There is research that suggests highly agreeable people do not do as well e.g. negotiation tactics. What is probably true is that is good to 'appear' agreeable. The same research suggests you are correct about the other 3 traits.
With some product categories there are independent testing laboratories that do a fairly good job of determining quality. The automotive industry comes to mind.
It seems it's a revealed preference that most people really don't care that much about quality, or there would exist a host of companies like Consumer Reports to meet the demand. Complaining on social media about enshittification and evil corporations does not put skin in the game.
I myself constantly complain about the atrocious quality of most consumer software products, but I'm not sure how much I'd be willing to pay for a subscription to an independent testing report.
This is basically a full-time job for many senior engineers. It may as well be the job description. Thing is, most of these 'leaders' are not capable hiring competent engineers - as if they're capable of identifying competence. You do not want to end up at one of those organizations - but they are everywhere.
It's interesting to think Microsoft was around back then too, taking approximately 14 years to regain the loss of approximately 58% of their valuation.
In practice, it seems that politics generally takes precedence over problem solving. If you look into the psychology of it, neither politicians nor voters are really incentivized to solve big problems. This is especially true for big problems that will take more than an election cycle to solve.
It seems to me that it would be easy to support an argument that suggests more big problems could be solved if incentives were better aligned toward problem solving and if competent people, not professional politicians, were chosen to solve them.
> we're headed to a world with humans, livestock, and the few species...
It looks more and more like we're headed toward a world where we'll regenerate extinct species in labs; and grow our steaks in meat factories. If we no longer need cattle farms, it's possible we'll vote to preserve more lands.
You might even say that some neurodivergence is an adaptive strategy to quickly identify a potential threat.
Many sapiens like to believe they are good people, but they don't like to to think about what that really means. It seems we are talking about a filter that identifies such people very quickly.
The underlying truth here is worse than 'majority of educated are illiterate'.
Collectively, we've built these delusions into our culture. Perhaps there is less suffering this way.
I've seen projects that failed, or were killed, likely at least in part due to a culture that encouraged poor quality and tech debt. This is preventable, and for no additional up-front engineering effort or time investment.
> Is there something here about the role of (and lack of in this case) deliberate and intentional practice?
Something like 50% of college graduates in the US are considered functionally illiterate, despite an enormous number of opportunities for intentional practice; and despite presumably knowing, at least somewhat, of the benefit of attaining more advanced literacy.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10928755
When I think of poor drivers, I think their incentives to become a good driver are much higher. After all, their own lives and the lives of their loved ones are at risk.
> Some clever business people sees this trend and starts ordering junk...
Similar to lower quality made-for-outlet products produced by major brands. With the bins it seems to approach gambling on some level. Like raffle tickets, except when you lose you also have to dispose of some trash.
> I recently overheard a very smart user struggle to find how to mute a group
> you end up having to search the internet for a recipe as to what place to click to find which flydropping menu
I remember when software was supposed to remove pain points in my life, but now I'm not so sure. I often contemplate whether switching from Spotify to the CD player in my car will save me time, but I'm fairly certain it will save me aggravation.
Using the same logic you might say that people shouldn't be allowed to drive until they are 24. Statistically far more lives would have been saved yesterday if we'd only simply restrict more liberties based on age alone.
The theory is that there may be civilizations, or remnants (AIs), that have a vested interest in removing possible competition for resources, or in the case of the AIs, have been instructed to snuff out signs of life for the same reason.
I think the 70's gas rationing in the US was another example of where price controls absolutely stomped on consumers.
I'm not sure if there are any examples to the contrary, but there are surely people who benefit as, say, 'winning' a rent controlled apartment (but I wouldn't necessarily consider that those people were ever actually consumers in the market to begin with).