[HN Gopher] Be curious, not judgmental
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Be curious, not judgmental
Author : shbhrsaha
Score : 239 points
Date : 2021-12-23 15:59 UTC (1 days ago)
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| [deleted]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It's a good title... My instinct is to ridicule the entire
| concept of the smart home with its dozens of internet-attached
| devices from TVs to refrigerators to light bulbs accessible from
| one's smart phone. I suppose I should instead be curious as to
| why anyone would be comfortable with such a system?
|
| I can see the attraction of using a Raspberry Pi on a closed
| local network instead of timers and so on, for example if one has
| a lot of houseplants and so on, but I don't really understand the
| desire for having that network be internet-accessible.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > _dozens of internet-attached devices from TVs to
| refrigerators to light bulbs accessible from one 's smart
| phone. I suppose I should instead be curious as to why anyone
| would be comfortable with such a system?_
|
| I get value from such a system for the following reasons:
|
| - my bedroom lights wake me up by fading in over the course of
| an 20 minutes. Before that, I'd always wake up in a bad mood as
| I got startled awake by an alarm.
|
| - Thanks to the HomePod in the bedroom, we can adjust the
| lights by voice, useful in the evening when one is falling
| asleep and the other's still in the bathroom. Like the 80s
| "Clapper", but magnitudes more useful.
|
| - My mainroom lights adjust color temperature through the day,
| which I find inordinately pleasing. They will also switch to an
| "evening" dimmed and redder lighting at a particular time. This
| is often a subtle cue to me to stop working, or prepare for
| bed.
|
| - The HomePod in my bedroom also serves as my alarm, using
| music from the auto-generated playlist of stuff I like. I no
| longer am woken up by the same repetitive alarm (I can't listen
| to some of my favourite tunes due to the association), or awful
| radio.
|
| - I can transfer the music to different devices as I go through
| my morning routine. It's never been easier to listen to what I
| want, where I want.
|
| - If a meeting suddenly comes up, I can just give a vocal order
| to stop the music
|
| - I can switch watching something on my iPad to my TV, and
| control the TV from the phone that I always have with me,
| rather than hunt down the single-purpose remote.
|
| There are some downsides of course, but they don't outweigh the
| above quality-of-life benefits, and I'm very happy with what I
| have.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| rfrey wrote:
| That all sounds great... But none of your examples require,
| or are even improved, by being internet connected.
| xibalba wrote:
| What non-internet connected voice recognition/NLU system
| that integrates with light bulbs is available for sale?
| DarylZero wrote:
| Even having a separate, but integrated, internet-
| connected voice recognition system would allow the
| devices themselves not to be internet-connected.
|
| This is possible on Android, you can have an Android app
| call out to Google for voice control, and have the app
| control your local network.
| krisoft wrote:
| That is in fact how most smart lights are implemented.
| There is a central unit each lightbulb connects to and
| that central unit (optionally) is connected to the
| internet.
| scollet wrote:
| You can make your own.
| Vetch wrote:
| I don't know any that are for sale on the internet but
| the deep learning, mesh network and microcontroller tech
| to join together such a capability are readily available
| and open source.
| orev wrote:
| Voice systems only require Internet because companies
| have designed them that way to keep you on the hook and
| collecting your data. There's no reason that voice
| control can't run on a local box except for this business
| decision. Voice control systems had been around for years
| before everything was in the cloud, and with the advances
| made in the technology since then, the accuracy would be
| just fine on a local system.
| greggman3 wrote:
| I thought Apple's system didn't use the internet. The
| voice recognition happens on the phone. No?
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Newer devices and newer OSs can do _some_ recognition
| device-side-only. But many features, and certainly
| anything through the older HomePods, requires cloud
| assistance.
|
| This article has a good overview:
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/08/02/how-to-use-
| siri-o...
| _Microft wrote:
| Apple introduced voice processing on the devices with iOS
| 15 (that's the current version if you are not so familiar
| with the system.) Older versions of iOS required an
| internet connection for any voice command. This works on
| all but the oldest supported devices (which are ~iPhone
| 6), from what I remember.
|
| Edit: scroll down to section "Siri" here:
| https://www.apple.com/ca/ios/ios-15/features/
| wruza wrote:
| Sometimes my home wifi gets stuck. I noticed that when I
| talk to Siri at this time she doesn't react quickly
| (working on it for seconds).
| nicoburns wrote:
| As an example: your driving home on a cold night, and you want
| to turn your heating on to preheat the house before you get
| home.
| bumby wrote:
| I guess the question is really the upside/downside ratio. I
| think for many the upside is marginal compared to the
| potential downside.
| jaclaz wrote:
| Many years ago I knew someone (an electrical engineer by
| trade) that modified a standard/ubiquitous Panasonic
| telephone answering machine connecting it to his home
| thermostat, he used the code to hear messages to switch the
| heat on.
|
| You don't need the internet, nowadays the equivalent would
| most probably be something _like_ :
|
| https://www.ezyswitch.co.nz/
| gkop wrote:
| Both voice calls and SMS are routed over the internet
| today, though...
| klyrs wrote:
| Grandma tech: keep rolls of sugar cookie dough in the
| freezer, and bake 'em when you get home. An excuse to hang
| out by the oven, and then you have cookies.
| iratewizard wrote:
| Each generation toils away to solve problems that were
| first solved more than 200 years ago
| rileyphone wrote:
| Or maybe our problems and potentials are radically
| different than they were 200 years ago?
