[HN Gopher] Nobody cares
___________________________________________________________________
Nobody cares
Author : fzliu
Score : 898 points
Date : 2025-01-15 04:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (grantslatton.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (grantslatton.com)
| theamk wrote:
| The sad part, the "do not care" attitude is infectious. Maybe
| there is a bright-eyed programmer who just joined and who wants
| to make UX better.
|
| They are full of enthusiasm, but nobody (around them) cares.
|
| They are fixing the most annoying bugs that users complained
| forever about.. but they is not recognized, because nobody
| (around them) cares.
|
| They hope to show a good example but nobody cares. Instead they
| get negative feedback when instead of blindly implementing
| horribly-designed feature, they are trying to fix it so it won't
| be so user-hostile.
|
| Eventually they give up and stop caring. When asked what they
| like about the job, their answer is "stability" and "job
| security".
| mulnz wrote:
| These people show up, offer trivially incorrect or untenable
| solutions to the trickiest problems. Rarely do they have the
| insight that fixes them. Often they do things that introduce
| more risk.
| spencerflem wrote:
| That's one possibility -
|
| Here's a story of the burnout of one of the GNOME terminal
| maintainers
|
| https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vte/-/issues/259
|
| In a situation where no amount of effort seems to be enough
| its really easy to not see the point anymore
| theamk wrote:
| Not all problems are tricky, there are plenty of easy-to-fix
| bugs that go unfixed.
|
| For example, there is an internal product that I use daily
| that has broken http links in error/status messages.
| PoppinFreshDo wrote:
| I think this is just the flip side of disengaged workers and
| managers.
|
| https://www.gallup.com/workplace/654911/employee-engagement-...
|
| To _care_ is to be _engaged_.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Why should someone working at big tech care? Their mission is ,
| generally , to 'capture value' from elsewhere and in the process
| make the world worse. Hard mission to get behind.
|
| And why should a 7/11 worker care? Their employer doesn't care
| about them. Minimum wage / minimum effort and all that.
|
| And Elon Musk as the sole positive example is so lame.
|
| All this bothers me because despite everything I _do_ still care.
| But finding a way to express that is so hard. And after a while
| of it not mattering its hard to justify. And finding somewhere
| where your work actually matters seems impossible when we 're
| funding everything except what's important
| afinlayson wrote:
| Agreed about Musk. Elon Musk as an example of caring, is
| ignorant of his actions vs his narrative. Example him saying he
| says he's the best diablo player in the world, vs seeing him
| play poorly.
|
| We live in a world full of people doing good who don't do it
| for the "player 1 energy"
| kmoser wrote:
| > And why should a 7/11 worker care? Their employer doesn't
| care about them. Minimum wage / minimum effort and all that.
|
| Because their actions affect the customers they interact with,
| who have no direct bearing on their jobs or salaries. To make
| your customers suffer because you're angry at your boss is
| misdirected at best, and selfish at worst.
| spencerflem wrote:
| No that's true- I totally believe that everything is
| connected, that by putting good energy into the world you
| make other people's lives better and in return feel good
| about yourself and inspire others to do good as well.
|
| There's a certain amount of lack of agency and connection
| that the modern worlds taken from us though. A McD's employee
| doesn't see the same customer twice. They're thoroughly
| disconnected from whether the company makes record profits or
| not. They are not empowered to change things. And management
| is often putting out bad energy.
|
| The incentives are such that caring is more effort than not
| and doesn't accomplish much other than appealing to internal
| pride. If that gets grinded down its over.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| it's a chain of broken windows. Their employers should care
| about making sure the primary interface with business cares.
| But they don't. So it goes down the chain until we simply say
| "7/11 is a sad place to be"
| mulnz wrote:
| This is a bullshit take considering the amount of pressure put on
| the average worker and their family in the US.
|
| And in software youre going to have to close a ticket or two that
| piss you off. You want to chase bugs into the sunset and never
| deliver new features? Cool, see you in Japan bro.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > the amount of pressure put on the average worker and their
| family in the US.
|
| Broken windows. To use his example with bikes: the firms didn't
| care enough to allow the engineer to properly angle that
| entrance to the sidewalk. The engineer didn't care to push back
| because they were underpaid and things are getting more
| expensive at home. Things get more expensive because landlords
| are taking advantadge of the situation to jack up prices,
| because no regulation cared enough to stop that (or worse,
| regulation cared about money more and landlords "donated" to
| him to sway their ruling).
|
| This apathy is a virus that spreads. At some point it becomes
| hard to figure out where it started. It's just this fog that
| seemingly always existed.
|
| >You want to chase bugs into the sunset and never deliver new
| features?
|
| I don't get paid to deliver features. If that bug is really
| critical enough I may push back on it.
|
| Or I simply realize it's above my paygrade, don't care, leave a
| paper trail down the line for when they inevitably blame me,
| and do what I'm told like a proper worker.
| russsaidwords wrote:
| Don't let the bastards grind you down.
| jfengel wrote:
| Too late. Too many bastards. Too much grinding.
| medhir wrote:
| I relate to this a lot. Someone is referring to this take as
| "bullshit" contrasting the experience of the average worker to a
| software engineer.
|
| I'd argue the average worker is in the position they're in
| because of a whole chain of people that couldn't be bothered to
| care.
|
| Our government has let go of its principles, because no one in
| charge could be bothered to give a fuck. There's a certain
| nihilism to life in the US in 2025 that has been enabled entirely
| by people not speaking up.
|
| I'm myself guilty of staying on the sidelines. Starting to
| realize that perhaps I need to be louder, because no one else is
| speaking up and that "giving a fuck" is something that must be
| led by example.
| paulcole wrote:
| > I'd argue the average worker is in the position they're in
| because of a whole chain of people that couldn't be bothered to
| care.
|
| This is a lame excuse. My caring is a choice I make. I can
| choose to care whether you care or not. I make the choice for
| myself.
| lazide wrote:
| Just wait until you try to speak up and get destroyed. Why do
| you think folks don't speak up?
| medhir wrote:
| so... the fear of speaking up should lead to staying silent?
| what exactly are you advocating for here
| lazide wrote:
| I'm not advocating for anything. I'm pointing out the cause
| of the effect you're noting.
|
| Concretely, I suspect it's a side effect of 'how dare they'
| type political attacks and increasing balkanization. What a
| lot of folks would call 'California style politics'.
|
| Short of everyone taking a step back and actually
| evaluating what they want/need as people and having a
| productive conversation about it and a useful compromise
| (hah!), I imagine we'll just end up with a 'strong man' who
| can do all the 'bad things' necessary to pull everyone
| together into a consistent direction despite whatever hate
| might be thrown in their direction.
|
| Though typically that is just what someone pretends to be
| so they can loot everything... at least unless people are
| really careful to look at the persons track record of
| outcomes instead of what they are saying right now. And
| since everyone will be all angry and pissed off while this
| happens, lots of room for various bullshit to happen,
| 'others' to be made and punished, etc, etc.
|
| Oh wait....
|
| And yes I know this is a symptom of the problem, but I've
| also literally had enough of my life destroyed trying to
| discuss elements of this already to not do anything else.
| Murder anyone trying to be a hero, and what else is going
| to happen? You'll either have villains, dead bodies, or
| cowards.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| It's human nature. You don't put your hand into a fire
| because early in your childhood, you learned the
| consequences of those actions.
|
| >what exactly are you advocating for here
|
| Nothing really. Bad people do bad things to keep good
| people down. figure out how to prevent that.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Our government has let go of its principles, because no one in
| charge could be bothered to give a fuck.
|
| Oh they care... about money. We're being sold out but keep re-
| electing the same perpetrators simply because "it's better than
| the other person".
|
| Meanwhile a third of our country is a mix of "not caring" or
| legitmately unable to keep dates in mind and find a poll booth
| to vote. Who knows how things would change if voting was
| compulsory, as was receiving a ballot in the mail.
| astroalex wrote:
| > Have been to the DMV? It sucked? There is a human being whose
| job it is to be in charge of the DMV. They do not care that it
| sucks.
|
| Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've actually never had a bad
| experience at the DMV here in Seattle. The staff have been
| efficient, fast, and friendly every time.
| OJFord wrote:
| Maybe I'm just not American, but I've never had to go at all,
| it's just a bizarre TV/movie thing.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think I have dealt with such organization thrice in my
| life. 3 driving tests. And on all times it was as pleasant
| experience as possible.
|
| Only complaint I really have with that system is them caring
| too much. Why does my car need "type certificate" sticker...
| It is all online and tied to VIN... Replacement cost like
| 200EUR and then tens more for showing them paperwork new one
| was ordered...
| p1necone wrote:
| The idea that the DMV is a particularly awful experience does
| seem like something that would be especially susceptible to
| selection bias. Why would anyone ever announce "I went to the
| DMV today and it was fine"?
| spencerflem wrote:
| My experience has been that it sucks but not as bad as
| private customer service.
|
| Getting a refund from UHaul was fifteen hours of pulling
| teeth. DMV was a 45 minute wait.
|
| Worse in Texas where they dont fund it ofc.
| thayne wrote:
| Well, now that it is a meme, and the DMVs where I live is
| actually very effient, I've actually heard multiple people
| say "I went to the DMV, and actually it was fine"
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| The service is fine. The lines and waits are horrendous and a
| DMV never seems to have the seating room for that. So you
| spend an hour before you even get in the door like you're
| waiting for a new iPhone or something.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| DMV in Virginia has been efficient and relatively painless in
| my experience.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| I've had experiences with the DMV in three US states, and in
| two out of the three it was highly efficient and worked great.
| In one of them it was mediocre to unpleasant, but nothing to
| write home about.
|
| I suspect the DMVs in LA and NYC are particularly bad and
| that's why it's a cultural meme.
| zonkerdonker wrote:
| I've had wonderful experiences at DOL offices (which are 3rd
| party contracted), not so much at the DMV. Which one are you
| going to? Honestly worth a drive (or bus ride, depending on the
| issue) to go to a a decent one
| Over2Chars wrote:
| Ironically, we may look with fond memories of the days when an
| actual human being handled our DMV paperwork.
|
| An AI chatbot with an unblinking stare and frozen smile is
| likely to be your new DMV virtual assistant!
| mikewarot wrote:
| Indiana's BMV used to be the Kafkaesque when I went with my mom
| in the 1970s. She waited in a huge line only to find out it was
| the wrong line...waited again to find she didn't have a certain
| document and had go home to get it.
|
| About 20 years ago the would check to see if you had everything
| right as you came in.
|
| Now it's almost magical how fast friendly and efficient they've
| become for the few times you actually have to visit. Most
| transactions are online or via mail.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Most complaints I hear about the DMV are just about long lines.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| I find the piling on of the DMV to really be a cheap shot. In a
| sense it made the entire rant seem like another example of
| someone not caring.
| daveoc64 wrote:
| Why do people in the US need to go to the DMV at all?
|
| Here in the UK, pretty much any interaction with our equivalent
| (DVLA - Driver and Vehicle Licensing) can be done online or by
| phone.
|
| If you want/need to apply in-person for a licence or to pay
| vehicle tax, you can do it at many post offices.
|
| I guess it is a centralised system, while the DMV is per-state.
| simanyay wrote:
| Same. Getting a drivers license and car plates in Seattle was a
| _fantastic_ experience. Start with a simple, fast web app.
| Finish with a 10 minute start-to-end in person appointment.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Or I guess, put another way, IMO this is about Apathy. The
| feeling where doing things or not doing them, what's it matter
| anyways.
|
| I think, a lot of the apocalyptic sentiment lately has a lot to
| do with it. Climate change is already ruining things and will
| only get worse and also has started getting worse faster.
| Politically, economically, things are pretty hopeless. What use
| is picking up trash or wearing a nice shirt in the face of all of
| this. What are we building towards, and does anything I do mean
| anything
| monkeycantype wrote:
| Nah, I moved from a big city where people are feeling squashed by
| the pressure, to a small town, where people feel a bit more
| relaxed, and I am constantly surprised by how much of a shit
| people give. I'm not advocating for small towns here, I like the
| city, I'm advocating for making a society where we act like
| people matter and stop calling anyone who doesn't want to kick
| everyone in the teeth to get ahead a communist, and stop calling
| people who do inspiring visionaries
| hattmall wrote:
| I've lived in most every manner of setting the US has to offer.
| The best by far is the micro-urban settings. Where as opposed
| to a small town with strip malls and neighborhoods, there is
| high density around an urban center that pretty much
| immediately transitions to rural. That way you can still have
| walkability and the mix of bars / restaurants / activities that
| urban settings inspire without all the overhead of actual large
| cities. Even when I lived in large cities I spent most of my
| time in just a few blocks. So a few blocks of city and then all
| the recreational activities of rural areas is pretty great.
|
| There's still issues with people not caring, but it seems like
| those are more so outliers than anywhere near the norm and it's
| a lot more expedient to get in contact with someone that does
| care and can take actionable measures where there is a problem.
|
| Just as an example there was a water leak from the municipal
| system in the right of way in front of my house. It was
| repaired quickly but they had to dig up a lot of the yard,
| which they filled back in. But after a few heavy rains it
| washed out a fair amount. It was a little annoying but I just
| said "Oh well". A few years ago in Atlanta my neighbors had
| reported a sinkhole FOR YEARS, and nothing was done about it
| until it finally caved in and swallowed an entire intersection.
|
| I had a friend come over though and this had been like 3 months
| and he asked about the hole. I told him the situation and he
| just said "Call the city and tell them you need dirt." So I
| did, and told someone that took a message. A couple hours later
| they called me back and confirmed my address and that I needed
| dirt. He said they were busy but would do it tomorrow, and sure
| enough the next day they came with a dump truck, a trailer of
| equipment and filled in the hole, compacted the area, smoothed
| it all out and planted grass. All in 24 hours for a problem
| that impacted no one but me.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| I want to live in a community where everyone cares.
| spencerflem wrote:
| This is largely a political problem, I'd start there
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Trust me: You don't. You'd go insane.
|
| See for example everyone who has to live with an HOA.
| liontwist wrote:
| Is that what caring about people in your community looks
| like? Or some kind of property value paranoia and sense of
| control.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| Classically underspecified, you are right. The care has to be
| about others and respecting them, not about oneself. Like in
| a good partnership. Care about giving, not taking.
|
| But as the article frustratedly states, it usually goes the
| other way. Like Jethro Tull progressing into desillusion from
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=luDfuZkeqKU
|
| to
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f7SGq7jMdSU
|
| This planet is such a beautiful marble and all we do is
| trample it with our feet. Guys, make a random somebody smile
| today, will ya?
| andrewstuart wrote:
| That's Japan.
| lazide wrote:
| Eh, Japan is mostly a place where everyone is afraid to not
| 'be Japanese'. It can be quite stressful.
| janislaw wrote:
| Reading the original article I reflected: "I can totally see
| how this can happen, but for some reason it doesn't happen
| where I live"
|
| I moved to Switzerland 9y ago. People care. I believe this is
| due to high trust society which evolved not that long ago from
| small, poor, tightly woven communities.
| lnsru wrote:
| I am the guy who cares or cared! I will bring lost lady back to
| care home. I will help a kid to find his lost key in the
| playground. I will start fixing technical debt in a product at
| work. While two first cases were naturally the right thing to do
| I didn't expect anything. With technical debt I was stopped
| because I was wasting company's resources. I observe in my diary,
| that I am turning into do not care type person. One can't cary
| about every pothole in the world.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Please never give up the fight against entropy. We can keep the
| flame alive a little longer.
| tolerance wrote:
| Resist the cold churn toward pride-fueled apathy that this rant
| exhausts.
|
| After reading this, if this is supposed to demonstrate the
| psyche of the sort of person who "cares", I really hope he
| keeps indoors and spends a little bit more time on his self
| before stepping out on others.
| lnsru wrote:
| The thing is that I might be another psycho. But there is a
| city center, winter and an old women with blueish hands.
| Wearing no proper shoes and having only a sweater. There are
| hundred other caring and loving persons and missionaries
| around, heavy car traffic too. But somehow I am the one
| bringing her to the care facility a mile away. How can it
| happen!? Why do you think, that only a Good Samaritan can
| care and a psycho can't?
| tolerance wrote:
| Well, pardon me. It doesn't seem to me like you've gone
| mad, but if you are a psycho indeed, I don't want to do you
| further harm.
|
| If you really are "all right" and just an honestly styled
| man trying to cultivate good in a barren city with crushed
| soil and souls, then I reckon there's some care in you of
| some kind much to be desired from others and you know it.
|
| And I suspect that it's the psychos who believe that
| they're "Good Samaritans" and if your word is true then we
| can tell that apparently they're unwilling to provide
| actions that confirm their claims. Crazy.
|
| So, my guess is maybe the world's gone so mad that anyone
| trying to behave sane looks strange, and the ones who are
| mad pretend to be right until wrong shows up.
| lnsru wrote:
| Sorry, but it's in German: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/ge
| sellschaft/panorama/sterbenden... Society is that far,
| that some people just step over the corpse to reach ATM
| and get some cash. World is gone mad and numb to the pain
| of others. So don't be shy if you sometimes help others.
| tolerance wrote:
| > ,,Ich gehe einfach nur rein, mache meine Erledigungen
| und gehe wieder."
|
| What a world. And what a way that this phrase can mean
| different to different people depending on what a person
| perceived to be their duties and their deeds.
|
| Thanks.
| climb_stealth wrote:
| I think that's actually a known psychological phenomenom.
| The more people there are, the less likely someone steps in
| to help. Because if help was needed, someone of all the
| other people would have already helped. Same with driving
| past car accidents for example.
|
| It's good to keep this in mind. If you see something and no
| one is helping, it's good to check. Especially when there
| are other people around.
|
| Personally I just try to do right within my influence. And
| helping someone find their keys, or going after a stray
| pet, and similar fits right into that. It won't change the
| world, but it makes life better for someone and I'd hope to
| be treated similarly if I was in that situation.
|
| And caring at work in an institution? I don't know, it
| seems part of survival to learn to not care there.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| What a worthless rant. There are big problems and there are small
| problems and/or inconveniences. People do care, when they have a
| budget for caring. Unfortunately the modern world depletes that
| budget with the day-to-day life. I live close to where the author
| does and trust me, the city has way bigger problems to deal with
| than the nitpicky bullshit OP is calling out. In the suburb I
| live in, we have an app where the city does receive and implement
| reasonable recommendations. The reason why is that it's a small
| town with large pockets.
|
| The rest of the things are just rants aimed at society? big tech?
| I don't get it.
|
| > When I joined my former Big Tech job, everyone cared. Over
| time, incentives attracted a different set of people who didn't
| care as much. Eventually those people became the majority. It's
| painful to work with people who don't care if you care a lot, and
| eventually I left because of it.
|
| No. Bullshit take. I used to care. But then in 2008, my employer
| showed me that I'm not the 'developer! developer! developer!'
| Steve Ballmer was excited about, I'm just a number on a
| spreadsheet governed by some pencil pushers in finance. All
| employers since have showed me again and again that if times are
| tough, I'm the ballast the company can shed to stay afloat. And
| in the past 4-5 years they've showed me I'm ballast even if the
| company is doing great, because 'activist' investors say so. So
| why should I care? I care about my family, I care about my
| personal projects, I care about my craft and I care about my
| health and the people around me. Do I care about your little
| annoying bug? Fuck no. Why would I? It's not even my intellectual
| property.
|
| > Have been to the DMV? It sucked? There is a human being whose
| job it is to be in charge of the DMV. They do not care that it
| sucks.
|
| I have. It's actually called the DOL where we live, OP. And it's
| great. I need to renew my license in person because of my
| disability and it takes me 15 minutes in-and-out, I barely have
| to stay in line. I also renew my car tabs online exclusively with
| 0 problems. I really don't understand the DMV meme, at least in
| Washington state.
|
| > We have examples like Elon who, through sheer force of will,
| defeat armies of people who don't care. For his many faults, you
| can't say the man doesn't care.
|
| Oh, you shouldn't have gone there, you lost all credibility my
| friend.
| spencerflem wrote:
| I agree the authors examples were all nitpicky and omg Elon was
| the worst example you could have picked.
|
| But it does touch on a sort of apathy and nihilism that I can
| feel myself falling towards.
| tolerance wrote:
| I gather that the worth of this piece lies in relating and
| resolving _not_ to follow the author's lead.
| spencerflem wrote:
| For sure
| flymaipie wrote:
| People do not care because they don't want to suffer all the time
| they see some lack of effort. Even when there is 80% carers and
| 20% do-not-carers, 80% will suffer and go into the opposing
| group. It has upside-down-bowl stability.
| szundi wrote:
| I care. Title busted.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| What the author of this post is actually mad about is that most
| people don't care about _him_. The people who designed the DMV
| don 't care about him. The people who made the crappy Oracle HR
| software he probably has to use don't care about him. The people
| who designed the bike lanes don't care about him.
|
| It's not their job to. They have about a million other
| priorities, they're not sorry about it, and they shouldn't be.
|
| The DMV, the HR software people, the engineering people, they
| care about lots of things: Following the laws they are required
| to follow; maintaining regulatory compliance. Handling the latest
| set of changes and rules from a higher office who demands they be
| implemented yesterday. Not overwhelming the underpaid staff they
| have on-hand. Figuring out how to deal with a generally
| unpleasant general public, including the guy who wrote this.
| Holding back an ounce of sanity so they can get home at the end
| of the day and be happy and not drink themselves to death.
|
| The reality is that life is a series of tradeoffs. Even if I am
| giving 100% at work (and I have a family and a life, so often I
| am not), that 100% does not get allocated entirely or even mostly
| to "deliver the best experience for the specific needs of the
| author of this article." It's dedicated to getting work out the
| door at an acceptable level of quality; monitoring our systems so
| they don't crash and lose us money; complying with the rules and
| procedures my employer demands I comply with; being tolerable and
| decent to my colleagues so they don't resent me and make my life
| harder. If I think about the needs of _one specific_ customer out
| of the millions that transact business with my employer every
| day, it 's because something extraordinary has happened with
| implications for one of the things above.
|
| What sets people like Elon apart is that they are single-mindedly
| dedicated to getting people to appease them, and also pretty good
| at it. All Elon cares about is whatever interests him day-to-day,
| his ego, his impact on the world, whether people like him or hate
| him. He's "successful", by this author's metric, because he's
| self-obsessed.
|
| All that said, the UK has a phrase for someone who cares only to
| do the bare minimum: a jobsworth, as in, more than my job's
| worth. A jobsworth is unhelpful on purpose, or because enforcing
| apathy is more valuable to them than doing anything that might
| impose upon them later an obligation to act. The thing is - those
| people are universally reviled. They are not liked or approved of
| in society. They're also a severe minority.
|
| Most people are doing their best to stay above water on a dozen
| different things, and you are only one of them. The author ought
| to have some humility and realize that.
| kmoser wrote:
| Then why the huge disparity between cultural attitudes in the
| USA vs. Japan? Clearly the Japanese tend to take more pride of
| ownership, which is OP's point.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Japan also has an entire group of people so disillusioned
| with society they completely lock themselves off from it (0),
| record high suicide rates (1), record low fertility rates
| (2), and a far lower rate of self-reported happiness.
|
| I don't know _why_ they prioritize differently, but I don 't
| think it's working out for them.
|
| Which set of tradeoffs would you rather live under?
|
| (0) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori (1)
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-33362387.amp (2)
| https://apnews.com/article/japan-birth-rate-declining-
| popula... (3) https://countryeconomy.com/demography/world-
| happiness-index/...
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Which set of tradeoffs would you rather live under?
|
| I'll take the one that doesn't lay me over every year to
| hit record profits, thanks. There's degrees of not caring
| and the US is very far on the "you are just a number" peg.
| The fake drinking parties at least try to make me feel
| involved.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| He only thinks it's that way because in Japan, he's the big
| man with the big bucks the whole society caters to. An
| average Japanese person probably makes a terrible salary, has
| few if any economic prospects, sees a stagnant economy, and
| also is very unlikely to even start a family. I'd much rather
| have a family than have store clerks obsses about serving me.
|
| If you have tons of money in Seattle area and live in an
| exurb, and only go to Seattle for the orchestra and a
| baseball game in a box, you probably think everyone in
| America cares too
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Those are a lot of very wrong assumptions. Salaries aren't
| US level but more than liveable because even most non-tokyo
| housing is perfectly reasonable. The economny is stagnant
| (and now recessionary) but they have a decent amount of
| safety nets. They don't need to worry about walking to work
| one day to be locked out or being in debt if they collapse
| (yes, there are some very dark work patterns to "lay off",
| but you won't suddenly have zero salary next month).
|
| >I'd much rather have a family than have store clerks
| obsses about serving me.
|
| Okay, the US has neither. So...
|
| >If you have tons of money in Seattle area and live in an
| exurb, and only go to Seattle for the orchestra and a
| baseball game in a box, you probably think everyone in
| America cares too
|
| These are small micro-behaviors, not a larger mindset. Even
| a rich tourist would notice the difference between someone
| taking your ticket for an orcheastra and going to a corner
| store in Japan.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| I don't think they are wrong assumptions. Japan has
| higher suicide rates, lower rate of having kids, and on
| and on.
|
| And like I said, obviously a rich tourist is treated
| better. The average Japanese person doesn't benefit from
| these things because the average Japanese person lives in
| a cramped, barely livable closet-sized apartment in a
| huge city where costs are probably not close to wages
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| They are wrong assumptions. They aren't so signifigantly
| high that they fundamentally affect the perceptions of
| the culture. Japan is 14.29 per 100k suicide rate. the US
| has 14.21. Japan has something low like 1.2 kids per
| family, the US has 1.66, also pretty dang low. You gotta
| do a lot of heavy lifting to say those differences make
| for a much worse culture.
|
| >obviously a rich tourist is treated better. The average
| Japanese person doesn't benefit from these things because
| the average Japanese person lives in a cramped, barely
| livable closet-sized apartment in a huge city where costs
| are probably not close to wages
|
| Tourism goes both ways. You can switch Japanese with
| American and this metaphor is just as apt. You're missing
| a lot of subtleties and cultural difference just saying
| "well Americans make more money on average" while
| comparing the quality of life of the lower compensated
| parts of each society.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Fair play. I'm open more to the idea that a culture where
| people care about the greater good makes more of a
| difference. Haven't seen it myself, and I'm still
| skeptical that if he were an average Japanese person he'd
| see it the same way. But your argument is convincing.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| It's cultural. Japan and Asian in general is a lot more
| conformist and taught to care about the larger society. Huge
| contrast of the individualism of US enforcing "hustle
| culture" and "dog eat dog world".
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I invite the author to work for a large corp or a government and
| try and improve things. The most supportive people for
| improvements will be your team. The least supportive will be the
| higher-level managers. And no, the Director of Transportation is
| not the real manager. That's the mayor or city council.
|
| Why? They get measured on the sweeping stuff, by the broad
| demands, and the people who actually pay them (in money or
| votes).
|
| A better bike ramp that involves user testing but involves a
| delay that pushes work into the next quarter, changing
| accounting? That's a problem. I've lived this scenario where user
| features got axed to ensure all work could be budgeted under a
| particular quarter. Or a sign? That costs money and also needs
| approval, perhaps from another department.
|
| Oh, and you are improving one bike ramp? Can't do that without
| people complaining. Got to improve all of them. So that is now a
| multi-million dollar project.
|
| In a large org, it often isn't clear who owns overall design
| control, if anyone.
|
| Lights that are great for drivers but suck for everyone else?
| That's many things in most cities and that is because drivers are
| the most vocal (and often the largest) population. Drivers win on
| everything from parking to infrastructure spending and drivers
| will tell city council what's on their mind.
|
| For the corporate software I worked on, many users hated it. Tons
| of complaints. Team agreed. Team created proposal to fix it. Team
| managers pitched it to those above for the broader roadmap.
| Management explicitly said they didn't want to waste time on UI
| as the people paying were not the same as the people using.
|
| Never worked for the DMV, but know a guy who maintains some
| software for one. What's the priority? Cheap. Cheap, cheap,
| cheap. Nobody wants to fund the DMV. Nobody wants to pay for
| technological improvements for it. Nobody wants to pay for
| staffing. It is where small amounts get shaved off to pay for
| things people do care about. The guy in charge of the DMV is
| tasked with keeping costs low.
| moconnor wrote:
| Maybe the Will To Have Nice Things is solved by culture not
| process.
|
| I've seen the above too. Imbuing an organisation with the Will
| To Have Nice Things seems unsolved because, as you say, the
| value is constantly traded off against more measurable
| outcomes.
|
| I think the solution has to be building and rewarding a culture
| of doing the right thing, taking pride in delivering not just
| to spec but excellence. So when the org plan demands a giant
| construction barrier near the kids playpark _of course_ the
| person responsible also commissions a dinosaur mural for it.
| Not because it's a KPI or was debated and traded off on the
| functional spec but _as a matter of personal and professional
| pride_.
|
| Interestingly I think the drop in taking pride in your work
| coincides with the relative anonymity of society in which
| reputation is no longer tracked through past interactions or
| word of mouth but is institutionalised in rating systems. This
| is _perhaps_ related to why a more insular and smaller society
| in Japan has managed to retain it to a higher degree. Certainly
| there are elite groups around the world in which everyone knows
| the other players and so reputation and (from an institutional
| perspective) over-delivery are still valued, and these groups
| are the ones that accomplish otherwise unachievable advances.
| The broader anonymous society that delivers only to spec ends
| up with leaky abstractions that gradually collapses under its
| own weight of incompetence once the former culture of Wanting
| Nice Things degrades to Somebody Else's Problem.
|
| If true this predicts a stable rule-of-law-based society or
| organisation in which the most powerful all know each other and
| which otherwise is broken into small mostly-stable communities
| would foster the Will To Have Nice Things more than an
| anonymous interchangeable mass would.
|
| I can hear patio11 reminding me that this should have been a
| blog post.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I imagine so. You need agreement on "nice things" first.
|
| My city constantly fights over this. Is a mural a nice thing
| or is the tax saving? Heck, is colour printing too much? I've
| heard people whine about them printing city handouts for
| council in colour.
| sidkhuntia wrote:
| Wait till you discover India and goverment.
| willswire wrote:
| Everybody cares actually. Obviously the author cares more about
| investing the time to write this blog post than to take a
| sledgehammer and some concrete and fix the bike ramp himself. Or
| he cares to avoid the potential interactions with law enforcement
| that would result from such ridiculousness.
|
| The problem isn't with people not caring, it's that the deepest
| affections of the heart are selfish - incurvatus in se (curved
| inwards).
|
| "Our nature, by the corruption of the first sin, [being] so
| deeply curved in on itself that it not only bends the best gifts
| of God towards itself and enjoys them (as is plain in the works-
| righteous and hypocrites), or rather even uses God himself in
| order to attain these gifts, but it also fails to realize that it
| so wickedly, curvedly, and viciously seeks all things, even God,
| for its own sake." - Martin Luther
| 383toast wrote:
| Everybody cares, but not enough to make a difference
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Or he cares to avoid the potential interactions with law
| enforcement that would result from such ridiculousness.
|
| uhh, yes? What was the point of this ridiculous metaphor you
| yourself created?
|
| >The problem isn't with people not caring, it's that the
| deepest affections of the heart are selfish
|
| It's a bit more basic than that. If people aren't happy they
| care less, because their senses dull to focus only on survival
| and not assisting one's community.
|
| A lot of people are unhappy these days.
| imgabe wrote:
| Man, I've been the engineer in situations like that bike lane and
| believe me, we care. Usually the engineers care. 99% of the time
| the contractor had some "value engineering" suggestions that the
| client was all too happy to take because it saved them a little
| money up front. As the engineer you can try to explain that it
| will be shitty, but they ... don't care.
| Over2Chars wrote:
| A well known CEO noted that in a failing organization he was
| trying to devise a turn around plan for that everyone in the
| organization invariably blamed... the other teams! Not a one
| said "our team is responsible for our failure".
|
| The engineers blamed product, the product people blamed sales,
| etc.
|
| He said he provided this suggestion, "You are of course right
| (it's the other groups fault, and it might have been so), but
| what can you do, in your group, as part of a solution we all
| work towards to help fix this?"
|
| So yeah, it _is_ the other guys fault. But what you can _you_
| do to help fix it?
| imgabe wrote:
| Sure, that's great if you all work for the same organization
| and everyone involved asked themselves that and they all
| benefited from the organization's overall success.
|
| But that is not the case here. That is not how bike lanes or
| many other things get built. The engineer is a consultant
| that works for one independent company. The contractor is a
| different independent company. The client is another company
| or a government entity. Possibly the client involves several
| different entities with competing demands and priorities.
|
| And "success" for the engineer doesn't really mean building a
| good thing. It means a happy client who will come back for
| repeat business.
|
| How does this problem get fixed? Well, eventually someone
| hits that curb and breaks their neck and sues the city. Then
| the city hires an engineer to create design standards that
| they include in future contracts when they build new bike
| lanes.
| 000ooo000 wrote:
| Classic CEO. "How can you, the powerless IC, fix an
| organisational problem? No, I mean without me having to do
| anything meaningful or risky"
| Over2Chars wrote:
| Not at all.
|
| The CEO in question publicly declared his own job would be
| forfeit within a year if he didn't meet goals that were in
| the recent past history of the company, absolutely
| impossible.
|
| He met and exceeded those goals.
|
| The IC isn't powerless with good management.
| imgabe wrote:
| What company was it, who was the CEO, and what's one
| specific thing one of the departments did?
|
| Or are you just copy/pasting LinkedIn drivel?
| Over2Chars wrote:
| Nissan, Ghosn, and I can't answer the third easily
| without delving back into it, but if I think of an
| answer, I'll edit this reply.
| imgabe wrote:
| Never heard of Ghosn before - but you mean this guy?
| https://www.dmarge.com/cars/nissan-bankruptcy-ceo-carlos-
| gho...
|
| The guy who's a wanted fugitive in Japan and fled to
| Lebanon by shipping himself in a piano box?
| Over2Chars wrote:
| 100% correct.
| orwin wrote:
| Power and money got to his head, hard, but he used to be
| a really good manager, probably the best Michelin ever
| had, before he took the job at Renault (then Nissan). Not
| surprised to hear he was very successful there, as he had
| a really good reputation before his divorce (and this is
| baseless gossip, but I will still say I doubt any of his
| wrongdoings were before 2012. Too much power and no one
| to keep his ego checked down).
