throwawaymsft

Infinite, because the median counterfactual is never getting around to this P4 “nice to have” issue that’s languished in the backlog.

https://www.theonion.com/facebook-employees-explain-daily-st...

Yeah, it’s wack how people want to buy the laptop with the best perf per watt ever.

A few seconds isn’t bad to boot an OS, no? ;-)

If you’re in the tech industry, FIRE is an option closer than most. You can build your own tenure to pursue what you like.

It’s gotta be the mangoes!

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!”

Tu quoque, COVID: we foolishly ignore other fixable problems so we should ignore this too?

Why isn’t the burden of proof on the lone BSL4 lab in the country doing research on that very class of virus to prove its innocence?

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.

Most replies are having their Green Eggs and Ham moment.

I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam I am.

Meanwhile, people who have actually used it, find it great. It's a wonderful framework.

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.

Long term: Don't become a peasant, live life on your own terms.

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...

If you like hacking, you can arrange your life to do that.

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.”

– Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

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.

Easy, after first imagining the pink elephant you aren't supposed to.

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."

"A classic is something everybody wants to have read, but no one wants to read." -Mark Twain

Many want to have had done a startup.

Not OP, but I saw people wasting their lives on "big projects" that actually had little impact. (And that's if you're lucky enough to have it ship and not be cancelled.)

Imagine you are designing the McDonald's hamburger wrapper. "Oh, your work will be shown to millions of people!" And nobody really cares. I'd rather design something smaller that is truly appreciated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_segregation_in_the_U...

Being bored for 40 years isn’t your only option.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...

You can move towards a life designed the way you like it. Good luck.

Thanks for taking the time to clarify, I mostly agree with your updated version. Global wealth can grow but is not necessarily (or often) distributed, and not everyone is in a circumstance to grow it on their own.

You may enjoy the elephant curve: https://www.brookings.edu/research/whats-happening-to-the-wo...

The very rich and moderately poor have seen wealth increase while the top quintile (E.g. many Americans) have seen wealth stagnate. Globally we’re richer on average but not everyone participated. Clearly it’s best if we can lift all boats and not certain subsets.

It's helpful to separate natural resources (land, woods, oil, etc.) from wealth (valuable possessions).

We take natural resources, often plentiful, apply labor + skill, and get a more valuable product. We're wealthier as a result.

Yes, natural resources are finite, but not the limiting reagent for most things. There's a zero-sum game in that land used for farming is not available for an entertainment complex. But we have so much used for "nothing" that switching it to "something" is a giant increase in wealth. You can buy an acre in Kansas for a month's worth of minimum wage work. Las Vegas was built in a desert surrounded by hundreds of miles of wasteland. Did turning land, earth, trees, and iron ore into Las Vegas add zero value? (Not saying it was the best use of resources, just that assembling buildings improved the value of the raw materials.)

As a counterexample, consider melting down a car into slag. Are you less wealthy with your charred steel than a working car? Of course -- charred steel is less valuable. The number of atoms is the same. In other words, is an assembled watch worth the same as a pile of gears? Are you indifferent to the two?

If wealth were fixed in the earth, we must be getting poorer as the population grows. A few thousand years ago we had 1M people on earth. Were those peasants 7000x wealthier than us?

Why doesn't the absolute share matter? If I give everyone an iPhone and a few people get an iPhone + Macbook, is that "bad"? Isn't everyone better off? (Yes, humans can be petty and jealous, but they are objectively better off.)

Uber created a lot of wealth. Some got more than others. Is that objectively bad if the wealth didn't exist before?

What "pretty decent" physical resources does making software consume? (Beyond energy, which is renewable.)

The internet and other tech doesn't create new wealth? Why has the size of the economy grown exponentially since the industrial revolution?

If wealth were fixed, as population in increased we'd be getting vastly poorer worldwide (1.6 billion in 1900 -> 7 billion people today). Have we gotten 5x poorer on average?

(These facts are easily googleable.)

Many people think the economy is a fixed pie. Do a quick google: inflation adjusted gdp per capita is increasing exponentially(!) over time as we find new ways to create wealth. If the pie were fixed our living standards should decrease over time as there’s more mouths to feed.

https://www.google.com/search?q=world+gdp+per+capita+over+ti...

I’m not saying local deviations don’t exist - I can lose my job - but globally wealth has been growing continuously and poverty is being eradicated. This is only possible with wealth creation. Look up Hans Rosling’s work.

https://goo.gl/images/QejAcY

When you invent the wheelbarrow, stack bricks into a house, plant a seed, where is wealth diverted from? Who is losing? What shrank?

Potential wealth is ‘finite’ because humans are finite but there’s no practical limit. (Just like there’s no practical limit to how much art can be made. If art isn’t being made it isn’t because there’s only so much creativity to go around.)