| iratewizard wrote:
| Spoken like someone toiling away at something your great-
| grandpa had a solution for.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Actual grandma tech: keep grandma at home using the oven
| so the house is warm when you get home.
| klyrs wrote:
| Nah, my grandma had a life, as I fully intend to when I'm
| her age.
| sjg007 wrote:
| I have never found this feature useful. In cold places you
| tend to leave the heat on to keep things stable. Same when it
| is hot and humid.
| konschubert wrote:
| You can turn down the heat a few degrees when you're out of
| the house and save quite some energy this way.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| That would be a dumb home then. A smart home would be
| properly insulated and a lot more passive, it wouldn't leak
| as much heat and wouldn't be cold when you get home. All
| without "smart" tech or burning extra fossil fuel.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The "smart" tech is affordable and costs less than
| renovating or rebuilding a home, a luxury which many people
| cannot afford.
| wruza wrote:
| Curious if that saves any significant energy, if you visit
| home regularly. The same with summertime AC. I believe that
| allowing a properly insulated room to get hot/cold and then
| reheating/recooling it takes the same work, because half a
| day is barely enough for it to get equilibrium with the
| environment. For a week probably yes, but then again you
| don't want your home to cross a freezing point too often. Am
| I right or naive here?
| jaclaz wrote:
| You are half-way right (or half-way naive, it depends on
| points of view).
|
| Generally speaking (but it depends greatly on the specific
| home thermal properties and on the kind of heating or AC
| you have) it is usually less energy intensive to keep in
| winter your home at a certain temperature (lower than
| normal but not too lower) than to switch off completely
| heating and then when you get home boost to the wanted
| temperature.
| Vetch wrote:
| A smart system would learn your patterns and eventually be
| able to predict your arrival, setting a temperature that's
| further away from ambient and towards some target the more
| confident it is.
|
| Or a tad bit more risky, you could email it.
| jfim wrote:
| > I don't really understand the desire for having that network
| be internet-accessible.
|
| Some devices are more useful if they're internet accessible:
|
| - Thermostat: can start the AC/heating ahead of time if one
| comes back at irregular times, in order to come back to a house
| at the right temperature while saving energy away from home
|
| - Security system: can arm it away from home if someone forgot
| to arm it, can disarm it remotely if coming back with heavy
| packages
|
| - Security cameras: can monitor them remotely if needed
|
| - Garage door: can close it remotely if forgotten, can open it
| remotely so that it's fully open by the time one arrives at the
| door, can also integrate with Amazon delivery so that they can
| leave packages in the garage instead of on the porch
|
| - Lights and other devices: no more wondering "did I turn off
| the lights?"
|
| - Washer/dryer: I don't have one of those, but it would be nice
| to get phone notifications that the laundry is done and be able
| to check remotely how much time is left on the current cycle
| greggman3 wrote:
| I look at most of that in the opposite way
|
| > Security system: can arm it away from home if someone
| forgot to arm it, can disarm it remotely if coming back with
| heavy packages
|
| Someone finding a zero day can turn off my security system
|
| > Security cameras: can monitor them remotely if needed
|
| Someone hacking my system can spy on me and my family members
| naked or doing other NSFW things
|
| > Garage door
|
| Same as above, someone will hack it to open my garage
|
| > Lights and other devices:
|
| Increases the surface area massively for getting hacked.
|
| > Washer/dryer (same as previous item)
|
| Further, each one is a chance to be monitored by 3rd parties
| and/or charged a subscription.
| konschubert wrote:
| Just to pick one, i think there are many more likely
| threats to your home security system than a hacker with a
| zero day.
|
| In the end, it's about your personal threat model.
| alfor wrote:
| I imagine our home of the future with a microchip in all
| outlets, switch, circuit breaker, bulb, etc.
|
| Each breaker would know the current going through it and
| through all sockets and bulbs. They will be able to detect the
| bad connection, shut off the current and report the problem,
| saving a lot of electric fire.
|
| The wiring of the house will be massively reduced as they will
| be no need to go from switch to light. All lighting will be
| connected all the time, the switch will be wireless, will be
| just a faceplate that you stick where you want them. You will
| assign the switch to the light that you want, they will adjust
| with the time of day, etc.
|
| Some of the heavy energy use appliances will do peak shaving to
| reduce the cost of the electricity bill (already in place in
| some areas)
| jaclaz wrote:
| There are (since several years) "bus" electrical systems,
| simplified, there are five wires (live+neutral+earth+a two
| wire "bus" ) going everywhere.
|
| You can decide to mount in "box #1" a switch and (say) a
| socket, then you configure the switch in "box#1" to command
| light bulb #23 and the socket to be either always on or
| commanded by switch #18, etc..
|
| What you are proposing is essentially removing the two wire
| cable to go wireless.
|
| You need anyway the three mains cables (live+neutral+earth)
| to get everywhere and passing in the same pipe/tube the
| additional two wires cable is "no cost".
|
| NO practical advantages, but a whole new possible sets of
| malfunctioning and/or vulnerabilities.
|
| Apart from the added (and not-so-trivial) added cost of a
| "bus" system as compared to a traditional electric
| cabling(not that your dream solutions will be any cheaper),
| the existing solutions work, and work reliably, because by
| now they have existed and have been tested for many years,
| let's introduce a new wireless protocol and brand new
| microprocessors/terminal devices that offer no advantage...