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > Or are you just copy/pasting LinkedIn drivel?
|
| Ok, you got me. I laughed at this one. I never tire of
| reading the funniest LinkedIn drivel posted to meme sites
| or Twitter/X. This one is legendary funny to me:
| https://www.linkedin.com/posts/astuckey_nobody-linkedin-
| infl... > Nobody: >
| LinkedIn 'influencers': "Yesterday I was walking to an
| interview. There was a starving dog on the road. I
| stopped to feed him & missed the interview. The next day
| I got a call asking to come in to do the interview. I was
| surprised, but I went. Then the interviewer came in. He
| was the dog."
| dasil003 wrote:
| This is such a low effort learned-helplessness response.
| Look, there are good CEOs and bad CEOs, I'm not here to
| defend them, but one thing you have to understand is that
| CEO action is an extremely blunt instrument. Of all the
| problems in an org, the vast majority can not be directly
| solved by the CEO, they can just sort of broadly steer the
| culture in the right direction, but folks down the chain
| need to solve problems at their own level. Of course there
| are tradeoffs in an organization and so not every problem
| can be solved, but if folks who understand the details
| can't propose any kind of solution that doesn't A) require
| CEO action or B) every other person to act exactly the way
| they propose, then they're not really helping.
|
| I understand there's a lot of toxic environments where it's
| not worth trying to improve things, but a blanket statement
| pointing at CEOs en masse as the root of all problems is
| just as stupid and reductive as CEOs who don't do anything
| to empower ICs and learn from the front-line expertise.
| 000ooo000 wrote:
| >a blanket statement pointing at CEOs en masse as the
| root of all problems
|
| That's not what I said. Must've struck a nerve.. CEO by
| chance?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Definitely a cultural problem where any sort of flaw is
| punished. We definitely need to root that out if we are to
| come together.
| LouisSayers wrote:
| The irony is that the CEO is essentially blaming the
| employees in this case without listening and figuring out
| what the actual problem is.
| caseyy wrote:
| There are two groups of people: blamers and doers. For
| example, people will often blame local government for issues
| such as not disposing of fly tipping garbage quick enough,
| but they will not do much to clean up the pavements with
| sofas or fridges around their house - a man with a van can
| often drive over these large bits of garbage to a recycling
| centre for like $30/PS30 an hour. Sometimes people will say
| government is spending money poorly, but they will not have
| participated in any of the consultations the government did
| on the matter, even if they were online or accepted mail-in
| comments. And in workplaces, they will often blame other
| departments without having put in elementary effort to
| resolve the issues with them. Sometimes people will blame
| government services for collapsing - there are certainly many
| YouTubers that constantly moan about how bad public transit
| is in many regions of the US, but few will donate to groups
| and politicians that genuinely want to replan public transit.
| Few will campaign for them, which can be done online in the
| fraction of a time it takes to produce a video.
|
| If an org gets taken over by the blamer culture, it is
| doomed. These people will make no attempt at fixing problems,
| even when that would sometimes take 5 minutes and an email,
| but they will moan. And they will blame, and sometimes
| they'll blame the person suggesting an easy and workable
| course of action to resolve the problems.
|
| Interestingly, sometimes resolving the problem takes less
| effort than sustained moaning, and certainly less mental
| strain. And still, people who tend towards the blamer group
| will blame and moan. Though I make no insinuation that
| moaning doesn't have any other benefits (such as YouTube
| video revenue, virtue signalling, and similar) - it is
| clearly appealing to one of the two groups I mentioned.
| vv_ wrote:
| > Interestingly, sometimes resolving the problem takes less
| effort than sustained moaning, and certainly less mental
| strain.
|
| That would involve actually doing some kind of work that
| people doing the complaining would like to avoid in the
| first place, because it's "someone else's responsibility to
| get it right!".
| AdieuToLogic wrote:
| Care does not come from without, but instead from within.
|
| To proclaim "Why does nobody care about anything?" is to neglect
| an oft quoted axiom: You must be the change you
| wish to see in the world.[0]
|
| 0 - https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/mahatma_gandhi_109075
| DowsingSpoon wrote:
| Okay, I now care passionately about each and everything I do.
| The bike ramp still sucks. What now?
| em-bee wrote:
| _Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
| the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to
| know the difference._
| zoogeny wrote:
| You know who really cares? The Karen in the HOA who relentlessly
| hounds the board because one of the units in the complex has the
| wrong color paint on their door. Be careful what you wish for, or
| the grass is always greener.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| You bring up an important adjacent point. OP believes bikers
| and non-drivers are substantial stakeholders, but ignores that
| the tax complainers and drivers may prefer the world that way.
| And they do hound council.
| hosteur wrote:
| How would a better solution to the bike lane cost more tax or
| worsen situation for drivers?
| xnx wrote:
| Indeed. Imagine a neighbor who was upset that people didn't
| care enough to clear the parkway of leaves and selflessly
| dedicated himself to spend hours loudly leaf-blowing the whole
| neighborhood.
| Sammi wrote:
| Most Karen's are actually great. We only hear about the
| unhinged ones on social media because the algorithm rewards
| outrage. But most Karen's are kind and they care and they work
| hard and they set an example for all of us. It's the Karen's in
| the world that keep all the small things from being shitty all
| the time.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Those aren't Karens, they're all Jessicas
| karmakaze wrote:
| Have you thought this through? Incessant requests for an
| unimportant matter is a sure way to have those in charge of
| said matters _not care_ , not only about that particular
| request but requests in general or the desires of requesters.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| If it's unimportant then why is there a rule against it?
| Why did everyone agree to this rule when they bought a home
| there if it didn't matter? Clearly it exists for a reason
| and if no one enforced it then it's completely pointless
| karmakaze wrote:
| I wonder if this is how Karen logic works, black and
| white thinking with no sense of proportion.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| I don't think it's black and white to think, hey that
| door isn't an approved color, and I care about community
| standards, so I'm going to submit a note on it
|
| I wouldn't personally do this but I can see how someone
| would without it being mean spirited
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Really depends on the context. And the rule. Some rules
| are stupid, some situations have no rules but
| "expectations" ("Have it your way" is a famous slogan
| arguably perverted by reasoning for a few people). The
| rules could be made for powertripping reasons or safety
| reasons.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Why did everyone agree to this rule when they bought a
| home there if it didn't matter?
|
| I don't think you have thought this through. People are
| generally not asked about every bylaw individually. Maybe
| they bought the house because it was close to work. Or
| maybe they bought the house to get the kids into a good
| school. Maybe they bought the house because they just
| loved the garden. Or maybe they bought it because that
| was the only one they could afford after a long search
| and they were exhausted and just wanted to live
| somewhere.
|
| Even if they read the rules maybe they cared about 80% of
| them and couldn't give a hoot about that specific one.
| (Maybe they like that their neighbour can't turn their
| front yard into a mechanic shop, but they don't care what
| colour their door is. That sort of thing.)
|
| They might have agreed to it in a legalistic sense. As in
| they signed a piece of paper which referred to an other
| piece of paper which had this rule in it among many
| others. But you can't pretend that that means they
| "agreed" to it in the common sense meaning.
|
| > Clearly it exists for a reason
|
| That is not always clear. No.
|
| > if no one enforced it then it's completely pointless
|
| Some rules are completely pointless. Weather or not they
| are enforced is a different point. But either way
| enforcing it doesn't make it have a point if it had none
| to begin with.
| Izkata wrote:
| They're called "Karens" because they're unhinged, not because
| of whatever other criteria you're imagining. The kind people
| you're referring to aren't Karens.
| Sammi wrote:
| No there is most definitely more to it. There is a
| generalized trend as to what unhinged social media Karens
| care about. A Karen isn't a Karen if she is just spouting
| conspiracy theories loudly at you. She is only a Karen if
| she is adamant that you follow the established rules of
| good society, whatever she is convinced that these rules
| are. Karens value "good" group behavior, whatever their
| definition of good is, and they are willing to tell you to
| get in line. Karens care that you don't put external costs
| onto others. Karens care.
|
| A "hinged" Karen is your common group mom stereotype, who
| makes sure everybody is doing well and that everyone
| understands what is up and is following along. She has no
| problem telling you what you should and shouldn't be doing,
| but you love it because she is lovely. Hinged Karens are
| simultaneously the scaffolding and lubrication of good
| society.
| Shank wrote:
| > In Japan, you get the impression that everyone takes their job
| and role in society seriously. The median Japanese 7-11 clerk
| takes their job more seriously than the median US city
| bureaucrat.
|
| My favorite example of this is how, if you visit 7-11 in Japan
| and an employee isn't busy, or is busy but with an unimportant
| task, they will jump to open a cash register and check people out
| the second a queue forms. They will move as quickly as possible
| to clear the queue of people, seemingly aware that everyone has
| some place to be that isn't a checkout line. It's wonderful.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I used to rank the McDonald's in Toppongi hills Tokyo as having
| the best employees anywhere after I saw one run from one side
| of the little shop to the other when the French fry buzzer went
| off.
|
| However, it got beat out by the McDonald's in Arkadelphia
| Arkansas, where the employee fast walked as quickly as hen
| could to take the order to the car waiting in the Drive-Thru,
| and then also fast walked back. Running of course would have
| been against OSHA and gotten hen in trouble so hen did the best
| hen could.
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| The run usually isnt because they care its because theyre
| scared of senpai and (bucho/shacho) big boss.
|
| If the management is chill they arent gonna run.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I'm not sure what was going on in tokyo, but in arkadelphia
| it was simply that there are a huge number of people
| waiting for food and the employee did not want them to wait
| any longer than they had to.
| unknownsky wrote:
| Are you Swedish? Just wondering because I've never seen the
| gender neutral pronoun "hen" in English.
| layer8 wrote:
| And here I thought it was about how actual hens walk.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Til https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hen_(pronoun)
| cafard wrote:
| I don't want to see employees running in the direction of hot
| fat, thanks.
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| In Japan this attentive behaviour is often out of fear or
| boredom. Either way the service is good overall.
|
| I live here. Sometimes the service isnt good and staff behaves
| like an insentient robot who repeats a script and fucks off.
|
| If you know Japanese and actually talk to them, its obviously
| the same ape base mech the rest of us are driving.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Oh.. do people not do that anymore? At the little grocery store
| I worked at in BC Canada, if there were like 2 or 3 people in
| line we'd call for help if they weren't already on their way.
| Seems like a pretty basic thing.
|
| Here in the US, I don't know what's going on with the cashiers.
| They're slow. They don't say a single word to you, not even to
| give you your total. And they're awful at bagging. I just don't
| get it. It's not a hard job.
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| How roles are perceived, becomes how people perceive
| themselves, becomes how people act out those roles.
|
| Or more to the point: Its easier to be what people expect you
| to be.
|
| In my experience the US is especially susceptible to this
| 'roleplaying', probably because all (entertrainment) media
| comes from the same overarching culture.
| mc3301 wrote:
| It is a hard job if you and your partner both have full-time
| jobs and other part-time or side-hustles just to barely pay
| the rent.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| It's not a hard job to check out any single customer's
| groceries. It's a hard job to do it all day, especially when
| you're not allowed to sit down.
| numpad0 wrote:
| One thing that rarely mentioned in Japanese 7-11 efficiency is
| the "employment ice age" problem that contributed to it: there
| was a massive job crisis around 1993-2005 and major STEM
| university graduates were dime a dozen. A McDonald's but with
| only clones of Gordon Freeman as employees tends to become a
| bit different place than a regular hamburger shop.
| arisbe__ wrote:
| Its worse than that. There is a logic to society, growth and
| scaling that involves accumulating obligations. This is like a
| gravity or a gang hivemind that due to scale inverts the value of
| bettering to the value of self-preservation of a corrupt society
| theatre. They dont want improvement but containment i.e.
| inhibition of creative destruction. What really gets me here is
| just how much people normalize lying.
|
| When you know this (if you arent obligation enslaved) you can
| then just work orthogonally to the system to make something way
| better. In fact it kind of breaks reality for you.
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| "does this dress make me look fat"
|
| is it lying or not? People lie all day every day, and if you
| dont they wont like you. They expect you to lie.
|
| Someone invites you somewhere. You respond you dont want to go
| because meh. They get angry. "Atleast make up an excuse or
| something dont just tell me you dont want to go!!"
|
| Very common. More common in women.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I refuse to socialize with people who cannot handle my way of
| communication, unless I strictly require them in a
| professional setting. Recently I organized a party and it was
| so amazing to be able to communicate in a group without any
| barriers at all.
| joeldg wrote:
| I mean... This guy must not have kids in school--because to be a
| teacher, you have to be nothing but a ball of caring because the
| job sucks the life out of you at every step. No money, half the
| country thinks you want to turn their kids into trans people and
| want you to teach their specific brand of a religion and so they
| defund you at every step. I feel bad for teachers--they really,
| really care.
|
| This guy must not ever volunteer for anything--In my town we have
| volunteers who will find houses with dogs chained up and offer to
| build them a fence for free because they don't like seeing dogs
| on chains. We have volunteers who work community evenings and do
| cleanups at schools, parks and graffiti removal for community
| spaces. My city has hundreds of volunteer fronts, and they always
| need an extra hand.
|
| This guy must not ever have bought girl scout cookies or got a
| Christmas tree from the boy scouts, a lot of people volunteer to
| make sure all that happens and the money goes back to the kids,
| and nobody there is getting "paid" and they all care.
|
| This guy must never have talked to a fireman or a parks worker,
| they have crap pay and dangerous job conditions (Park rangers are
| assaulted at the highest rates for any job). They do it because
| they care.
|
| This guy must never have been to a museum... actually, I could go
| on all day about people who care ...
|
| At this point, all I can figure is this guy has his head firmly
| lodged up his rear-end.
| eviks wrote:
| > You might think "something something incentive systems". No.
|
| It's exactly that. All your government and regulatory capture
| examples are precisely about bad incentives leading to bad
| outcomes (including people who cared but stopped caring because
| these perverse incentives punished them for caring one way or
| another)
|
| But wait, the author understands this!:
|
| > Over time, incentives attracted a different set of people who
| didn't care as much.
|
| So it's a YES?
| sandreas wrote:
| It's interesting how people react first when you start acting
| different, doing little things like picking up garbage you didn't
| throw on the ground.
|
| Even my kids went: Why are YOU picking this up, you didn't do it?
|
| I just ask: Why not ME?
|
| After some of similar experiences my kids asked to help and they
| were so excited when a friend of my wife bought them trash tongs
| to help me.
|
| It's not that I'm proudly making the world a better place by
| doing something very difficult (like in the movie Pay it
| forward), but just doing small things that aren't difficult to
| do. Somehow it feels nice.
| whyenot wrote:
| Most of the government employees that work in the bureaucracy do
| care. They care a lot. The reason their "favorite" part of the
| job is "stability" or "job security" is because the pay usually
| sucks compared to industry, and the bullshit you have to put up
| with to avoid scandals, lawsuits, and corruption also sucks. Most
| of the civil servants I know stay in their jobs because they
| really do want to help people; they really do want to make their
| agencies or institutions more efficient and better.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| Yes, but they don't seem to care about the stuff OP cares
| about, therefore they're just mindless bureaucrats. Unlike
| Elon, who's defeating armies of nihilists by sheer force of
| will!!!
| GuestFAUniverse wrote:
| And playing PoE!
| batiudrami wrote:
| Also external people don't generally know or understand all the
| constrains that led to decisions that are suboptimal (for the
| person complaining).
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| I work for the government IT.
|
| Constraints are often bogus, made by a few bad actors and
| never questioned because the government is structured to
| avoid personal responsibility. Unfortunately, this takes away
| agility and disempowers individual workers.
|
| Which, as noted in a nearby comment, makes them coping
| instead of caring.
|
| An overlooked cause is the management science that insists on
| getting rid of individual ownership.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| There are many problems with individual ownership though.
| It is a whole large system where people constantly change.
| You need to have multiple owners and redundancy otherwise
| all the projects are dependent on one individual who might
| quit any time. Things happen in the past, people make
| mistakes and you start to incorporate processes to avoid it
| because people are and will always be imperfect, you end up
| with thise processes and bureaucracy.
| orwin wrote:
| I've worked as a temp for my government in a bureaucracy (tax
| recovery/delaying) before studying CS (15 years ago now).
|
| The bureaucracy have rules to disempower low-level civil
| servants and keep them from having too much agency.
|
| Everytime someone asked for a payment delay on their taxes, i
| had to fill their data in 2 to 3 different software that did
| not allow pasting (well, the third one did, but wasn't used in
| most cases). If the info given by the citizen was wrong, I
| often took upon myself to correct it even. All that doesn't
| help with willingness to help, but like most people, if someone
| asks me for a payment delay, I'll accept it. But wait, I can't
| if this is the third year they ask one! (Or second year in a
| row). I had to go through another software to ask confirmation
| from an unknown person. Except the demand/justification wasn't
| in a mail but in a letter, in that case my manager had to
| handle it. Except she was overworked, so it took weeks, and
| sometimes the 'tax majoration coz not in time' was probably
| sent before the 'yeah, ok for the delay' letter (if you're in
| France and need help with taxes: send emails, not letters).
|
| Most of the rules were probably there for good reasons: data
| separation and anonymity, and probably fraud/corruption
| prevention. That didn't make them good rules.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| My wife works for the federal government of Canada. Her and her
| coworkers are some of the most sincerely interested and
| concerned people I've met, at least as far as their work goes.
| I work with chronic job-hoppers and shiny-thing-chasers. She
| works with people who care deeply about their teams, the
| quality of their work, the health and purpose of their union,
| the sustainability of their organization, the safety of their
| work, etc. They pour so much into it.
|
| I had a thought years ago that the startup I was working for
| would find them laughably inefficient. Yet that startup is dead
| and gone, in part because they put none of the same care,
| intention, and thought into creating something functional and
| sustainable. We often think highly of how we work from first
| principles, move fast and break things, or whatever, but I
| think many of us have lost sight of what having a regular job
| that gradually, yet more certainly, improves the world around
| us looks like.
|
| I do think they should strive to innovate more. I often write
| scripts to automate my wife's work, and it blows my mind how
| little they've invested in exploring what's possible. Yet
| they're one of the best hydrographic offices in the world.
| ClaraForm wrote:
| The move fast and break things mantra, at least in my
| estimation, was always about not being fearful of trying new
| things. The things that break on the way were always going to
| break in the long run with enough changes accrued over time
| anyway. Implicit is an assumption that the things that were
| breaking were the most dysfunctional, or most restrictive
| parts, of incumbent systems of work or thought. Moving fast
| for the sake of moving fast, or for the sake of breaking
| things, was never the goal. It became a slogan of misplaced
| pride aimed at making movement the goal. At least that's how
| I feel about that era.
| roland35 wrote:
| While I was at Facebook they dropped the "and break thing"
| off the corporate values anyways. Turns out they just want
| you to move fast.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I think you're absolutely right. I was using it in the more
| abused term, but I actually subscribe to the original
| intent of it. My wife's organization would almost certainly
| be better off if they embraced this mentality even slightly
| more. Maybe most people would, for that matter.
|
| But yeah, the movement did seem to become the primary goal,
| and breaking things seemed less about stress-testing and
| freeing from restrictions, and more like an inconvenience
| on the path of progress, whatever that might mean. It
| seemed like a lot of us went from being experimental and
| nimble to clumsy and incoherent at some point.
| tqi wrote:
| Imagine taking the answer to an innocuous question like "what
| is your favorite part of the job?" in what I assume was a
| social setting and extrapolating from there to "they don't care
| about their job."
| NoGravitas wrote:
| This is my experience as a government worker.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Some of this I think is misjudged - there is an implication that
| people _know_ what they are doing or what their actions '
| consequences are, but do not care about it.
|
| I would argue that for a bunch of things, _people just don 't
| think_.
|
| It's not that they don't care: they've not even reached that
| stage of awareness. They just don't ever get to thinking about if
| what they're doing has any kind of follow-on consequences or
| implications. It doesn't even enter their minds.
|
| I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but as I've grown
| older I think I've learnt that not everyone thinks like I do. I
| guess here on HN and at work we're surrounded by people who are
| ultimately "knowledge workers" who are paid (and selected for)
| their ability to _think_. We 're doing mental gymnastics and
| playing 4D chess against ourselves in our head all day. Meanwhile
| outside of tech, people aren't and there are IMHO lots of people
| who just think in a totally different way. It's like they stop at
| Step 2 or 3 of a linear thought process, but we as tech engineers
| etc are already on Step 7 of a decision tree with multiple
| branches etc even if we don't actively realise we're doing it.
|
| Not saying we're any better/smarter, but we're at least
| implicitly trained and attuned to thinking things through,
| identifying edge cases, defensively coding to handle inevitable
| misuse/issues etc etc. Not everyone thinks like that.
|
| Some stuff though is just experience or lack of it. I never knew
| how much of a pain it can be to push a kids buggy around until a
| did it and I would see sometimes the difference in others when I
| was struggling with one: some people (other parents with older
| kids, grandparents etc) would offer to help or to go out of their
| way to move out of the way etc, while others were blithely
| unaware (as I was!) and just don't realise because they have no
| knowledge or experience of the situation so even with care, they
| just don't know (which is fine - this is why we have schools and
| books etc, to teach people things they don't know). That bike
| lane in the article looks totally fine to me for example - even
| if I think think a whole range of scenarios in my head, I have no
| in-depth knowledge or experience or understand what the problem
| the author of the article is talking about as it looks totally ok
| to me but I only have very simplistic knowledge of riding a bike.
|
| Tl:Dr - not always malicious or deliberate, just a lack of
| awareness and experience.
| spencerflem wrote:
| As an antidote to this, one thing I like to do is notice when
| something is subtly nice.
|
| I've bumped into those little wobly plastic things making a
| narrow turn. Saved me from a scratch.
|
| The lights in my apartment are arranged so its quick to turn them
| all off when walking out the door.
|
| That sort of thing.
|
| One of the best parts of living in society with as much
| specialization as we have is that everything usually has a lot of
| thought beind it. Sadly, that thought is often towards making it
| more extractive and not better for me. But when it does work out
| its such a lovely feeling. That someone out there did this gift
| for me and we will never meet but share this invisible
| connection.
| mc3301 wrote:
| I really enjoyed your comment. Without digging deep into design
| philosophy, it really is a fun practice to try hard to notice
| the things around you (especially in the physical world as
| opposed to digital) that were specifically designed for you in
| mind and have actually positively affected you. Most of them
| were quite intentional, indeed! Isn't that great?
| LastTrain wrote:
| On Vomiting in Dunning-Kruger...
| DharmaPolice wrote:
| As someone who works for a local government bureaucracy - not
| caring is a coping mechanism because if you let every sub-optimal
| thing bother you then you'd just burn out. Very few jobs are
| structured in a way that those directly involved can determine
| how things are done so there is no real value in caring about how
| long a process takes. Where people have some agency you might be
| surprised how much people do care even in relatively low paying
| bureaucratic jobs.
|
| In a similar way, many of us walk past multiple homeless people
| every day. Do you not care about them? Well, in an abstract sense
| yes of course but as there's not a lot you can do about it right
| now you evolve an indifference to it.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Love the analogy and your explanation
| liontwist wrote:
| Why doesn't Japan have this problem?
| GreatGaijin wrote:
| - Culture that prioritizes collective good over individual
| need
|
| - Functioning government
|
| - Competency, skilled engineers
| cogman10 wrote:
| With:
|
| - A declining population
|
| - Rural collapse
|
| - Stagnating economy
|
| - Shut in problem for old people
|
| Like most cultures, Japan gets some stuff right and some
| stuff wrong. It's not perfect. Certainly not to say US
| culture couldn't improve by adopting some aspects.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Your first three problems also apply to Italy. Why don't
| we read as much about it? I find it bizarre. (South)
| Korea, the same. Non-Asians just love to focus on the
| extreme positive and negative aspects of modern Japanese
| society; it is weird.
| spectra72 wrote:
| Because we aren't bombarded with "Why don't we do things
| like they do in Italy" messages on every online forum
| like we are with Japan.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Not sure what you are driving at. This thread was about
| Japan and I responded about Japan. If we were talking
| about Italy or South Korea then my response would be
| different.
|
| You are correct that Japan isn't the only nation with
| large problems, particularly around declining
| populations. The thrust of my initial comment is that no
| nation is perfect and thoughts of "why aren't we just
| like that nation" are a little silly.
|
| It's very easy to come up with a few bullet points of the
| big problems of a nation. Just like it's easy to generate
| such bullet points about the positives of a nation.
| gorogorogorokun wrote:
| Anime and 90s propaganda from people appealing to
| Japanese businessmen.
| tdeck wrote:
| It is weird. I think it's kind of a leftover from the
| apex of the Japanese economy and all those Japanese
| business management books. We had a whole generation of
| managers putting samurai swords on their walls and
| talking about "open kimono" leadership and people got
| famous essentially promoting the idea that Japan is like
| nowhere else and fetishizing the country. So it kind of
| entered the zeitgeist.
|
| There was never a corresponding image of Italy and almost
| nobody in the US was talking about South Korean society
| at all 15 years ago.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Businesses I've dealt with in the manufacturing world (so
| most American workers before the 'service economy'
| revolution) deal way more with Japanese companies than
| Italian. Also I think humans just need an ideal to aspire
| to. We don't respond well to 'it's all crap, always has
| been, always will be'. Foreign countries we like look
| better because we see what's better than where we are.
| There's a reason for the saying 'the grass is always
| greener (because from a distance you can't see it's full
| of dog crap)'.
| ks2048 wrote:
| I thought Japan had a reputation for pointless bureaucracy
| (faxing useless paperwork around to get something approved,
| etc).
| M95D wrote:
| Faxing... So very convenient!
|
| We have to personally take the paper orginals to various
| offices around the city, wait hours in a queue, get another
| paper document, go make copies, assemble another folder and
| go to yet another office/institution.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Don't forget when your coworker prints out a memo, asks
| you for edits on the paper, then you go in and edit the
| virtual document.
| tdeck wrote:
| A couple of jobs ago one of my colleagues went to work
| with a Japanese partner for a few days to do an
| integration. Apparently they had to import a bunch of
| data and one of the Japanese employees, who seemed to
| have an axe to grind, printed out pages and pages of a
| spreadsheet and handed it to my colleague. Whenever my
| colleague asked him to just send the file, he pretended
| to not understand. In the end they had to OCR it but at
| least it was a story.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| It's a surface level joke but if I remember there were
| reasons for it, both culturally and regulatory, something
| about Hankos? I think I read about it on a post here
| talking about them finally changing some of those
| requirements.
| presentation wrote:
| To be fair, while it's antiquated and there is a lot of
| needless paperwork, the rules are always clear and if you
| follow them you more or less always get the result you're
| looking for. And they almost never make you wait on hold or
| in line for inordinate amounts of time; generally when I go
| to city hall, or a doctors office, or call a telephone
| line, or go to the post office, or whatever it is, I
| generally don't need to wait more than 2-3 minutes and
| usually I get service immediately.
| unknownsky wrote:
| I hear that in Japanese schools, the kids do most of the
| cleaning, like sweeping, cleaning the boards, taking out
| trash, and cleaning windows. Janitors mostly do building
| maintenance or major jobs.
|
| That must instill the sense that environments that are shared
| collectively are everyone's responsibility. When janitors
| clean up after us, it instills the sense that we can do what
| we want and it's the problem of some lowly person to deal
| with it.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > I hear that in Japanese schools, the kids do most of the
| cleaning, like sweeping, cleaning the boards, taking out
| trash, and cleaning windows. Janitors mostly do building
| maintenance or major jobs.
|
| We did this in Catholic grade school. Every week the
| assignments would rotate. The cleaning involved sweeping
| the class floor, washing the chalk board, beating the
| erasers of chalk dust, and pulling the trash bag from the
| can. The janitor took care of the rest like the hallways,
| offices and so on.
|
| Would never happen in a NYC public school as the kids would
| be doing a union job.
| homebrewer wrote:
| > kids do most of the cleaning
|
| We have that in my country, and it doesn't really affect
| the society overall: the streets are full of trash and it's
| considered normal to throw away cigarette butts, candy
| wrappers, etc. after you're done with them. From reading
| local internet forums, you get the idea that it's always
| the government fault that trash does not get picked up in
| time, it's never our own fault.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| The OP is kind of wrong, because Japan has a different set of
| issues that Nobody Cares about that the OP hasn't understood
| Japan enough in Japan to immediately consider. Ironically,
| one could say that the OP failed to spend 1% longer thinking
| about this part of their claim to imagine that a different
| society might perhaps have different "nobody cares" that are
| not immediately visible to them, before making it.
|
| Japan is infamous for a certain kind of work culture that
| demands being in the office even when it's lot necessarily
| productive to do so; so onerous that it harms domestic life,
| among others.
