Unfortunately the internet has a large selection bias. Anger, outrage, etc. are more viral than quiet contentment. Misery loves company and all that.
It’s hard to change opinions online (especially when people go online to vent or already in a bad mood), but I’m sure you’re inspiring those with your real life interactions. Keep on keeping on.
People think the virus has a strategy, like it’s playing a sport and deciding an outcome.
Tell the Black Plague its strategy of killing 30% of is suboptimal. Or to the species driven to extinction by a disease. “Inanimate object, that was suboptimal to your existence!”
Sure, the system generally may loosely correlated with the long-term preference of the populace depending on the government, such that people don't revolt. But the system is designed to keep itself in power or maximize its own goals. It doesn't decide any more than water decides to take the path of least resistance downhill.
Did the populace decide they like bread and milk in the back corner of the grocery store, or does the capital-maximizing system decide its best if you walk through the aisles to get there? Are impulse purchases of gum at the checkout aisle because people really wanted gum when they walked into the store? On and on it goes.
What is clean air worth? What do you pay for it? In the US, you pay taxes which are distributed under the purview of a democratic republic, whose officials may decide to create an EPA, which may enforce rules, etc. Tautologically, clean air is now worth something in the US, because the system pays for it. But it wasn't the case 100 years ago. Or in another timeline where Nixon didn't create the agency. It's worth something because the conditions of the system aligned its interest with that outcome, not because of some direct preference of the populace. In many countries, clean air isn't "worth much" because you can't pay for it, even though the people want it badly.
Yep. Most of the advice here is about how to be a better employee and navigate a system that doesn’t have your best interests at heart.
Instead, work to free yourself from needing that system at all. Then you don’t need a life of playing politics and keeping CYA emails from your manager.
The long-form format is a huge part. The regular media is not incentivized to air a 3-hour interview with a thoughtful interviewer. No, you'll get a 2-minute clip on CNN designed to extract click-bait soundbites from the guest.
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
Thank you so much for sharing this. A lot of people will knee-jerk react with "push, push, you're worthless, push" and I have deep appreciation for this wiser attitude.
Check the incentives. For corporate managers, your salary is generally proportional to the number of people you manage. Who cares if your 1000-person org doesn't accomplish anything, you're a big shot now.
On a sports team, coaches are rewarded for championships. There is no room for waste, and underperforming people get cut.
Not always. The best code is no code. Sometimes you can clarify requirements (and realize the request is redundant with existing capabilities), adapt workflows, combine existing features, etc.
If someone has a request, the first instinct shouldn't be to write more code, it's to clarify what they are trying to accomplish.
"How do I get the last 3 letters of a file? I need a feature for that."
"Are you trying to get the file extension? We have that in the metadata."