| taneq wrote:
| Sounds great. None of those devices need to be talking to
| anything outside the home, though.
|
| Even peak shaving can be done by simply checking the AC
| supply voltage. If it's starting to sag, ease off some of the
| heavier appliances. If it's higher than expected, now's a
| good time to burn some extra power.
| alfor wrote:
| I agree, they don't really need the internet.
| oriolid wrote:
| KNX already does this without internet. The downside is
| that it's expensive and just as proprietary as the
| internet-connected smart gadgets.
| taneq wrote:
| Network connected devices are fine, but this thing where every
| object in your home is reliant on a persistent network
| connection to a remote server which it uses to funnel data back
| to the manufacturer? This needs to die.
|
| The push for evergreen, cloud-connected, as-a-service
| everything was never about meeting users' needs. It's just a
| cynical grab for recurring revenue and job security.
| nine_k wrote:
| Smart home is a useful thing.
|
| A cloud-connected, vendor-locked smart home is not such a smart
| move, to my mind, though.
|
| A LAN of things, with a VPN to my phone and laptop is something
| I'm considering. An always-on third-party listening device,
| like Echo, I would never consider.
| [deleted]
| balls187 wrote:
| It's a quote miss-attributed to Walt Whitman. Made very famous
| by Ted Lasso (in probably the greatest scene in television
| history).
| bmitc wrote:
| https://youtu.be/i_FofLSherM
|
| We're currently binge watching _Ted Lasso_ , and that scene
| really stung and stuck with me. I am someone who is often
| judgmental and contrarian, exacerbated by the Internet and
| many things in our society being not enjoyable, and it has
| masked the underlying humanity of curiosity that lies inside.
| It's hard, but focusing on what I can do to learn more about
| something and actually do things rather than critiquing some
| existing thing is a process I'm trying to implement. While
| being a critic is valid, too much of anything is not a good
| thing.
| jprete wrote:
| There are lots of applications for having home devices and
| appliances on the network. The typical user doesn't know much
| about security and tends to assume devices will do what they're
| supposed to, so it's not an obvious problem for those devices
| to be accessible by a cellphone app.
| weikju wrote:
| > I suppose I should instead be curious as to why anyone would
| be comfortable with such a system?
|
| My assumption, informed by a few anecdotes of people I know -
| people want to feel like they're living with modern amenities,
| or like they're in the future (Star Trek people talking to
| their computers, for example), and this is obviously aided by
| marketing.
|
| Remember when Apple referenced Dick Tracy when introducing the
| Apple Watch (or a subsequent model?), and how they had always
| wanted to have the same cool device? I suspect that this is a
| huge part of what drives the "smart" home.
| gerdesj wrote:
| "My instinct is to ridicule the entire concept of the smart
| home"
|
| Your choice. I'm an IT consultant and I try to run my home IT
| to the same standards as at work.
|
| I keep my IoT devices on a separate VLAN or two. I use Home
| Assistant as a mediator and I absolutely refuse the likes of
| Alexa. I'm pretty sure that my Kitchen telly is listening and
| it is surely loving Morecambe and Wise show's audio on an
| endless loop and quite quiet.
| oriolid wrote:
| I'm a former IT consultant, and I'd like to run my home
| network to the same standards as at work. I looked into it
| and came to the conclusion that dealing with a few timers is
| much less hassle than trying to do it with computers.
| alfor wrote:
| That has to be the funniest serious video
|
| The absurdity of our modern high tech lives in 2min
|
| It's not anyone's fault, it's an emergent property.
| dqv wrote:
| By the third time I was saying IT'S ENOUGH SLICES [0].
|
| In all seriousness, it's fine if that is the reset procedure,
| but I think they should provide some kind of reset socket tool
| where you can screw in the bulb and it will run the procedure
| for you. This way, it's always possible to do it manually, but
| also can be done more easily with the reset socket. It should
| be an inexpensive tool of course.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.tiktok.com/@theneedletok/video/69560346101741519...
| rgasiorek wrote:
| I think it's naive to think that we can stop being judgemental.
| It's like saying we can stop going to the loo or needing love. It
| is out nature and this is the nature of our neural-nets. Our
| neural-nets were trained, and then they 'classify' and 'trigger',
| the classification is the trigger which is the judgement. What we
| can do do is to be aware of the nature of our neural system, of
| the fact that as any other AI solution needs training data and is
| only as good as the data. As any other AI solution it can over-
| optimise or end up in a local optimum which makes us think so
| strongly about some subjects. Part of the video is spot - it's
| its title - yes being curious helps 'cleaning' the training data
| and helps having the trained data better balanced which in turn
| kicks your locally-optimised NN out of it's dip and allow to
| explore further. The most important part is to distinguish
| between being judgmental and acting upon judgment rather than
| reflecting on it first.
|
| This part is not naive -> we can and should control our actions,
| we do not control our thoughts as much as we like to think but we
| can choose how we react to them.
| chrismckleroy wrote:
| Also, PMs and engineers that don't actively use and love their
| product can be subject to laziness - finding the most simple
| passable direct solution and implementing that - just to go home
| at 4:20.
|
| Sure, yes, empathize don't judge, but also, let's acknowledge the
| human tendencies as non-owners to DGAF - especially in this
| current age of the worker questioning everything.
| omosubi wrote:
| Yeah what a terrible example. We can all strive to more curious
| but bad product design is bad product design. We shouldn't let
| people off the hook for that regardless of the engineering
| challenges that arise.
