The World Would Be a Better Place if Everyone Was a Hacker | Hacker News Reader

The World Would Be a Better Place if Everyone Was a Hacker

rdegges.com

39 pointsb14ck21 comments

Not everyone is a hacker.

I see this in some of my co-workers who only code for a living, not for a passion. They go home to their TVs and Netflix and raise their families. They could care less about Hacker News and the signal/noise ratio of the content.

I see this nowadays - people just expect things to work - my niece (under 6 yrs of age) will go to photo frames and swipe across them, expecting something to happen. From a very early age, she expects touch screen interfaces.

I see this in my parents when I have to do technical support (they refuse to move from Windows - Go Microsoft!) - and have to explain to them that a computer operating system is a dynamic system and, yes, the printer will stop working- just because it worked yesterday doesn't mean it will work today.

When I try explaining to my dad the process for fixing something on the computer, he just doesn't want to do it or can't. He wants a step by step by step process. But I can't give it to him. Because the process is finding out the process.

Isn't that what hacking is?

I would argue, based on a non-scientific sample of some of my friends talking about TV shows they watch and the restaurant food they go to, that the world is divided into producers and consumers. The catch here is that everyone is a producer and everyone is a consumer.

Pre-digital distribution, it was very hard for someone to produce at scale (the Gutenberg press revolutionized information access - previously books were hand-copied, a process taking months if not years).

Now, with digital distribution, people who can produce works that can be copied (sometimes illegally, to detriment of the author's profit) can make a profit off their creativity and hard work. They can produce at scale (software, CDs). Mozart died broke because he lived in an age before distribution, before he could reach an audience that would appreciate and pay - concerts were the only means of distribution - couldn't load his tunes on your iPod.

As hackers, we can produce something that can be copied digitally and distributed digitally. From Youtube Instant search to TwitterVision - people can consume (even if just for free) - what we can hack. Hacking isn't always fun though - it's not easy (my dad, potential CS students who drop out because it isn't as easy as they thought) which is a subject for another time.

I'm a hacker - though not a great one - I love being able to modify and create things. To create is to live, for me.

> I see this nowadays - people just expect things to work...

> When I try explaining to my dad the process for fixing something on the computer, he just doesn't want to do it or can't. He wants a step by step by step process. But I can't give it to him. Because the process is finding out the process.

This is reminiscent of The Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The conflict between the romantic and the classic.

> The process is finding about the process.

Yes. Exactly. I've been in a similar situation with my mother. I have to describe the steps one by one. When GMail changed its design, she was suddenly bewildered!

On a related note, I do think this mentality starts from an early age. Education teaches pupils to memorise and not understand. In an attempt for pupils to stay on par with their peers, they resort to memorising. Later on in life, this gets increasingly difficult, and then people just resort to staying consumers, not producers.

To put it another way: the process is the Scientific process. When we teach kids "science" in schools, we teach them rote facts about physics, or chemistry, or biology—but what we really need to do is just to instil in them, over and over again, that experimentation gives you data you can use to craft a better, next experiment.

> I see this in some of my co-workers who only code for a living, not for a passion. They go home to their TVs and Netflix and raise their families.

Especially this one:

> ... and raise their families.

You think being a coder and raising a family is oxymoron? Or rather not being a 'passionate' coder is a bad thing? Or even being a hacker for 8 hours a day is the same as not being a hacker at all?

Trust me, raising a family (if done properly) involves a hell of a lot more 'hacking' than saving 8ms on some random SQL query...

In both cases it's the act of creation, they're just manifested differently. Hacker's enjoy their creation because they feel like stretch the limit of their intellect. Creating a family (IMHO) is both as equally, if not more, challenging.

You are both right. Somehow raising a family seems to be more than hacking, though, it is the meaning of life.

If only life was so simple. Most problems are not so one-dimensional. Problems in life are typically not math problems - they usually are complex situations with multiple solutions that have numerous impacts with degrees of good and bad.

For example, we would all like our roads well paved at all times but you'd also have to take into consideration the environmental impacts of upping the frequency of putting tar on all of our roads across society. On top of it you'd most likely have higher incidences of road worker deaths. etc. etc.

I'd agree that we need more people attempting to solve problems and that there are many things that could be vastly improved -- but I think the dynamics of true social problems are somewhat misrepresented in the article.

Problems in life are typically not math problems - they usually are complex situations with multiple solutions that have numerous impacts with degrees of good and bad.