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_company_(Japan)
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_work_environment
|
| I can well imagine that the OP would point out to the
| pervasive unproductive work culture, or unnecessarily
| exploitative work culture, and wonder why nobody cares about
| it.
|
| Note that the dynamic of work culture impacting domestic life
| is to such an extent that the government is recently trialing
| arguably drastic measures:
| https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/06/asia/tokyo-
| government-4-d...
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Yes, but the author doesn't care
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| I feel like the article is mostly focused on environments
| around us, so it makes sense to focus on Japan in this
| context. He's not saying it's an entirely flawless country
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > Japan is infamous for a certain kind of work culture that
| demands being in the office even when it's lot necessarily
| productive to do so; so onerous that it harms domestic
| life, among others.
|
| I think that's the opposite. They care too much. That
| collective school cleanup example above has a similar
| extreme. If you literally live to work, you'll forget about
| caring for yourself and collapse.
|
| Tokyo Government just introduced a 4 day work week for its
| workers. You'd be surprised how much friction there has
| been to this, by the workers.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| They care about the wrong things. Ultimately everyone
| cares about something and then there is tons of things no
| one or that anybody doesn't care from simply because you
| have limited amount of possible care to give.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| It's another country's culture. It's really hard to
| holistically judge what is right or wrong. If people want
| to be a workaholic, then I can't really judge their
| lifestyle.
|
| That said, yes. If this is pressure from their society,
| they probably should revisit those mindsets. Especially
| when the birth rate right now really can't afford a
| higher mortality raet. Fortunately they are starting to
| in some sectors.
| tdeck wrote:
| I can't find the link now but I read a post by an
| immigrant to Japan who attended one of these school
| cleanups at their child's school. They said basically
| that they seemed to be the only one really scrubbing /
| actually cleaning properly rather than just putting in a
| performative effort to wipe something down.
| automatic6131 wrote:
| >Why doesn't Japan have this problem?
|
| Japan has some of these problems. For example: they do not
| care about homeless people. In Japan, I saw a homeless person
| sleeping between two car lanes, amongst some bushes.
| Literally 50cm of space separating cars, and he was lying
| there with his possessions.
| cokeandpepsi wrote:
| aren't homes generally extremely cheap in most of Japan?
| automatic6131 wrote:
| They are cheap because they are in disrepair, in an area
| with no jobs (or only subsistence farming) and limited
| services. In central Tokyo, they are cheap compared to
| cities in most of the West but too expensive to keep up a
| good drinking habit without working and on limited out-
| of-work benefits.
| presentation wrote:
| No; they're cheap because Japan builds homes more than
| other countries do.
| syncsynchalt wrote:
| There were many homeless people on the streets of Tokyo every
| time I went in the 2000s, building little cardboard homes
| every night and taking them down every morning.
|
| If you mean the bureaucracy - every one of my coworkers there
| grumbled about dealing with government morass the same way we
| complain about the DMV here.
| csomar wrote:
| > There were many homeless people on the streets of Tokyo
| every time I went in the 2000s
|
| This is misleading. Japan has the lowest homelessness rate
| in the world:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Japan
|
| They clearly had a problem and fixed it. I was in Japan a
| few years ago and I saw one homeless (I assumed?) person
| during my whole trip. He didn't look too bad (like the ones
| in the US) but he was probably having a rough time.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| There are some homeless people living in camps in certain
| parks. Ueno Park has a bunch of them. Others have camps
| hidden away in flood-plain areas next to rivers. Some
| live on sidewalks, like under overpasses, and have a
| bunch of junk in front of their sleeping bag that they're
| trying to sell.
|
| Generally, these homeless people _want_ to be homeless.
| There 's options for homeless people to get help, but
| some people simply don't want to be part of normal
| society for whatever reason (like mental illness).
|
| Overall, in my experience living here, I very rarely see
| homeless people. It's nothing at all like the huge
| homeless camps in US cities these days.
| swores wrote:
| Neither of you are wrong. As your link says, they have
| one of the lowest rates of homelessness in the world, but
| it also says that their low rate is roughly 1 in 34,000
| people. There are 14 million people in Tokyo (city, or
| 41M in Tokyo greater area), so for 14M residents you
| would expect roughly 400 homeless people if the ratio is
| exactly the same as national average (and typically, big
| cities have higher than average). So simultaneously there
| are many homeless people still even if you only saw one
| of them, it's just a smaller % than in most countries.
|
| Ultimately the stats are what matters more than how many
| people any one anecdote happened to see, and they show
| that Japan should be applauded for doing well but also
| acknowledging that sadly they haven't completely solved
| the problem and too many people there, as everywhere, are
| still homeless.
| csomar wrote:
| Which is reasonable? Within the millions of people there
| will be a few people that are completely helpless. I
| think Japan is as close to having no homeless as a
| country can reasonably get. Which is a completely
| different situation from the USA. Also living in a small
| shoebox hotel is orders of magnitudes better than living
| on the streets. I am not saying it is a good option but
| between having nothing (US) and having that, I'd
| definitively chose the shoebox.
| ycombinatrix wrote:
| I strongly disagree that 400 homeless people in a city of
| 14 million is a lot
| presentation wrote:
| One difference is that they're concentrated in areas away
| from the public eye - if you enter Yoyogi park from the
| entrance nearest Yoyogi Koen station then before the hill
| starts go up the footpath to the right, you will find a
| homeless encampment with 20+ tents. It's orderly but they
| are homeless.
| james_marks wrote:
| I asked myself the same question when I saw exactly 1
| homeless person in all of Tokyo.
|
| There has been a global trend to decommission psychiatric
| hospitals. Japan didn't follow suit, and today has 10x the
| beds per capita compared to the US.
|
| This is balanced by the fact that it's much harder to commit
| someone against their will in the US.
|
| https://www.borgenmagazine.com/japans-homeless-
| population/#:....
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| > I asked myself the same question when I saw exactly 1
| homeless person in all of Tokyo
|
| Homelessness in Tokyo looks different than homelessness in
| a major US city. Often enough, it means freeters sleeping
| overnight in manga cafes.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_cafe_refugee
| ilaksh wrote:
| According to the article, living in an internet cafe can
| be as little as $420 per month. But where does someone
| who has no work that month get the $420? Does the
| government have a minimal support program?
| presentation wrote:
| lol that's actually more expensive than a lot of small
| apartments in Tokyo.
|
| That said there is no shortage of work in Tokyo. Far more
| work than the number of people available to do it.
| earthdeity wrote:
| Probably because workers' protections are very strong in Jaan
| and it's close to impossible to fire people.
|
| - You cannot fire your staff (easily) - Rather than replace
| staff, you need to train them - You also really want to
| engender a sense of loyalty, because anyone who is checked-
| out is dead weight you need to carry
|
| I think the legal protections for employment are upstream of
| the working culture. Maybe it's a chicken and egg problem.
| But in terms of policy you could test this, and it makes
| sense the culture is just in alignment with the incentive
| structure. America has an "I've got mine" approach, which is
| efficient and good for businesses, but... Employees
| (correctly) know they are replaceable and have a strictly
| profit/loss relationship with companies they work for. In
| that framework the risk/reward for a worker to be doing the
| minimum they need to earn their pay-check is pretty
| favourable.
| bn-l wrote:
| Because it's full of Japanese.
| lmm wrote:
| Japan has processes for everything, and people care about
| following the process properly, and are empowered to follow
| the process properly (indeed that's the only thing they're
| empowered to do).
|
| High trust and good equilibria might be part of it as well.
| If your superior cares and does things properly then you can
| care and do things properly and you'll get proper results. If
| your superior is burnt out and doing the minimum, but you
| care and want to do things properly, you'll get burnt out,
| and a few years down the line you'll be that superior doing
| the minimum.
| buzzardbait wrote:
| If you dig deep enough, you might find that Japan has plenty
| of other problems that people in the developed west don't,
| but of course the grass is always greener on the other side.
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| Don't leave us hanging like that.
| xtiansimon wrote:
| Living outside NYC, I'm reminded of both extremes with every
| visit to the city.
| parpfish wrote:
| if you care and you end up in a position where you don't have
| the ability to act on that feeling, you WILL burnout and get
| cynical and go into not-caring preservation mode.
|
| I used to work at a big tech co that made a popular consumer
| app. New hires were always excited because not only was it a
| pretty cushy job, they got to work on a product that they
| loved. They cared until the bureaucracy and product decision
| making processes ground that enthusiasm into dust. Everybody
| ended up jaded.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| This is the answer. It's not just government bureaucracy, large
| corporations are intentionally built to diffuse responsibility
| in order to allow the corporation to do things any single
| person would find abhorrent. This means that if you see
| something you want to fix, you most likely can't, because
| nobody is really fully responsible for that thing or can
| directly do anything about it.
|
| So you just hit your head against wall after wall after wall
| until you burn out, and that's how you learn to just do your
| job instead.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| The fact that people pursue this sort of thing is extremely
| strange to me. They'll admonish people under them for not
| caring while creating and perpetuating a system that requires
| it.
| navane wrote:
| An organisation arizes around people. The organisation that
| arises with the traits you describe, one that allows
| organizational behavior that non of the members would
| individually allow, but also behavior that has a competitive
| advantage towards other organizations that lack this
| behavior, will thrive. They are a cancer that grow around us
| instead of within is.
| bjornsing wrote:
| That doesn't explain the doctor who doesn't care that they are
| misdiagnosing their patients though... Or am I missing
| something?
| bccdee wrote:
| I assume the doctor was just wrong. It happens. I imagine
| doctors get patients coming in saying "look, I have this
| extremely specific syndrome. I diagnosed myself based on the
| Wikipedia page" all the time. Usually those patients are
| wrong and it's something simpler, but sometimes they're
| right, and this time the doctor's simpler explanation was
| wrong. Never attribute to malice what can be easily explained
| by stupidity, etc.
|
| Of course, I don't know the actual situation, but this seems
| more likely to me than a doctor who doesn't care about their
| patient's health enough to spend 10 seconds diagnosing them.
| At the very least, I expect they're investing enough effort
| in their job enough to avoid transparent malpractice.
| bjornsing wrote:
| I've personally been incorrectly diagnosed with a life
| altering condition. When it became more and more clear that
| the diagnosis was wrong the doctor just doubled down. When
| I said I thought he was wrong and refused to see him he
| sent a colleague after me to another hospital to try to
| persuade the medical staff there of the misdiagnosis. That
| thankfully failed, but the whole process very much left me
| with the impression that the only thing that mattered to
| him and his colleague was to be "right". My health was
| completely irrelevant to them. And nobody put them in their
| place.
|
| Sure, I'm a big believer in Hanlon's razor. But there comes
| a point when you have to conclude that something is
| seriously wrong. My feeling is that it's a complete lack of
| consequences that is the core problem. Nobody is ever
| "forced" to admit they were wrong. Some people can't handle
| that, start believing they are always right.
|
| (This was in Sweden and malpractice is a bit different
| here.)
| silexia wrote:
| Government is definitely the worst here. Zero accountability
| means that after a while working there, even the most motivated
| best worker will have his desire to work destroyed by watching
| less competent people do nothing and move ahead. Then
| government hired more people to keep doing the same job. It
| grows and grows and drains more resources, just like cancer
| does.
| bccdee wrote:
| > Then government hired more people to keep doing the same
| job.
|
| Do they? The example given in the article is the DMV, and the
| only problem I've ever had at a DMV was long wait times
| caused by too FEW employees.
|
| Yes, government can be overly bureaucratic, but I think
| people come up with a lot of weird narratives about it that
| go well beyond the actual inefficiencies at play.
| fredphilo wrote:
| this articles has a ton of typos but that reinforces the
| emotional state the author was - an emotional state that i think
| is becoming more and more common. theres an underlying anxiety
| here; the world you grew up in is gone. this is bad and we (the
| author and myself) are not falling victim to nostalgia. all the
| things i interact with are becoming more and more dysfunctional.
| everybody has their answer to whose fault it is, people to blame
| for the fact that things simply don't work anymore, but i think
| an analysis of this "lack of care" or "i just dont dgaf" attitude
| on the part of the workers, the employees of the companies who,
| theoretically, make the USA and similar countries the beacons of
| good living that they appear to be, might be fruitful. i'll
| definitely be thinking about this observation for a while.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| I have a feeling this is a very common sentiment as one gets
| older though.
|
| When you live somewhere where wages and costs diverge further
| and further every year, as you get to be 30-40-50-60, etc. you
| feel more and more like the world was better back then
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| I also think part of the realization is that as you grow up,
| the world was "whitewashed" for you when you were younger.
| Your parents took care of going to the DMV, or taking you to
| the dentist and paying / using insurance, and making sure
| there was someone to drive you there.
|
| Now, you're the parent, and you have to figure out if you can
| drive your child, make sure they're covered by insurance,
| make sure you can pay the dentist if your insurance is maxed
| out for the year, heck, just in the last year, find a new
| dentist because the one you had for 20 years switched to "not
| taking Delta" and suddenly wants you to pay $500/checkup
| instead of previous $0, etc. And if you can't pay, well..
| sucks to be you..
|
| I'm in my 50s, and I kind of understand this attitude, and I
| also understand why people get cynical. I moved to the US due
| to finding someone to marry online (from Canada), and while I
| had heard some stories of how bad the US was, I felt like I
| had my eyes open going in, knew about insurance, etc. I never
| figured I'd have to worry about the government going openly
| hostile, somehow embracing Russia AND Nazis at the same time,
| etc - I always figured things would slowly improve over time
| (especially when Obama was elected), not get drastically
| worse. So I've stopped caring as much - during Covid, I
| canceled several charities we used to donate to regularly -
| suddenly, after feeling quite secure financially (not rich,
| but ok), I didn't feel that way anymore. I got laid off the
| day after my 50th birthday and after transferring to another
| position in the same company, again 1.5 years later and I
| stopped donating to the local food bank where I was employed.
| Finally found a job ~1 year later - actually with better pay,
| but less WFH and it's hard to go back.
|
| Eventually life gets to you. Looking around, there are a
| whole lot of people who care greatly - but what they care
| about is hurting specific groups of "others" in specific
| ways.. Or in grifting as much $$ as possible. So now I don't
| care as much. I just want the ants to stop crawling into the
| house and the neighborhood dog to stop barking at night so I
| can sleep. Because I'm (*&@#$ TIRED.
| f4stjack wrote:
| Preach brother. I am in the same boat but in the caring side of
| things. I read e-mails, I respond to them as promptly as I can. I
| read the tickets and contact the users to resolve their issues as
| quickly as I can. I attend to meetings, do the required things
| and long story short, I give two shits about what is going on
| around me.
|
| You know what I get? Additional assumed responsibilities is what
| I get, because I read the goddamn mails sent to the goddamn
| regional IT staff distribution list - I am the "knowledge base".
| If you are naive you might, just might, assume that additional
| responsibilities involve a raise or a title change.
|
| Hell. No.
|
| The final straw was a person got promoted without any interviews
| etc. to a position I am de-facto doing. So you keep the people
| who care in the same position because "they get the job done" and
| you raise the people who doesn't care and the end result is this
| situation.
|
| But hey! KPIs are green, the job gets "done", right? Who cares?
| tolerance wrote:
| I feel like I've been in his shoes before and they tend to run
| you toward running people away from you who do "care"...well they
| may not care about how long it takes a guy to get a shed approved
| or order McDonald's (can a man claim to care who cares to wish to
| expedite his order of _that_?) or that nobody wants to help him
| lace the streets with dog crap sack sticks when they're worried
| about actual human issues like they're well-being, dignity and
| identity.
|
| I'm conflicted by this article. Because I hate most of it,
| because I relate to it.
|
| Institutional gripes are low hanging fruit that are only
| significant in relation to taking care of what's relevant to a
| mundane life but not relevant at all to a life worth living and
| dying over as a man. Maybe a man- _child_ , but not a man.
|
| This reads like "Suicidal Tendencies All I wanted was my Pepsi"
| remixed into Yacht Rock. This is not a rant, but a wining
| pantomime griping over things that a town elder would roll his
| eyes over his grave and take pity on the youthful.
|
| So yeah man, I felt you. I felt you. But I beg Allah that I never
| have to feel where you're coming from again beyond knowing about
| how I once felt myself & the destruction it caused me and the
| disdain it arises from the people who I thought I was just trying
| to help.
| xnx wrote:
| "Nobody Cares [about the things I think they should care about in
| the specific way I think they should]"
|
| The author seems very conscientious and civic minded, but there
| are often unsatisfying explanations for why things are they way
| they are or why people act how they do.
| solatic wrote:
| Everybody has a limit to their capacity To Care About Things.
| It's not fixed in stone, people can care about more things and
| more deeply, but at any given time it's essentially some finite
| capacity. A glass-half-empty mentality (like the author's) is to
| look at everything that people don't care about and despair,
| while a glass-half-full mentality is to look at everything people
| _do_ care about and remain optimistic about our ability to
| inspire people to care _more_.
|
| The classic needs ladder states that first you need to take care
| of yourself, only after which can you take care of your in-group,
| only after which can you take care of your out-group. A lot of
| the process of inspiring others is to first set a good personal
| example, then helping others in such a way that ascribes cultural
| value to paying it forward, i.e. to teach people to fish instead
| of giving them fish. Sadly, this culture had largely dissipated
| in a society where so many people first have so much trouble
| taking care of their own needs. But it can be restored, with some
| optimism and finding people who are receptive to it.
| spencerflem wrote:
| lovely perspective <3
| liontwist wrote:
| Nobody is asking you to care and fix everything. They are
| asking you to care about the things in direct control, like
| your job or kid.
|
| This thread is filled with "I do care but can't because _". And
| yet there are those rare people who do care, and with a little
| bit of preparation and effort make a big difference.
|
| When people start in a new job they go through a tough 3-6 week
| sink or swim experience, and then the skills and approach they
| develop rarely changes. Think about that. Most professionals
| probably have spent 200-300 focused hours of their entire life
| trying to get good at what they do for 40 years.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| > Sadly, this culture had largely dissipated in a society where
| so many people first have so much trouble taking care of their
| own needs.
|
| I have been thinking about this a lot lately, thank you for
| writing this.
|
| I have a pet theory that selling products and services that
| reduce people's ability to look after their own needs (either
| directly or as a side-effect), while marketing that the same
| product actually improves your life is one of the key business
| strategies of our generation.
| johnfn wrote:
| I don't like this post, mainly because I think I don't like the
| attitude behind it. It seems somewhat obvious to me that people
| who do care exist and are out there; all you have to do is go and
| ask people what they care about and you'll get some interesting
| answers. You can choose to view the world as having no one who
| cares, but that seems seems a distorted way of viewing the world.
| And distorted in way that will make you more lonely, since you
| aren't looking for other people like yourself, since you've
| concluded they don't exist.
| BigFnTelly wrote:
| I read the blog post feeling the author's rage, but your
| insight is far more important. Humanity's collective goodwill
| is stifled by friction and inertia while moneyed interests are
| given jetpacks.
| dfedbeef wrote:
| The DMV in Seattle is good though...
| dfedbeef wrote:
| It's called the DoL btw. I guess nobody cares about getting
| department names right anymore.
| ripped_britches wrote:
| Believe it or not, there are many super rural places in the US
| where people care because there is such a close knit community
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Maybe I'll retire to one. Will I be welcome as a transgender
| person? How far do I need to drive for tofu? I've been eating a
| lot the last few weeks and I don't want to give it up
| Yen wrote:
| I've lived in Japan for a few months. I was about halfway through
| the article, thinking about how it seemed to be a counter-
| example, before the author called out Japan specifically.
|
| For all the other differences in culture, the attribute of
| "People Actually Care" seems to have a huge impact on how
| pleasant a place it is to visit or live.
|
| I don't know why it seems to be the case there. I don't know how
| to replicate it. I don't think it's magic. I've heard people
| bandy about the theory of cultural homogeneity. That might be a
| _factor_, but I doubt it's the full story.
|
| I suspect if you dig into it, differences in economics are a
| major factor. In the US, it feels like caring is actively
| punished, economically. Caring is nice, but someone can only
| _afford_ to care if their other needs are met.
|
| I also wonder if density is a major factor - not so much for the
| difference in economy of scale, but the difference of "if my
| physical space is incredibly constrained, I'm both more
| incentivized to keep it looking nice, and there's less of it to
| keep looking nice."
|
| And, of course, it's not like Japan is some kind of otherworldly
| utopia. There's serious tradeoffs and differences, there's
| negatives compared to other countries. But it does seem like
| almost everyone, everywhere, just... puts in a bit more effort.
| Takes a little bit more time.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > There's serious tradeoffs and differences, there's negatives
| compared to other countries.
|
| The collectivism of the society which both gives them a public
| sense of ownership of the whole country (thus, the caring),
| also yields crazy bullying in school and work, a high suicide
| rate, and lots of racist and xenophobic attitudes.
|
| Maybe it's changing. It's been a long time since I spent any
| real time in Japan. My buddy who grew up in Tokushima also is
| out of touch with how things are there now. Who knows?
| Edman274 wrote:
| The suicide rate in the United States is higher than it is in
| Japan if you believe official government figures of Japan and
| the United States. The talking point about suicide in Japan
| is one of those that's 30 years out of date.
| tines wrote:
| Not sure what the "official government figures" are but the
| OECD says otherwise:
| https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/suicide-rates.html
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| This is still pretty true. The xenophobia is waning as
| Japan's economy stagnates and there's a general vibe that
| Japan did something wrong economically. But otherwise, these
| all continue to be real issues in Japan.
|
| These days there's also huge problems with infidelity,
| marriage rates, and divorce.
| disambiguation wrote:
| Everyone cares, but:
|
| - everyone has a different idea of what that means.
|
| - many problems can't be solved by one person.
|
| - caring has an opportunity cost.
|
| - caring introduces liability.
|
| - we live in a society.
|
| Caring is a luxury, most people are just trying to survive.
| challenger-derp wrote:
| This list is quite well-put.
|
| Also, for a large number of roles, people are judged by the net
| value that they've contributed (net of mistakes). In a pretty
| large subset of such roles, it's usually the case that small-
| ish mistakes result in small-ish penalties, or sizeable
| penalties that aren't apparent immediately - so in the short-
| term, the here and now, folks in these roles are incentivized
| to focus on the big picture, and to ignore what they might feel
| could cause small-ish mistakes.
|
| Consider a person involved with the modification of city street
| infrastructure to better cater for bikes. It's pretty good by
| most people's standards to have made progress by building
| reasonably use-able bike pathways, stands, etc. in say, a 4 km
| radius in a year. If it just so happens that like three out of,
| say, sixty of such constructs are problematic (mistakes) but
| they aren't big-ish problems, then on the whole, this person
| would be, quite justly, credited for having contributed to at
| least fifty seven functioning constructs; all in all, pretty
| good work despite three problematic constructs.
|
| Of course, not all types of work is like that. That is, not all
| work are that forgiving in the sense that most earnest mistakes
| turn out to be small ones relative to the overall value
| produced. E.g., trading: algorithmic or otherwise.
|
| Now, just a note in closing, the distribution of the price of
| mistakes in a given role is a different matter, can be an art
| in that it involves qualitative judgement, may be largely
| sensitive to context, and may be quite opinionated depending on
| who is reached for comment.
| pestaa wrote:
| Another example of everything is amazing and nobody is happy.
|
| Maybe not everything. And certainly not nobody. But there's so
| much to be grateful for in most people's lives, if we all just
| calibrated our perspectives a little.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Everyone has a breaking point and negativity bias makes the
| awful stuff pile on quicker.
|
| Put it another way: Things are getting worse for more people.
| It may still be "amazing" for most people, but the ones next to
| the metaphorical "awful" line see it creeping. So it can feel
| very arrogant when someone a mile out says "why aren't you
| happy, it's great" as you see the line start to take your
| amazing things.
| pestaa wrote:
| I hear you. I also sense people generally are becoming more
| anxious. More and more we took granted for decades has a
| question mark next to it.
|
| But I didn't expect the author to feel happiness, or be
| grateful for the state of things. However, we can pause and
| realize how much people still do (for a salary or otherwise)
| for each other, despite things getting worse for them.
|
| A good bike road with one bad turn is still mostly a good
| bike road. Still took a lot of caring to build. There's only
| so much capacity to fix mistakes.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| Karl Marx talked about alienation -- we are alienated from our
| work, we are alienated from one another, and eventually alienated
| from our humanity.
|
| I disagree with Marx about a lot of things, but I do think that
| this theory makes a lot of sense. As we become increasingly
| mechanistic in our work, we feel less agency. Less control. Less
| attachment to the work. We stop caring about the product.
|
| You can pay people to care, for agile, but ultimately the
| alienation wins. The solution? I'm not sure! Probably several
| possible things, not least of which is probably work that's
| focused on building one's community and helping meet their needs.
| SCUSKU wrote:
| Ctrl+F'ed to see if anyone mentioned alienation, since this
| post basically seems to be OP talking about alienation without
| them knowing.
|
| I think fundamentally if we want people to care about things
| again, we are going to need to give them ownership of the
| things they produce. Otherwise, why would anyone care?
| throw7 wrote:
| Yes. Give people the ownership of their job. Kaizen comes to
| mind.
|
| What we have today are MBA's that tweak spreadsheets and see
| employees as replaceable cogs in a machine. No one cares in
| that environment.
| morgengold wrote:
| I tend to agree with the author. But then, look around: a lot of
| stuff works really really well.
| throwaway277432 wrote:
| I care. It's frustrating sometimes, but I still can't help
| myself.
|
| Working with people that also care (and are empowered to do
| something about it) is the greatest thing. I've worked in several
| such teams over the years and it's absolutely awesome.
|
| On the opposite side, working on a team that doesn't is the
| worst.
|
| I've actually been reprimanded by middle managers for caring,
| because caring sometimes takes more time than planned, and an
| arbitrary internal deadline wasn't met. I've come to realize they
| do in fact care, just not about the software but only about their
| own promotion. And the core issue is that they don't actually
| know why their own deadlines and feature requirements exist, they
| just get them handed to them.
|
| This is different when you work closer to and with a customer
| directly. They know exactly what's important and why they need X
| or Y. When someone actually has to deliver results and deal with
| the users, they are more invested in having a working system.
| Here, caring involves finding the "right" person (usually not the
| one in charge), talking to them and figuring out what they really
| need (not want) and how they're using the system.
|
| In such a setting, caring and building stuff that truly works is
| also reflected in performance reviews as everyone including the
| customer is happy.
|
| You really have to pick your battles. I've had to make some
| concessions myself: some stuff turns out to be more complicated
| or unclear than it is at first glance, and sometimes you really
| don't have and can't make time for it. And in really large
| companies, there are sometimes so many people involved that you
| often can't get the answers you need or access to the person you
| need. Or you end up at legal which is more often than not a dead
| end.
| daft_pink wrote:
| I think if you want the closest thing to Japan in the United
| States, consider moving to Hawaii.
|
| Seriously, the cops drive Toyota 4Runners. It's an asian majority
| state.
|
| It might be a good compromise into what you are looking for.
| Fricken wrote:
| >White LEDs reduce car crashes by 0.1% and that is measurable,
| but sleep quality and aesthetics are not measurable. You just
| have to care about them. And nobody cares.
|
| I've always been sensitive to the flicker and broken colour
| spectrum of fluorescent lights, it has been a longstanding "How
| come everyone is so willing to spend all day every day under
| these horrible lights?" type pet peeve.
|
| This guy has a problem with white LEDs and I'm not sure what his
| issue is. He really hates them but didn't explain why. I can't
| empathize, I don't understand.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Also he says that they switched to white LEDs because they
| don't care when they likely switched to save on their electric
| bill.
| tommiegannert wrote:
| From skip-reading, this is not about motivation (intrinsic or
| otherwise) in general. This is about other people not caring
| about you, or what you care about.
|
| I care a great deal about DevEx, and since no one else tends to
| care as much as I do, I can do good work for a few years, but
| then I'm worn out from fighting alone. I move on and hope things
| are more aligned somewhere else. Doesn't mean my co-workers are
| wrong for "not caring", just that I haven't found my peers.
|
| The driver who doesn't let you into her lane perhaps cares deeply
| about not being late, again, to pick up her kids from daycare. Or
| her brother is about to do that stupid thing again, and if she
| doesn't try to stop him, she'll feel bad forever, again. Which
| lane you're in doesn't even register on her list.
| Sammi wrote:
| It's really about culture. The US is high individualism, low in
| long-term orientation, and high in indulgence. The US has a bad
| culture for caring.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensio...
| guelo wrote:
| Republicans want to tear government apart and privatize
| everything. Democrats have big ideas but sacrifice them on the
| altar of protecting public unions. Nobody fights for good
| government. I'm sick and tired of the endless big vs small
| government argument, I want to vote for good effective responsive
| government, good hang for the tax buck whatever it's size.
| bilater wrote:
| The sad game theory result of this is that no one ends up caring
| or comes to the conclusion there is no point of caring. Wonder if
| it is at all possible to reverse it once you fall in this cycle.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I don't care because I honestly believe that caring in a world of
| stupid cunts is not worth the limited time I have on this Earth,
| which I'd rather spend doing things that make me happy, instead
| of being perpetually frustrated and disappointed. There are some
| people who keep pushing out good value despite the frustration
| and I think they're the real heroes, but I'm not a hero myself.
| BTW the society is constructed in such a way that I won't have
| kids so all of you can go fuck yourself once I die.
| ed_mercer wrote:
| This article resonated with me and OP was able to clearly
| articulate what I have been feeling pretty much my entire life.
| It's probably not as extreme as OP makes it sound but it's there.
| Enough to make you feel defeated. The dreaded feeling of "yeah we
| are going to be so f*cked 100 years from now" because no one
| gives a shit. In Japan this feeling transforms into optimism and
| hope because people generally do care and take things seriously.
| It has given me the strength to care and try to do my best. The
| power not be an asshole to the person next to me. The ability to
| see the bigger picture.
| ReDeiPirati wrote:
| I don't have faith that this is something we can fix in the short
| term because most of us have been educated in a very competitive
| environment where individuals come first. I'm not saying that the
| opposite is good either, but we should find a balance in between.
| I also feel like that we are all becoming more disconnected,
| alone, and where the center of gravity is only ourself. Despite
| my premise, I still have some hopes for future generations, but
| unfortunately I think that things will get way worse before
| correcting.
| swed420 wrote:
| > most of us have been educated in a very competitive
| environment where individuals come first
|
| This is definitely intertwined with rampant individualism, but
| I don't think it's just our education or lack thereof that's to
| blame. It's also the environment we're born into and therefore
| never really question where it leads us and why. Century of the
| Self [0] makes an excellent case for where/how things went
| wrong, and we never deviated from this path because capitalism
| and its consumption-first economies would never permit such a
| thing.
|
| For those comparing post-WWII to now, the only real difference
| seems to be capitalism becoming ever more desperate to squeeze
| all remaining profits. Capital concentrates [1] and profits
| continue to trend toward zero as Marx warned they would. It's a
| fundamental contradiction built into capitalism that has yet to
| be addressed except for by those few who are already
| disproportionately benefiting from the arrangement at everyone
| else's expense.
|
| Consider how the average baby boomer was treated by their
| company of employment compared to the average worker in the
| 21st century. Employers now make it painfully obvious that
| everybody is disposable, and the only thing that matters are
| the metrics tied to their own compensation, no matter how
| disconnected that is from producing results that are actually
| good for society. The workers are all incentivized to become
| back-stabbing careerist wolves fighting and hoarding secrets
| instead of cooperating to build actual Good Things. The best
| way to get a raise is to jump ship to another company. Etc.
|
| Given all of the above, it'd be very strange if we _didn 't_
| end up in the hellscape that we are currently in.
|
| [0] https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-century-of-the-self/
|
| [1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/how-asset-
| managers-h...