| nthngtshr wrote:
| Yeah, but how are you going to get likes on those tweets?
| lejohnq wrote:
| This reminded me of a clip from Ted Lasso with the same quote:
| https://youtu.be/5x0PzUoJS-U
|
| Nice to see this pop up here
| kstenerud wrote:
| What would be cool, although it would take enormous coordination
| and negotiation effort to do, would be to develop a universal
| reset code for lightbulbs.
|
| One idea would be to use the morse code encoding for "RRR", or
| ".-. .-. .-." (has a nice, memorable beat to it) with a minimum
| and maximum frequency such that it could be input at human or
| machine speed (say an allowed period between 50-500ms and a
| tolerance of 20% variation while inputting).
|
| Once you have a standardized way to encode "reset" using on-off
| (which is all we have available given the legacy system we use),
| the next-gen lamps and light switch panels could just incorporate
| this into a built-in reset switch that sends the full reset
| signal to any bulb that happens to be plugged in.
| mmaunder wrote:
| "...unless you're me."
| jmath wrote:
| y'all got it twisted
| ricardobeat wrote:
| This is good advice, but that design is still terrible.
|
| Take for example, IKEA Tradfri: if you use their dimmers, you
| don't ever need to reset the lamps. You just hold the dimmer and
| it's reset button close to the lamp.
|
| And if you use another system, you reset them by quickly
| switching them on and off six times. Takes under ten seconds.
| "It's complicated" is not a very good excuse for shitty design
| reaching end users.
| omosubi wrote:
| Not sure why you're getting down voted. People here complain
| that a website/app doesn't load quickly even if it's a few
| seconds regardless of the complexity. I'm not going to use the
| service if it has problems. I don't care about the "engineering
| challenges" unless it's moving needle dramatically.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Be curious, not judgmental
|
| Those two are not opposites. The opposite of curious is that you
| don't care. Most people don't care about things like the factory
| reset procedure for lamps. A judgemental person cares or they
| wouldn't spend energy judging, and in fact one of the best way to
| sate your curiosity is to be very judgemental online since people
| will write comments, blogs or articles like this and explain
| things to you when you do.
| Msw242 wrote:
| Why can't the button be on the bulb? It's not vacuumed glass
| sgallant wrote:
| There is so much wisdom in the title of this post (a quote by
| Walt Whitman) and it applies to so many situations in life. Happy
| to see it used as the title to this post (and on the homepage of
| HN :)
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| I believe it's misattributed.
|
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/be-curious-not-judgmental-...
| https://ace.nd.edu/news/be-curious-not-judgmental-not-walt-w...
| deft wrote:
| Not directly about a lightbulb, but I've learned that when you
| see something and think "why is it this way, that's stupid" its
| usually not. People don't make things "stupid" for no reason.
| dexterdog wrote:
| Somebody hasn't seen the yoke.
| ozy wrote:
| FYI: Little kids unpair ikea lamps with ease if there is still a
| physical switch.
| [deleted]
| CraftingLinks wrote:
| Excuses...
| mooreds wrote:
| Always good advice. When I see something I don't understand that
| seems off or weird, one way I avoid judgement is to ask the five
| whys to myself.
|
| It is also good to recognize that most everyone is doing the best
| they can, and if you ship a light with a weird way to reset it,
| there were probably (as the author suggests) constraints that you
| don't know about.
|
| What if you're wrong and they wanted to inflict anguish on their
| users? Well, the market is pretty good about fixing those
| problems, at least with commodities like lights.
| Jiro wrote:
| >What if you're wrong and they wanted to inflict anguish on
| their users? Well, the market is pretty good about fixing those
| problems, at least with commodities like lights.
|
| The problem with this idea is that consumer-unfriendly things
| can make more money for the manufacturers than consumer-
| friendly things--not because the consumers want to pay for
| them, but because it lets the companies make money in other
| ways (typically advertising, monetizing consumer data, or using
| consumer bandwidth) that are dangerous in ways that are hard
| for consumers to understand. The consumers will end up worse
| even by their own standards (they'll understand the dangers
| _after_ they happen to them, they just won 't understand them
| in advance or connect them to the poor design).
|
| The market assumes perfect consumer knowledge. Most people here
| know the dangers of the Internet of Things, but the average
| person doesn't. And _just_ HN geeks are not enough to support a
| market, so you only get to buy the same things that the average
| consumer can buy. (Go ahead, try to find a non-smart TV.)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> When I see something I don 't understand that seems off or
| weird, one way I avoid judgement is to ask the five whys to
| myself._
|
| There's an awesome (and odd) book, called " _Outside Lies
| Magic_ ,"[0] that explores many of these types of things in
| everyday life.
|
| [0] https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/john-r-
| stilgoe/ou...
| chaostheory wrote:
| > "we can't put it on the glass"
|
| LED lightbulbs are typically housed in plastic. You easily
| integrate a plastic button into plastic housing.
| DantesKite wrote:
| I liked how they picked the worst possible example to illustrate
| their point lol.
| cupcake-unicorn wrote:
| While I agree with the general sentiment when it comes to
| individual interactions, I think it's kind of naive to put this
| much trust into corporations in a capitalist system.
|
| Should we have been curious about the development of MCAS at
| Boeing? Or the Volkswagen emissions scandal? And it's very common
| that have companies that have actuaries that spend money
| determining the amount of money they'd have to pay out in
| lawsuits for lethal design flaws in their products vs recalls.
