Creeping normality | Hacker News Reader

Creeping normality

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218 pointsIsmair73 comments

This is also why it's useful to hire new people once in a while and pay attention to what they think. A new, junior hire will note many of the same things as an expensive consultany. With the difference that people actually listen to the observations of the consultant , while they expect the junior dev to get used to things.

Agreed. A helpful exercise is to ask them to keep a log for the first 30 days. Ive always found incredibly useful information in there.

+9000

I'm "using" our interns for this. First task is to create a document where they're supposed to write down everything that seems odd, overly complicated or broken. Even though they're sometimes in their third semester only, this pretty much always brings up something that can be improved on the spot without refactoring a dozen components.

But also for all the things that were actually just a case of the intern being inexperienced or too naive it's great for them to go back to this document after three months and see how their understanding changed over time.

> But also for all the things that were actually just a case of the intern being inexperienced or too naive it's great for them to go back to this document after three months and see how their understanding changed over time.

Seems like a fantastic exercise, with benefits both ways. In hindsight, this seems so simple and powerful that I wonder whether it's a commonly accepted onboarding exercise for new team members, especially junior ones. If not, it probably should become.

This is presented mainly in a negative context but from my experience almost all change happens this way. You slowly get used to it. I still remember when people were saying that a mobile phone was a luxury item normal people don't need or that they would never do online banking.

Oh, there are still people who are indignant, or at least puzzled, that a poor person could possibly own such luxuries as a mobile phone or a flat screen TV.

I was amazed when seeing this in India. Until I learned that a phone plan with unlimited data costs the equivalent of $3 a month there.

Suddenly it becomes like the best investment ever. Even if you have nothing else, you can still be connected to the internet and all it’s joys.

What ? The cheapest flat LCD TV plus cable service costs about 100 dollars. And the monthly subscription is about another 2 dollars. That's not enough to buy the cheapest smart phone.

People in India certainly can afford that. In fact many teenagers these days buy $250-300 (average) smart phones. Also keep in mind I am talking about rural India.

This is what I don't get. If the median income is about ~$1600, how does almost everyone have a $200 phone?

If you assume a phone gets replaced every 3 years -- with service -- that's about $110 per year, or close to 7% of a person's total income.

In the US, median income is ~$32k -- $26k after taxes. If you make the same assumptions, a phone would cost about $580, or close to ~2% of a person's total income.

So it seems like not so big of a deal, especially for something so valuable.

But the teen part is what piqued my interest. India is MUCH younger than the US. Women participate in the workforce at a MUCH lower rate. And household size is MUCH larger. If you factor all of those things together, it means that for like 60% of families with children, you have a single earner with a spouse and 2.9 children. If everyone's got a phone, that's more than 40% of your household income. THAT seems insane.

In Indian cities, for a lot of people involved in the service industry, being in touch with their clientele through phone (often WhatsApp) is a fantastic boon that increases earnings. They don't need the latest and greatest phone, but a smartphone with a data plan is almost surely worth it.

On the topic of teens affording smartphones, either they come from relatively well to do families so their parents can spare the money, or they're older and make some money on the side by running errands, etc.

Statistics are useful but they don't always show accurate information. India is one of the most diverse country in the world. Hell even the states are like little countries living together. I am an Indian but even I can't make assumption like that about another state.

But still I don't think everyone replaces their phones in just 3 years. The younger generation does that (they replace their phones even faster). But the older generation who use a smart phone like a phone keeps their phones for lot more then 5 years.

And these days due to population control awareness most couples limit themselves to only 2 children.

Consider the amount Americans spend on cars.

If I had to, I would spend 10% of my income on a smartphone / laptop / whatever without even thinking. It simply pays for itself.

I CANNOT believe how much Americans spend on cars. As an American, I just do not get it.

Whether you're rich or poor, people spend INSANE amounts of money commuting. I get it that our public transit is garbage. I just don't get how much people pay to commute instead of moving somewhere that makes better economic sense (even within the same metro, where you can keep all your roots -- your family and friends and eat at your favorite restaurants and all that).

Many people still associate mobile phones with a 1980's luxury status symbol and think poorer people are trying to encroach on their class bracket. After all, how does one let others know that one is rich, if simply everyone has mobile phones, big televisions and habitable accommodation?

And what about extreme events? Creeping normality changes the five W's of extreme events.

(Who, what, when, where, why)

This is true also for social changes. Homosexuality, at least in my country, is an example. When I was a kid at school, 20-30 years ago, it was frowned upon and used as an insult. Now it's totally normal and no one except fringe extremists would use it as an insult. And as far as I know, there wasn't any Rosa Parks-like event that triggered the change (factually or symbolically), it just creeped in.

It’s the same in the US (assuming “my country” is elsewhere).

The triggering event is generally considered to be the Stonewall riots, which happened before I was born. Seems like a big event dislodged things, but then it took a long time for the change.

It's not really fringe to be homophobic in the US though.

There's lots of people that are blatant about it, and then lots of people who know they are supposed to think something other than what they do think.