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > we never deviated from this path because capitalism and its
| consumption-first economies would never permit such a thing.
|
| While I haven't read Century of the Self, I will say that
| most of East Asia outside of China and NK are fiercely
| capitalistic. Ads are everywhere and obvious. There's a huge
| focus on consumption and status. There's generally much
| looser restrictions on zoning, gambling, and prostitution
| than the West. And yet the cultures continue being a lot more
| collective and understanding of their fellow person. South
| Asia is less capitalistic (having transitioned from more
| socialistic modes of economic organization somewhat
| recently), but is still quite capitalistic.
|
| I think capitalism might _exacerbate_ this in the West but it
| is fundamentally a Western problem. Most of East and South
| Asia still operates on an extended family model where there
| 's an expectation that when a person or a family is having a
| hard time they take resources from their family and when
| they're in a position to do well they give resources to their
| struggling family members. Lots of extended families have
| family members who are ... problematic. Many of these folks
| have gambling issues, can't hold down jobs, have mental
| health problems, etc. But families support them. They never
| really thrive but they usually have food, shelter,
| companionship, and understanding around them. I think this
| creates a level of empathy that's just absent from Western
| society.
|
| My partner and I are Asian but we have caucasian friends.
| Many of our caucasian friends will cut off problematic family
| members immediately. Indeed a lot of caucasians I know are
| very quick to cut people they don't like or who don't align
| with their values out of their life. This culture of
| individual supremacy is what I think really plagues the west
| which used to at one time have a less individualistic nature
| and now finds its hyper atomization eating away at the
| foundations of its societies.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Yes, this is the correct understanding of the problem. The
| thing is, correctly understanding the problem is highly
| disincentivized, much less doing anything about it.
| cafard wrote:
| The Maryland DMV used to be quite efficient. Once, having mislaid
| my driver's license (at my mother-in-law's, 100 miles away), I
| drove to the Wheaton DMV, and was out within 20 minutes with a
| new license.
|
| This was about two years before 9/11, after which a whole lot of
| rules came down about verifying one's identity, and the DMV then
| crawled.
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| Japanese culture might have the impression of caring but if you
| get to spend more time there it's all a face . People are people
| and they don't care. The magical city the author wants is
| something you need to create and fight to maintain. It's not out
| there waiting for you. The smaller the town the easier it is to
| accomplish. You aren't gonna change Seattle and certainly not New
| York City.
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| Japanese culture might have the impression of caring but if you
| get to spend more time there it's all a face act. On the surface
| they pretend to care but well, People are people and they don't
| care. The magical city the author wants is something you need to
| create and fight to maintain. It's not out there waiting for you.
| The smaller the town the easier it is to accomplish. You aren't
| gonna change Seattle and certainly not New York City.
| joeyagreco wrote:
| > I want to live in a community where everyone cares.
|
| This summarizes the whole thing quite well.
| from-nibly wrote:
| Has the author been tested for ADHD? Not that people with ADHD
| are the only ones that care. They just care really hard about all
| the little things, and have a really hard time switching it off
| for their own benefit.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| What you're describing sounds more like OCPD than ADHD to me
| from-nibly wrote:
| I mean that's in the anxiety disorder family so it probably
| bleeds between both.
| alganet wrote:
| > They just care really hard about all the little things
|
| Maybe they just care and the world has become an endless
| distracting sea of little things that get in the way.
|
| I mean, there's a lot of people trying to shift others
| attentions to little things, like ego.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| The author should really move to Japan if they're so impressed.
| Then they'll get to find out what things in Japan no-one gives a
| shit about, and the shine will wear off.
| jchw wrote:
| People often seem to caution against romanticizing Japan, and I
| think that is a good instinct no matter what, but at least
| among my cohort, I don't know anyone who has moved to Japan and
| shown any signs of having regret for having done it. I've never
| considered moving to Japan, but based on what I know and people
| I've talked to, I suspect I'd probably enjoy it too, though
| having only one year of Japanese class under my belt, it'd be
| quite a long road for me.
|
| But actually, I like a lot of aspects of the United States,
| too, and I also wish more people gave a shit here. They're
| clearly speaking in hyperbole but I think the overarching point
| rings true; less people give a shit than you'd hope. Hell, I
| struggle to give a shit some days.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Hmm, I've met quite a few people over the years who spent
| time living in Japan and moved back, they usually weren't in
| any hurry to return. Seems like some really love it and
| others think they will, but don't.
| xigency wrote:
| The flight is long and expensive, the exchange rate
| fluctuates, and people like to be near their families. Also
| the language thing is kind of tough without consistent
| practice and it can be harder to remember over time.
|
| I say this as someone who loved being there but can't quite
| afford to go back and see my friends who are still inviting
| me to visit again.
|
| In terms of permanent residency, I think that Japanese
| culture Does Not Care about employees' work/life balance.
| The USA is working hard to catch up here so that's only a
| temporary gap.
| ksplicer wrote:
| This is where the author lost me as well. Massive peer pressure
| to conform is not the same as not caring. Maybe thats a little
| reductive, or the worst possible way to look at it, but no
| place that really cares would have such a bad reputation for
| terrible working conditions.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I would like to a make a small joke about something that
| Japanese culture does not care about: Home insulation! I have
| been in so many older, frigid homes and small hotels with paper
| thin windows and walls. It is like they are allergic to
| building insulation! Of course, newer homes and buildings are
| much better now.
| myheartisinohio wrote:
| Nihilism is a cancer on the western psyche.
| kerblang wrote:
| Nihilism is cynicism with a turbo button
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I care about the work I do.
|
| Just sayin'.
|
| Of course, I'm kind of outside the "incentive system," so I do it
| for different reasons.
|
| Yes, it's frustrating, when I encounter obvious "Person didn't
| care" stuff. Sometimes, it infuriates me, but usually, it helps
| me to feel that I need to care more about my own work.
|
| I'm not sure that I buy that every example given is a "Person
| didn't care" instance. I feel that personal values may play a
| part, in interpreting the work.
|
| Also, when you run large organizations/municipalities, small
| numbers become big numbers, quite easily, and you are often
| serving folks with very different priorities. Can't make everyone
| happy. Often, unfortunately, folks decide to make the weakest
| people unhappy.
|
| Want people to care? Incentivize them. That's not just money.
| Treat the people (and their work) better. Hire and promote good
| managers. Stand up to unreasonable demands from above, etc. If
| you are an "above" person, then don't be insecure. Let the people
| under you, stand up to you, if you are being unreasonable. It
| really doesn't hurt as much as you might think. You always have
| the power to force your will, anyway, but I found that it was a
| good idea to listen to my employees.
| csours wrote:
| Whatever your locality is, there are existing opportunities to
| volunteer. Even if you don't particularly care about whatever
| that organization does, it's a great place to meet people who
| care, and they usually care about more than one thing. Maybe ask
| them about mutual aid.
|
| ---
|
| There is a very real danger in being too helpful in some
| organizations. I was too helpful and I got looks from my
| coworkers. People would call and ask for me specifically, which
| pissed them off.
|
| In some organizations being too helpful is threatening to the
| boss. Are you trying to take their job?
|
| ---
|
| Another problem is the legacy mudball - it's not just for source
| code. The sidewalk fix that would cost less than $1000 in
| materials may wind up costing $100,000 after bubbling through all
| the required layers. The layers are there because of very real
| historical failings, but they create failures NOW. It's hard to
| build things now because of 'the sins of the father'.
|
| ---
|
| You can't fix bureaucracy all at once - it's not one thing, and
| it has many different causes.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42645391
| charlie0 wrote:
| After all thay griping, this last bit really stuck out at me.
|
| >We're not going to move to Japan, but would absolutely be
| willing to move within the US.
|
| Let me finish it for him.
|
| >I just don't care (enough).
|
| As for me, I'm looking forward to visiting Japan.
| auggierose wrote:
| That bike lane ending might be so because it forces you to slow
| down. You are not supposed to crash into unsuspecting pedestrians
| when the bike lane ends. You should actually stop and get off the
| bike at this point.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Given the design, looks like the rider will definitely be
| getting off the bike one way or the other.
| whycome wrote:
| The author stated that a sign should be BEFORE the end of the
| lane. When riding, it's not clear that your lane will all of a
| sudden disappear so that you have time to slow down and change
| 'modes'. That wouldn't be allowed for the equivalent car lane
| without advance notice/signage.
|
| The "bike lane ends" sign is...at the END (almost as bad as it
| saying 'bike lane has ended). And, it conflicts with the
| messaging on the road itself which features a "this is a bike
| lane and its going right" marking even up to the end." That
| marking is trying to say "this is turning into a combined
| pedestrian/bike pathway" but that's not clear and it makes it
| extremely dangerous for pedestrians.
|
| Here's the streetview of the bike lane in question:
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/J2b5mgG5LhNLhQk38
| highfrequency wrote:
| Sometimes people don't care, but often they are just unaware
| because there is no mechanism for feedback to make its way to
| them after they have designed the thing. Whoever designed that
| bike ramp probably designed a thousand other road features, lives
| many miles away, and never communicates with the people that
| handle injury reports; he knows none of the visceral details that
| you see every day in your specific corner of the universe.
| frotty wrote:
| 100% of the people around me at work care.
|
| I wish they didn't, because they're bad at their job and "them
| caring" puts them as a peer for experts and people who both care
| AND are competent/experienced via design by committee and
| inclusion. Their incompetency is explained away as "unique point
| of view."
|
| So perhaps the entire piece is an exercise in overgeneralization,
| where you assume that everyone has a baseline amount of
| competency. That curb could have been designed by a very caring
| intern, who is awful at what they do. They were managed by
| someone who had 100 other deadlines that are more important. They
| care about that curb, but they care about 100 other things with
| more priority.
|
| We're in the era of Good Enough.
|
| I find it's an impossible thought experiment to judge doing 100
| things Good Enough is better/worse than doing 1 thing perfectly
| and ignoring 99 other things. Add a token / currency to the mix,
| costs + returns on investment. And now you have something
| substantial to judge.
|
| There is a massive difference between actively not caring and
| passively omitting attention.
|
| Peppered into the diatribe is direct, aggressive, not caring. But
| that doesn't validate the general stance.
|
| Make a consultancy called Caring Company that makes
| companies/products/projects more efficient at same or less cost.
|
| My institution has hired multiple consultancies to fix structures
| and form new ones... the entropy of pay grade and how to
| prioritize thousands of tasks in parallel doesn't "get solved"
| because someone finds that some employee is just bad at what they
| do. And what do you do when you find you can only hire those
| employees because you don't pay enough for better, because your
| products' incomes don't match the skill level required?
| LunicLynx wrote:
| I would argue that incompetence is a form of not caring.
|
| It means that one just does, maybe even more then necessary
| because one doesn't actually understand what their
| responsibilities are. And to be not detected it's better to
| seem very busy and very caring.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Maybe some fraction of incompetent interns are playing a kind
| of double game, where they merely pretend to be really
| caring.
|
| But I doubt that's the norm. There really are a lot of not so
| smart people of all ages out there in positions way beyond
| their actual capability.
|
| Edit: And in a lot of situations the dumb and hard working
| are way more dangerous than the smart and lazy.
|
| With the dumb and lazy being somewhat better, so I partially
| agree with the parent.
| dgfitz wrote:
| In my 15 years, I've had a lot of interns, and a lot of
| indirect interaction with other interns. I can usually spot
| a genuine one in about a day at this point.
| caseyy wrote:
| Show horses and workhorses - Hillary Clinton was all
| about that and say what you like about her, this
| distinction is quite wise.
|
| There is also the latin saying "res, non verba" - that
| one is proven by action rather than words.
| sureglymop wrote:
| I'm sure there are also a lot of competent smart people who
| may happen to have other issues in their lives affecting
| their output. Maybe they are burned out, have some family
| drama, have health issues, etc.
|
| I for one am glad if 10 interns get a chance even if only 1
| turns out to be truly useful. It's a matter of empathy and
| I hope it prevails because what real purpose do we have
| without it.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| One man's incompetence is another man's profound skill. OK
| maybe not actually, but let's just say that some people are
| quick to apply a label of "incompetent" to people who think a
| little differently, or who are perhaps only 10% less
| knowledgeable, or to people they imagine are less
| knowledgeable.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| > One man's incompetence is another man's profound skill
|
| Only when there's no way to measure the results.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| Measuring results is notoriously hard in this industry.
| Any metric can be easily manipulated, and many
| qualitative aspects of software are not quantifiable.
| Moreover, the people who get to decide the metrics will
| tend to choose them in a way that gives an advantage to
| themselves.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I would argue that incompetence is a form of not caring.
|
| It is not.
|
| It can be a _product_ of not caring, and what is _actually_
| not caring can be mistaken for incompetence, but incompetence
| can coexist with dedication (the idea that it cannot seems is
| a face of the "effort is all that matters, there are no real
| differences in capabilities" myth), competence and concern
| are not at all the same thing or inherently linked such that
| either necessary implies the other.
| rcxdude wrote:
| Not always. I've seen multiple people who are very
| enthusiastic and care deeply about something they are
| absolutely terrible at, but are unable to recognise it
| (possibly because it's a hard thing to admit to yourself that
| this thing you like and care about is probably best left to
| someone else).
| norseboar wrote:
| The "era of good enough" here really resonates with me, I've
| been in product and people mgmt and there's a lot of tension
| between "optimal amount of quality for the business" vs
| "optimal amount of quality for the user", esp in B2B or other
| contexts where the user isn't necessarily the buyer. The author
| sort of blows off "something something bad incentives" but IMO
| that is the majority of it.
|
| _On top_ of that, people have genuinely different preferences
| so what seems "better" for a user to one person might not to
| another.
|
| And then on top of that, yeah, some people don't care. But in
| my experience w/ software engineers at least, the engineers
| cared a _lot_ , and wanted to take a lot of pride in what they
| built, and often the people pushing against that are the mgmt.
| Sometimes for good reason, sometimes not, that whole thing can
| get very debateable.
| lolwutgood wrote:
| Is this an AI response? Has the dead internet lured me in,
| again? Or, more likely, do you just not care as well?
|
| Every example in the linked post is either "not caring" about
| the work being done OR aggressively "not caring" due to main-
| character syndrome/individualism of modern American society.
| AND on top of it, every political fix is a _feel good_ fix
| instead of actually fixing the fucking problem.
|
| An "era of good enough" makes no goddamn sense in response to
| this article. NONE of the things listed are good enough. None
| of them.
| bccdee wrote:
| No, the examples in the article are bad.
|
| The bike ramp is designed correctly. It should not be
| possible for a cyclist to maintain 20mph speed while mounting
| up onto the sidewalk. That's dangerous. The ramp (correctly)
| forces them to slow down.
|
| DMVs are not slow because the staff don't care. They're slow
| because they're understaffed, because it's cheaper that way.
| No politician is willing to raise taxes just to make the DMV
| a bit faster.
|
| The McDonalds kiosk upsells you 3 times because McDonalds
| makes more money that way. They care a very great deal about
| that.
|
| Most of these have actual explanations that the author of the
| article just didn't think about.
| sureglymop wrote:
| Good enough... seems almost too self explanatory. Its good
| enough! Great!
| tucaz wrote:
| Thanks for the domain name suggestion.
|
| TheCaringCompany.com was taken but a good enough variant wasn't
| and I got it.
|
| Thank you!
| asmor wrote:
| As the software archeologist on call for literally anything
| going wrong with anything IT operations related for a large
| publishing house that unfortunately had an IT department since
| the 80s and a web presence since the 90s, I'd like to extend a
| generous "fuck you" to all the people who have not cared to
| document a single thing in the past 30 years.
|
| Point being, this isn't new.
| anarticle wrote:
| Not really sure why you brought your job into this, other than
| to inject corporatism into social problems.
|
| Good enough = human shit in the street in USA.
|
| This reads more like a death by a thousand tiny cuts, much like
| people that do not return their shopping carts.
|
| As for solutions, it won't happen in our life time in USA.
|
| Shame has a function in society, USA as a whole is shameless,
| that's all there is to it.
| whycome wrote:
| Isn't "good enough" the definition of "bare minimum"? That
| aligns pretty well with "doesn't care"
| nomel wrote:
| I've only used "good enough", and have only ever seen it
| used, when enough margin beyond bare minimum exists to make
| it "good enough", which requires caring.
|
| I suppose it depends on the personal definition of good
| enough, but I like to reserve "bare minimum" for those who
| truly do the minimal work, teetering on line between
| functional and non-functional.
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| There are an infinite number of things to care about (which is to
| say, to spend resources on, because that's what caring about
| something actually means), a finite amount of resources allocated
| to everyone except about 6 people who have a practically infinite
| amount of resources, and a social organization system that
| revolves around getting as much of those resources as possible
| and nothing else. What you're looking at is the real end product
| of "there is no such thing as society, only the individual and
| the family" neoliberalism. It's not just that no one cares, it's
| not even that no one has answered the question "Why should I
| care?". It's that the majority of people simply cannot care.
| azeirah wrote:
| > The McDonald's touch-screen self-order kiosk takes 27 clicks to
| get a meal. They try to up-sell you 3 times. Just let me pay for
| my fucking burger, Jesus Christ. The product manager, the
| programmer, the executives. None of these people care.
|
| I was working in this space! And I got fired for refusing to work
| on more upsell features for clients like Coca Cola and such.
|
| I don't want to work on adding fucking ADS into checkout. That is
| fucked up.
| dgfitz wrote:
| My spouse bought us kindles recently, and it popped in my head
| today that at some point e-books are going to have ads
| interspersed...
| culi wrote:
| There are kindle alternatives. Luckily the technology isn't
| that advanced and any/all of them pretty much MUST support a
| general PDF (or whatever other similar format). You might
| have to manage your own library a bit but that means you can
| just use these devices completely offline
|
| I think e-readers are not that high on the list of
| technologies most at risk to be taken over by ads
| roland35 wrote:
| Kindles already can have ads on the sleep screen! Unless you
| paid for the ad free version.
| dgfitz wrote:
| Oh my...I'll have to ask, I bet they did. Unreal.
| whycome wrote:
| So far, Kobos are the way better option in my opinion. No
| ads, and it's much easier to add your own books. It's
| (currently) a much more open system. But, not without
| fault. They've shut down some older readers for no good
| reason.
| Uvix wrote:
| "Easier to add your own books"... it depends. Yes, if you
| have ePubs and want to transfer files to the reader via
| USB, Kobo is _marginally_ easier. But Kindle is easier
| for wireless delivery (regardless of format), and
| supports it on all of their models instead of just a
| limited subset.
| whycome wrote:
| There are some awesome independent tools to get files on
| the device via the web.
|
| Try https://send.djazz.se/
|
| But you're right. Via email is easy. And I'm mostly
| thinking of epubs/mobi -- but drm free.
| TheFreim wrote:
| I have KOReader on my Kobo device, with a couple taps I
| can connect to my desktop instance of Calibre and
| transfer books in a flash.
|
| https://koreader.rocks
| barnabee wrote:
| The Onyx Boox readers have a feature called BooxDrop
| which runs a web server on the device when you enable it
| that provides file management and upload. It simple,
| wireless, and works great.
|
| The readers work perfectly fine without an account and
| the Poke 5 I have is a fair bit smaller than the last
| Kindle I had with the same size screen.
|
| It runs Android and I also use Termux plus a bluetooth
| keyboard with it for a rather nice minimal writing
| experience.
| dspillett wrote:
| I've been tempted by their products in the past, but
| unless they've improved their stance on their use of GPL
| covered code in a non-compliant manner I don't want to
| support their business.
| ycombinatrix wrote:
| They also use incredibly annoying DRM
| warner25 wrote:
| If you put them into the Kindle Kids mode you get a much
| cleaner, more streamlined, ad-free experience _without_
| paying extra. I 've seen a few adults say that they
| prefer it to the full-featured mode.
| internet_points wrote:
| i sent an email to have them removed. it was a thing some
| years ago at least (though I don't know if US-ians are
| allowed to do that or if it's just in the EU)
| raphael_l wrote:
| I actually recently purchased my first Kindle, as well as
| an gift upgrade for my partner. I researched and talked to
| a friend of mine who owns one.
|
| At first I was determined I would purchase the ad-free
| version (I think the price difference was like ~20EUR), but
| after talking to my friend they kind of convinced me that
| the ad version is not so bad.
|
| 2 points on this: 1. The ad appears only on the lockscreen
| of the device, so you see it once and then never again
| until you reopen it. The ad is also only for a book in the
| Kindle store, never anything else (this might seem trivial,
| but I think one of the negative aspects of advertising is
| being blasted with stimuli about so many different things
| you don't care for)
|
| 2. The ads are personalized on books you bought and
| therefor a sort of recommendation engine. Both my friend
| and my partner told me they got some inspiration from those
| ads to find books they liked.
|
| So all in all while I despise ads, I gave this one a try.
| Personally (and yeah, I know - subconciously) I have never
| looked at the lockscreen apart from the first time I
| launched it. It's a relatively non-intrusive ad about a
| book that I don't even need to engage with. And in case
| something relevant is on there, it leads to a good outcome
| for me.
|
| This is advertising done well for me at least.
| spc476 wrote:
| I've found _books_ that had ads inserted into them [1]. It
| seemed to be a thing from maybe the 1960 /1970s. The ad page
| was a different type of paper, and no text from the book was
| on it (that is---the ad wasn't on one side and book text on
| the other).
|
| [1] One example: https://boston.conman.org/2002/12/31.1
| cbsks wrote:
| My dad has some old sci-fi books with full color cigarette
| ads in the middle. Crazy!
| dspillett wrote:
| Sometimes ads end up in the actual text, without the
| authors permission or even knowledge: https://www.reddit.
| com/r/Fantasy/comments/q1wbie/the_time_te...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| There was a post, here, some time ago, about how many
| paperbacks had ads actually woven into the story.
| Apparently, it was quite common practice, at one time. Sort
| of an obnoxious "product placement" thing. I think the
| author had nothing to do with it.
| wantoncl wrote:
| https://lithub.com/the-time-terry-pratchetts-german-
| publishe...
| Animats wrote:
| That was so unpopular that it died out.
|
| Paper magazines still have "blow ins", though - advertising
| cards that are injected into the magazine with compressed
| air after printing. They're not bound in. They fall out.
| shae wrote:
| My swedish books from the 1800s have ads inside.
| culi wrote:
| if you don't, someone else will. Maybe you could've introduced
| a "bug" that makes it so it usually doesn't work except when a
| member of the QA team is looking at it :P
| azeirah wrote:
| Well.. I did implement most of the framework. The good thing
| is that I'm waaaayyyyy detail oriented, and I made an
| extremely sophisticated system for it.
|
| Maybe a little bit TOO sophisticated
|
| Not my proudest _engineering_ achievement, but as an R&D
| project? I consider it a success.
|
| Ethical outcome? Success.
| xigency wrote:
| Good on you for sticking to your guns. I hope karma rewards
| it somehow.
| benjijay wrote:
| Volkswagen already had this idea...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
| maxerickson wrote:
| Yeah, there's always the "No thanks" button but not the "No,
| fuck you" button.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Or in online spaces, the ever more common "maybe later." No
| means no, maybe go jump in a lake of fire.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Silicon Valley is like a creepy and terrible suitor, never
| knowing what "no" means or letting its counterparty express
| "no". It's always "ask me later".
| darkteflon wrote:
| The iOS app "Calendars" recently starting showing a modal
| on launch trying to up-sell something - I don't give a shit
| what it was - the "no" option was labeled "Thank you". I
| had to click "Thank you" to dismiss it so that I could use
| the fucking app I pay a yearly subscription for. Or in this
| case: paid. The cheek of these people.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| That "Thank you" button just raised the bar on cheek, I
| think.
|
| I'm actually chuckling at it -- just the sheer passive-
| aggressive childishness of its attempt at shaming users.
| I mean, what did they think writing that on the button
| would achieve? It has literally no effect except to
| infuriate people who were already going to opt out.
| Labelling it "I suck" would have been better.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| because that 2nd one requires a "No, fuck YOU!" button and so
| on ad infinitum.
| whycome wrote:
| I hate that the options when faced with a location
| permissions request is "block" or "allow". why isnt ignore an
| option?? Block adds the site to a discrete local list which i
| dont need recorded on my computer...
| lmz wrote:
| Because if you don't remember the block, it'll probably ask
| again on the next page load.
| whycome wrote:
| Exactly? I may not want a site to have my location now,
| but I may be okay with it in the future. Eg, I'm not in a
| place where I want my location tagged at the moment.
| lmz wrote:
| Next _page_ load aka next link you click. I agree it
| would be nice to have a "No, don't ask me again for this
| session".
| gs17 wrote:
| Brave has an option for "remember this choice until I
| close this site".
| whycome wrote:
| Yes. Similarly, the "agree" should have the option for
| "Okay yes, but just for this session."
|
| The fact that this part of the UI is not escapable by the
| user is hostile and breaks the interaction model. If the
| "webpage" is asking me this question, why is the browser
| acting as a middleman and forwarding me this message
| without letting my continue unless I answer. Let me
| respond to the webpage or ignore it as well.
| hansvm wrote:
| Qutebrowser offers that.
| agumonkey wrote:
| and decoupling order taking with service makes for "funny"
| times. since mcdonalds installed the tablets i regularly wait
| 10 minutes while looking at confused / avoidant employees not
| knowing what to do, even if there's nobody else waiting.
|
| i can almost feel the meeting where someone managed to sell
| this idea to shareholders... "decouple everything, more
| efficient !"