|
| The point is that big companies have such vastly, mindbogglingly
| different systems behind them, so yes that much is true, that
| most likely there was a "reason" it was done this way, like there
| was a "reason" the Volkswagen emission scandal happened and the
| departments were mixed up in such a way so no one could point to
| any one person. But that reason sure isn't about the customers,
| it's about their corporation.
|
| By all means though, curiosity is great to cultivate in
| INDIVIDUAL interactions where it's a human interaction and not
| motivated by profit/transactional. Why give companies this
| benefit of the doubt? In my opinion the onus should be on them to
| prove to consumers that they're not just profit based and that
| they care about customer service and transparency.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| Good question. Should we apply this axiom (and resulting
| benefit of the doubt) to power structures / organizations? One
| way to look at it is: which approach is more likely to lead to
| a better understanding of the problem and thus the solutions?
|
| If we are curious, we can ask questions like: what are the root
| cause incentive structures that led to anti-social actions?
| and: What systematic adjustments can we make that
| disincentivize such actions in the future? I think that these
| questions lead to a more broad perspective on how to address
| problems. Where a judgemental approach narrows the possible
| solutions and opens us up to the cure being more deadly than
| the disease.
| grover35 wrote:
| ketzo wrote:
| I'm taking a little of my holiday break to try and apply this to
| cryptocurrencies and blockchain stuff.
|
| Horrible, terrible, tragic, I know. But if I feel like I'm going
| to be ridiculing this stuff on a fairly regular basis, then I
| should at least know what the fuck I'm talking about, right?
|
| I mean, what number of HN commenters who dismiss crypto out of
| hand have literally never made an effort to _be curious_ about
| the guts of it all? Probably a pretty sizeable majority, if I had
| to guess - myself included.
| psyc wrote:
| I think I have a general policy of withholding judgement until
| I've researched a thing, with as little prejudice as I can
| manage. But if I spend a lot of time researching a thing, and
| _still_ reach the conclusion that it 's stupid, and everybody
| buying it is stupid, then woe unto that thing (in internet
| comment threads).
| ketzo wrote:
| Yeah, I'm with you. I just feel like a lot of my "research"
| so far - crypto-wise - has mostly just been people talking
| about it, instead of me making an actual effort to understand
| any of it myself. So now I gotta go do that.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| The technology is actually not that hard to understand, at
| least at a high level, it's getting through the "people
| talking about it" down to what is actually being done with
| the technology and why it needs to be a "distributed
| ledger". Often it doesn't and understanding that disconnect
| seems to often be the hard part.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > I mean, what number of HN commenters who dismiss crypto out
| of hand have literally never made an effort to be curious about
| the guts of it all?
|
| I think most people on HN don't dismiss the "guts of it". I
| don't think blockchain is technically deficient, though proof
| of work is an ecological disaster, and I don't think most other
| people do either.
|
| But it seems to be a technology in search of a problem; the
| problems blockchain/crypto answer are often things like
| enabling Ponzi schemes, money laundering, ransomware and,
| rarely, currency in despotic regimes.
|
| Whenever we ask crypto supporters WHY blockchain?, WHY NFTs?,
| WHY so many ICOs?, isn't this a ponzi scheme?, the answer is
| some form of "you don't understand" or "good luck, stay poor".
| Vetch wrote:
| One start on this question is with another question: What
| advantage does Nakamoto consensus have over typical Practical
| Byzantine Fault Tolerance? It, surprisingly enough, scales
| better and is also open with permisionless participation.
| It's inefficient but a big part of that is because it's both
| open and seeks consensus with essentially no subjectivity.
|
| The combination of these features: a distributed, open,
| permissionless, minimal subjectivity, practical double spend
| immunity, and malicious actor or sybil resistance log of
| transactions, are what make it as it is and difficult to
| improve upon without weakening one of those aspects. To
| answer your why questions would be to defend those
| properties.
|
| My experience is people from oppressed corruption filled
| countries tend to be sympathetic of those properties and
| those from wealthy stable countries tend to think them not
| worth the cost. It probably can't be used as a global
| currency but can (in theory) be there for scenarios where
| trust and subjectivity tolerance are minimal.
|
| > isn't this a ponzi scheme
|
| I would say no, it's more like a speculative bubble and
| casino that breeds pump and dump schemes. If most
| participants are uninformed then it's a scam, if most are
| informed it's senseless gambling. There are some legit uses
| such as funding civil disobedience or hedging against serious
| inflation in countries with constrained access to dollars
| (this usecase is why it fails to be a ponzi scheme, you don't
| want value to increase, stability is preferred).
| lysecret wrote:
| I like this way of putting it. For me I have seen it more as
| being understanding compared to judgmental. But I understand how
| you would put it as curious ;)
| r3n wrote:
| Dose anyone has good advices to change this kind of mindset ?
|
| It is hard for me to not be judgmental about stuff I disagree,
| and I can tell this attitude is causing more trouble than I would
| like in many different area of my life.
| biql wrote:
| Remembering when I was wrong about something I felt strongly
| about in the past can be a good reminder to suspend harsh
| judgment.
| grasshopperpurp wrote:
| The replies to this are very good. I'd just add that - like
| anything - it takes practice. You have to train your mind to
| work this way, and you need to continue to do so. So, don't
| judge yourself too harshly when it doesn't come easy. Recognize
| it and continue to practice.