I think the bulwark against it is a society being clear on what its moral axioms are. Like in the US, "all men are created equal", where we understand "men" to mean "people". There are certainly forces in the US that do not want to accept this as true, but the existence of the stated value and national identity helps to defend it. Same with the bill of rights.

And on a personal level, identifying ones own values and principles explicitly and reviewing them periodically can help guide one's path as society changes.

Smoking in the public places was just few decades ago, very common and it seemed like impossible to move. Now even thinking about going back is absurd idea.

Today people defend 'basically harmless stuff like:

1. Force physical mutilation of children crazy reasons is OK if there is not much physical harm. Circumcision of boys is seen as OK in countries where it's common and normal. Others can see it as crazy cultural thing.

2. Physical punishment of children is OK because I turned out just fine.

> Today people defend 'basically harmless stuff like:

I'm sure there are people (where n > 1) in the world who defend that, but here in The Netherlands this is not OK except for Jewish boy circumcision. Which is in a different league than the removal of the clitoris.

Physical punishment of children went from 'normal' before 1970 to 'not acceptable' throughout 1980 and 1990. It is now 'very much not acceptable'. In fact, I'd argue this one, like smoking, fits the 'creeping normality' definition although keep in mind I talk about The Netherlands only. I do not know how this developed throughout the rest of the world.

I'm speaking to HN audience that is not similar to north European audience.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/hitting-kids-american-par...

> More than 70% of Americans agreed in 2012 that, “it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking.”

I was talking about boy circumcision and why in a different league than the removal of the clitoris. Infant body modification for religious reasons is barbaric custom even if it is mostly harmless. You would only few decades of banning boy circumcision and Jews would recognize it as a normal and new generations would think it was silly stupid practice not deeply related to Jewish identity after all.

Not all female circumcision involves removing the clitorus. It varies, and the least harmful forms involve only a symbolic pin prick. While I strongly oppose all forms of circumcision on babies and children (unless a good medical reason is involved), I think the lightest form of female circumcision is essentiallu much less barbaric than male circumcision. If people practicing female circumcision could be convinced to switch to the lighter forms (perhaps through creeping normality?) that would already be a great improvement, and a good step towards eventually stopping the practice completely.

It would be more consistent if male circumcision was treated with the same condemnation that all forms of female circumcision (or 'FGM') seem to receive. Currently the western world criticising female circumcision seems like the pot calling the kettle black.

Driving cars in the city is the new smoking. Our grandkids will look at this time as barbaric.

Sharing your location with the state in real time all time seemed barbaric a decade ago while it will be normal for our kids.

*Internal combustion cars. Electric cars enable us to avoid polluting the cities by burning coal somewhere unimportant.

My take is it’s more about killing pedestrians than polluting.

Oh. I didn't expect that, probably because in the US car-pedestrian accidents kill 6,000 people a year [1] and air pollution kills 6,000,000 [2]

1. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/28/589453431... 2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/04/18/air-po...

But way more than 6000 kids a year don’t play outside because of our artificially created apex predators.

For example, the creeping normality of using employee burnout to finish AAA games.

Or the creeping normality of focusing on game devs crunch when there are other project based jobs with close deadlines as well

I don't know of any other industries that have normalized masochistic crunch to anywhere near the degree that most of the game industry has, and I've worked in some pretty freaking crunchy sausage factories. The game industry really takes it to the next level, in part because it's an employer's market- a lot more people love the idea of being a game dev than there are game dev positions available, so high turnover rates are actually sustainable for much of the game industry, leading to some horrific practices.

If there are other industries that are up there with the game industry in terms of extreme crunch, I'd be very curious to hear about them. I don't doubt they exist, I just am not aware of them. There's also nightmares like 996 schedules in China, but I've heard that in many cases that's more pretend crunch for show than actual crunch. In some ways 996 is even lamer because it's so pointless and dystopian, but I bet many game devs would be jealous of people who only have to work 72 hours a week and only have to pretend to work for some of that time.

Only place that I heard was cruncher from my time in gamedev was the animators who came to us from some of the VFX shops over in the movie industry.

Still inclined to agree, the number of non-crunching gamedevs out there are shockingly small. It really is celebrated as a right of passage and 'part of the job' which is infuriating given all the data that backs overwork on cognitive ability.

Yeah, why would we talk about game dev when there are other unspecified examples we could be talking about? Shame on us.

The Easter Island narrative is probably wrong: http://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-easter-island-a-s...

"It is generally agreed that Rapa Nui, once covered in large palm trees, was rapidly deforested soon after its initial colonisation around 1200 AD."

"Throughout the 19th century, South American slave raids took away as much as half of the native population. By 1877, the Rapanui numbered just 111. Introduced disease, destruction of property and enforced migration by European traders further decimated the natives and lead to increased conflict among those remaining."

The Easter Island narrative is probably wrong

So is the boiling frog story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

It's fun to contrast with the opposite phenomenon, which I think also rings true. As said in Terry Pratchett's book "Making Money":

> People don't like change. But make the change fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.

This reminds me of the frog in the pot/pan concept. Note: the frog did not get hurt so watch until the end without worrying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svpsLZDgFK4

It's an interesting concept, but the "frog in the pan" fable has no scientific merit. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#Experiments_and_a...

