're doing is arguing for a nasty status quo with a bunch of deflective name-calling because this is hard to argue against in good faith: calling a potent, contrarian-to-the-gravy-train argument a "cliche", and in so doing implying that it is "asked and answered", that it has been raised, addressed, and disposed of, is the worst kind of argument on 2025 HN. To the extent that it's been raised before and is being raised again, it's precisely because no one has addressed in a satisfying way. And we're going to keep raising it until someone does. Saying "we're in the the pre-inflection part of a sigmoid" is not the same as manipulating everything from stock markets to wars premised on log-scale-and-ruler math. "They are not identical. The aspects you are willing to ignore are more important than the aspects you are willing to accept. Robbery is not just another way of making a living, rape is not just another way of satisfying basic human needs, torture is not just another way of interrogation." - Erik Naggum
    - TeMPOraL 1y ago
      I guess it depends on perspective, or maybe circles you frequent. I for one am tired of sigmoids, I truly perceive them to be a tired cliche. Hell, most people haven't even grasped exponential growth to this day, and here we are, pointing at the ending and implying they can skip the beginning. Litmus test: when you hear soundbites like "in the last N years alone, the world used more energy/emitted more CO2 / did more whatever than it did in all recorded history", are you shocked? Surprised? If so, you failed to understand what exponential growth means. I mean, I assume you do understand this, but most people don't. > implying that it is "asked and answered", that it has been raised, addressed, and disposed of, is the worst kind of argument on 2025 HN If it were, I wouldn't have written my comment in the first place. I see the HN commentariat, on average, to be still enamored with sigmoids, treating the s-curve nature of growth in real world as some profound insight that invalidates the entire concept of exponential growth. > Saying "we're in the the pre-inflection part of a sigmoid" is not the same as manipulating everything from stock markets to wars premised on log-scale-and-ruler math. For one, it worked (and still does), so there's that. But secondly, this is not just about capitalism and wars. It's everywhere. COVID-19 was actually a nice demonstration. Yes, infections ultimately followed a sigmoid, as they were expected to, but the first part of the sigmoid is exponential, it was also the part that mattered at the beginning, and which most people across all social and economical strata failed to grasp. Also thanks for the Naggum quote. I do consider myself a moral being and I am proud to be firmly in the S-expression camp.
somenameforme 1y ago
Everything that exists to make money, gradually takes it to an extreme as it becomes more difficult to make money on the up and up. Everything that doesn't exist to make money ends up existing to make money once it reaches a sufficient size - this includes nonprofits and charities. This is one of the many reasons I tend to be vehemently in favor of decentralization. A lot of these problems are just because organizations become too large. It also feels kind of dystopic, or sterile at least, how you can be a thousand miles away and have a main street that looks largely indistinguishable from the one you just came from.
- benreesman 1y ago
  I don't really disagree with anything you've said, other than a vague sort of discomfort around practicality. I dislike market failures very much, I war-crime dislike engineered market failures (the two co-occur with alarming frequency). But markets are effectively part of the natural world: if you engineer the most oppressive, regimented, panopticon nightmare prison available to human deviousness you will succeed in creating a black market, not in eliminating markets. So any solution has to be about preventing market failures, not eliminating markets. If North Korea can't effectively inhibit markets from forming, it's a pretty convincing demonstration that no acceptable amount of anti-market intervention is going to be okay.
  - spacemadness 1y ago
    I’m not following. I don’t think they said anything about eliminating markets, rather halting monopolies.
    - benreesman 1y ago
      Like I said, I'm broadly sympathetic to your view. I was just pointing out that you led with "things that exist to make money..." and while the point you raise is true (or often true), its kind of an unsolved problem. On halting monopolies I would vote and canvas for you if you ran on it. I agree about the appeal of decentralization, I just don't know how to make it happen in a world where centralized control is enforced by MQ-9 Reaper drones with sole executive discretion on "kill or capture" of anyone and decentralization is considered a national security priority. An example would be the people who argue that inherently sovereign and anonymous money would liberate people. What it would do is get you shot for fucking with the Mint.

catlover76 1y ago

[dead]

cjs_ac 1y ago

Insightful comment. I think there's a dividing line in society between those who understand systems and those who don't. The systems people look at the non-systems people as stupid; the non-systems people look at the systems people as evil.