| dools wrote:
| Start with questions, even when you know the answer, and
| listen.
|
| Then follow up with a question.
|
| And repeat this without offering any opinions.
|
| Just practice that.
| Skunkleton wrote:
| Try looking up "Beginners Mind". It's a concept from Zen
| Buddhism.
| sorokod wrote:
| "In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, in the
| expert's mind there are few."
| petargyurov wrote:
| I can strongly recommend the book "The Scout Mindset" by Julia
| Galef.
|
| It's not only an excellent discussion/lesson on exactly this,
| it's also an incredibly well written book.
| rdli wrote:
| In improv, there's an exercise where you say "yes and". This
| language construct helps you build on what someone else is
| saying.
|
| (Because in improv, if you object to something, you can just
| stop the show.)
|
| It works really well in a professional setting, too. Try it!
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I learned about Buddhism and the concept of lovingkindness and
| that really helped. I read a short book on Buddhism.
|
| But also finding people who can engage with those they disagree
| with without resorting to mean behavior and listening to them
| is probably a good tactic. One person I can think of is Beau of
| the Fifth Column on YouTube who basically explains a left
| leaning political position to conservatives and centrists in
| short videos every day. He's totally non judgmental and I have
| found it useful to just listen to the way he describes things.
| He explains topics that are often divisive without any
| condescension, which I think is a rare trait in political
| discussion.
|
| EDIT: Forgot to include the obvious, but therapy. I had all
| manner of rough edges and I'm still finding tricky situations
| that my therapist has been helping me with for years. Keep in
| mind that if you learn to become less judgmental you will have
| better relationships all around. Better friendships, work
| relationships and love. My career is much better today because
| I matured, in a large part through therapy, and can manage
| complex and difficult discussions with my business partner
| without upsetting anyone. These changes benefit you and those
| around you and lead to more harmony and happiness. And you
| deserve that!
| wccrawford wrote:
| It's really hard, and the author falls into their own trap.
| They're being "judgmental" about the people who are being
| judgmental. And here I am doing it, too.
|
| Instead of worrying about "curious" vs "judgmental", I would
| instead ask: Who am I helping with this statement?
|
| The author is attempting to help people be more helpful to
| other people. Clearly you heard them, and it has inspired you
| to be a better person. Unfortunately, they didn't provide you
| actionable advice. I'm hoping my suggestion above is better for
| people.
|
| I use it myself sometimes when responding online. When I first
| started asking it (or things like it, focusing on the wellbeing
| of others), I deleted a _lot_ of comments. They simply weren 't
| actually helpful overall.
|
| Another way to look at it: "Am I going to ruin someone's mood
| with this?" If you are, can you provide the information in a
| way that doesn't, or at least softens the blow, if they really
| need to hear it?
|
| I don't enjoy making people unhappy, so it wasn't hard to start
| concentrating on that first instead of last, and improving all
| the help I was trying to give. I'm sure I have a long way to
| go, but I feel like I do better than I used to.
| wruza wrote:
| Another deleter-a-lot is "Why do _I_ need this fight?".
| Fnoord wrote:
| With our toddlers we ask ourselves: 'is this the hill you
| want to die on?' It makes us less judgemental, more
| curious, more listening, and more self reflective. I
| believe that is also what 'please listen to what I have to
| say' means (tho its too often shortened to shouting
| 'Listen!' which works less well. But we all lack one
| important currency these days: time. Spending your time on
| someone is therefore an invaluable investment. Who other
| than your children deserve it more?
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| there is a logical fallacy (not just in the title). It ignores
| that curiosity will always result in a judgement, and even it's
| a "positive judgement". If only we stick around long enough
| we'll need to tear down our original belief (only way to avoid
| it is not to grow). Being loud (judgemental) makes us look like
| we have done the leg work (of curiosity). But curiosity is a
| lot of work and it's easier to get reward by simply looking
| competent (judging loudly). Exploiting this is easy because
| it's hard to tell if a stranger has actually put in the legwork
| and earned their "right" to judgement. And it's also easy to
| dismiss judgement as _" Don't judge just be curious"_, when in
| reality, staying curious is impossible once you have a full
| grasp over a specific topic. (being curious here would mean
| move on to new things to be curious about).
|
| I'm probably overthinking it. Last weeks I was working on
| designing an IIoT device (EV charging point) where the customer
| insists on using the outdated protocol, and not spend the money
| or time to bother with security. Hardware constraints will rule
| out there is a future in which this device will be secure (or
| maintainable). So when I read this:
|
| > By being curious, not judgmental, we can start to understand
| these peculiar things around us. Only by understanding, we
| might even find a way to make them better.
|
| It drives me up the wall. Almost impossible for me not to
| immediately judge and ridicule them, for sloppy thinking, but
| also for forgetting that a system/idea will only get better by
| stressing it. And it would be a shame if somebody destroyed
| their echo chambers, or took a dump in their "safe-space".
| Perhaps I'd understand the situation a bit better (have
| empathy) if the people being attacked and ridiculed were unpaid
| tinkerers or engineers (e.g. FOSS). But a big company like GE?
| And especially a topic like IoT - I don't think so.
| paradite wrote:
| Give it five minutes. My all time favorite advice on exactly
| how to do that.
|
| https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3124-give-it-five-minutes
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Dose anyone has good advices to change this kind of mindset ?
