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Comment by bkeroack | Hacker News Reader

I would not expect the average HN reader (foosball-playing, video gamer, etc) to agree with this.

Sometimes I think tech is the epicenter of the "permanent adolescence" phenomena.

Given that the tech sector celebrates having fireman poles instead of stairs, colored ball pits, giant bean bags for chairs and webcomics as regular features in slideshows and the revealing contents of 'intership swag' posted to reddit from various tech companies (NERF guns, USB turrets, etc) - I would tend to agree.

Beyond that, the tech sector is made up of exactly the sort of Louie character described in the article. Mostly pale pasty males that feel obligated to sex with women more attractive than them. Boyish-men that try to out-novelty one other and whose boyish hobby (computers) just happens to be something that makes a _lot of money_ - it's like if we discovered that LEGO construction somehow helped corporate bottom lines. A culture that buys into the myth that computer pioneers,serious and careful mathematicians and technicians all, were 'geniuses' rather than driven and hard workers and that they, by knowing how to code in Python and Angular, are somehow too in that rank of elite men.

The tech industry celebrates adolescence and arrested development. It claims with a straight face it has engineers and is doing engineering, but just look at the difference in ethical standards and responsibility Software Engineering has compared to, say, Civil Engineering or Architecture. Software Engineers have no licensure. If your software kills someone (Therac-25, Great Northeast Blackout) or causes widespread instability (Black Monday, Flash Crash) or has ethically questionable goals, where are the repercussions? As a tech industry member you are shielded from your own ignorance, laziness, and carelessness. (Sure we build software faster. We could build bridges faster without licensure and regulations as well).

Cullen Murphy and one other writer from The Atlantic wrote a book (unless it was just an article) about the notion of "neoteny", the preservation of juvenile characteristics into a mature age. They noted that among North American wildlife the tendency increased as the animals were further from their (presumed) original range. The biologists argued that the younger traits added to the adaptability of the animals and enabled them to thrive in conditions different from those of their ancestors. You could make an argument for the uses of neoteny in the software business.

(I once amused an (extremely grown-up) immigrant acquaintance by proposing this as the explanation for the immaturity he saw in Californians, suggesting that the Eastern US was the home range of the American. But of course he saw Americans as generally immature.)

I do not blame anyone for enjoying it when his chosen work makes him a lot of money. I do not blame any man for aspiring to attract women better looking than he is. (And I think you mean "entitled", in which case, No, nobody's entitled.) But yes, a little consciousness of what it's about wouldn't hurt a bit.

I've encountered a number of articles and podcasts that extend the thesis that the process of domestication produces neoteny - that dogs are what wolf puppies would be if they never attained adult wolfhood. Many left the reader/listener with the idea that perhaps humanity had domesticated itself; purposefully weeded out those who become aggressive and self-involved and less trusting (by prison, execution, exile, cultural norms of fitting partners for reproduction) and made conditions more favorable for those who remain childish and collaborative longer. Hardly reproducible, but fun to think about.

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