LiquidSky

Imagine showing this headline to someone in the 80s or before.

People seem to really simple, strong narratives. It used to be that Edison was a titanic genius who invented countless things solely through his own brilliance and hard work. Now he's some kind of scheming con man who did nothing but steal the work of others. Nuance is not popular.

You can just write “rape”. Don’t let yourself be trained by social media algorithms.

Move fast and break passengers

It's funny because this is EXACTLY how it played out with Japan in the mid-20th century. "Japan can only make cheap copies of our stuff!" They even joke about it in Back to the Future.

Is your community experiencing an epidemic of theft that needs dissuading? So much that you feel unsafe taking trips away from your home?

If you watch Jackie Chan's "Rumble in the Bronx" (shot in Vancouver) you can sometimes see the majestic Bronx Mountains in background shots.

>My experience has been that this isn't limited to engineers.

To some extent, but the most severe form does seem fairly unique to engineers, specifically programmers. That is, I've met many arrogant lawyers and doctors, but never a lawyer or doctor who assumes they could program a computer due to their legal or medical expertise. But I've seen many a programmer assume that because they are proficient in programming they can confidently and authoritatively expound on all other areas of human endeavor (those being obviously inferior and trivial in the face of their own).

>RationalWiki calls the third one 'Ultracrepidarianism'

LOL because RationalWiki was written by engineers. I've often seen it referred to as "Engineer's Disease" for how it's commonly encountered.

This is going to be framed in the usual "weird Japan" way but it's not at all limited to Japan. I don't know if similar studies have been conducted in the US or other other countries (and, as another comment note, the supposed study on which this is based isn't linked in this article), but phenomenon like r/MyBoyfriendIsAI and countless stories about people all around the world becoming entranced by "relationships" with AIs indicate this is not at all unique to Japan. I suspect a sadly large number of people everywhere feel this way, they just want someTHING to talk to if they can't/don't have someONE.

>You don't know how to build a home. >I do.

Do you? Sound like the people you hired built the home. Do you know how to do what they did? Did you do it? What did you do to earn that $50k?

Today a Hacker News user discovers the concept of qualia.

I feel like in the US if you punched a cop the cop and his colleagues are much more likely to just shoot you, or at least unleash brutal violence on you and the rest of the crowd. I guess the idea is to provoke these kind of battles in hopes that the cops can be overwhelmed or at least public opinion goes to your side?

Seems like that'd just discourage people from going above and beyond at work. Why do more than the bare minimum to avoid being fired if nothing else you do counts?

>the well is now poisoned for companies that do care

Because there's no such thing. Or rather, there are until it's unprofitable enough that caring seriously threatens the bottom line, or the nice owners sell off to someone less nice.

You need to be careful here, you're falling into the inverse "Elon is a visionary genius" trap: "Elon is an evil genius". For example:

>buying an election through Twitter

It's weirdly forgotten now, but Musk didn't want to end up owning Twitter. After making the impulsive buy offer, he spent that summer and fall desperately trying to get out of the deal. He finally gave in when it became clear he was going to lose in court. It was a major failure for him, and it's odd seeing this aspect of the Twitter purchase memory-holed and reframed as some 19D chess move.

Yet!

That reminds me of an interview I heard with comicbook artist Chip Zdarsky. He was talking about how we all love to draw as kids, but eventually around 10 years old or so we start to become aware that what we see in our heads isn't anywhere near what's appearing on the page in our drawings, and that gap acts as a powerful filter discouraging most people from pursuing art any further.

But who cares about the long term when you could make a killing this year or even just this quarter and walk away with a fortune.

>Do we think that's impossible?

Yes. Even if it weren't, it doesn't even seem to matter anymore. Making better products doesn't seem to lead to more money than churning out shit and financializing it, so why would anyone bother?

>I associate the concept of pronatalism with also wanting to be involved in your kids' lives

Then don't because it's just wrong. Very few, if any, of the "more babies, bigger families" types have any interest in or concern for the children after they're born. In fact they're usually the ones fighting tooth and nail to prevent any kinds of programs or services that might help the resulting children and families.

For them it's just a pure numbers game/bizarre sexual fetish disguised as a philosophy.

Sure, WFH has some downsides as does anything, but it's always funny to me that we have 150+ years of basically everyone who's ever worked in an office despising it as a place where productivity goes to die mired in pointless meetings, office politics, etc., but when WFH becomes a realistic option all of a sudden the office is now Plato's Academy reborn.

I know that this is Hacker News and so all rich and important people must be geniuses making only rational moves, but consider the slim possibility that most aren't very good leaders and make poor decisions.

Maybe there's some 19D "soft layoff" motivation, but I suspect a large part is just about control and appearance. You spent all that money on offices so workers better be there. And what's the point of having your own nice big office if you can't look out on the peons toiling for you? And more fundamentally, some people just have this deep belief that work = something you do in an office and can't compute working at home as "real" work, no matter what the results show.

>I don't think Musk and Andreesseen are who most people would associate with the concept of pronatalism.

Musk is for sure. Doesn't he have like 100 kids because he's constantly trying to get women to become pregnant by his sperm?

The second one is mostly accurate, yes. There aren't really many good rational arguments for requiring full-time in-office attendance.

Well, there was the previous whistleblower complaint that members of DOGE accessed and shared sensitive Social Security data without the awareness of agency officials, which the government denied...until this January when they were forced to admit in a court filing that it was true. [https://archive.is/efY6S]

That is to say, there is no reason to extend this administration or anything DOGE-related the benefit of the doubt.

>Everyone adapted.

I like the phrasing of this because it tells us nothing of whether your family liked the change (or felt better off with it) or not. You can adapt to a lot.

Does it even actually matter what you do? How many lawsuits/investigations have there been in the last decade revealing that some company or another that swore up and down was following privacy laws, protecting your data, and not selling it actually were. I'm at the point where I figure anyone who wants to track me is, and any privacy pop-ups or the like are just for show.

No, it's very much yours and the way you phrased it. Perhaps you didn't mean it this way, but you sound like some kind of "pickup artist" type giving advice on "negging" women.

> I feel like I'm missing something here to properly understand why people ended up working for these companies in the first place

Money.