Like maths problems.

I'd like slightly disagree. I do think more people needs to be analytical but without empathy and morality all hacker qualities would be rendered meaningless and pointless.

As a hacker without empathic skills I could pick any goal and ruthlessly implement it: Goal: Need more organ donors 1. People are unwilling to donate organs 2. Force all prisoners on death row to give away they organs for staying in death row accommodation 3. Kill them in ways that doesn't hurt the organs (they might suffer some inconvenience) 4. Harvest organs

As Charlie Chaplin in Great Dictator said: "More than machinery we need humanity, more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness, without these qualities life would be violent and all would be lost."

I don't think "empathy" and "morality" are fundamentally required; rather, they are convenient heuristics for interacting with other humans. As long as you are rational, then acting without empathy or morals would still result in similar behavior (depending on how "smart" and well-informed you are, I guess).

A rational agent seeks to maximize utility. It turns out that murdering people for their organs does not maximize utility! At the very least, society is cleverly structured in a way that the probable utility of murdering somebody for their organs is relatively low.

Basically, my point is that your argument is a straw man. The issue isn't too much logic but rather than you (the agent killing everybody in the example) did not use enough of it. For some reason, all the "arguments" about the inferiority of logic always assume the logical person is extremely short-sighted or ill-informed.

Societal structure is not a constant. In China, for example, the government willingly admitted that 2/3 of organ donations came from executed prisoners (2009), as proposed by the original argument. A purely rational Chinese person probably wouldn't consider criticising this policy to be a means of maximising his utility, and it's not even easy to make an argument that abolition of that specific practice in isolation would maximise society's utility.

You can call it a heuristic or a guideline, but I consider them essential. Perfectly rational agents without empathy can commits massive acts of evil trying to achieve their goal. Or as the proverb says "Road to hell is paved with good intentions".

And I don't think short-sightedness or ill-informing was ever an integral part with arguing about how empathy is essential to human live. IIRC there was an example of perfectly informed and rational computer of super human intelligence who was told to calculate a particularly difficult equation, to which he promptly restructured all matter on earth, including people into a giant super-computer.

Sorry this deserves dramatic pose. Hackers are not immune from the human condition. What of the irrational triumphs? Of serendipity and of chance? To believe all things solvable through logic, science, and engineering is hubris. Emotions matter. Manipulation matters. Hackers excel at local optimization, but without the turbulence, the conflict, and the occasional "kick" delivered by those that think differently, we would face a gradual descent into extinction.

The conclusion I come to from some of the points made almost equate to: "To make everyone a millionaire print more money".

Increasing taxes and the average income really does little in the scheme of things other than create/abolish a disparity. The talk of money offers no real solutions, throwing money to fix US education has done next to nothing.

I have been in places where most people had very little money and it was wonderful, while in some rich places it was anarchy with people living behind razor wire and armed guards.

There are a lot of books that have been written about how to fix things in poorer countries. Take a look at William Easterly or if you like Bono try Jeffrey Sachs. Whatever your politics there is no easy answer. Try reading some books and see the mess that has been made by people trying to make things better, and all they've done is make it worse.

No it wouldn't. Rather than being a monoculture, the world needs more respect for the differences that naturally exist.

I agree. It is all too natural to accept things as they are--just go with the flow. The world would benefit having more people take a hard look at systems and situations we take for granted, call out short comings, and take action to improve things. The trouble is that hackers are more apt at noticing these deficiencies than the laymen. How do you encourage this heightened awareness in everybody? Entrepreneurs have profits and hackers have their curiosity. What motivations are there for everyone else?

> What motivations are there for everyone else?

In a worst case scenario, survival.

I believe that's the second part, there is a first part although: realizing there is a problem. For example, you may not see cancer as a problem and not try to find a cure as you may see this as a special destiny.

And to help people to realize problems you need to teach them to doubt. And not only doubting about religion, but also science (didn't Eistein somehow prove Newton wrong?) and their life choises and everything basicaly.

Who is good at doubting? I believe usually really good scientists or people that have a grasp of good philosophy (the greeks, Popper, etc.).

So, as it's not even that difficult to learn, I believe the world needs more (good) philosophy...

The world would also be a better place if everyone was a police officer, and a chef, and a plumber, etc. That doesn't necessarily mean it's practical.

> Increase the average income of residents of your community.

Let's aim for raising the median income instead

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