|
| The only way you can not be judgmental is by being dead or
| unconscious. Living is about making judgments about everything,
| all the time (and most of them become habits at some point).
| Nihilartikel wrote:
| A person may not be able to suppress spontaneous judgement,
| but one can observe the process and reflect on the reasoning,
| incentive, and emotions that go into it afterwards. Then you
| can decide if you mind _should_ be made up, or if it might be
| better to put more effort into a higher order of
| understanding.
| telesilla wrote:
| I use self-reflection and internal dialog when I notice I'm
| feeling judgemental, to drill down to what has created the
| discomfort. Once you understand your own reactions it's much
| easier to talk with others. I'm not always aware until later
| but it works then too as a retrospective. Most people are open
| to walking through their beliefs with you as long as they feel
| safe from risk of attack. Apply the same kindness to yourself.
| pronik wrote:
| Assume you are wrong until proven otherwise. There are really
| quite a lot of constraints you are at most times not qualified
| to reason about. Small example: I was working on implementing
| accessibility for a government website and was rather baffled
| at the requirement to provide sign language videos providing
| basic explanations. I had assumed we'd need to provide
| augmenting accesibility, i.e. text-to-speech for the blind. In
| my mind, if a person can see, they can also read. Turns out:
| no, not the case. Sign language is a separate language and
| you'd be learning your locally dominant language as a first
| foreign language, so depending on the community you grow up
| with, you may as well lack basic literacy in that language.
| Therefore, sign language videos are more akin to offering the
| website in different languages that assistive technology. After
| that incident, I've learned to assume there is always something
| I don't know which explains the things I find weird.
| icu wrote:
| Besides living long enough to witness mistakes that took a
| decade or longer to play out, what I do is use the cognitive
| bias codex by designhacks.co.
|
| My heuristic is:
|
| Is the subject matter important?
|
| If yes, is the cost of being wrong high?
|
| If yes, am I displaying any signs of cognitive bias? (Consult
| the cognitive bias codex)
|
| If yes, how do I mitigate the bias?
|
| Once done, has my outlook changed?
|
| What action should I take?
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| This is close to Sociocracy's "Is it good enough for now and
| safe enough to try?"
| codeptualize wrote:
| What works for me is to assume there is always an explanation,
| then go look for it.
|
| Could be anything from an actual good reason to do it this way,
| or some other factors like cost, or maybe even just lack of
| time, or the best of multiple bad options.
|
| Postpone judgement until you have a good understanding. You
| could still come to the same conclusion but it will likely be
| much more nuanced.
|
| Basically empathize with whoever build it or was involved.
|
| Also design/build stuff yourself, do user testing and get
| feedback; it's humbling haha.
| jrs235 wrote:
| Like Chesterton's fence [0].
|
| I get annoyed when other younger/new hires come in and just
| start bashing and saying how stupid this is that is/was and
| that the person that did it was dumb or an idiot or
| incompetent without them first learning the history, context,
| and environment the decision(s) were made in. And they're
| typically not wrong. If the decision(s) were made today, I
| typically agree 100% with them.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Chesterton%27s_fence#:~:
| tex....
| jrs235 wrote:
| *they're usually not wrong about how stupid the current
| situation is, but they're wrong that someone is stupid,
| dumb, or incompetent. Hindsight is 20/20 and historical
| context is important.
| mfav wrote:
| Plus, the QA team probably felt this a lot more then end users,
| testing this reset procedure thousands of times.
|
| The product team had probably received this feedback long before
| the Internet spoke. And, ultimately, found a 40-second factory
| reset procedure is not that big of a deal.
|
| Totally agree with this sentiment. It's easy to criticize on the
| Internet and receive positive feedback for that. But,
| constructive replies are often the most clever & interesting
| ones. Great post, Shu!
| mwattsun wrote:
| _There is a principle which is a bar against all information,
| which is proof against all argument and which cannot fail to keep
| a man in everlasting ignorance. This principle is contempt prior
| to examination_ -- Herbert Spencer, 19th century English
| philosopher, scientist, and theologian
|
| I've been attempting to train myself to be more open minded. For
| example, I have been skeptical of functional programming because
| my assumption was that it was an academic thing for those that
| didn't have to live in the real world of state and mutability. I
| thought it had to be less efficient.
|
| Some investigation proved me wrong. Russ Olsen set me straight:
|
| Functional Programming in 40 Minutes * Russ Olsen * GOTO 2018
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0if71HOyVjY
|
| We don't have to copy a million element immutable array to change
| one element. We copy a section of it and keep the rest in a tree
| structure of changes (this happens under the covers). Secondly,
| manipulating the stateful world is easier to understand if we
| isolate those actions in Atoms and Actors.
|
| Now I see the beauty of it so I'm glad I investigated.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| I was very puzzled by your argument until I skimmed the video.
| You are associating functional programming with avoiding side
| effects. That's a very Haskell-ish view of things but that's
| not the heart of it.
|
| The key idea of functional programming is that it's easier to
| think of program as a composition of functions rather than as a
| list of statements and therefore functions should be first
| class values. That used to be controversial but frankly the
| idea won. We have seen lambdas go mainstream in most major
| languages and programming is more and more functional by the
| day.
| mwattsun wrote:
| Right, I understand where I wasn't clear. You're right, that
| idea has won and gone mainstream so I didn't think it was
| worth mentioning. I was emphasizing that I thought immutable
| data structures were inefficient and that it was the luxury
| of academics to abstract away stateful changes in the name of
| purity.