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| That seems more indicative of just bad management. It's been
| over a decade since I've been in (specially) a McDonalds, but
| I used to frequent them easier in my life. The ones I went to
| were well run and efficient. But still as seemed as decoupled
| as kiosk ordering. The cashier would take the order and put
| it into the computer. The food preparers would prepare the
| food and put it on the trays where the packagers would
| subsequently take it and put it on your tray or in your bag.
| There was 0 communication between the three groups in 99% of
| the cases. Often I would make small talk with the cashiers or
| packagers if there was nobody behind me.
|
| I don't see how kiosk/tablet ordering would change that
| significantly.
| agumonkey wrote:
| it's pretty obvious, there's no more tension in the job,
| the cooks still have a list of things to do, but people
| serving customers have no idea who ordered what beside a
| number. they have no real relationship with any of us
| waiting and quite often I see them roaming around
| aimlessly, not sure if I've been called or not
| seabird wrote:
| This is a result of Taylorist management brain rot drive to
| reduce drive thru wait time metrics at the expense of anybody
| not in the drive through. Watch the shot clock near the drive
| through window (they're highly visible at Taco Bell) and
| observe that drive thru customers almost never wait more than
| 60-80 seconds.
| listenallyall wrote:
| This seemed like a poor example for the author to choose, of
| "not caring." Annoying, sure. But these extra upsells originate
| from someone who _definitely_ cares about increasing revenue
| and is aggressively exploring multiple avenues to achieve it.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Companies don't care about you, they care about your wallet,
| extraction of money from. The most pleasant companies to deal
| with are the ones who have found a niche where customer
| satisfaction helps with the goal of wallet, extraction from.
| But at best it's a means to an end, and McDonald's is
| definitely not one of those companies.
| listenallyall wrote:
| The article was about not caring at all, as in total
| apathy. Not "we're going to work really hard to purposely
| create anti-patterns."
| wat10000 wrote:
| I understand that, but it included this particular
| example which doesn't fit. I guarantee the people at
| McDonald's in charge of the kiosk design care a great
| deal about wallet.
| listenallyall wrote:
| ...which is why I started out by calling it a poor
| example!
| ryandrake wrote:
| Lately, the number of times (across different
| businesses/industries) where I've found myself thinking "Will
| you please just fucking take my money and stop bothering me?"
| is too damn high.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yup, it's not good enough that you're already a paying
| customer- they have to try their best to manipulate and
| coerce you into spending even more. It's insulting, abusive
| and honestly pathetic. These thirsty lamers have to try every
| trick in the book to eke a few more cents out of me?
| Embarrassing. Modern tech/business does not have a shred of
| pride or dignity, as per TFA.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Businesses aren't in business to prioritize the customer
| point of view [1].
|
| They are not in business to prioritize the employees point
| of view.
|
| They are in business to maximise revenue, and profit.
|
| If you work for a business, your job is to work on their
| priorities. By all means object or quit if you don't agree
| with them. (And yes, assume you'll be fired for refusing to
| do their tasks.)
|
| If you're a customer, and you font like their behavior
| _stop being their customer_. You have agency. Use it.
|
| [1] good customer service, good customer experience, are
| all good for revenue. Happy customers are the ultimate
| success. But maximizing the revenue from those happy
| customers is very much the business goal.
| Aeolun wrote:
| That's nonsense. Some businesses exist purely to fund the
| ability to do exactly that thing as well as possible.
| Making money is a means to an end.
|
| It's just that they always seem to lose to those that
| optimize for money.
| bruce511 wrote:
| I think some small businesses start because the owner
| wants to do something well. Sometimes this aligns with
| some group of customers and it's sustainable.
|
| Most small businesses fail of course. Usually because
| while they do a task well, they're bad at the business
| part.
|
| Once you get large (McDonald's in the parent thread) the
| focus is necessarily on the business part. At that scale
| it's not "doing the thing as well as possible " - it is
| "making money as well as possible".
|
| Clearly lots of people use McDonald's. So they provide
| customers with satisfaction. But that doesn't mean they
| aren't out to maximize revenue.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| One of the things that's surprising about traveling to
| Europe and Japan is that this revenue maximizing business
| strategy isn't as prevalent. You don't see the same
| upsells everywhere and tipping culture is also mostly
| non-existent. Many US businesses managed to behave in a
| manner that was vastly less extractive to their customers
| for most of the last century as well. It really is
| possible to care about the quality of your business in
| some cultures, it's just harder to do so here today.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Exactly. Enshitification wouldn't be a concept if there
| wasn't a previous better point to reference.
| bruce511 wrote:
| It's exactly harder but when customers prioritize price
| above everything it's hard to succeed if you offer
| better, but charge more.
|
| The hard truth is that American consumers care only about
| price, and so businesses optimize for that (or go under).
| Which means they lean into other sources of revenue, or
| ways to reduce costs.
|
| Elsewhere people care about _value_ more than price, and
| are willing to spend more to get more. Restaurants post
| the real price (including service) because that 's what
| it costs.
|
| Ryanair exists to fill the need for those who want low
| price above all else. KLM exists for those who want a
| better experience and are prepared to pay more.
| thimabi wrote:
| Do you think it is possible for a society to switch from
| emphasizing price to emphasizing value? If so, how do you
| think such a change would take place?
| bruce511 wrote:
| It's really hard for cultures to change. Outside of a
| major event (WW2 scale event) its likely to take multiple
| generations.
|
| It can happen locally. Farmers markets are a thing.
| Supporting local owner-run, not chain, restaurants is a
| thing.
|
| But in big cities, or nationally? Probably not in pur
| lifetime.
|
| But it doesn't really matter what others do. It starts
| with what you do, for yourself. Look around, find small-
| scale suppliers. Support local producers where you can,
| and so on. The quality is usually better.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The problem is that the number of suppliers seems to be
| constantly going down. Chains are taking over public
| spaces, successful smaller companies get bought out, and
| the successful independent ones eventually get a new CEO
| who is incentivized to maximize profits (see e.g.,
| Chipotle hiring Taco Bell's CEO.)
| bruce511 wrote:
| Obviously this is highly location dependent, and I don't
| doubt there are places where this is true.
|
| Also, there may not be sufficient people in your area to
| support independent businesses that believe in providing
| more value at a higher price.
|
| But it's worth looking and asking around. They may exist,
| but you won't see them on TV. Ask in local Facebook
| groups, look out for weekend markets and do on. Asking in
| those places can give you clues.
|
| But I agree that the vast majority of Americans care only
| about price, so there will be lots of places where
| quality simply doesn't exist outside of what you cook
| yourself.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| McDonalds has fallen so far in the past few decades. I
| used to eat there or at least grab a soda several times a
| week. I never go there anymore. The kiosks suck; I refuse
| to use them, but they don't staff the counter half the
| time so there's no other way to order. The drive-thru
| expects you've already ordered on the app. Fuck that.
| It's all way too complicated. I want a Big Mac meal with
| a coke. That used to take me 3 seconds to order and I had
| it on a tray in about another minute. Now I have to dick
| around on the kiosk for a couple of minutes, pay, and
| then wait 5-10 minutes for the food. It's absurd.
| botanical76 wrote:
| This is a bizarre take to me. If food is on my tray in 60
| seconds, I'm concerned what corners they are cutting to
| serve food this fast. It sounds terribly stressful for
| the employees. How can 5-10 minutes be considered slow?
|
| I think in any case, this is an entirely different qualm
| than the other issues, like taking orders only via kiosk,
| or constantly up-selling you during the order.
|
| Personally, I hate the McDonald's app. All the vouchers
| seem quite plainly optimized to encourage you to come
| back. I hate this kind of psychological micro-
| optimization of human behaviours. I would take a ten
| minute order every time if they stopped trying to
| manipulate me.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| This is a classic McDonalds counter:
| https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D3A1A6/dpa-customers-of-the-us-
| fas...
|
| behind the counter-guy, in that wide silver opening, is a
| black plastic slope with with burgers queuing up. The
| cooks are constantly cooking, even when nobody has
| ordered anything, and that means they can get the
| efficiency boost of making 5 Big Macs at the same time -
| laying out 5 boxes, 5 buns, 5 patties cooking, etc. - and
| with no customer waiting on them, there need be no
| immediate rush[1]. The cashier only picks one up and puts
| it on your tray, much less than 60 seconds and no
| stress[1]. Contrast with Subway where the cashier has to
| assemble one custom sandwich at a time while the customer
| and queue of waiting people all watch (stressor); they
| can not get custom sandwiches into muscle memory, or the
| efficiency of doing several at once (slow), and the
| cashier delaying for a moment doesn't relieve pressure by
| letting the buffer fill, it just adds more pressure.
|
| If McDonalds is now taking 5-10 minutes for a typical
| order, what has gone wrong with their fast-food-factory-
| production-line design?
|
| [1] Maybe it isn't actually low stress or no-rush in
| McDonalds, but that design of food service _could be_.
| joncrocks wrote:
| They changed their model a while ago to trying to
| optimise the assembly time of each item, and produce them
| as they are ordered. The hot parts are pre-cooked and put
| into warmers, but not assembled (put into buns with
| toppings etc.) until you order.
|
| Allows for easier customisation and less food wastage
| (and you don't have to keep track of when something was
| made), at the cost of time for 'easy' orders.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> Most small businesses fail of course. Usually because
| while they do a task well, they 're bad at the business
| part._
|
| Some small businesses fail because larger ones see their
| initial success and compete by making a slightly worse
| product a bit cheaper. Sometimes a significantly worse
| product. Once the superior but smaller competition is
| either out of business or has been forced to reduce their
| quality to try compete on price, the bigger business can
| either reduce the quality & price further (the big
| business will usually win in this sort of race-to-the-
| bottom because they can afford to take losses on
| individual products for a time, where a smaller business
| cannot) or bump their price up to improve margins.
|
| It sometimes isn't that the small business is bad at the
| business part, but that they refuse to play dirty even if
| playing dirty is the only way to compete. It is easier to
| rationalise some tactics in a bigger company, because
| there is no one who has to look the customer in the eye
| who is also making product quality affecting decisions.
| photonthug wrote:
| The old "use your agency" response never gets old does
| it, no matter how much consumer alternatives are whittled
| away, and no matter how much the abusive corporate
| behaviour gets ratcheted up and normalized. Do you
| actually make a profit yourself from forcing ads on
| paying customers who can't choose to avoid your services,
| or just aspire to one day?
| bruce511 wrote:
| Thats a cop out.
|
| There are lots of alternatives to McDonald's.
|
| There are lots of alternatives to most things. Some cost
| more money though. That's kinda the point.
| photonthug wrote:
| What if I can't drive all the way to an ad-free
| restaurant or for that matter an ad-free gas pump? What
| if I buy a plane ticket to get out of this bad situation
| and the airline is using the emergency PA to harass their
| captive audience of paying customers to join their miles
| club? What can't be avoided must endured, but there is no
| reason for people like you to insist that this is fine or
| normal, or that it's something one can opt out of. You're
| actively building the dystopia when you do that
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >What if I can't drive all the way to an ad-free
| restaurant
|
| Eating at a restaurant is a luxury. If you don't like the
| experience, don't go (or don't go back). You're free to
| make your own food with stuff you buy at the supermarket,
| and you'll most likely get something healthier and much
| lower-priced. The entire point of a restaurant is to pay
| more money, frequently a LOT more, for a combination of
| convenience, service, ambiance, and food that might not
| be so easy for you to make at home (e.g. pizza) due to
| skill or equipment limitations.
| notpushkin wrote:
| So at least the supermarket should be ad-free, right?
| dspillett wrote:
| Most of the supermarket is essentially ad-space.
| Companies often negotiate quite hard for good eye-line
| shelf positions for their products.
|
| That special offer Tesco has on Pepsi products? Tesco is
| probably making exactly the same markup on each sale and
| the saving is actually coming from a supply price deal
| they have arranged with Pepsi in exchange for their
| products getting extra shelf space and end-isle displays.
|
| High-shelf space (too high for customers to safely reach,
| so otherwise empty or used to store boxes of product to
| open when it is time to replace sold stock on lower
| shelves) often has advertising hoardings for products on
| other isles these days, again this is effectively paid ad
| space for the suppliers. If no external supplier is
| currently paying for it, the space is used to advertise
| own-brand ranges.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| You seem to believe that you're entitled to certain
| things that are provided by other businesses -- but on
| your terms.
|
| I don't know why you think that.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| You seem to believe that someone wanting a thing to exist
| means they believe they are entitled to it.
|
| I don't know why you think that.
| autoexec wrote:
| If an "alternative" to McDonald's does exactly the same
| abusive thing it isn't a real alternative to McDonald's
| at all.
|
| If an "alternative" to McDonald's forces you to drive
| excessive distances to reach it, or it costs much more,
| or it sells Thai food instead of burgers, then it isn't a
| real alternative to McDonald's.
|
| A suitable alternative to McDonald's would be one similar
| enough to McDonald's for your purposes that you can use
| it to replace McDonald's. I'm sure some people have that,
| but I'm also sure many people don't.
|
| There are lots of things that don't actually have
| suitable alternatives. There are entire product
| categories that are completely filled with consumer
| hostile garbage, with zero competitors offering a
| suitable alternative, because sometimes it will always be
| more profitable for companies to refuse to give consumers
| what they want.
| bruce511 wrote:
| A suitable alternative to McDonald's is learning to cook.
|
| Or pay a bit more to go to a nicer joint.
|
| Quality does cost more. As long as you keep signaling to
| MD that you'll tolerate more and more crap for lower
| prices, they happily oblige.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Another trope that never gets old, it seems.
|
| Many people have stopped going to McDonald's by the way.
| But not enough for McD to hurt.
|
| Then what? What does our agency change in the world in
| this situation?
|
| You are using cop-outs as well.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Cooking for yourself is a trope? You realise that's what
| most of the world does every day.
|
| If making your own meals is literally out of your reach
| then I feel really sad for you. That must truly suck to
| be so dependent on companies just to eat...
| skyyler wrote:
| Do you grow 100% of your own food? It may be helpful for
| your understanding (and this conversation) to get off the
| high horse and realise that you're also dependent on
| companies "just to eat".
| bruce511 wrote:
| I never said I wasn't dependent on companies. I very much
| am. For everything. But I have choices and, when I gave
| the opportunity, I make those choices meaningfully.
|
| For example, I don't much care for the McDonald's
| experience, so I go elsewhere. Indeed on occasion I find
| going 'nowhere' to be preferable if there's no
| alternative. I haven't been to MD in 30 years.
|
| I'm not trying to be on a high horse. I follow a path
| that works for me, and I don't complain about it. You
| choose the path that works best for you.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Are you being obtuse on purpose or are you really
| desperate to "win" this debate?
|
| EXTREMELY OBVIOUSLY I meant this part of your comment:
|
| > _As long as you keep signaling to MD that you 'll
| tolerate more and more crap for lower prices, they
| happily oblige._
|
| That is the trope many use, yourself included. A lot of
| people signal their displeasure with various status quo.
| Still nothing changes. I wonder how does the one-
| dimensional quote above addresses the messy and complex
| real world out there.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Sorry, it wasn't obvious to me. I misread your point.
|
| I'm not really trying to "win" anything. I'm telling you
| that you have agency. Whether that means anything to you,
| or if you do anything with it, I guess that's up to you.
|
| Personally I'm not looking for my agency to change anyone
| else or how any company behaves. I don't do it for them,
| I do it for me.
|
| I choose to support companies that align with my
| requirements. If a company makes me feel like crap I go
| elsewhere. I'm not out to change the world, just choose
| how I live in it.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Now I look like an a-hole! :D
|
| It's OK, of course, and yes I take a number of stances
| out there by supporting one and not supporting another,
| company.
|
| My point however was that nowadays that's mostly a feel-
| good measure. Not the unquestionable actual agency many
| make it out to be.
| svnt wrote:
| I think I understand you: everyone at the bottom end of
| society should just have more money or more personal
| time, or both. I wonder how we could make that happen.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Different people are in different places. And obviously
| some people have been fortunate enough to have choices,
| and some do not.
|
| I would assume that most people in this thread are not
| working 3 jobs to survive etc. My context is not their
| context.
|
| I'd also guess they are far less invested in concepts
| like whether or not the server offers fries with that. In
| my long ago, limited experience, I couldn't have cared
| less about how many adverts there were, there were more
| pressing things to worry about.
|
| Back to your point - I choose personal time over more
| money. My spending is modest, my income is likely much
| lower than most here. Frankly I have more than enough.
| Living is a lot cheaper when the goal isn't money.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| As others make clear here you have agency in theory, but
| in practice your ability to use that agency is very much
| dependent on how well the world enables the exercise of
| that agency. Something to think about, interdependence
| and all that.
| entropi wrote:
| Badmouthing bullshit practices of a company is also a
| part of the agency here.
|
| E.g. Yes, I hate that McDonalds (like tons of other
| companies) is incessantly bugging me and quite blatantly
| trying to upsell me. As a result, I rarely go to such
| places anymore. So they lose my business. But I will also
| complain out loud. This is part of the deal with
| bullshitting your customer base. This is part of my
| agency. Losing me as a customer, as well as getting
| badmouthed left and right is the cost of extracting that
| 3 additional cents from me. Now the company also has a
| choice.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > They are in business to maximise revenue, and profit.
|
| Correction, "they" are not a hivemind with one goal, they
| are a collection of individuals with individual goals to
| maximize _their own_ profit. If some marketing employee
| can get a bonus or promotion by showing ephemeral
| monetary gains at the expense of the long-term integrity
| of the product, they 'll jump all over that.
| whycome wrote:
| Hey now, you can pay extra for "McDonald's without ads" like
| you can with Netflix or Amazon Prime or Disney okay.
| ipython wrote:
| Actually, in a way this is already true. If you consent to
| installing their mobile app (which includes god knows what
| kind of analytics), you are rewarded with at least 20% off
| all McDonald's food list prices.
|
| So you can pay for "McDonald's without analytics" by paying
| list prices in cash at the register.
|
| Now, if there was an option when booking a flight to pick a
| fare class not subjected to the stupid branded credit card
| offer walk of shame prior to landing, I would sign up in a
| heartbeat.
| gs17 wrote:
| > So you can pay for "McDonald's without analytics" by
| paying list prices in cash at the register.
|
| I didn't know they took orders at the register still.
| I've only been in once (last year) in the past 20 years,
| but they seemed to insist on kiosk-only. Not sure if the
| drive-thru is like that too.
| ipython wrote:
| You still pay the unsubsidized full menu price at the
| kiosk or drive through. I believe you can order at the
| kiosk and not use a card (pay cash at register)
| gonzo41 wrote:
| This feeling is a driver of theft at self service checkouts.
| amrocha wrote:
| Respect for standing up for what you believe in
| Animats wrote:
| I recently went to a gas station where the pump worked right!
| No affinity cards. No car wash offer. No asking for a ZIP code,
| since I'd been there before. No screen with ads. Press card
| against RFID reader, select octane, pump gas.
|
| I went inside and complemented the worker on their pumps being
| so easy to use. I go back there occasionally, even though the
| station with the ad screen is cheaper.
| _sys49152 wrote:
| nah - gas pumps that ask for phone numbers for savings card
| id's are great opportunities to save cents at the pump.
| 555-555-5555 always works everywhere and half the time gets
| you savings.
| brantonb wrote:
| Enough people use 867-5309 as their grocery loyalty card's
| phone number that it's often got savings available at the
| gas pump. Use the local area code. It works great for
| filling up rentals while traveling, too.
| boredumb wrote:
| I went inside and complemented the worker on their pumps
| being so easy to use, He. Did. Not. Care.
| willis936 wrote:
| I go to a gas station that blares ads at an ear piercing
| volume. I now keep duct tape in my driver's side door.
| s-video wrote:
| I feel like this reveals some sampling error in the OP rant.
| When you see something negative get made that makes you think
| "nobody cares", you're not seeing the people who _did_ care and
| left.
| michaelhoney wrote:
| Which relates to the linked incentives piece: when you create
| incentives, you think you're changing people's behaviour.
| Actually you're selecting for people who respond to the
| incentive.
| aaron695 wrote:
| McDonald's touch-screen were only profitable because users
| ordered more. Possibly Covid and processes to get costs down
| have changed this, but not to begin.
|
| I feel like your comment falls under "Nobody cares"
|
| I love the touch screens and having the time to order what I
| want. I used to rush my order at the checkout and never got
| exactly what I wanted.
|
| If you did a start-up 'ethical ordering' you'd care, made
| money, and probably forced McDonalds to change it's touch
| screens. In South Korea it asks the user are you sure, here's
| the extra kJ, when it does an upsell.
| azeirah wrote:
| I was working so hard to change the internal culture for
| this.
|
| I did not succeed.
|
| It's ran by business people who want to make money. Not by
| philosophers.
| kmarc wrote:
| Same here.
|
| Also, TFA sounds like something I could've written.
|
| Anyway, besides other anecdata, I don't have anything to
| add.
|
| But I wanted to thank you, azeirah, that at least you tried
| azeirah wrote:
| I left impressions where it matters. The young
| engineering talent is not interested in working there.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Even Costco gives you a pop up trying to upsell you on a
| cookie.
| jl2718 wrote:
| I have an interesting anecdote about that. I was consulting for
| a very large tech company on their advertising product. They
| essentially wanted an upsell product to sell to advertisers,
| like a premium offering to increase their reach. My first step
| is always to establish a baseline by backtesting their
| algorithm against simple zeroth and first-order estimators.
| Measuring this is a little bit complicated, but it seemed their
| targeting was worse than naive-bayes by a large factor,
| especially with respect to customer conversion. I was a pretty
| good data scientist, but this company paid their DS people an
| awful lot of money, so I couldn't have been the first to
| actually discover this. The short story is that they didn't
| want a better algorithm. They wanted an upsell feature. I
| started getting a lot of work in advertising, and it took me a
| number of clients to see a general trend that the advertising
| business is not interested in delivering ads to the people that
| want the product. Their real interest is in creating a
| stratification of product offerings that are all roughly as
| valuable to the advertiser as the price paid for them. They
| have to find ways to split up the tranches of conversion
| probability and sell them all separately, without revealing
| that this is only possible by selling ad placements that are
| intentionally not as good as they could be. Note that this is
| not insider knowledge of actual policy, just common
| observations from analyzing data at different places.
| bee_rider wrote:
| One thing you know about ad guys--they are really good at
| tricking people into spending money. I mean, it's right there
| in their job description. For some reason their customers
| don't seem think they'll fall for it, I guess.
| chgs wrote:
| The average "smart person" thinks a trillion dollar
| industry can't brainwash them.
| dspillett wrote:
| In terms of the people with products to advertise being
| crewed over by the ad industry, I think it is more that
| they don't see the similarity between the ad industry
| brain-washing _us_ and the ad industry brain-washing
| _them_. Perhaps the disconnect happens because they want
| to interact with the ad industry, so get their stuff
| hawked to us, but we 'd usually rather not.
|
| Another interesting disconnect is that sometimes a person
| is both the "us" and the "them" in different contexts. i
| knew someone who would complain about some of it on other
| sides but when pointed out that his site used some of the
| same tricks he'd respond with "yeah, but I need that
| because ...".
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| "advertising works, even when you know exactly how
| advertising works"
| pdimitar wrote:
| Meh. I have no idea if I am smart or not -- the last
| several years proved to me I am definitely stupider than
| I thought -- but I know that with time I only started
| buying things I directly derive value from or in the
| worst-case scenario, I'll undoubtedly need during the
| next few months. No cutesy phone cases, no gadgets
| "because why not", no extra socks "because you never
| know", no new toaster because the current one just a tad
| too big etc. Almost no unnecessary purchases.
|
| It's much more related to maturing on this or that axis
| than being smart IMO.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Effectively the advertisers could buy less ad space and get
| the same or better conversion? That is somewhat hilarious
| because that means that not only are the end-users "the
| product" the advertisers are as well. There's only cows for
| the milking, on either side... and shareholders.
| rrrx3 wrote:
| Yes. It works really well. You can do a WHOLE LOTTA
| ARB(tm)(circle R), buying the crap placements at super low
| CPMs and selling the performance difference to clients.
| This is mitigated by those clients who ONLY WANT THE BEST
| (but of course, sir, right this way) - but there are ways
| around that, too - like the MFA (made for advertising)
| domains of all the big-name sites you can think of that
| solely exist for your RTB machine to pump ads stacked on
| top of each other, and only visible to bots and crawlers.
| It doesn't help that on one side, you have folks astute
| with math (Data Scientists et al.) and on the other, a
| metric shit ton of Media Planners/Buyers who are just
| handed a budget and are often pretty naive about the
| intricacies of how it all works. But it all sort of goes
| back to the original point - people put on blinders. They
| just wanna see the metric get hit, the numbers go up. Most
| of the time they don't care how any of that works as long
| as they look good to their boss, and the industry mostly
| obliges.
| sanj wrote:
| This is a really interesting insight. Drop me a line if you
| want to talk further.
| rrrx3 wrote:
| > They have to find ways to split up the tranches of
| conversion probability and sell them all separately, without
| revealing that this is only possible by selling ad placements
| that are intentionally not as good as they could be.
|
| I worked in the adtech space for almost 10 years and can
| confirm this is where we landed, too.
|
| >The short story is that they didn't want a better algorithm.
| They wanted an upsell feature.
|
| This is why I got out. No one cares about getting the right
| ad to the right person. There's layers upon layers of hand-
| waving, fraud, and grift. Adtech is a true embodiment of "The
| Emperor's New Clothes."
| lqet wrote:
| > That is fucked up.
|
| Yes. Our local IKEA recently started doing this. During self-
| checkout, you have to click through hot dog, ice cream,
| cinnamon buns and drink offers, and the inevitable offer to get
| an IKEA family card before you are actually able to pay for
| your furniture.
|
| Seeing this after waiting in line for 10 minutes, navigating a
| sluggish, unresponsive touch screen terminal and unsuccessfully
| trying to scan slightly bend bar codes while 10 people are
| watching you doesn't exactly increase my desire to return to
| this store.
|
| I really think a huge part of the problem is that there isn't a
| direct interaction with a human anymore. If IKEA would ask
| their cashiers to advertise all this crap to customers before
| accepting their money, they would revert this after a single
| day because many customers would very, very strongly complain,
| and the cashiers _would_ care and threaten to quit.
|
| But you cannot complain to a self-checkout-terminal, which
| makes this even more frustrating. As another comment has
| pointed out, there is just a "No thanks" button. I want a "I am
| seriously offended that you try to milk me like a brainless
| cash-cow, you should be ashamed to even advertise this to me
| after I bought a couch for 1,400 EUR, and I will not return
| anytime soon" button.
| kevincox wrote:
| Last time I went it was only one food upsell. But it is still
| really annoying. Before this they had basically a perfect
| self-checkout, fast and easy to use. But now it is adding
| crap and I fear that I'm going to have to stop shopping there
| like many of the other self-checkouts around me.
| poisonborz wrote:
| Just want to thank you for standing up for your values at your
| workplace. I wish more SWEs would have morals like this.
| pards wrote:
| At the dominant pharmacy/convenience store in my area (Shoppers
| Drug Mart), it can take up to 12 clicks to self-checkout,
| depending on what garbage they're upselling on the day. I
| counted them.
|
| I refuse to use them, and (annoyingly, I know) let the cashier
| know why each time as they're checking me out. I feel bad for
| the poor cashier but unfortunately for them, they're my only
| interface to the company.
| zzzeek wrote:
| you can't say "they don't care" though, the folks making these
| screens are obviously pretty motivated to keep squeezing out
| more profits and care a lot about that. if they "didn't care"
| they'd have told you "ok fine, im going for break"
| Nathanba wrote:
| I've always been perplexed and dumbfounded by this to the point
| where it had a really bad effect on my life because I just
| couldn't believe that it's happening, in a sense my life was on
| hold. I couldn't believe that people don't understand the
| simplest things in life, that my own parents or brother or
| friends don't seem to care at all. I grew up with them at the
| same time after all, it didn't make sense to me. Even back in
| school when we were clearly not learning anything and the whole
| system was a joke, nobody said anything. Nobody cared. To me it
| was obvious that it can't be an IQ problem, they are human and go
| through the same systems as me and it doesn't even require
| intelligence to understand. What I ended up realizing much later
| is that people intentionally don't care and they intentionally
| make an effort not to know better. It's an optimization strategy
| that people develop consciously and subconsciously so that they
| don't have to do any more work, don't run into more risk, don't
| offend etc. They literally just give up while outwardly keeping
| up the pretense of caring.
|
| I noticed the same thing that the article writer noticed: You can
| point out obvious problems to the exact person responsible for
| them and they will agree with you and later they still don't fix
| it. They just don't care, it's like you mentioned some
| geographical fact about a town in South Africa to them. A normal
| person would call this psychopathic behavior but now it's the
| human norm. I decided to cut people out of my life that don't
| care [about anything except themselves] because obviously there
| is just no point in interacting with them. To be honest, that's
| almost everyone in society. They are self benefit machines, hyper
| optimized for their own wellbeing. Fine, be a machine then but
| don't be surprised when I recognize you for what you are and I
| don't start playing tetris where the only outcome is benefit for
| you.
|
| It's also sad how even in this thread on hackernews almost
| everyone disagrees with the author and they keep claiming that
| people do care about some stuff and it's okay and we are all
| human after all and so on. I want to emphasize: You aren't
| supposed to have to care about everything. But some people do in
| fact have jobs and specific duties and they are paid to care
| about them and still don't do it.
| nikeee wrote:
| I thought about this the other day and came up with a theory that
| people _do_ care if the thing they are doing has their name
| associated with it for everyone to see (in theory).
|
| Edit: And sometimes, it's just the tragedy of the commons
| aabajian wrote:
| I agree 100% with the comment about the McDonald's food ordering
| system. It is legitimately the worst of all the major fast-food
| chains. It is slow, ad-heavy, and there are certain things that
| you cannot order.
| foxglacier wrote:
| When I know what I want, I order at the counter, which is
| faster and there's never a queue because everyone else is using
| the kiosk. There isn't a cashier waiting but you just stand
| there and somebody will stop to take your order pretty quickly.
| warner25 wrote:
| I recently used the system to order a bunch of chicken nuggets
| for my four kids. When my order came out, I got a bunch of
| _spicy_ nuggets. If you have young kids, you know that this is
| a disaster. Anyway, I said, "Uh, _spicy_ nuggets? That 's not
| what I ordered." The supervisor sighed and immediately said
| that I could keep them if I wanted to, but he'd fast-track a
| new order of regular nuggets for me (on the house, of course).
| Then _he_ started complaining about how the kiosk UI
| confusingly puts the spicy nuggets as the first choice, so this
| happens _all the time._
|
| Meanwhile, an old man was hollering about how he wanted to pay
| with cash, but the kiosk wouldn't take cash, so another
| employee was trying to figure out how to transfer his order to
| the register at the counter to take his payment.
|
| So in addition to being a horrible experience for customers,
| this whole thing appeared to be a disaster for the company in
| terms of both employee time and real money.
| james_marks wrote:
| By "nobody cares", I think they mean "not everyone shares my
| exact priorities".
|
| I see this rant against the exact way a bike lane was installed-
| installed because someone cared ALOT to get it approved and
| built- and all they can think to do is complain?
|
| The world is a complex place full of trade-offs and compromises,
| I feel for the people that worked so hard to get this project
| done.
| a12k wrote:
| I don't know, prioritizing sharing the sidewalk with everyone
| who wants to use it seems like it should transcend individual
| priorities.
| wedn3sday wrote:
| In the hypothetical world where Im the Supreme Leader, there are
| crack teams of sharpshooters that who get placed around randomly
| selected grocery store parking lots dealing out summery justice
| to people that dont return their shopping carts.
| percentcer wrote:
| Sounds terrible!
| ndileas wrote:
| At least the benevolent supreme leader cares! Just look at
| the corpses!
