monkeyodeath

"As the analytics overtook decision making, the quality of everything declined sharply."

Pretty much. I'm sure Hollywood execs have always wanted to make as much money as they could, but they also (formerly) didn't want to be known as guys who only made terrible movies. Prestige, vanity, relationships, reputation...unanalyzable human factors are really important for the production of human-centric products like art and entertainment.

The business philosophy of "maximize shareholder value above all else" is going to eviscerate our society until there's nothing of quality left.

Hollywood has always been a dirty and money-focused business, but it seems like the latest crop of execs are hellbent on entirely divorcing the creative enterprise from its human elements. Now studios are just exotic financial instruments that seek to turn "content" into stock prices.

Sapporo's "innovations" for the Anchor brand were to pick a fight with labor, tinker with the recipe of their most historic beer, and green-light of the most infamously eye-searing rebrands in recent memory.

It's a good idea to target your product to the sensibilities of your consumer.

American Millenials and Gen Z are having less sex than the generations before them.

They've also grown up with frequent mass school shootings and the "tactical", "everyday carry", amateur-soldier, military worship culture that really got rolling after 9/11.

No wonder sex scenes squick them out -- it's a world that's distant, unfamiliar, and uncomfortable for them.

Violence, though? Pile it on. Now you're speaking their language.

True. I guess it's pretty much just product (or should I say "content") that we're discussing, despite all the lip service given to the idea that it's this really creative endeavor.

What, pray tell, constitutes "necessary" in art?

People act like the only point of narrative work is to tell a story and advance a plot, forgetting that some of the greatest novels, plays, and movies of all time have creaky plots and barely-there stories, and plenty of "unnecessary" stuff.

Religion, at least the dominant Evangelical Christian kind, has gotten increasingly politicized, to the point where religious == conservative (note I'm using JS-style "truthy" here, I know that this isn't a blanket case).

So it's not surprising that young Americans, who are generally liberal, don't consider themselves religious.

And as for having kids? Not only is it more expensive and stressful than ever before, but we're slowly moving away from the mindset that a woman's primary purpose is to raise children.

That, and I think a lot of folks have started to reflect on how having kids didn't seem to make their unhappy parents any more fulfilled.

The poll mentions "patriotism", not "nationalism", and I think those are two different things. "Nationalism" increasingly refers to an exclusivist mindset, whereas "patriotism" at least used to be more "pride in one's country".

Older people grew up during the Cold War, when the USA perceived itself as a bulwark of freedom and democracy in a world of opaque, totalitarian regimes, and when the country was further ahead than most of the rest of the world in development.

These days, a lot of the rest of the world has caught up, and a lot of younger Americans feel discouraged about the state of democracy in their own country. We aren't at the vanguard of freedom and functional government anymore.

Plus, over the past few decades, "patriotism" has been increasingly associated with flag/anthem worship, military boosting, and a kind of rah-rah "USA! USA!" attitude that has little to do with freedom and democracy. It's been turned into a marketing tool and a cudgel that right-wing political groups have used against their opponents since the Vietnam War.

You should go find a Holocaust survivor and check. I'm sure many of them take comfort in the fact that destruction of their lives contributed to the progress of science.

I see where you're coming from.

I guess to me, it makes no moral difference. The means corrupt the end. The Nazis managed to get some useful science out of the Jews during the Holocaust, but it's hard to see that as a silver lining.

I think that if you're at the level of making those kinds of choices, you're already living in hell.

It's a point of view that makes no sense. Murdering one person to save another is not "noble". It negates the entire point of "human rights" in the first place.

You might as well suggest that people who need organs should be able to kill a random person on the street to get them.

Not that it makes a moral difference, but the victims aren't all hardened criminals. They are political dissidents, people who follow the wrong religion, and racial minorities.

Most of the greatest mass atrocities in world history have been framed as a "tradeoff". Destroying some lives to save others isn't a functioning society, it's a living nightmare.

From this article: https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/519/filling-the-void

"The true source of drug addiction: a society organized around the quest for wealth and geopolitical power, which creates enormous dislocation. This pursuit of wealth and power inevitably produces widespread addiction, which we insist on calling a “drug problem.”"

We live in a society where record numbers of people are lonely, depressed, and disconnected. We worship consumerism and the economy, and idolize weirdo greedlords like Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump.

Increased opioid regulation has had the effect of forcing a lot of people who are in pain to suffer even more. The addictions that plague our society won't go away until we fix the underlying problems that make people so vulnerable in the first place.

I appreciate the encouragement! Sometimes I have to just assess the situation more objectively and tell myself "you're making a good living at this stuff, you can't be that terrible at it!"

This is good to know, thanks!

True, I guess focusing on the impostor feeling doesn't really have much practical application to getting the work done and getting paid for it!

I think it's just a confidence thing -- when you learn an idea in a class, you know it's something that's been validated by your professor and whoever wrote the book. When you come up with it or learn it on your own, you don't have the same validation that you're on the right track and not just repeating someone else's mistake.

That's sort of how I felt when I took the job -- just kind of thrown into the deep end. I had no idea how I was going to complete my first assignment. I think it's tempting to want to seek comfort in your profession (or anything you do, really), but I guess comfort doesn't necessarily spur much growth.

Yeah, I think there's a tendency to assume that everyone else is so much more competent than you are. I have to say that being brought in to fix other people's code has helped a lot in building my confidence as at least a decent engineer.

Yeah, I think I need to keep that in mind -- that some of the "softer" skills are just as important. I can see how leadership pushes you away from some of the nitty-gritty of the code.

Awesome, I think I know this stuff but just not the exact name for it. Thanks for the help.

Asking for help is something I'm trying to force myself to do more and more. It's hard to shake the paranoia that you're revealing a weakness that will eventually come back to haunt you, but I know that's an attitude that's antithetical to success.

This is a great idea, thanks for the advice!

Yeah, I think I had enjoyed being comfortable in my skillset, but I can see how that can be the exact moment you stop improving.

That's good to know. I think in some cases I know the concept from experience but just don't necessarily know the official term.

Well shoot. I guess this is just part of the territory.

I agree that the author is opinionated, but it's not an uncommon opinion. Plenty of Bay Area residents who lived there before tech took over feel pretty "suffocated" by its dominance. I've seen first-hand how SF has changed, and agree with the author on a lot of points.

Maybe there would be less anti-tech sentiment if tech culture stopped taking itself quite so seriously and had a little perspective. A sense of humor would go a long way. It's possible to both enjoy these kinds of events and understand why some people might find them sad or weird.

The self-seriousness of the tech crowd, in my opinion, invites these kinds of hit pieces.

I think it's ironic that so many of these "frugal living" gurus advocate cutting your expenses to the bone to avoid taking part in America's rampant consumer culture.

Then they advocate plowing those savings into home ownership, as if that itself isn't a consumerist decision. As if there isn't a multi-billion dollar real estate industry pushing the idea of home ownership as "the American dream".

Certainly, it's possible to err too much on the side of irresponsibility, but the author of this blog post has a point. Of all the joys we have in this short existence, "buying a house with cash" seems like a pretty lame one to build your whole life around.