|
| I've got a couple of other ideas that I need to do more
| research on (I'm watching Erik Meijer videos today)
|
| 1) Class objects with methods and data are like small
| programs, so I don't get why people go on and on about having
| data structures with functions as being superior to class
| objects, which are essentially data structures with
| associated functions.
|
| 2) Similarly, Joe Armstrong seems to hate object oriented
| programming but Erlang instances are essentially class
| objects, albeit running in their own process so they have
| more isolation
|
| 3) From reading Erik Meijer's Confessions of a Used
| Programming Language Salesman, I'm assuming that Async/Await
| that he help put in C# and Dart are his attempt to bring
| Haskell continuation monads to the imperative world
|
| 4) I'm assuming Clojure Atoms and Actors are like Haskell
| monads but don't know that. I watched Brian Beckman: Don't
| fear the Monad (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhuHCtR3xq8)
| but couldn't make heads or tails of it. Something about
| functions calling first order functions and pure first order
| effects with stateful second order effects, or something...
| That was a few years ago so I will give it another chance.
|
| I'm probably wrong about these ideas but they're fun to think
| about and give me something to learn
| mwattsun wrote:
| In this talk Erik Meijer surprised me by saying functional
| programming is not about immutability (at the end) which is
| talked about a lot by functional programmers and then refers
| to his paper, which lays out his thoughts in greater detail:
|
| The Curse of the Excluded Middle: "Mostly functional"
| programming does not work by Erik Meijer
|
| https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2611829
| aaron695 wrote:
| > Why not add a factory reset button?
|
| If you don't say dumb things in life out loud, you won't move
| forward. You'll just continue to think dumb things.
|
| > I'm saying that we don't know enough about the constraints to
| say there's a better solution.
|
| This is pride in ignorance. There's no reason why you can't.
| Light bulb engineers, rocket scientists and doctors are just
| human beings.
|
| OK I'm curious.
|
| Why was it like that? If you don't judge it how can you
| understand it? What framework should be used?
|
| Don't be judgemental without being curious, I think is a better
| line.
| borski wrote:
| Sure, but this isn't such a unique problem. Hue handles all of
| these reset scenarios with much more grace, as an example:
| https://www.trustedreviews.com/how-to/how-to-reset-philips-h...
| dvt wrote:
| This article, the Twitter critics, and the overall lesson learned
| reminds me of this quote, one of my favorites:
|
| "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how
| the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have
| done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually
| in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
| who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,
| because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who
| does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great
| enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy
| cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high
| achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails
| while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those
| cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." -
| Theodore Roosevelt
| trabant00 wrote:
| I like this quote and have used myself several times. The devil
| is in the details though. "who spends himself in a worthy
| cause". IoT is far from a worthy cause, it's a desperate
| attempt to sell more stuff. Or let me go to the internet's
| favorite argument: Hitler also did deeds and could have
| certainly done them better. Are we not allowed to be
| judgemental?
| zachlatta wrote:
| I love how I can have lots of floor lighting that's easily
| controlled with IoT bulbs and power switches.
|
| It solves a real problem for me, and I think many others too!
| BoysenberryPi wrote:
| > Are we not allowed to be judgemental?
|
| I am far from innocent here but I'm gonna say no. You are
| saying IoT is far from a worthy cause. Really? Is it not
| worthy that my aging grandparents can open the door from
| their bed and not have to go downstairs, turn on their lights
| in the dead of night from their phone so they don't have to
| risk stumbling and falling when reaching for the light
| switch, or even just more accurate track their health? I
| think those are all pretty worthy causes.
| selfhifive wrote:
| I don't know if that's a great use case. My experience with
| old people says that they (mostly) hate tech and cannot
| operate it without someone else.
|
| Also with old people you'd want the tech to be familiar to
| them so that you don't have to video call them to show them
| how to reset the WiFi.
|
| And if you're talking about old people who cannot even walk
| without stumbling their memory would be so far gone that
| they'd forget how to operate half the devices half the
| time.
|
| Maybe it would be more helpful to future old people such as
| ourselves, but I think simpler, robust, and familiar tech
| is better for old people.
|
| Just another perspective.
| trabant00 wrote:
| Excuse me, but a an analog electrical switch to open the
| front door remotely works just fine. If you must insist on
| a digital one, OK, though I fail to see why you would
| complicate things. An internet connected one though: just
| NO.
| nine_k wrote:
| Consumer IoT is often a gimmick. In industry and
| agriculture it's much more worthy but less visible to lay
| people.
| suifbwish wrote:
| The problem with IoT is that people in other countries can
| also theoretically open the door and turn on the lights
| from THEIR phone if the grandparents don't keep everything
| updated.
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| Anecdotal but Yeelight smart bulbs in my home require 5 turn offs
| and ons to reset with 2 sec pauses after every press. I reckon
| the GE bulbs don't actually require 8 sec pauses and it's just
| suggested to ensure users cross a certain threshold at all times
| when they are really trying to reset.
| selfhifive wrote:
| But the whole point of curiosity is to find out more about
| something in order to form a judgement. We just need to be
| willing to change judgements when shown the constraints. In a
| way, asking people to be non judgemental kills curiosity.
|
| I'd quote Marc Andreessen: "Strong opinions; weakly held."
| trabant00 wrote:
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