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Vlad the Impaler, without any irony, cared a lot.
| ecuaflo wrote:
| I wonder if it's really about not caring or rather optimizing for
| perverse incentives or just lack of competency.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| I'll care - for money.
| ryanisnan wrote:
| This is a really uninformed article that comes off as just plain
| whiny. Taking the traffic curb example, it's entirely plausible
| that the person who designed that ramp isn't a cyclist, and
| didn't think about what it would actually be like to _be_ a
| cyclist making that curve.
|
| I hired a contractor once, who was a fantastic one. We were
| designing some changes to one of our rooms, and he had a proposal
| that would have made for some interesting, yet unfortunate
| corners in one of our rooms. It would have been more annoying and
| more expensive, but I don't think for one minute that it was
| because they didn't care.
|
| They just didn't live in the space, they didn't spend enough time
| sitting in the problem to appreciate other solutions. I however
| had, and when I presented them with a cleaner solution, they
| ruminated on it for a bit and loved it. Saved a ton of time and
| money, and the end solution was better.
|
| All it took was a conversation, and building a shared
| understanding of the needs and possibilities.
| nine_k wrote:
| > _isn 't a cyclist, and didn't think about what it would
| actually be like to be a cyclist making that curve._
|
| But this is _exactly_ the "don't care" attitude. Ignore the
| specifics of the problem, avoid studying it or just giving it a
| thought. Didn't think that, not being a cyclist themselves,
| they should ask somebody who is. Didn't even think about very
| obvious things, like putting a warning sign ahead of the actual
| object that it would warn about.
|
| No. That person did not care. Really sad.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Imagine building an app for a market you're totally
| unfamiliar with. You don't research the market, you don't
| talk to potential users, you don't do any real world testing.
| You just build something that seems like it should be ok,
| ship it, and never touch it again.
|
| None of us would dream of doing that, but that's what the
| designer of this atrocity did, if we're assuming the best.
|
| Bonus: the app probably isn't going to kill anyone.
| dieselgate wrote:
| Usually constraints are financial related. It takes money to
| do all that and public works is not some big tech company
| nine_k wrote:
| True. But putting the signpost 20 yards ahead likely costs
| exactly the same.
| leipert wrote:
| Ha. The traffic curb example is actually a good one. I don't
| think it's an excuse to build a potentially dangerous ramp
| because you aren't a cyclist yourself. People who design ramps
| should be capable to do it properly.
|
| Imagine it were a ramp for wheelchairs and they would have
| decided that a 20 degree slope is doable.
| caseyy wrote:
| Yeah, not doing one's job well because they don't know how to
| (and won't bother to figure out) is an example of not caring,
| fundamentally.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| People who aren't competent to do a job also generally
| aren't competent to teach themselves the job. That's why we
| the whole idea of qualification, competency testing,
| supervision, training, etc., exists.
| Animats wrote:
| This may be intentional.
|
| Road to sidewalk is a speed transition point. The transition
| from street to sidewalk via a tight turn here is an effective
| traffic-calming component to slow down bikes from road speed
| to walking speed. That's done on freeway off-ramps, where
| there's a curved section or two of decreasing radii to force
| vehicle speeds down before they reach a stop sign or traffic
| light. Same problem.
| ew6082 wrote:
| This is the most likely reason. They should have put a
| sign, but the ramp looks right to me if you want them to
| match pedestrian speed when merging into a pedestrian
| space.
| huhkerrf wrote:
| Yes, this is most likely the reason.
|
| Which means that the author didn't "care" enough to think
| through what the reason might have been or didn't "care"
| enough for the pedestrians.
| drunner wrote:
| Yeah, that's why we have raised crosswalks and stop signs
| everywhere that a pedestrian has to interact with a car.
|
| Or that we have safe and separated bike lanes instead of
| paint to keep cyclists safe, right?
|
| Do you really think a pedestrian feels safe here with
| this design?
|
| Its the same reason many dont walk places. Too many half
| passed attempts by people who don't care designing
| crosswalks and intersections for cars and not
| pedestrians.
| sasmithjr wrote:
| I agree people should be able to design things property, but
| I'm not sure this ramp is actually a good example. It might
| be! But no one is talking about an obvious issue for any ramp
| that would exist in that photo: it is merging bikes in to
| pedestrian traffic. So I'd think that you specifically want a
| ramp that forces the bike to slow down.
| foresto wrote:
| This reminds me of Tempest in a Pothole, an episode of The
| Paper Chase TV show from 1984:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEFBX4M5LCQ&t=2896s
|
| The thrust is that standards of accountability are (or should
| be) higher for a professional than for a random reasonable
| person.
| duderific wrote:
| I imagine the designer was under a set of constraints, for
| example, only a certain about of linear space was available for
| the ramp, because of other issues in the area; or maybe there
| was some budget constraint.
|
| The designer may have thought about what it's like for a
| cyclist to make that curve, and thought, "the bicyclist can
| slow down to make the ramp."
|
| None of those things have anything to do with not caring.
| whycome wrote:
| > This is a really uninformed article that comes off as just
| plain whiny. Taking the traffic curb example, it's entirely
| plausible that the person who designed that ramp isn't a
| cyclist, and didn't think about what it would actually be like
| to be a cyclist making that curve.
|
| They literally mentioned it to the Director of the Seattle DOT.
| If the person who designed a _bike lane_ isn 't aware of the
| needs and dangers to bike users then they are not fit for the
| job. Engineers must make decisions for the curve of car lanes
| based on speed limits and terrain. They must make those same
| decisions for other vehicles.
| codemonkey-zeta wrote:
| I completely agree. The author is attributing apathy to every
| action or inaction of everybody they see.
|
| Just take the banal examples, like the person listening to
| their headphones. Maybe that person is listening to an audio
| book about medicine, because they are in medical school, and
| they really care about being a good student. Or the people
| taking up the whole escalator. Maybe they are old friends who
| have the opportunity to be together, and they care about
| listening to the conversation. Maybe the man zoned out in
| traffic who doesn't see your signal has his mind occupied by
| thoughts of his new baby who is sick in the hospital. Maybe the
| bike ramp was designed by a plucky intern who, despite
| inexperience, successfully got the entire mile-long bike lane
| installed in the first place.
|
| The author is entirely wrong because they are myopic. It isn't
| that nobody cares, but rather that _everybody cares_. About
| different things, but the author has no insight into this and
| it's not their place to judge those things in the first place.
| They reach a good conclusion though, which is to change the
| things they care about with personal activism.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Yes, I get a lack of empathy from this article. The author
| mentions a lot of little things other people do that annoy
| him, without the sense that maybe you need to put up with a
| little annoyance to get along with other people, and without
| any awareness that maybe he does little things that annoy
| other people.
| grayfaced wrote:
| The whole article is "This design isn't optimized for me" and
| "No one else prioritizes my priorities". Empathy is something
| one can develop with practice if you take the self-reflection
| to recognize things from others perspectives. Their "Nobody
| cares" can easily be redirected back to author with how little
| other perspectives they consider. Multiple times their
| "objectively" better thing is worse for some.
| Dunan wrote:
| _it 's entirely plausible that the person who designed that
| ramp isn't a cyclist, and didn't think about what it would
| actually be like to be a cyclist making that curve._
|
| Can you even imagine any piece of automobile infrastructure
| being designed in a way that is dangerous to drivers, and those
| drivers' concern being downplayed with the excuse that perhaps
| the person who designed the infrastructure isn't an automobile
| driver and didn't think about what it would be like to be a
| driver?
|
| That would be inconceivable, but when non-drivers are the ones
| whose _safety_ is ignored in favor of automobile drivers '
| _convenience_ , nobody cares.
| CalRobert wrote:
| If the person designing it can't consider the needs of people
| who are biking then they shouldn't have that job.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| >Taking the traffic curb example, it's entirely plausible that
| the person who designed that ramp isn't a cyclist, and didn't
| think about what it would actually be like to be a cyclist
| making that curve.
|
| So... In other words... They did not care about their job
| enough to investigate and think through the situation. They
| just did the default easy thing and moved on with their day.
| postcert wrote:
| Does anyone have the time to care anymore? I searched for "time"
| in the comments and found a few unrelated hits.
|
| Good enough is going to be the output when nobody has the time or
| people's time isn't valued.
| shibby wrote:
| > We have examples like Elon who, through sheer force of will,
| defeats armies of people who don't care.
|
| The interesting part of this article and the comments this site
| have produced is this statement and the fact you've all either
| ignored it or just accepted it as fact.
|
| You're all part of the problem.
| foxglacier wrote:
| Bloggers mention Musk like they do Trump to politicize their
| writing for some stupid reason. Ignoring it isn't part of any
| problem. Starting a flame war over it is.
| shibby wrote:
| Yes because this place is known for its tolerance and ability
| to just sidestep such nuances.
|
| Tech bro bs.
| cbsmith wrote:
| It's a common misconception of youth to think nobody cares. For
| the most part, people care, a lot, to the point that they get
| exhausted. The challenge is prioritizing what to care about,
| which means as much about _not_ caring as it does about caring.
| jongjong wrote:
| I used to care so much 10 years ago. I didn't have to factor the
| state of the world or society into all my decision. I trusted
| society fully like I trusted air.
|
| Now I feel like the boiling frog and I only trust a handful of
| people. I don't trust the system. I don't trust that it's fair. I
| feel like being honest is harming my survival odds.
|
| Imagine you have to live in North Korea... Your awareness of how
| that society operates can make it challenging to sing your
| praises to your dear leader.
|
| I really hope things change. I live outside the US and it feels
| like we get the worst of everything. It's as though the political
| machinations which used to take place in Africa to keep the
| people poor has spread on to parts of the western world in a
| slightly different form. In Africa, the environment is about
| artificial deprivation of resources and rights; in the west, it's
| about deprivation of opportunities.
|
| In Africa, the goal is to deprive people of resources and rights;
| to allow corporate monopolies to exploit their labor as much as
| possible. In the west, the goal is to deprive people of
| opportunities to prevent them from competing against monopolies.
|
| In the west, we have a fake society where everyone pretends to be
| on the same playing field, but we're not even close.
| tonymet wrote:
| He's really talking about aesthetics (the philosophy of beauty)
| and how we lost the ability do admire beautiful things. The only
| means we have to assess & debate merit are quantitative (and
| lossy) so the grotesque dominates.
|
| There are a couple exceptions about apathetic doctors and
| degrading community, but most of his examples are complicated and
| ugly things (McDonalds app, the bike ramp, dog mess , etc)
| sureglymop wrote:
| > We have examples like Elon who, through sheer force of will,
| defeats armies of people who don't care. For his many faults, you
| can't say the man doesn't care.
|
| I fully expected that bit. Can't say I would agree in any way
| though. If anything, a perfect example of a person with way too
| much agency and executive power and way too little restraint and
| rationality. The perfect anti social candidate to not care but to
| want to appear to due to his own personal insecurities that the
| world now has to suffer for.
| BhavdeepSethi wrote:
| What do you not agree with? That he doesn't care? I would
| assume scaling Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity are net positive for
| the world (as it stands). Can you achieve those ambitious
| things if the leader/ceo of the company doesn't care?
| tdeck wrote:
| I mean, he clearly didn't care that supervisors at his
| company were calling people the N-word on the job. He cares
| about benefiting himself and promoting his image, at least to
| a specific audience.
|
| Perhaps the bike path engineer was focused on caring
| intensely about something else and didn't allocate much
| caring for the bike path.
| notfed wrote:
| You know what what happens when you assume...
| jeffhuys wrote:
| Good rebuttal, very nice debate.
| arretevad wrote:
| Elon only cares about enriching himself.
| podgorniy wrote:
| If that's true what would be explanation of his
| gaming/streaming?
|
| I believe his motivations are beyond getting rich. At some
| point in life money become means to goals, and goals are
| driven by real motivation.
| grajaganDev wrote:
| Do you mean paying others to game for you?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > I believe his motivations are beyond getting rich. At
| some point in life money become means to goals, and goals
| are driven by real motivation.
|
| They are now about acquiring power and respect from other
| people, after he became rich and everyone started making
| fun of him.
| hypeatei wrote:
| > If that's true what would be explanation of his
| gaming/streaming?
|
| It's a PR stunt. He pays someone to play for him and level
| up his account. Then, he plays for a bit and it's painfully
| obvious that he's inexperienced.
|
| He doesn't take criticism very well either. He recently
| removed a live streamers Twitter verification for pointing
| out his lack of skill. How's that for a "free speech"
| platform?
|
| Elon is extremely partisan, insecure, and rich. That's it.
| jeffhuys wrote:
| I think he mostly cares about getting humanity off this
| planet, he's been saying that for a long, long time.
|
| Starting a space company to enrich yourself sounds like a
| very weird thing to do if you only care about money.
| Vilian wrote:
| He don't want poor people with him, only his rich friends
| grajaganDev wrote:
| He only cares about benefiting himself and promoting his
| image.
| Sloowms wrote:
| He's certainly working towards getting humanity of this
| planet by making it a worse place to survive. I'm not sure
| why you would praise him for that.
|
| Also Elon lies all the time. He's even lying about playing
| games.
|
| He's just trying to get money and power. Maybe he's doing
| some stuff that interests him on the side but he really
| doesn't care about you specifically.
| andrepd wrote:
| That's not fair. He also cares what twitter randos think of
| him (e.g. to the point of paying to boost his diablo account
| or whatever).
| caseyy wrote:
| In smaller communities, people care more. There is a reputation
| social cost associated with being a self-centered asshole when
| everyone knows each other. If one doesn't care about others,
| they'll soon find themselves excluded from social circles, not
| offered help when they need it, and similar.
|
| This is not the case in large cities - show 1 million people you
| do not care for them and there are still millions that will treat
| you reasonably well, especially if you can make a nice first
| impression. In some way, this social environment optimizes for
| not caring.
|
| This is why I spent 30 years living in large cities around the
| world and now moved to a relatively small town. And I couldn't be
| happier. Streets are tidy, the town administration fixes most
| known problems, the public spaces are refurbished and the parks
| are maintained, businesses are pleasant, and everyone is friendly
| - I think I could ask for a favor from my taxi driver and they'd
| probably try to help.
|
| There is a list of grifters we all know and keep in our heads,
| and I don't think the community will ever do them any favors.
| That is justice - these people wouldn't do anything for the
| community, too. And this list happens naturally in small places -
| you know the character of those around you. Reputation for having
| good character has social value. And this is natural.
| batsoupremacy wrote:
| There is no solution, only trade-offs.
| cyrnel wrote:
| You could replace "they do not care" with "they are prevented
| from caring" or "they care about different things" to get a more
| empathetic take.
|
| Designing entire cities on shoestring budgets and break-neck
| timelines prevents caring.
|
| Choice of lighting requires caring about many factors, including
| longevity and efficiency. The fact that you would make a
| different tradeoff doesn't mean the person doesn't care.
|
| Driving is a complex task. Watching for mergers while trying not
| to die in a crash is hard to do simultaneously.
|
| I could go on, but the solution to these things is not to get
| weirdly mad at people who may have a perfectly good reason for
| their behavior (sometimes they don't).
|
| Cities should be designed in close consultation with residents
| (not just whoever has the free time to show up to meetings).
| Humans shouldn't be forced to drive everywhere. Up-selling should
| be a consumer protection violation. Caring alone isn't enough if
| you care about the wrong things.
| usr350891230 wrote:
| > Choice of lighting requires caring about many factors,
| including longevity and efficiency. The fact that you would
| make a different tradeoff doesn't mean the person doesn't care.
|
| The author was complaining about the use of cool white (5000k)
| LEDs instead of warm ones (2700k). Cool LEDs aren't any cheaper
| or more efficient than warm ones. So what tradeoffs are we
| talking about?
| Tokkemon wrote:
| Maybe the city has a million of them sitting in a warehouse
| from some previous administration and they don't want to buy
| new ones.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Imagine this argument made about e.g. the leftover stock of
| lead-based paint. What, are we gonna dispose of all this
| toxic paint and re-stock with new one? That'd be just
| ridiculous. /s
| eweise wrote:
| regarding "These new lights objectively suck to anyone not
| driving. If your house is near one, they suck."
|
| I have a blinding street light across from my house. I complained
| to the city and they put a shade on the light so that my house is
| now in the dark. Its so much in case anyone else has the same
| problem.
| r-w wrote:
| What city are you in? Or state / general region, if you'd
| rather not share.
| eweise wrote:
| marin county
| chaseadam17 wrote:
| I don't think people don't care, I think they have too much to
| do. Kids at home, too much work, and still barely making ends
| meet. Our society is set up to push people to the max,
| prioritizing quantity and "good enough" over quality. Most people
| do not have a career where spending 1% more time on a curb design
| instead of spending that time with their kids results in any more
| pay, much less the spare time to focus on craftsmanship for its
| own sake.
| ndesaulniers wrote:
| Apathy is death.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Contrary to the author's quip about incentive systems, I wish I'd
| learned earlier that it's a fool's errand to care about things
| that have no positive feedback loop, no relevancy in my life,
| that I have no actual influence over, or that are otherwise
| beyond my purview. To 21 year old me, and probably many others,
| it would seem heartless or self-serving, but by doing so I get to
| focus on the few things I can _authentically_ care about without
| worrying about how much they 're reciprocated, and I don't need
| to passive aggressively try to influence broader behavior
| indirectly. If a neighbor or random stranger needs a hand, I give
| it to them and don't ask for anything in return. Likewise if
| someone wants to strike up a convo. I give people my time and
| energy if I can afford to and want to. I try to make that
| possible more often than not, and it leaves me with a very
| healthy social life, along with a non-burnout inducing work life.
| Beyond that, it'd be self-destructive and non-economical.
|
| I realized years ago that in retrospect it was stupid to care
| beyond what I was rewarded for caring about or that my success
| was measured by, which was time, not quality, or accessibility,
| or usability, or anything else, and that's usually the case. If
| you have 2 weeks to get something completed, and it's not in the
| definition of completed to make sure screen readers can parse the
| website or whatever, then it's not your job to do that unless
| you'd be there anyway and get the rest of the stuff done with
| time to spare.
|
| If you work at the DMV, you're sure as hell not wise to try and
| fight for different higher level decisions, it's not worth losing
| it for, and you're not measured by how happy of a place it is.
| Sure, engage in your interactions with people with respect, but
| don't take on responsibilities you're not paid for.
|
| That said, if you could otherwise afford to spend a bit more time
| or effort outside work on things that aren't entirely self-
| serving, after you've done things that do bring you only personal
| value, but deliberately choose not to _all_ the time, then ya
| that 's just lame af.
|
| Lastly, I do ultimately agree that some people are just absolute
| careless assholes on an individual level or deeply antisocial
| unfortunately, and we shouldn't be cultivating that in our
| cities, but that's a different convo. The worst I tend to see on
| a daily basis is cigarettes being tossed on the sidewalk and
| dogshit left by owners who I'd prefer didn't have them.
| globalnode wrote:
| I doubt people in Japan care more or less than anywhere else.
| They just buy into a different social contract, one where they
| believe that if you behave a certain way towards others, your
| life in turn will be better as well. Japan is right to discourage
| foreigners from moving and living there. Those sorts of social
| contracts only work when everyone is on the same page.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > I doubt people in Japan care more or less than anywhere else.
|
| They do care more than most countries where I have visited or
| lived. There is a real send of "excellence" about their public
| behaviour that is hard to replicate. For example, when you
| queue to board a train, people stay to the side to allow
| passengers to exit. After others have exited, they board the
| train. (Tourists sometimes make the mistake of rushing into the
| train when the doors open, but it only takes one try to figure
| it out!) Ask yourself: Why do they do it? I don't why, but I
| observe it on the daily, and the incentive to behave well in
| public is pretty low in a modern ("selfish") society. I feel
| the same about littering -- the amount of litter in public
| places is astonishingly low in Japan. Another tiny thing that
| you may notice: When in a busy public place where two groups of
| people are crossing one another's path, people in Japan make an
| effort to allow one person to cross from each side. It is like
| watching a ballet performance when you see it.
| > Japan is right to discourage foreigners from moving and
| living there.
|
| This is a myth. Japan (and, coincidentally, Germany) welcomes
| three groups of foreigners: (a) students (language and
| university, mostly), (b) low skill workers (factory, farm,
| retail), and (c) high skill knowledge workers. I would say it
| is much easier to get ( _and keep_ ) a work visa in Japan
| compared to the US.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| This is how trains work in Bangkok also, and Thai culture is
| very different from Japanese culture.
|
| This is just how trains work in that place. It's not deeper
| than that.
| ArthurStacks wrote:
| Not sure what train you got in Thailand, you were perhaps
| lucky. Usually it is the opposite. As a westerner working
| in BKK this drives me mad that they do not wait. They will
| only wait if there is no gap to try push in on.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| I'm talking about the skytrain, where they paint arrows
| on the ground to tell you where to stand to await
| boarding.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| Same in the UK. Isn't waiting for others to get off before
| you get on just _basic_ courtesy? There are definitely
| individuals who don't do this, but most do. Same in lifts.
|
| Other than that, I completely agree that people in Japan
| seem to care and take their jobs more seriously than
| elsewhere. Though my Japanese friends would probably tell
| me that it's not because they deeply care -- really they're
| just terrified of standing out. Still, perhaps the
| resulting society is worth it! High trust is _great_.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| It's not even the basic courtesy, it's basic _reason_.
| The inside of the train is smaller than the outside
| (which is a station) so it 's easier to maneuver your way
| if you first let people out and then go inside than it is
| in the case when you first go inside and then try to let
| people to go out. The same is true with elevators.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| True.
| emchammer wrote:
| I sure do miss the sodium lamps.
| nph278 wrote:
| Why was this written?
| thrance wrote:
| This guy is _this close_ to rediscovering worker alienation.
|
| Most people don't care about doing their jobs well because they
| don't really choose what they work on, they don't own the product
| they're working on and don't enjoy the fruits of their labor.
| They know working harder won't improve their material condition
| either, only tire them more, seemingly pointlessly.
|
| And so society turns to sh*t, but a lot of value is created for
| shareholders in the process, so who cares?
| NoGravitas wrote:
| > This guy is this close to rediscovering worker alienation.
|
| A lot of people in the comments are, too. It's been a real
| interesting case study for me.
| omgJustTest wrote:
| I feel this way a lot, i would suspect however that these "1%
| improvements" are really obvious to some people and completely
| not obvious to the person who did it.
|
| People are lazy, which means if it isnt obvious to them, or more
| importantly, if they don't see a direct incentive to their life,
| they don't do it.
|
| In reality "1% effort" probably looks like 10-50+% effort... and
| society would be 10-1000x better for it but the incentives are
| wrong.
| aoeusnth1 wrote:
| I find that caring, and networking with other people who care, at
| work can be a huge career boost in the long term. So I'm not even
| sure the not-caring people are winning, long term, but maybe they
| also don't can't about that.
| freen wrote:
| Societies decide if they are pro-social or anti-social.
|
| Pro-social is more work. It's harder. It is caring, sensitive,
| flexible. You have to give a shit because society actively
| disapproves of and discourages not giving a shit. No one wants to
| be your friend cus your the asshole who doesn't give a shit.
|
| Anti-social is easier: you don't have to care. My industrial
| effluent will cause cancer? I don't care. My bigass truck is more
| likely to kill pedestrians? I don't care. Masking during a
| pandemic jmight save someone else's life? I don't care.
|
| Everyone wants to live in a prosocial society. Certainly many
| people complain about the fact that society isn't pro-social, yet
| themselves are deeply anti-social.
|
| "No one wants to work! Do you pay a living wage? Benefits? Heck
| no, my business wouldn't be as profitable"
|
| Unfortunately, the ability to freeload off the collective
| relatively more pro-social past is coming to a rapid end.
| dieselgate wrote:
| Far as the bike lane/sign thing goes at least there's a bike
| lane. Many streets in Seattle don't even have a sidewalk let
| alone a bike lane. And I got hit by a car while biking in seattle
| a few years ago. Either way wear a helmet while biking
| juliend2 wrote:
| I used to feel the same before having a kid.
|
| Nowadays, the scope of what I can care about is drastically
| reduced. But one area where I don't allow care to be dissolved
| (apart from my family) is the work I do.
|
| I had to leave a job where co-workers wouldn't care and it was
| about to influence my own level of care by the end.
| jwr wrote:
| I agree with author's frustrations. So many things could be
| better if people cared and did the right thing.
|
| Japan is indeed slightly better in this regard: the work culture
| emphasizes doing your job as well as you possibly can, no matter
| how menial the job is. That's why you'll so often see attention
| to little details, which makes life better for everyone. It is
| very noticeable on a daily basis.
| donatj wrote:
| I set up a weekly auto-buy for a stock about a year ago with
| Cashapp.
|
| I noticed the stock was way up today so I logged in to sell.
| Well, turns out the auto-buy has just... Not been firing... For a
| solid year. I have two purchases and then it stopped. It still
| says I have a weekly auto-buy set up, but I have not been
| charged.
|
| In a just society, I would be owed my potential winnings for
| these unprocessed purchases, but having dealt with Cashapp
| support in the past I know damn well there's no way they're going
| to agree to that. I would be lucky to even catch the ear of a
| human being. It's sure as hell not worth taking them to court
| over a loss of maybe a couple hundred dollars at most.
|
| The opaque and useless support of modern companies is literally
| in my eyes the worst part about the modern world. They quite
| literally do not care.
| kristianp wrote:
| > having dealt with Cashapp support in the past
|
| Yet you're still a user? Perhaps you also do not care? Actually
| the "do not care" covers a lot of ground here, perhaps you
| still find it useful and reliable enough, that you are willing
| to forgive this one bug due to the general convenience of
| cashapp.
| donatj wrote:
| No, I despise their stock feature. It was just easy to set
| up, but is fundamentally terrible in every aspect. The rub is
| I have a bunch of stock with them from the start of the
| pandemic and am pretty sure there is no way to move it to
| another service without triggering a taxable event.
|
| So I guess I don't care in that I don't care enough to lose
| money on switching, or complicating my taxes even further by
| utilizing multiple investment firms.
| radicalcentrist wrote:
| They have an option to do an ACATS to another brokerage
| account. They do not mention specifically, but it looks
| like this would be considered a stock transfer "in kind"
| which should not be considered a taxable event.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Fidelity/comments/la7tj6/can_someo
| n...
|
| https://cash.app/help/5026-transferring-stock-to-another-
| bro...
| donatj wrote:
| Oh interesting! Thank you kind stranger
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| As HN loves to quote Hanlon's razor: <<Never attribute to
| malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity (or
| incompetance).>> First, assume that they shares were purchased,
| but not correctly credited to your account. Second, confirm
| that with CashApp. (Doubt it -- but try that first.)
|
| Assuming CashApp is a US-based brokerage, I would first raise a
| complaint with CashApp. If you get the blow-off (which I fully
| expect), send a written letter to the Securities Exchange
| Commission (SEC) and CC CashApp legal and compliance team.
| (Make it clear in the letter that you are CC'ing CashApp L&C.)
| Usually, brokerages are not allowed to make a customer whole
| after an execution mistake. However, if they make enough
| mistakes, SEC will slap them with a huge fine. (See:
| Robinhood.) It is very important to formally register your
| complaint with CashApp. In fact, I would use this exact phrase:
| "I would like to formally file a complaint about poor execution
| service from your brokerage firm." Everything is recorded in
| brokerage firms these days (voice or written). There will be
| absolutely no doubt that you wish to formally file a complaint,
| and I can guarantee you that it will be taken seriously by
| either CashApp (L&C team) or SEC (enforcement team).
| xigency wrote:
| This is great advice I hope GP follows, but this also
| highlights something that I wish the original article
| addressed: not caring is contagious.
|
| The reason corporate interests push a facade of not caring is
| so that many customers will also not care.
|
| Between binding arbitration and other legalese-fu, the
| process for remediation slowly chips away at people who at
| first thought they cared.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| I think the undue romanticism for East Asian societies is an
| instance of not caring. I think it's racist too.
|
| East Asians are regular people, with regular problems, and
| regular levels of care or indifference.
|
| I think the same of anyone who believes in the magic of ancient
| Chinese medicine. It's not endearing to believe that the Chinese
| have some mystical otherworldly powers. It's just racist.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism
| nejsjsjsbsb wrote:
| Tldr: smorgasbord of 0.1th to 1st world problems designated as
| horrendous failures by me ain't fixed, so I decide that people in
| their jobs don't care.
|
| I actually like the bike ramp. Cyclists merging to a footpath at
| 20mph are a danger. Take em out before they hit the pedestrian.
| hoosier2gator wrote:
| As a physician who does care, I found it interesting that he
| chose to include doctors in this tirade but then patted himself
| on the back for squashing bugs quickly and feeling badly about
| having written buggy code. I know that there are outliers, but in
| meeting and working with literally hundreds of other physicians
| at this point in my career, I can count on one hand the doctors
| who truly do not care. And boy do we feel bad when we make a
| mistake.
| paulnpace wrote:
| My primary care physician will only do video meetings or wait 6
| months for in-person appointment. He does not care.
| sien wrote:
| Why don't you change ?
|
| Is it not allowed ?
| Edman274 wrote:
| Is that a rebuttal to the idea that the doctor doesn't
| care?
| simoncion wrote:
| Why would you think it's a rebuttal?
|
| Six months' wait to see your GP for an in-person visit is
| a worryingly long wait. If I heard someone say that they
| were required to wait that long for in-person doctor's
| visits, I'd wonder why they were still seeing that doctor
| and ask them polite questions to try to figure it out.
| veltas wrote:
| That's the case where I live, there's only a few
| surgeries I'm allowed to register at and they all have
| this problem. I think there is some manipulation of
| statistics the surgeries do to prevent more being
| created, and to hide the difficulty in getting an
| appointment. For example rather than having 6 month
| waiting list, they don't make appointments more than a
| few weeks in advance, so you just can't get an
| appointment and it looks like nobody waits more than a
| few weeks. I think while surgeries are allowed to do this
| we'll never understand the real capacity.
| simoncion wrote:
| When you say "surgeries", are you using what I understand
| to be the UK word for the US phrase "doctor's offices"?
| veltas wrote:
| Yes
| BizarreByte wrote:
| > Six months' wait to see your GP for an in-person visit
| is a worryingly long wait.
|
| I always find it cute to see what Americans consider a
| long wait for any medical service.
|
| For myself in Canada the very minimum time to see a GP is
| a month and a half and that's a best case scenario. Get a
| different GP? Impossible.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| They might be living in the UK where most of the population
| has no private healthcare insurance and the nationalized
| GPs are frequently all overloaded like that.
| tqi wrote:
| You think PCPs get to decide what their schedule looks like?
| Or do you think they have a specific patient load they are
| expected to meet, which dictates how many in-person vs remote
| slots they have in each day?
| paulnpace wrote:
| Even people posting comments don't care.
| zo1 wrote:
| Yes. They just choose to fill it way passed capacity
| because they want more money and don't want to accept the
| money they will end up getting for doing a proper non-
| rushed job.
|
| That's why they have 15min slots and rush you out the door
| if you look like you'll be taking too much of their time.
| Maybe blame the insurance for dictating they must charge
| per-session instead of per-hour, sure, but the doctors at
| the end of the day prioritize their own salary over
| patients well being. Not to the extent that one can say
| they are negligent or do a bad job, but they ride that line
| between in order to optimize their earnings without getting
| into (too much) trouble.
| rcxdude wrote:
| Presumably, if the GP comment hasn't switched yet, then
| there's a bit of a shortage of options. So it's entirely
| possible that there's a shortage of doctors in general in
| the area, and a doctor that does care about serving
| patients in that circumstance will find themselves in
| exactly the same pattern of behaviour, because there's
| more need from patients than they can satisfy, so they
| try to help the most people they can even if that means
| each person gets less help.
|
| More egregously in that regard, in the UK it's common for
| doctors to part work for the NHS and part work privately.
| Anything on the NHS is massively underresourced and so
| long waiting times for short, overworked appointments are
| common, but you can get an appointment much faster and
| with better attention from the same doctor if you pay.
| But then even these private services are starting to have
| too much demand, because the problem is more structural
| as the population grows and ages, while investment in the
| education and training, not to mention reasons to stay in
| the country afterwards, has stagnated.
| ikr678 wrote:
| His care does not scale and he has to ration his care between
| existing patients. For him to give you more care, it will
| likely come at the expense of someone else's care.
|
| This situation has occurred because somewhere and somewhen
| else, a chain of other people have not cared and allowed
| primary care resources to get to this state.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| My mother is a nurse practitioner who works in an acute care
| clinic, and I can say that she feels horrible when she makes a
| mistake, learns that one of her patients' conditions has
| worsened and they've been hospitalized, or -- worst of all --
| when they die, even if it was expected.
| least wrote:
| A lot of physicians have terrible bedside manner and that is
| going to be one of the biggest criteria a non-physician is
| going to use to judge how much they care.
|
| And I don't think that's unreasonable, either. It's necessary
| for a physician to communicate effectively with their patient.
| Trust is a requirement to work effectively together. If you
| can't establish that, then you've failed. Encounters with
| doctors shouldn't feel adversarial.
| parpfish wrote:
| in situations like that, i like to think about Berkson's
| paradox [0].
|
| In the overall population, bedside manner and medical
| aptitude are likely uncorrelated. But the individuals that
| fall into the quadrant of bad bedside manner AND low medical
| aptitude will be filtered out of the profession. That means
| that in the remaining population, you have an externally-
| induced _negative correlation_ between bedside manner and
| medical aptitude.