benreesman 1y ago
I think that my understanding of how systems work has had very differing degrees of effectively translating into other regimes. Math and the hard sciences? Very effective, doing stuff in biotech or something has always been a fruitful two way street. But for human systems? Eh... Yeah I struggle with agreeing there. I think much harm has come from trying to think about human systems like computer systems both in the small of my own immediate life and in larger regimes. No matter how you feel about Elon Musk and DOGE? That didn't look like it went great for either side of that equation to mention one recent high-profile exanple. That looked pretty lose/lose.
- cjs_ac 1y ago
  I agree: systems thinkers' inability to fully represent the complexity of human systems is a large part of why non systems thinkers think systems thinkers are evil.
pydry 1y ago
Having systems thinking is a bit like being Cassandra: doomed to know the future yet doomed never to be believed. What's odd is that you'd think tribal thinkers would respond to a track record of being proven correct but they emphatically do not. Moreover they're invariably convinced that you too think tribally. As an example, I can think of one politician (edit: not trump) who is definitely a systems thinker (who is not nice, but is successful and generally outplays his opponents because of it) and ~80% of Hacker News is convinced beyond the shadow of any doubt that he's an evil idiot loser who invariably makes stupid mistakes.
- rgreek42 1y ago
  Successfully leverages barbarism isn't a virtue of systems thinkers. You're proving GP's point.
  - pydry 1y ago
    I think you might be proving mine actually. "Vices and virtues" are pretty much irrelevant to systems thinking but they are the bread and butter of tribalism.
    - rgreek42 1y ago
      This is exactly that classic dril post https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/994/418/48b.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/994/418/48b...
      - pydry 1y ago
        i was not making a normative statement at all. bizarre. tribal thinking doesnt seem to let you comprehend this.
- nsingh2 1y ago
  > As an example, I can think of one politician who is definitely a systems thinker (who is not nice, but is successful and generally outplays his opponents because of it) and ~80% of Hacker News is convinced beyond the shadow of any doubt that he's an evil idiot loser who always makes stupid mistakes. Not sure whether you’re talking about the Orange Man, but calling him a systems thinker is a hard sell given the damage his tariffs, defunding, and other nonsense are causing.
TeMPOraL 1y ago
Some of those insights are overused cliches at this point. My pet peeve is the "S-curve argument": > Everything is Exponential (Sigmoids are For The Small Thinkers) Yes, that's technically true because universe is finite, yadda yadda, but in practice where you are on the curve and your time horizon matters. Plenty of things are still effectively exponential[0], and I feel some people bring up sigmoids specifically because they you squint hard enough, it seems nicely and comfortably linear. But it isn't. -- [0] - Random example from a recent HN discussion: total amount of all written text to date. It's obviously going to be a sigmoid (or worse, if disaster strikes), but right now, we're still before the inflection point, so I wouldn't short the stock of storage providers just yet. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44442770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44442770
- benreesman 1y ago
  It is absolutely going to be a sigmoid, because population in high-literacy areas is crashing generally to name but one antecedent, and so your example is not even a particularly good one. But really what you're doing is arguing for a nasty status quo with a bunch of deflective name-calling because this is hard to argue against in good faith: calling a potent, contrarian-to-the-gravy-train argument a "cliche", and in so doing implying that it is "asked and answered", that it has been raised, addressed, and disposed of, is the worst kind of argument on 2025 HN. To the extent that it's been raised before and is being raised again, it's precisely because no one has addressed in a satisfying way. And we're going to keep raising it until someone does. Saying "we're in the the pre-inflection part of a sigmoid" is not the same as manipulating everything from stock markets to wars premised on log-scale-and-ruler math. "They are not identical. The aspects you are willing to ignore are more important than the aspects you are willing to accept. Robbery is not just another way of making a living, rape is not just another way of satisfying basic human needs, torture is not just another way of interrogation." - Erik Naggum
  - TeMPOraL 1y ago
    I guess it depends on perspective, or maybe circles you frequent. I for one am tired of sigmoids, I truly perceive them to be a tired cliche. Hell, most people haven't even grasped exponential growth to this day, and here we are, pointing at the ending and implying they can skip the beginning. Litmus test: when you hear soundbites like "in the last N years alone, the world used more energy/emitted more CO2 / did more whatever than it did in all recorded history", are you shocked? Surprised? If so, you failed to understand what exponential growth means. I mean, I assume you do understand this, but most people don't. > implying that it is "asked and answered", that it has been raised, addressed, and disposed of, is the worst kind of argument on 2025 HN If it were, I wouldn't have written my comment in the first place. I see the HN commentariat, on average, to be still enamored with sigmoids, treating the s-curve nature of growth in real world as some profound insight that invalidates the entire concept of exponential growth. > Saying "we're in the the pre-inflection part of a sigmoid" is not the same as manipulating everything from stock markets to wars premised on log-scale-and-ruler math. For one, it worked (and still does), so there's that. But secondly, this is not just about capitalism and wars. It's everywhere. COVID-19 was actually a nice demonstration. Yes, infections ultimately followed a sigmoid, as they were expected to, but the first part of the sigmoid is exponential, it was also the part that mattered at the beginning, and which most people across all social and economical strata failed to grasp. Also thanks for the Naggum quote. I do consider myself a moral being and I am proud to be firmly in the S-expression camp.

somenameforme 1y ago

Everything that exists to make money, gradually takes it to an extreme as it becomes more difficult to make money on the up and up. Everything that doesn't exist to make money ends up existing to make money once it reaches a sufficient size - this includes nonprofits and charities. This is one of the many reasons I tend to be vehemently in favor of decentralization. A lot of these problems are just because organizations become too large. It also feels kind of dystopic, or sterile at least, how you can be a thousand miles away and have a main street that looks largely indistinguishable from the one you just came from.

benreesman 1y ago
I don't really disagree with anything you've said, other than a vague sort of discomfort around practicality. I dislike market failures very much, I war-crime dislike engineered market failures (the two co-occur with alarming frequency). But markets are effectively part of the natural world: if you engineer the most oppressive, regimented, panopticon nightmare prison available to human deviousness you will succeed in creating a black market, not in eliminating markets. So any solution has to be about preventing market failures, not eliminating markets. If North Korea can't effectively inhibit markets from forming, it's a pretty convincing demonstration that no acceptable amount of anti-market intervention is going to be okay.
- spacemadness 1y ago
  I’m not following. I don’t think they said anything about eliminating markets, rather halting monopolies.
  - benreesman 1y ago
    Like I said, I'm broadly sympathetic to your view. I was just pointing out that you led with "things that exist to make money..." and while the point you raise is true (or often true), its kind of an unsolved problem. On halting monopolies I would vote and canvas for you if you ran on it. I agree about the appeal of decentralization, I just don't know how to make it happen in a world where centralized control is enforced by MQ-9 Reaper drones with sole executive discretion on "kill or capture" of anyone and decentralization is considered a national security priority. An example would be the people who argue that inherently sovereign and anonymous money would liberate people. What it would do is get you shot for fucking with the Mint.