It doesn't have to work on a literal level. It's a fable, not a recipe.

Along the same line, it reminded me of salami tactics [1], where not sudden but gradual change appears to be more effective.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_tactics

This is how we ended up living in surveillance state.

Another example: people walking around looking at their mobile phones.

Boiling Frog experiment. Real frog used - no prop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRWL8-dn_Uk

I was going to add a link to normalization of deviance [1] here, but there is a list of related concepts on the page:

    Boiling frog
    Camel's nose
    Gaslighting
    Defeat in detail
    "First they came ..."
    Foot-in-the-door technique
    Moving the goalposts
    Normalisation of deviance
    Overton window
    ''Principiis obsta''
    Salami tactics
    Shifting baseline
    Slippery slope 
    Technological change as a social process
    Tyranny of small decisions
    Change blindness

[1] https://danluu.com/wat/

Interesting to compare against Yurchak's term of 'hypernormalisation' ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Yurchak )

Seems related to hypernormalisation...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation

This goes both ways. When we progress to a new technology, after the wow factor we take it for granted. We dont often think what life was like before artificial lighting, electricity, mass transportation, etc. So whatever it is that is changing we eventually get used to it, it becomes the new normal. Will the same thing happen with global warming as it’s slowly creeping on us?

Makes me think of the gradual increase of identity politics in mainstream media, politics and liberal circles, to the point it's driving me insane. Most people around me seem undisturbed by it though.

I'm reminded of ebay's relaunch:

https://theuxblog.com/blog/redesigning-user-experience

The standard american meat based diet is a good example. Centuries ago the absurd scale of meat production and consumption could never have been imagined.

Agriculture is another good example. Ice-age hunters (and their guts) could never fathom musli or noodles (or even just gruel / paste of pounded seeds).

I wonder if genetic mutations in general are an example of this.

Flooding in Miami and Venice.

“In late November of 1968, I spent a few days in a hotel just off the Piazza San Marco in Venice. At 6 one morning, hearing the loud warning bells, I jumped out of bed, grabbed my camera and rushed to see the famous Venetian flood. I stood in the empty and as yet dry Piazza and looked out toward the Gulf, for I expected the flood tides to come in from the open water. Many minutes passed before to see that the Piazza was flooding, not directly from the Gulf, but up through its own sewers. The indented gratings in the pavement had all but disappeared under the calm, flat silver puddles, which grew slowly and silently until their peripheries touched and the Piazza became a lake. That morning I experienced vividly, if almost subliminally, the reality of change itself: how it fools our sentinels and undermines our defences, how careful we are to look for it in the wrong places, how it does not reveal itself until it is beyond redress, how vainly we search for it around us and find too late that it has occurred within us.”

The under-appreciated Robert Grudin in Time and Art of Living.

Yes, Venice has had flooding since at least 1900. But now it's 60 times a year.[1]

[1] https://theconversation.com/venice-flooding-is-getting-worse...

Random mass shootings :(

Could just call it... normalization? There's already a word for that.

I agree.

But for a different reason: I am wary of the originating author.

I personally find Jack Diamond a compelling writer, but it has been pointed out to me that he tends to play fast and loose when mixing in ideas from outside of his domain. Thus, I prefer my Jack Diamond, like my Jack Daniels, dry, and without ornamentation. Which is why I would personally prefer it's safer for his nomenclature to stay in his books.

Docker!

Interesting, frogs boiling etc, but... What is up with all of these wikipedia entries making the front page of hacker news? Has it always been so and I’m mis remembering thinking this is something new?

I’ve seen it for a while. My 2c.

They’re usually off beat enough to be interesting.

They have always been there, but in recent months the frequency has increased a little, and a lot in the last two weeks or so.

I guess I should mostly attribute it to the Baader-Meinhof effect [0] then.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader-Meinhof_effect

I suspect their record is incomplete since I don't see some pretty hot threads from the past few weeks, but https://hntrending.com/domains/all/index.html does purport to accumulate domains/listings/score.

Full English Wikipedia is 15 over both the past year and all-time, 6 over the last month, but back down to 12 over the past week.

(This rank is just based on points, but it lists total points. I don't see a way to force it to re-sort, but it wouldn't be too hard to re-compare them by volume.)

..creeping normality

> What is up with all of these wikipedia entries making the front page of hacker news? Has it always been so and I’m mis remembering thinking this is something new?

Hehe, there's another name for what you're describing: baader-meinhof effect...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader%E2%80%93Meinhof_effect

Everything has a name nowadays. Taxonomies are almost complete :)

I swear i'm seeing the Baader-Meinhof effect come up more and more frequently recently.

I thought the current rate of references to it was normal? :P

At least since I've been browsing HN, it's been this way and I quite enjoy it. Lot's of Wikipedia pages I would otherwise not stumble upon. Usually, they are quite relevant to something happening in current events.

Same for me. I've been conditioned in a way to expect Wikipedia posts on HN to be interesting, and I'm rarely let down.

Probably my all time favorite: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

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