|
| So if you find a doctor with bad bedside manner, they're
| likely to have better medical aptitude otherwise they
| would've been filtered out.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox
| least wrote:
| There are plenty of professions where it makes sense
| someone unpleasant still has a job because they're actually
| hyper competent (like software development) but why would
| physicians be filtered out of the profession for poor
| bedside manner? In what part of the world is there a
| surplus of supply of doctors that would allow for that?
| xigency wrote:
| I think you missed a bit of nuance. Psychologically,
| people are more likely to pursue a malpractice case
| against an incompetent physician who has poor bedside
| manner rather than an incompetent physician who has
| excellent bedside manner. So that specific quadrant would
| be penalized the most.
| parpfish wrote:
| or doctors with bad bedside manner could move into non-
| patient-facing roles like research or pathology
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| TIL that there's a name for it. I always just sort of
| intuited this phenomenon.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| "In the overall population, bedside manner and medical
| aptitude are likely uncorrelated."
|
| I'd [citation needed] on that, depending on the condition.
|
| In that for some conditions, successful diagnosis and
| treatment across a wide range of the population (not just
| the most educated, articulate, mentally with-it and
| compliant quartile) is going to depend on being able to get
| qualitative information from the patient, and interpret
| that correctly.
|
| Equally though the medical profession has enough
| specialisation in terms of role to be able to put the right
| personality types in the right jobs.
| parpfish wrote:
| citation: i made it up based on my intuition because this
| is a thought experiment to illustrate a paradox.
|
| also "bedside manner" is not just about conveying
| information. that _would_ be a big part of successful
| treatment.
|
| if you ask people about bedside manner is all going to be
| about personality and emotional sensitivity (where they
| gruff? did they make you feel bad? etc). somebody can be
| amazing at conveying accurate information but come across
| as a complete asshole, and those are the 'bad bedside
| manner' docs.
| nusl wrote:
| My personal experience with multiple doctors, some in primary
| care and others in hospitals, is that they often don't care and
| just want to get you out of the door.
|
| Bring up some symptoms not immediately easily attributed to
| something? Sorry, those are "nonspecific symptoms" and they
| can't help you. Maybe see a specialist, maybe not. Figure it
| out.
|
| Obviously this isn't all of them, but it is definitely a decent
| chunk.
| 0xfffafaCrash wrote:
| Doctors are at the very top of my list of people who don't
| care. Not necessarily that they got into the field not wanting
| to care, but that in practice they quickly get to the point of
| caring largely about getting through their day -- maybe a few
| select patients stir them out of their bizarrely intense waking
| slumber where they go from patient to patient and immediately
| prescribe nearly the first thing that comes to mind for nearly
| the first diagnosis that comes to mind. Given the volumes of
| patients they are expected to churn through though it's not
| surprising that they become desensitized and divorced from the
| ramifications of shoddy work with minimal research -- for many
| (especially nonspecialists) it's effectively impossible to do
| thoughtful work for every patient. I think overwork
| desensitizes many/most and few actually have the time or energy
| to do more research or think deeply about an individual
| patient, but ultimately decisions which consume minimal
| resources from them drastically affect the lives of patients.
|
| Healthcare professionals know this to be true. This is why when
| their own loved ones are the patients they have such a strong
| tendency to become very actively involved --- it's not
| necessarily that the person attending to their loved one is
| incompetent, but chances are that their loved ones will
| similarly be just another face that occupies another
| physician's mind for a few minutes.
|
| Artificially high barriers of entry in the field may lead to
| massive compensations but also to a huge ratio of patients to
| physicians -- this takes a toll.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| It's not just the ratio. In many medical roles, engaging your
| full humanity with every patient would destroy you
| psychologically, even at a much lower number of patients.
|
| "Follow the process, follow the training" is how medics,
| emergency responders and the armed forces are able to stay in
| the job more than a few years without burning out completely.
|
| (It's also, as psychological defensive mechanisms go,
| somewhat fairer than those used in the past. Ask a retired
| medic in their 80s or 90s if you know any.)
| Graa wrote:
| Regardless of facts about how much doctors actually care, he
| still perceives the world as one where almost nobody does. I'm
| glad he expressed himself as such because I feel the same way
| sometime, even though I know that most people try to fill their
| role in society well. It's like a special kind of loneliness
| that grows quick. I like how he describes the development of
| this loneliness. Once he put on its glasses, he thinks
| carelessness is everywhere, even in doctors who do care, so he
| develops existential hopelessness of some sort.
| deltaburnt wrote:
| Loneliness is a really good way to describe it. I definitely
| have had similar experiences to the author. It can make you
| feel really pessimistic and like a freak outcast for actually
| caring. It makes me feel arrogant or overly confident too.
|
| I think ironically it does show that the author thinks highly
| of people and their potential. A truly bitter person would
| have long stopped expecting anything of anyone, which I think
| is very unhealthy. You expect people to care but only about
| things that harm you.
|
| I'm guessing there's more people out there who feel this way,
| and likewise I'm glad the author shared this experience even
| if it's not the healthiest mindset to always be in.
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| This is a statement of privilege: find a doctor who cares and
| stick with them.
|
| I'm T1 diabetic, and it took me a long time to find an endo and
| a PCP that care. I have long since moved away from their
| offices, but I still make the drive because they are worth it.
|
| My tip on finding good providers is basically to get lucky and
| find a good one. Then you should ask who they recommend. They
| know who the bad ones are.
| aksophist wrote:
| It's a statement of privilege to believe (and say) that there
| are hundreds of good doctors per handful of bad ones? It
| sounds to me like a statement of fact. And that you dispute
| the fact. What does privilege have to do with it?
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| The entire article is a form of engagement bait. It's a pile of
| stereotypes with storytelling. Paul Graham does the same thing.
| Arguing about which stereotype is true or false... you're just
| playing into it.
| graphememes wrote:
| Nobody see's the time or effort that went into a thing only it's
| outcome. Unfortunate reality.
| Tokkemon wrote:
| Author, be the change you want to see in the world. Stop whining
| and do something.
| ary wrote:
| > You might think "something something incentive systems". No. At
| my big tech job I had the pleasure of interviewing a few
| programmers who worked for a large healthcare company that
| engages in regulatory capture. Let me assure you: They. Do. Not
| Care.
|
| Regarding programmers specifically I can concur, but with a
| caveat. Devs often care quite a lot about many things, but often
| one of those things is not doing the job they were hired for. The
| tedium of building software for businesses, even what we now call
| "big tech", is universally unappealing and definitely not the
| reason most devs started tinkering with computers. So they care
| very little, and it shows in the tech taking over the clerical
| aspects of every day life.
| MetroWind wrote:
| Well, I don't know about the other things, but I absolutely hate
| the orange street lights. Bad color reproduction, and make me
| sleepy.
|
| > They spend all their free time doing activist stuff
|
| Having free time is a privilege. The author is privileged and
| they don't know it.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I care way too much and it causes burnout because those in power
| do not care.
|
| That's probably my take on this: those in power do not care
| anymore. Money has turned into political influence in America, so
| now politicians are there for money first of all, and the needs
| of their communities are an afterthought. Even back in the day
| when you had shitty politicians or robber-barons, they still
| wanted their local area and America to succeed because they lived
| there, but in today's world the oligarchs and their appointed
| cronies (execs, upper management, etc.) just jet around the
| planet and could not care less about how well people are doing in
| one area of the world over another. This leads to the regular
| American seeing the lack of responsibility and lack of punishment
| for injustice and they also stop following the rules or caring
| about doing a good job, or they are too busy to do so, and you
| can't really blame them.
|
| Solution: Money out of politics first, then we need to instill a
| pride and responsibility for the local community into the new
| generations of Americans, but in a non-propagandized way because
| they actually have to have real pride and not some fake
| patriotism like today.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| It really sucks to be the one person who cares amongst colleagues
| that don't care. You're seen as creating work for others, making
| waves, causing instability, etc etc. Or because you care, you get
| burned out by trying to fix everything.
|
| In these places you're pushed to not care.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| There was a crummy, barely used, mostly abused, walking path with
| a sitting area near my old apartment complex. [0]
|
| One day I decided to pick up all of the trash/cigarette butts,
| installed a butt bin, and planted a bed of flowers in the center.
| Big sunflowers.
|
| The next day I went out and someone had destroyed the cigarette
| bin. When the flowers sprouted someone immediately doused them
| with something and set all but one on fire.
|
| I replaced the butt bin same day and replanted the flowers the
| day after they were burned.
|
| Nobody cared, they even resisted at first, but, eventually people
| stopped trashing the place and what was an empty sitting area
| started filling up with people.
|
| It's worth trying. Sometimes people will care.
|
| [0]: Turns out (and I learned this way after the fact) that the
| path marked the site of a WWII POW work camp. I didn't know this
| but German prisoners were shipped to the US to make up for the
| farm labor shortage during by WWII.
|
| Anyway, the path was a loop with a sitting area at the entrance.
| Imagine the most out of the way, inconvenient place you could put
| a plaque. That's where they put it. The plaque informing you that
| your apartment complex was built on the former site of a Nazi
| work camp was at the very back of the loop with the text facing
| away from the path.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| > Why does this ramp suck so much? For literally the exact same
| effort it took to build, it could have been built 10x better.
| Make the angle 20 degrees instead of 70. Put the ramp just after
| the sign instead of just before it. Make the far curb face sloped
| instead of vertical. Put some visual indication the lane ends 50
| feet uphill. Why wasn't this done?
|
| > Because the engineer who designed it and the managers at the
| department of transportation do not give a shit.
|
| No the reasons are likely wholly political.
|
| It's clear from the photo that doing the bike ramp better would
| require more space. It would require moving that street sign. It
| could require allocating less space to cars and more to sidewalk,
| pedestrians and cyclists. These are financial decisions and
| political decisions. Spending money on cyclists is a political
| lightning rod that special interest groups will fight at all
| costs to maintain the automobile oriented status quo. Spending
| money is aggressively fought at all costs in an effort to keep
| property taxes as low as possible.
|
| Engineers and policy people are not lazy they are constrained by
| aggressive political special interest groups.
|
| > These new lights objectively suck to anyone not driving.
|
| hint hint.
|
| It's almost as if the decisions are being made for car drivers
| and not pedestrians. This is a political choice driven by special
| interest groups that seek to preserve 1950s era thinking
| automobile dominated status quo.
|
| The author assumes that everything sucks because everyone is lazy
| and stupid but the reality is everything sucks because it's
| massively underfunded.
| avalys wrote:
| Umm, in 99% of the US, cyclists and pedestrians are definitely
| the special interest group, and the vast majority of voters and
| especially taxpayers want to see the transportation
| infrastructure optimized for cars.
| EliBullockPapa wrote:
| Well damn I guess I'm living in the 1% /s
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Minority groups are not the same thing as special interest
| groups. Special interest groups usually have undue money,
| resources, or power given their size.
| grajaganDev wrote:
| Many cyclist are also drivers.
| bccdee wrote:
| Yeah, they shouldn't. Cars are a terrible mode of urban
| transit. They should all get bikes and bus passes, and then
| everyone would get everywhere quickly and cheaply and without
| deadly collisions.
|
| Everyone complains about traffic, but nobody realizes that
| traffic is just _what it 's like to drive in a city._ Stop
| driving.
| deeg wrote:
| I have a friend who sees what he thinks is a problem and starts
| off with "I don't know why they just didn't...", as if he could
| come up with a better solution in 2 minutes of thinking than
| experts in the field. The reality is that he just doesn't know
| all the competing interests and problems. The article feels the
| same way.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Knowing that there is a reason just boils down to the same
| thing.
|
| You can overcome the forced working against you if you care
| enough, but nobody does.
| potatoman22 wrote:
| I see this fallacy a lot in the US. I think it's because of
| our individualism. Attention and hard-work can't overcome
| everything, we aren't all-powerful beings.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| You're more likely to burn out butting your head against
| the incentives working against you. If you're lucky, you
| may get a few successes before you burn out.
| rcxdude wrote:
| If you care enough and have the resources available. It's
| rare for someone to care only about one specific thing like
| a bicycle ramp to put in the resources to make a
| difference, though.
|
| (i.e. my experience is that people do, on the whole, care.
| But they generally care about different things, and
| especially have different priorities in terms of how they
| allocate their resources, especially time. This blog is a
| rant about people caring about things that the author cares
| about, a lot of which are reasonable, but are not the be-
| all end-all of priorities)
| Earw0rm wrote:
| That's partly true, but "competing interests and problems"
| have a tendency to accumulate in much the same way as
| technical debt.
|
| Particularly so in a world of longer lifespans and careers,
| higher information connectivity and so on.
|
| It's arguably one of the reasons nations tend to experience
| boom periods in the aftermath of major wars. The destruction
| has a way of clearing out the accumulated complexity, giving
| people a clean slate to decide what's _really_
| important/valuable/productive.
|
| (To avoid any doubt, this is not an argument in favour of
| major wars.)
|
| I live on the fringes of an old European city which was
| damaged but, largely, not destroyed by WWII bombing. The
| difficulty of building new transit lines here is legendary,
| essentially they're almost entirely paralysed by the web of
| competing interests, and this grows more every year, not
| less, as new ones arise.
|
| Places that suffered nearer total war damage have a two-fold
| advantage. First, they could build back a city-plan that was
| more suited to the modern era - and secondly, nobody had time
| to get all that attached to the new city-plan, so they've had
| the flexibility to iterate further, things like retrofitting
| trams, relocating the main traffic arterials further from the
| city centre, new metro lines to adjust to changing
| demographic/geographic patterns and so on.
|
| To this specific example - it's not that the competing
| interests are worthless exactly, but their sum total value is
| surely orders of magnitude less than a new metro line.
| However, because of the due processes that hold sway in a
| peaceful, democratic and rights-based society, they're able
| to gum up the works to the point that we can only build about
| one genuinely new metro line every 30 years, despite being
| one of the richest cities in the Western world.
| LouisSayers wrote:
| > the reality is everything sucks because it's massively
| underfunded
|
| This may be the case for many things, but I would add that a
| lot of things suck because of conflicting incentives. Whether
| it's laziness or even because they are actually getting paid
| MORE to do the sucky thing.
|
| As an example, where I live a running joke is about the number
| of road cones whenever work is being done. They don't need THAT
| many road cones, but they put them there... why? I have no
| evidence, but I suspect someone is getting paid to add extra
| road cones - OR potentially another incentive is at play.
|
| The biggest one that gets me is traffic lights within
| roundabouts... how anyone thinks that is a good idea.... arghh
| #sigh :(
| montag wrote:
| It's not necessarily that complicated. My mom likes to complain
| that the person who designed her new stove never cooked in
| their life. I think the simpler explanation is that the person
| who designed that ramp arrangement didn't cycle very much and
| just wasn't empathetic to riders flying down the hill. In other
| words, they didn't care.
| bccdee wrote:
| No, there are very specific regulations around infrastructure
| design, including what sorts of curves are safe in bike lanes
| at which speeds.
|
| The reason that angle is that "sharp" (I don't think it's
| very sharp tbh) is because cyclists are _explicitly not
| supposed_ to zoom up onto the sidewalk at 20 miles per hour.
| That 's how you kill someone. If you're going too fast to
| make a 30-degree turn and avoid crashing, you're going too
| fast to be on the sidewalk. It's like complaining that the
| tight curves on a residential street make it unsafe to drive
| down it at 60mph.
|
| Anyway, the influence of the auto lobby on urban
| infrastructure is really well-established:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_dependency
| handity wrote:
| > Person with headphones blocking the sidewalk.
|
| Any normal sidewalk would be wide enough that a single person
| could not conceivably block it, and wearing headphones while
| walking, especially noise canceling ones, is popular because US
| cities are largely unpleasant, deafeningly loud places full of
| fast-moving cars.
| subjectsigma wrote:
| I admit the article is rather whiny but it did resonate a bit
| with me.
|
| A good example - we are provided free Keurig cups at work. Lots
| and lots of disposable plastic. At the same time there's been
| quite a number of changes put in place to "be more green" and
| help the environment.
|
| I asked my coworkers one day why we use Keurig machines instead
| of making a pot of coffee and everyone just shrugged. I asked the
| administrative staff if there was any plans to switch to grounds
| to reduce the number of Keurig cups and they basically said "No,
| that would be too much effort."
|
| In that moment, it really did just feel like everyone around me
| did not care, so I dropped the subject.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| You should not care. The universe does not need your help.
|
| Universe instantiated you in this reality in a random body in a
| random timeline with zero input from your side.
|
| It's just your ego that think your care actually makes any
| difference in this reality.
|
| The universe will continue to run creating bodies, life forms and
| so on. It keeps destroying and recycling stuff.
|
| Nothing is permanent. The more you care about impermanent things
| the more you suffer.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| I do care. In fact, I bring a sort of "fuck it, we ball" vibe
| to the existentialism that nihilists don't really like.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Nice. The ying and the yang.
| zubairq wrote:
| Great article. I need to care more myself even if other do not
| care, thanks for the wake up call!
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Human beings evolved to be surprisingly efficient. At any give
| moment, we are running in our heads a statistical analysis with a
| massive number of simultaneous inputs. We think about what we
| need, prioritize this list by level of necessity, analyze the
| perceived costs, multiply by probability of success, and divide
| by predicted time to reward. From this analysis, we make our
| choices whether or not to take action. In a system where people
| generally already have what they need, caring would be an
| inefficiency and an aberration. We have a salary, a house, food,
| water, companionship. We are comfortable. Why would a comfortable
| man care? To care for the sake of caring goes against 6 million
| years of evolution.
| heurist wrote:
| This is cynical. There are a lot of people who do care. Consider
| that someone cared enough to build a bike lane in the first
| place. IMO life is hard for most people and as much as most would
| love to "care", they have to take care of themselves and their
| families first. The caring is focused where it is best applied.
|
| I also don't think Elon would bother fixing a bike ramp or
| installing dog bag dispensers around his home(s). So if he does
| "care", it's not about things you care about.
| minifridge wrote:
| I think it is the direction of the situation, rather than the
| state of things, that is concerning. The general direction is
| that everyone is incentivized and rewarded to look after their
| bottom line and personal gain and then everything else.
|
| IMO, not caring about the wider impact of our actions is
| something that will keep happening at an increasing rate.
| otikik wrote:
| > We have examples like Elon who, through sheer force of will,
| defeats armies of people who don't care. For his many faults, you
| can't say the man doesn't care.
|
| About his ego. Nothing else.
| NL807 wrote:
| If nobody cared, art would not exists. Nobody would do science.
| Civilisations would not be built. Health care would not exists.
| And nobody enjoys living in a shit hole. People collectively do
| make decisions which are selfless, so long they know there is a
| positive outcome. People stop caring about something soon as they
| recognise their efforts is wasted or it's all for nothing.
| tlapinsk wrote:
| I tend to agree. Anytime I encounter negativity or cynicism of
| this level, it reminds me of a speech by David Foster Wallace:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms2BvRbjOYo
|
| In text if preferred: http://bulletin-
| archive.kenyon.edu/x4280.html
| kls0e wrote:
| another approach would be to take it easy and lead by good
| example.
| squidsoup wrote:
| As much as I hate the light from hooded LED streetlights, they
| leak far less light than sodium lights and are better for
| wildlife.
| dartos wrote:
| I care.
| thedstrat wrote:
| I think the author is very myopic in understanding that other
| people care - just not about the same things he cares for. Most
| people don't care about publicly available dog poop bags or
| fixing a random bike lane that's sort of wrong. In fact you could
| argue that the things he cares about are not the most important
| things. Other people might care more about family than work, or
| about animal activism than petitioning for green space. It's not
| that others don't care, they just care about different things -
| sometimes more important and sometimes less.
| tqi wrote:
| Its ironic, because this dude doesn't seem to care enough to even
| the slightest bit of research to understand why any of these
| problems he highlights are the way they are, and lazily
| attributes everything to OTHER people not caring. LEDs last
| longer, are more energy efficient, and also reduce light
| pollution because they are more directional[1]. Took me 30
| seconds to google. There are enormous design standards for
| designing bike lanes[2]. It is almost certainly the case the
| design of this intersection is dictated by these standards. But
| sure, just assume it's because everyone is stupid.
|
| [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/streetlights-
| are-... [2] https://streetsillustrated.seattle.gov/design-
| standards/bicy...
| aheidne wrote:
| It's* ironic, because you don't even seem to understand his
| argument and lazily disputed the LED part which isn't even
| remotely what he's complaining about.
|
| But, good job bruh, you defeated a strawman. Super proud of
| you.
| tqi wrote:
| Thanks grant!
| ulbu wrote:
| the ackchyually energy in this post is amazing
| easygenes wrote:
| It's possible to install warm colored LEDs with very little
| blue light output though. You get all those benefits without
| giving up the more-suitable-for-night sodium light spectral
| benefits.
| tqi wrote:
| Agree, but it's more expensive and less energy efficient[1].
| Personally, that seems worth it to me [EDIT: "it" being using
| slightly less efficient lights that are more comfortable for
| people], but thats a difference in values not in how much I
| "care" about the problem...
|
| [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/streetlights-
| are-....
| nyokodo wrote:
| > that seems worth it to me
|
| _How much_ more energy efficient is it? If it 's a tiny
| efficiency gain vs the negative effects of blue heavy white
| light then I would suggest it's a bad tradeoff. Some
| studies have suggested that blue light doesn't affect sleep
| [1] but the psychological effects of cold vs warm light has
| been used by lighting designers for decades. Cold light is
| less comfortable and discourages hanging around, the
| positive spin is "energizing", it's often used in
| supermarkets and budget stores that value faster browsing,
| and impulsive decisions under a greater feeling of urgency.
| Warm light has a relaxing effect and is used, for example,
| in luxury stores and restaurants where people are intended
| to take their time. [2] For outdoor areas where people are
| intended to enjoy relaxing after dark activities warmer
| light would be far superior an experience than colder
| light.
|
| 1. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/blue-light-
| may-not... 2. https://www.tcpi.com/how-lights-impacts-
| psychology-mood-in-r...
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| sure - for your house. For lights all over the city that
| will be lasting years?
| Mehvix wrote:
| OK but blinding blue LEDs are most common substitutes,
| because it's the lazy default, and because people do not
| care. That's the point of the article.
| teslabox wrote:
| Blue-white LEDs have become the replacement for High
| Pressure Sodium [HPS] traffic lights because that's what
| the LED light companies have to sell. In the early years of
| the transition to LED streetlights they had to sell blue-
| white LED streetlights because warmer LEDs were not
| competitive with HPS on the basis of lumens-per-watt.
|
| Most of the people who understood the advantages of blue-
| free amber HPS light over white metal halide lights
| retired, and this little tidbit of information didn't get
| passed to the next generation of city employees.
|
| > and because people do not care.
|
| People care, but they don't know why they hate the blue-
| white LED replacement lights. I've complained to the city
| about their new lights, but have not gotten any responses
| about why they haven't deployed LED lights with a safe
| spectrum of color.
|
| This comment about unsafe blue-white headlights got a few
| upvotes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42444111
| Qwertious wrote:
| Blue light is safer for cars - it gives slightly faster
| reaction times, and lower the chance of drivers falling
| asleep.
|
| The problem is that for pedestrians, the reaction-time is
| irrelevant, they're butt-ugly, and plenty of people go on
| night walks because they _can 't_ sleep but want to.
|
| Half of this article is basically about cities being
| overly car-centric.
| teslabox wrote:
| I'm not well-read on the old lighting research, but I've
| come across some explanations for why humans actually do
| much better with amber outdoor lighting than white. One
| of these points relates to how our pupils expand and
| contract with the amount of light available.
| reddalo wrote:
| In some ways, car-centric cities are like that because
| people don't care. "I'll just take my car, whatever".
| They don't care about traffic, pollution, accidents, etc.
| rob74 wrote:
| My impression was that HPS lighting became so widespread
| not because of the supposed advantages of its light
| spectrum, but because it was simply the most light-
| efficient technology available at that time. Here in
| Germany, only main/multilane streets requiring more
| lighting were using HPS, residential streets mostly had
| lamps with white fluorescent lights, so switching those
| to LEDs wasn't as much of a change. But still, I'm
| wondering: what about curtains, window blinds etc.? It's
| not as if people are _forced_ to endure the intrusion of
| street lighting into their bedrooms?
| teslabox wrote:
| Low pressure sodium lights were more efficient, but they
| emit a single wavelength of orange light. These lights
| were strongly disliked by people who liked to admire
| their car in the streetlights (I suppose).
|
| > residential streets mostly had lamps with white
| fluorescent lights,
|
| ... they used CFLs? The spiral fluorescents were invented
| in the 1980's, I guess. I speculate the residential
| street lights used mercury vapor bulbs, which had a
| longer expected lifespan than fluorescents.
|
| > But still, I'm wondering: what about curtains, window
| blinds etc.?
|
| You need a good blackout curtain to deal with light
| pollution through your window.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Decades ago, my junior college's parking lot was lit by
| low-pressure sodium lighting. I recall the light being an
| absolute monochrome yellow, to the point that you had to
| be careful to remember exactly where you parked your car,
| because you weren't going to find it by color.
|
| I can't vouch for Germany, but there used to be long,
| high-output fluorescent tubes and fixtures for street
| lighting in the US. They seem to have largely disappeared
| by the 1980s. They weren't very common, but some cities
| used them. They tended to be used on main streets when I
| saw them.
| rob74 wrote:
| > _they used CFLs?_
|
| Nah, the lamps used (I assume) standard fluorescent
| tubes. Although honestly I don't know how widespread they
| were. They were (and still are in some areas) all over
| the place in Munich (and also e.g. here
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/M3RPqkN5MHZuPG7f7). Hamburg
| (https://maps.app.goo.gl/fPGfeEwWXtUGFnTL7) and Berlin
| (https://maps.app.goo.gl/kSemA2Md84AEJ9Py8) also have
| similar-looking ones.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _But still, I 'm wondering: what about curtains, window
| blinds etc.? It's not as if people are forced to endure
| the intrusion of street lighting into their bedrooms?_
|
| Of course. But that's the problem -- now black-out
| curtains are required. And maybe you hate those because
| you really enjoy waking up with the sun streaming in, and
| now you have to wake up every morning in blackness until
| you go open the curtains.
|
| The onus shouldn't be on the residents. It's the same as
| saying, sure it's noisy but why don't you just wear
| noise-canceling headphones all day long?
|
| Government services exist to serve the people, not make
| the people work around them.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Here in Baltimore the city seems to have purchased a huge
| batch of defective LEDs that are actually purple. It's
| disturbing when you encounter one.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Nitpick: "are actually purple" makes it sound like they
| came out of the factory purple, but they're actually
| changing from white to purple over time as the phosphor
| coating fails.
| NikkiA wrote:
| They'll be near-UV LEDs with a phosphor to produce white,
| high efficiency, low cost, but garbage long term.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Just to be clear, these are about 1-3 years old. So yes
| they probably weren't purple on the day they were
| installed, but this is a defect and not normal aging. htt
| ps://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/136nz3b/til_
| ...
| 1659447091 wrote:
| The city employee who bought them is probably a massive
| Ravens fan...
| gunian wrote:
| i mean who wouldn't be the way they're playing
| Peanuts99 wrote:
| Might be so that they don't interfere with a certain
| species of wildlife. We have deep blue ones near me that
| aren't visible by a protected bat species.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| It happened in NC, too:
| https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2024/10/duke-
| universit...
| lesona wrote:
| They're purple (blue is the other option) because veins are
| harder to see under purple light. They're used to deter
| drug use, from my understanding.
|
| Edit: final clause
| headsupernova wrote:
| Not true, they're just defective and degraded quickly,
| resulting in the odd color.
| a_e_k wrote:
| The funny thing is, in my neck of Seattle (the city this post
| is complaining about), I've seen some of the harsh white LEDs
| that went in switched over to a warmer color. I remember
| being quite shocked when I pulled into a city-owned parking
| lot one night and realized that all of the lights around were
| all now a warmer color instead of the harsh white. The lights
| in my neighborhood also seem to have been switched over at
| some point. I suppose they're the tunable LEDs, but clearly
| someone here does care.
| lloeki wrote:
| In my city they started _turning off all streetlights at
| midnight_ outside of major driving lanes and active center
| areas.
|
| It's weird and somewhat unnerving at first but brilliant.
| I'd argue road-wise it is possibly even safer because
| headlights work so much better when it's pitch black by
| virtue of the human eye having so much dynamic range.
|
| Pedestrians can't miss cars as they're blasting light
| through the dark; cars can't miss bikes because even
| passive reflectors are blaring in the surrounding darkness;
| even pedestrians end up being more visible because of the
| higher contrast, cast shadows, and movement that conspire
| to make them plainly pop out like cardboard props or Doom 3
| flashlight jumpscares.
|
| And when you go out of the dark zone into a major axis
| that's bathed in light that _feels_ warm and safe it 's
| like everything is suddenly muted and flattened as if
| reality went through a low contrast sepia-tinted
| desaturation filter. You feel like you see better but
| everything is muddled together in the sameness of uniform
| lighting.
|
| The experience is highly cognitively dissonant and
| counterintuitive.
| jaimebuelta wrote:
| WTF? What about pedestrians? Are they walking in full
| darkness?
|
| This seems to be totally oriented to cars. I find
| American cities incredibly dark by night. Walking around
| feels too dark and unpleasant.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| I'm don't see why this is downvoted, I think it's an
| honest and legitimate question. What are pedestrians
| supposed to do when there's no car passing them right
| this moment? Carry their own torch? Rely on ambient light
| from the moon and reflected from nearby lit streets? Are
| we assuming there's such a high volume of cars that
| there's never a gap? I'm genuinely confused.
| tass wrote:
| Where I live, even with streetlights, most people I see
| walking after dark carry a torch.
|
| It's easier than ever to carry one.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| Honest question: Do you mean that most pedestrians are
| actually using (not just carrying on their person) a
| torch while walking along lit streets? I have essentially
| never seen that where I live, except some joggers have
| lights attached to their clothing but that's just so
| others can see them better. I can't imagine street
| lighting in an urban/suburban area being so bad that that
| would be necessary. That's a terrible state of affairs
| which, in itself, is a gross anti-pedestrian move.
|
| (Or did you just factiously mean that people have smart
| phones on them which can function as torches?)
| GJim wrote:
| Clearly you have lived your entire life in a city under
| streetlights.
|
| Here, if you go the the pub at night as the streetlights
| are turned off at midnight, so you take a torch (your
| phone as a backup). Its perfectly commonplace. To suggest
| this is "anti-pedestrian" is a bit silly. Rather, it's
| anti-light pollution.
| cowfriend wrote:
| > except some joggers have lights attached to their
| clothing but that's just so others can see them better.
|
| Yes, generally the purpose of the light is so others can
| see you.
|
| My god, we spend all of our lives blasting lights into
| our eyes (some people call these lights "screens"), we've
| forgotten how to live without it!
| cowfriend wrote:
| > Carry their own torch
|
| You state this like it is a bad idea.
|
| If you have a cell phone, you have a torch.
|
| If you are walking in a place where there are cars,
| having a light on you is a great way to reduce your risk
| of being hit. So yes, you should absolutely be carrying a
| torch if you are walking near streets after dark. Nordic
| countries teach this in kindergarden.
|
| When I'm crossing a street after dark, I always flash my
| torch at potentially oncoming cars. Even if I'm at a lit
| crosswalk.
|
| If you are walking in a place without cars, then the
| place probably doesn't have the infra to provide street
| lighting. You may want a torch, depends on the phase of
| the moon and your comfort level with dim lighting.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| You are starting an unrelated conversation.
|
| This comment chain started with someone suggesting that
| _in cities_ lighting be turned off almost everywhere, and
| someone replied that pedestrians won 't be able to
| clearly see where they're going without a torch (and I
| agreed). Where I live, no pedestrian in a city would ever
| need to use a torch to see where they're going.
|
| You've posted a couple of replies saying that pedestrians
| should carry a torch so that cars can see them. Well,
| maybe, maybe not. But that's a different matter.
| diggan wrote:
| > WTF? What about pedestrians? Are they walking in full
| darkness?
|
| During a normal night, you get used to the darkness
| surprisingly fast, and if there even a slight sliver of
| moonlight, your eyes will within seconds adjust and let
| you see things again without trouble.
|
| At least that's my experience growing up in the dark
| countryside in Sweden and seemingly retaining this as an
| adult, YMMV.
| nejsjsjsbsb wrote:
| YMMV as you get older and lose that superpower.
| diggan wrote:
| What range/years are you specifically referring to? It
| seemingly is as good as ever, and I'm 32 now. I'm
| guessing that would start being around 40s, when the
| general eye-sight starts to decline?
| meiraleal wrote:
| I don't think there is a rule for that? At least not in
| my case. My eyesight got worse really fast out-of-nowhere
| when I was like, 15 years old? And since then it didn't
| change anymore. I got myopia, after a few years of too
| much computer screen (the old CRTs).
| monocularvision wrote:
| Yep, right around your mid-40's in my experience. Friends
| have said it started the day they woke up on their 40th
| birthday.
| yojo wrote:
| There's a new-ish body of research that suggests aging is
| non-linear/happens in "cliffs," and that the first big
| decline is mid-40s. Something to look forward to.
