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Comment by decasia | Hacker News Reader

I always wish HN was more interested in anthropology as a field of relevant inquiry. I have an anthropology PhD and it's not just something that's useful for observing end users — a lot of it is thinking about how to organize concepts in a humanly meaningful fashion, with a more or less coherent inner logic in the abstractions. In other words, the exact problems you usually face if you sit down to write code.

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I have a B.A. in cultural anthropology, and when I started working as a software developer I found it helpful for exactly that reason.

> coherent inner logic in the abstractions

Umm, I recall in The Innocen Anthropologist the author said that grain threshing areas are closely associated with fertility of women. Doesn't really fit.

I do agree anthroplogy matters because so much of tech is about people not tech.

That could fit as a cultural symbolic concept if grain threshing was considered work for women. If that was something actually believed the anthropologist would have done their job properly regardless if the superstition is complete bunk or not.

Unless it was meant as "actually makes women more fertile".

IIRC grain is the reproduction of the plant. Women do the obvious work of giving birth, hence the link.

There's your "coherent inner logic in the abstractions" right there, it just isn't useful to HN readers except as a curiosity. We can't do anything with it.

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