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/15/1096799/aging
| -hi...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| About the time you start needing reading glasses to see
| your phone or computer screen. Between 40-50 years for
| most people. You will develop an appreciation for the
| people who complain about small fonts and low-contrast
| color schemes. And yes, adapting to darkness takes
| longer.
| diggan wrote:
| > people who complain about small fonts and low-contrast
| color schemes.
|
| I already do this at this point, so guessing that's a
| club I'm in already, even if my eye-sight is perfect :)
|
| Well, I guess I'll report back in 10-20 years and I can
| finally have this confirmed for all of us.
| jmyeet wrote:
| This is a car-centric ableist take.
|
| Not everyone has excellent vision. In addition to those
| who are actually visually impaired, your eyesight simply
| gets worse as you get older even if you had perfect
| vision when you're young.
|
| And even if you can adjust to the night, which is Moon
| and cloud-dependent anyway, that completely goes away
| every time a car goes past with its LED high beams.
|
| LED lights have way more capacity to be directional.
| There's absolutely no reason why street lights can't
| mostly point down to light the street and sidewalks with
| minimal light pollution to any nearby houses.
| diggan wrote:
| > This is a car-centric ableist take.
|
| Growing up on a island with 700 people where the most
| common mode of transportation is probably bicycle
| (besides walking, or possibly moped), it really isn't :)
| People are really eager to jump on the "ableist"
| accusation, aren't they?
|
| > And even if you can adjust to the night, which is Moon
| and cloud-dependent anyway, that completely goes away
| every time a car goes past with its LED high beams.
|
| It really doesn't, at least it didn't for me. It's true
| that for some seconds you'll see less, but your eyes will
| adjust faster after that than the initial adjustment when
| you go from a fully lit environment to unlit, even
| without direct moonlight.
|
| I'm not arguing for completely dark cities, that'd be
| bananas. I was just giving another perspective about how
| we can (usually) adjust to darkness if we let our eyes be
| used to it. Of course we should have lights in cities so
| everyone (not just us with good night-sight) can navigate
| without issues.
| jesterswilde wrote:
| I am night blind, among other things and cannot drive. If
| an area doesn't have street lights it's much more
| inaccessible to me, I become fully blind and I usually
| end up not going. Lights off is bad for me, end of story.
| Whether my ability to walk around at night is a factor
| here is a subjective decision. I understand people in my
| situation are a minority.
| BytesAndGears wrote:
| Wouldn't a headlamp or a flashlight achieve the same
| purpose?
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| > During a normal night, you get used to the darkness
| surprisingly fast,
|
| Then a car drives past and your sight instantly adjusts
| to that, but takes several minutes to adjust back. Then
| you're stuck in subjective total darkness for a while.
|
| Or, if you're in an area with mixed lighting (e.g. you
| walk past a house that incidentally lights part of the
| street) then your eyes can never adjust and you have to
| walk through pools of total darkness. I know this
| experience from rare situations where a few streetlights
| go out in a row, and it's not as easy as you just
| portrayed it.
|
| > At least that's my experience growing up in the dark
| countryside in Sweden
|
| That's fair enough IMO. I don't think it's feasible or
| helpful to plaster every centimetre of every rural road
| in street lighting. But the comment we're replying to
| suggested removing them in cities "outside of ... active
| center areas". That's a different matter.
| suddenlybananas wrote:
| Also it's terrifying for safety; way too easy to assault
| someone in complete darkness.
| GJim wrote:
| Completely the opposite.
|
| Numerous studies show crime goes down when streetlights
| are turned off.
|
| Simply put, you don't get scrotes hanging about in groups
| up to no good without lights, and anybody who is walking
| around is carrying a torch, making it obvious what they
| are doing (e.g. if you are breaking into a house, needing
| a torch instead of using a streetlight makes it obvious
| to everybody what you are doing).
|
| No to mention a lack of streetlights makes if harder for
| somebody to hide in the shadows.
|
| The real question to ask, is why people like yourself are
| 'terrified' [sic] of the dark. Statistics show the real
| truth of what you should be worried about.
| cowfriend wrote:
| I suspect your terror comes from lack of familiarity with
| natural light outdoors, and is a product of always having
| the lights on plus not being out of a house often.
|
| The night is not 'complete darkness', we can generally
| see fairly well.
|
| Also, I suspect your presumption on assault risk and
| assault rates comes from media, which is designed around
| building fear. Fear sells.
|
| So I agree that you find the natural world terrifying, I
| just wish you didn't. Because the natural world is what
| we are fit for.
| cowfriend wrote:
| Let's put it this way. The fear is someone hiding in the
| shadows to jump a person, and then dragging the victim
| back into the shadows.
|
| Bright lights on the street create more shadows. All you
| have to do is step out of the streetlight and no-one will
| see you, because the light-level contrast between the lit
| street and the surrounding space.
|
| If there aren't any streetlights, so the surrounding
| space has the same illumination as the roadway, then that
| space is more present in more passerby's visual
| awareness.
|
| So your proposed solution, "Streelights on every street"
| actually increases the risk you are so concerned about.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Get a flashlight?
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I'm a regular outdoor runner and also an extreme morning
| person, so I'm often out running at like 3 AM, and it is
| absolutely not safer to be in complete darkness. Surfaces
| are not perfectly uniform and unobstructed and the
| ambient light from the atmosphere and surrounding city,
| even dead in the center of a major metro area, is nowhere
| near enough to see everything you might hit. I've tripped
| many times and even broken my hand before. It is
| effectively impossible to ever go full speed.
| arccy wrote:
| if you're out running at night, perhaps you should also
| be carrying some lights? both to help you see your
| environment and to help others see you.
| mcswell wrote:
| I run at night on trails (during the summer, when it's
| too hot to run during the day). I wear a headlamp, and
| don't trip any more than I do in the day--despite the
| fact that the trails have rocks and roots. The only issue
| I have is that because the headlamp is inches from my
| eyes, shadows are almost invisible.
| csomar wrote:
| > The experience is highly cognitively dissonant and
| counterintuitive.
|
| Hitting the next homeless person and throwing them 10
| meter in the space will be quite the experience.
|
| Honestly, this is not shitty experience because of
| regulation, this is just councils cutting costs
| everywhere except their salaries. Los Angeles these last
| couple days has showed what it means to do that. You'll
| literally be on fire some day.
| rbetts wrote:
| I'm glad that darkness is respected in some places. The
| need to live in constant light is, to me, unnerving.
| Light pollution, like noise pollution, creates a myopic
| dome of sensory oblivion, separating us from experiencing
| the sounds of nature, the splendor the night sky, the
| emotions of isolation. I think we'd be better off with a
| nightly reminder of the natural world and expansive
| universe beyond our city block.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| People are afraid of the darkness.
|
| I really wish that wasn't the case. But removing lights
| is an uphill battle powered by irrational arguments and
| doomed to failure even on the cases where it's clearly
| the best option.
|
| Even dimming the lights is hard.
| mcswell wrote:
| I was once in the US Navy, and stood many a bridge watch.
| When it got dark, all outside lights except for the
| navigation lights (red light on port bow, green on
| starboard bow, a white light up top and another white
| light on the stern). And on the bridge, we used only dim
| red lights, to avoid affecting our night vision. None of
| the navigation lights was easily visible from the bridge.
| And you could see reasonably well, even on a cloudy
| night.
| Tomte wrote:
| In the netherlands I have seen green street lights with
| motion sensors. Only on smaller streets and pedestrian paths,
| though.
| alexandrehtrb wrote:
| That sounds cool.
| maayank wrote:
| Any way to test my light's spectrum? e.g. a cheap home
| spectrometer
| tmnvdb wrote:
| Take a photo
| maayank wrote:
| Implies no white balance shenanigans
| NikkiA wrote:
| A sheet of paper will generally manage ok for white
| balance calibration. A 3 tone grey card would be better,
| but a single, simple white will suffice
| neop1x wrote:
| Use a CD disk - really - it disperses light similarly to a
| dispersive prism. You can then see and estimate the amount
| of red, blue and green in a light. It works very well if
| you just want to check blue light sources at night. And you
| can even make a DIY spectrometer with it!
| https://youtu.be/p3MzQ1OF3lk
| flyinghamster wrote:
| In my town, when they replaced the old mercury arc and high
| pressure sodium lights, they picked a pleasing neutral white
| for the side streets that's far better than the bluish-white
| mercury arcs they replaced, while using 40 watts each instead
| of 175. Win-win in my book.
|
| The main streets have a different LED with a slight yellow
| cast, but not the ugly orange of high pressure sodium. Yes,
| we can have nice LED street lighting.
| CalRobert wrote:
| The ones in the article clearly go against the best principles
| at https://www.savingourstars.org/ though.
| veltas wrote:
| I don't understand how they're safer, because locally they've
| installed a few and they're already dying, and dying by
| strobing on and off at about 1Hz, which makes it quite hard to
| drive through. They're so bright that this failure mode is like
| a disco strobe light.
|
| This failure is so severe that regardless of how it might be
| elsewhere, to me it seems like the people who decided to use
| these LED lights and continue to advocate for them really don't
| care about people.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| anedcote but i've been using leds for 8 years+ now and
| there's big variance in such behavior between manufacturers.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Three led lights in my flat went within 3 months after I
| moved in. But some time ago I had an incandescent bulb that
| lived for years.
|
| With bulb it depends on how/how often you power cycle. A
| good way to extend its life is to not power cycle it and to
| underpower it. Dimming a bulb also saves electricity and
| easier on the eyes.
|
| With LED it is up to manufacturer. People say LEDs are
| cheaper but those leds are exactly the ones you have to
| keep buying. And good LED prices can go pretty high
| compared to bulbs.
| chgs wrote:
| On the one hand you have your Anne site, on the other
| hand there's decades of data.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| And only one of them is directly pertinent. None of the
| "decades of data" takes into account correct
| exploitation. But all talks about leds are about perfect
| spherical cow in vacuum that doesn't exist for average
| consumer
|
| I am sure leds technically do live longer than bulbs. But
| the difference is not significant enough in real life.
| easygenes wrote:
| Look up Dubai Philips LEDs. The problem with most
| consumer LEDs is that they are overdriven, so their life
| is short. In Dubai, the Sheikh basically mandated that
| the bulbs need to be underdriven, so the lifetime is
| about 25x that of incandescents. They only deliver about
| 1/4 the power to the individual "filament" that most
| similar Philips lamps would at the same light output.
|
| https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-
| royal-li...
| throwaway290 wrote:
| That is interesting.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Leds themselves are often fine for long time. It is the
| circuits they are powered by that are very often crap,
| poorly designed, specified, too cheap. So heat can kill
| it. Or like my last cheap powerful bulb in kitchen that
| flickers when I have certain controlled resistive loads
| on.
|
| I wonder how many tests are run in actual enclosures for
| example. Which for example might not dissipate enough
| heat.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| One of the dead lights that died was above the stove so
| could be heat related. Other 2 maybe just bad circuits...
|
| I think it is too expensive to run tests in real life
| changing conditions
| addicted wrote:
| Since only apparently anecdotes count as pertinent for
| you, here's one. I haven't bought a bulb in over 12
| years. My LEDs have simply not gone out. I had changed
| bulbs nearly every 6 months before that.
|
| Maybe spring the extra couple of dollars and get high
| quality LEDs.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Not anecdotes but practical data. Yes if you power cycle
| tungsten all the time at maximum brightness they will not
| live long (when I was a kid we used them this way and
| changed them often). Read my comment about correct
| exploitation
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| We essentially have a lifetime supply of LEDs because we
| label each one with the date and refund from Amazon when
| they don't last the full warranty, which none of them do.
|
| People assumed that LEDs would last forever because the
| crystals essentially do, but the encasement and all of
| the heat issues you have to deal with for the electronics
| makes that pointless.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Neat approach. I am not organized enough for that so I
| just buy whatever crappy leds ikea sells today.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| The problem is almost never the LEDs themselves, but the
| power supply.
|
| Sure, the actual LEDs might have a 50000 hour lifetime, but
| the crappy power supply they got from the lowest bidder and
| packaged with woefully inadequate thermal dissipation dies
| after a tiny fraction of that.
| pdimitar wrote:
| So... somebody responsible for the power supplies does not
| care? ;)
| kelseydh wrote:
| They care about being the cheapest option on Amazon, so
| that you will care about buying it. :)
| bobthepanda wrote:
| it is not exactly a huge secret that SDOT often would rather do
| weird compromises on a bike lane than inconvenience cars
| slightly. The NACTO guides don't really have anything on grades
| into turns, and the AASHTO and FHWA are notoriously not bike
| friendly.
|
| This particular lane was done in 2018.
| https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs...
|
| You can actually see the diagram here:
| https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/Maintenan...
|
| The entire reason it goes up onto the multi-use-trail to
| connect to Alki Trail, is because that leaves room for a right
| turn lane; whereas, if Seattle narrowed the two lanes to nine
| feet, which is a perfectly fine width on an urban street
| according to AASHTO, then you could have an actual protected
| bike lane all the way through the intersection without any sort
| of shallow curve.
| pointedAt wrote:
| you guys are smarter than that.
|
| in our civilization people observe and tell.
|
| all that research is wonderful and helpful but how many percent
| of people can do that, can follow that, know where to find it,
| have an environment that enables them to get observations to
| the responsible people and how many of those have the trust to
| do that?
|
| it doesn't matter how smart you are, any colony dies without
| enough people that fall into above "description".
|
| and those people don't have to fall into that description, but
| smarter people rather figure out ......
| renox wrote:
| While you're right on the LED part, this bike lanes is
| obviously misdesigned.. I have a similar one next to my house
| and fell from my bicycle due to its poor design, some French
| civil engineer also don't care :-(
| 0xEF wrote:
| We are starting to see some in my city in the US and while
| that is exciting and appreciated, many of them are terrible
| to ride on. There is one near my house that is so full of
| lane changes and curves, you really can do much more than
| 7mpg (walking speed). For some reason, they saw fit to make
| the bike lane weave in and out of the parallel parking? It's
| so bizarre and awkward that I'd rather just ride with the
| traffic in the street like we used to since that invokes less
| anxiety.
| phito wrote:
| Except he is talking about the color of the LEDs. Blue LEDs are
| terrible, just put orange ones. Has nothing to do with the fact
| that it's LEDs or hallogen.
| logifail wrote:
| > There are enormous design standards [..]
|
| I would suggest that "design standards" do not always make
| things uniformly better, certainly not for end users.
| drunner wrote:
| Go look into the design standards used in The Netherlands.
|
| https://international.fhwa.dot.gov/pubs/pl18004/chap03.cfm
| gives a decent overview of some of those things. They are
| much better for end users because someone over there cared.
| Whomever designed the ones in the article clearly does not.
| logifail wrote:
| > They are much better for end users because someone over
| there cared. Whomever designed the ones in the article
| clearly does not
|
| This is kind of my point, at a very general level the
| statement "$thing follows design standards" may or may not
| mean that $thing is actually better for users.
| crabbone wrote:
| I live in the Netherlands, in the burbs, and have to cycle a
| lot. That picture of a bike ramp... I can feel it. Whatever
| that document you googled says, it's wrong, if it justifies
| building ramps like that. That ramp is bad. There's no two ways
| about it.
|
| But, responding to this particular example is missing the point
| of the article. Let me, for a moment, agree with you, and say
| that the ramp is within acceptable parameters: still, the
| author complains about a more general phenomenon, a lot of
| aspects of this phenomenon are very relatable. And it doesn't
| have to manifest itself uniformly and similarly everywhere in
| every detail.
|
| For example, suburban houses in the Netherlands really show
| people care about the neighborhood. The want things to be nice.
| Windowsills are always decorated, have some art displayed in
| the windows, just for the passerby to enjoy. People mostly care
| to pick up after their dogs and to generally not litter. People
| even invest into community playgrounds, community garden
| patches etc. Life is good, at least in this respect.
|
| But, when I go to work, things change. Not only people around
| me don't care, they very much want _everyone to not care,_
| because that would show them in a bad light. It 's a convention
| of sorts, that people understand without saying anything out
| loud. Do the absolute minimum, waste a lot of time doing
| nothing of value, don't rock the boat. And it is, as the author
| says, demoralizing. It makes my blood boil when defects
| discovered in our product, and instead of being fixed they get
| documented in a bottomless pit of our multi-thousands pages PDF
| manual, and the product is shipped regardless. A lot of these
| defects resulted not from honest mistakes, but from a desire to
| do as little work as possible, and to do only the "pleasant"
| part of the work: programmers prefer writing new code to fixing
| existing code. Testing is for wimps. Adding more stuff without
| fixing existing problems results in simply having more
| problems.
|
| * * *
|
| Now, how to make people care?--I don't know. I know of some
| things that worked, but they have bad side-effects (religion
| works, but sometimes it detracts into killing a lot of people,
| communism works, as in kibbutzim, but then it loses momentum,
| and is very prone to be exploited by external forces also,
| doesn't work on a large scale.)
| addicted wrote:
| Also, the Wikipedia link he points to has 2 references from the
| same research team the latest of which is over a decade old.
|
| If white LED lights were so awful you'd imagine at least
| somebody would have done a decent, fairly cheap paper to show
| the negative impacts in the last decade where the uptake of LED
| street lights has been so widespread.
| pdimitar wrote:
| No, I can't imagine that because again, nobody cares.
|
| You are demonstrating the problem very clearly btw: you
| assume people would have cared and that's why nothing was
| done.
|
| Which is a puzzling thing to say. Because clearly, the people
| who care have no power.
| gizmo wrote:
| Of course there are "reasonable justifications" for the shitty
| status quo, but that's kind of the point. Things are shitty for
| reasons but not for _good_ reasons. The author points to Japan
| to illustrate that you do get measurably better results when
| people habitually try to do good work. We 're not actually
| doomed to have crappy furniture, flimsy and buggy appliances,
| byzantine legal codes, ugly architecture, and hostile
| infrastructure forever. This society is the product of the
| choices we've made collectively and if we made different
| choices we could have a much better (or much worse) society.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Cheaper lighting costs across an entire city are a very good
| reason.
|
| "Ugly architecture" is subjective. A lot of architects care
| very much, but they follow the academic line and lack the
| imagination and empathy to understand why elements of that
| aesthetic are unpopular and impractical - a completely
| different problem, even if it causes related outcomes.
|
| Bugs are easy to write and hard to fix. MBA culture as a
| whole is fixated on quick extractive shareholder returns, not
| on celebrating supreme engineering quality. MBAs care very
| much too, but not about the things the author (and probably
| most of us) care about.
|
| Some people do care but are simply not good at their jobs.
|
| Even if you do care, people will assume you don't. Anyone
| who's done direct customer facing work or even just sold
| stuff online will know that people love to nitpick.
|
| And so on.
|
| The problem is narcissism vs empathy. Caring means trying to
| have some insight the experience of others. Narcissism is on
| a scale from blank unawareness of others to outright
| hostility, whether overt or covert.
|
| There's a lot more of the latter than the former around at
| the moment, and corporate and economic values provide some
| conveniently expedient justifications for it.
| gizmo wrote:
| The problem, essentially, is that you can't rage against
| the dying of the light all by yourself. If you're an
| architect and badly want to build great housing your goals
| are frustrated every step of the way. By people who don't
| care enough to do all the little things that are necessary
| to make a building 5% better in 20 subtle ways. You can
| only fight indifference for so long before you're empty.
|
| What is the point of lighting being cheap if it produces a
| city where people don't want to live? Good lighting isn't
| unaffordable either. Cities with good lighting actually
| exist! And yet people will insist shitty lighting is
| somehow necessary. It isn't.
| ericmay wrote:
| > "Ugly architecture" is subjective.
|
| I think this actually illustrates the author's point and
| gets at the heart of the cultural malaise we are
| experiencing. If everything is subjective, nothing can be
| improved because nothing can be better than something else.
|
| But this isn't the case.
|
| The Mona Lisa is _objectively_ better than anything I have
| ever painted.
|
| Architecture is no different.
|
| Some buildings quite literally are better than others and
| we can scientifically study this [1]. We can recognize that
| all opinions are valid, but that some are better than
| others. We do this in daily life too, if you are in the ER
| and the trauma team comes and tells you their opinion on
| your condition, you will value that opinion over the
| opinion of the person outside waiting for a ride. Art,
| music, architecture - no different.
|
| Tens of millions of people visit the Notre Dame Cathedral.
|
| Why?
|
| Religious reasons of course, but many visit simply to
| marvel at the wonderful architecture. Contrast that with
| Rocky City Church [2] here in Columbus where I live. A big,
| bland, gray "modern" building that as our standards have
| dropped to nothing (remember everything is subjective so
| nothing can be better than anything else) we have come to
| accept as the norm.
|
| This is the Nobody Cares phase of not just architecture but
| society as well. [1] https://annsussman.com
| [2]https://rockcitychurch.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/09/1.png
| bccdee wrote:
| > The Mona Lisa is objectively better than anything I
| have ever painted.
|
| No it isn't. If I saw one of your paintings and liked it
| better, there would be no way for you to prove me wrong.
| My opinion might be highly unpopular, but that wouldn't
| make it _objectively incorrect._
| ericmay wrote:
| How would you compare the two?
| mcswell wrote:
| Then substitute one of my drawings (or paintings, if I
| painted) of a person. There's no way in the world that
| anyone--anyone!--would think mine were better. That's
| because mine are truly awful.
| fennecbutt wrote:
| Eh, I think as always is still just comes down to resource
| contention right at the root of the issues. We still all monk
| e, some things will never change.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Things are shitty for reasons but not for good reasons.
|
| I dunno. At the first problem, impeding cyclists that want to
| merge into a walkway zooming at 20mph without paying enough
| attention to even see their lane is ending is a quite good
| reason.
|
| Maybe he should be asking for some "cyclist-calming" measure
| instead, so they will slow down before not being able to make
| into the walkway.
| wpm wrote:
| There's a huge difference between "impeding" and "causing
| you to fucking crash".
|
| Like, what an insane take.
| pbronez wrote:
| Solution then is to add slowing features uphill from the
| cut over.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I'm not inclined to be sympathetic to cyclists, but the
| bike-murdering signpost right there is all the proof I need
| that there are people who hate them more than I do and that
| at least one of those people works in city government. I
| winced. It might actually be a felony, that act of
| transportation engineering. I'd at least listen to the
| prosecutor's theory of the crime.
| pastage wrote:
| It feels like zooming when you bicycle in those tight
| spaces at 9-12 km/h, which is a third of what you calld
| zooming. The point is that a collision at 12 km/h is pretty
| ok. The problem is that cyclists are always close to
| pedestrians so it feels unsafe even at slow speeds. The
| accident rate between cyclists and pedestrians are
| incredibly low so it is not really dangerous, but it feels
| like it.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The article explicitly says cyclists crash there going at
| ~30 km/h.
| watwut wrote:
| Yeah, my first reaction was "you should not move onto the
| sidewalk if you cant break and control the speed". Unless
| it is some kind of abandoned place where no one ever walks
| anyway.
|
| I am cyclist by the way. It is just that looking at
| picture, it is not exactly super difficult turn, if you
| have those breaks.
| stdbrouw wrote:
| But is that even true? My mid-tier appliances are all great
| and I love my IKEA furniture. Some things suck some of the
| time. Other things don't.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Related to the Japan thing, but one thing they don't do well
| is avoiding harsh white lights. It's far more common to find
| unpleasant fluorescent or LED lighting there than the US. The
| idea that warmer (or even dimmer) lights are preferable in
| most situations isn't a widespread opinion there apparently.
| mcswell wrote:
| IMO, the switch from sodium lamps to LED lamps (one of the
| article's gripes) _was_ for a good reason: lower use of
| electricity. I also happen to think that the light from
| sodium lamps looked ugly--much worse than a properly working
| LED lamp--but maybe that 's a personal opinion. (I would also
| question the study that "showed" white light reduced
| melatonin production, but that's a different issue.)
|
| (Re "properly working LED": apparently many street lamps in
| the US were built by a single company, and that company's
| bulbs are prone to turning purple over time. But that wasn't
| a reason not to make the switch back when, because at the
| time no one knew this would happen. It's being fixed now by
| replacing the purple bulbs with better quality LED bulbs.)
| tqi wrote:
| They might not be good reasons _to you_ , but that is not the
| same thing as not caring. If someone cooks something that
| without salt for health reasons, that doesn't mean they don't
| care about salt as much as me.
| stevedekorte wrote:
| But street lights don't have to use harsh 3000 kelvin LEDs,
| there are warm light LEDs (2400-2700 kelvin). For example,
| these lights are widely available for home, yet most people
| just buy the 3000K LED bulbs because (IME) it doesn't occur
| to them that there is a strong aesthetic (and health)
| difference between these colors. i.e. They don't care.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Ok for LEDs and your general point but for the bike lane
| situation you are kind of shooting yourself in the foot : It's
| either non-standard compliant bike lane, which is a problem, or
| it _is_ standard compliant and then it means that the standard
| is a broad, inflexible set of rules dictated from the top which
| is either too complicated for people in charge of the
| implementation or leaves them no room to adapt to a special
| case... or probably do not incentivize the implementers to
| think about what they are doing, all of which is a also a
| problem.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Maybe they would rather not have bikers bombing onto the
| sidewalk at 20 mph when they are going to be sharing that
| space with pedestrians. A sharp turn is a good way to prevent
| that. I assume there are several "bike lane ends" signs here,
| though, which should be an indication to slow down.
| drunner wrote:
| Imagine if you were talking about a road doing this for no
| reason. The engineers care about how fast you can go in a
| car around town, not bikes. You can't argue bike lanes get
| the same amount of care/effort as roads.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Roads do this all the time "for no reason." Plenty of
| neighborhoods have very sharp curves to get drivers to
| slow down. This is one of many "traffic calming"
| techniques.
|
| Also, I'm not sure where you got the idea that engineers
| don't care about the speeds of bikes (especially around
| pedestrians).
| drunner wrote:
| The example by the author is an unsafe one. You think
| putting unsafe sharp curves at the bottom of hills for
| cars is acceptable?
|
| Your example is good, and the matching example of a bike
| lane is the opposite of what was shown in the article.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > You think putting unsafe sharp curves at the bottom of
| hills for cars is acceptable?
|
| Yes, it is absolutely acceptable and it happens all the
| time in road design. It happens _specifically_ because
| people (apparently in all vehicle types) will speed on
| the long straightaway down the hill into whatever comes
| next. _Many, many_ suburban areas with hills will have
| sharp curves or T-intersections at the bottom of hills as
| a matter of course and it does work at slowing down the
| traffic going down the hill.
|
| If you look at street view on the actual road, that is
| exactly this situation: a very straight road with a lot
| of visibility, leading toward a very long and complicated
| intersection where everyone needs to pay attention and go
| slowly. Nobody traveling a reasonable speed on a bike
| will be surprised by that turn since they can all see it
| coming for literally a mile.
|
| I assume the alternatives to this specific merge are
| either:
|
| * Merge the bikes into the car traffic and pray to god
| that they obey traffic signals at the upcoming
| intersection (we all know this isn't happening), while
| also accepting that they accelerate very slowly compared
| to cars.
|
| * Set up a dedicated bike lane _with dedicated signals_
| (which is very expensive).
|
| The engineers here clearly opted to instead merge the
| bike traffic with the pedestrian traffic through that
| intersection so that the existing pedestrian signals
| apply to them. You can see that the bike lane continues
| after this intersection, so they literally just did this
| to handle the intersection.
|
| TFA on this point reads like "cyclist (or illegal moped
| user) doesn't want to be slowed down and doesn't care
| about anyone else."
| defen wrote:
| > Yes, it is absolutely acceptable and it happens all the
| time in road design.
|
| Aren't there usually signs indicating the maximum safe
| speed when that sort of thing happens? We don't have
| context here but I doubt there is a sign telling bikers
| that they should slow down. And aren't roads in general
| much larger and easier to see from far away, vs this tiny
| little ramp? You also haven't explained why the big curb
| is vertical instead of sloped, or why the street sign
| needs to be where it is. It's hard to avoid the
| conclusion that this thing is designed as a _fuck you_ to
| bikers who don 't obey the rules. We simply don't design
| roads that way, where it's _designed_ to make you crash
| if you deviate from the standard even a bit.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| We absolutely do design roads for all kinds of people to
| make you crash if you do not follow them. In fact, on
| pretty much all roads, you will crash if you decide not
| to follow the road, and frequently you will crash into a
| tree or a building. Drivers generally see this kind of
| design and complain about it but slow the hell down.
| Cyclists seem to be the same.
|
| There is a sign ahead of this ramp saying in very big
| letters "BIKE LANE ENDS." It's up to the bikers to decide
| how they want to use that information. The sign, the
| ramp, and the end of the bollards marking the bike lane
| are visible at quite a long distance.
|
| As for the street sign, it's a street sign. It's where
| the street is. It also tells you exactly where to use
| Google street view to get full context.
| defen wrote:
| If you look at the street view
| (https://maps.app.goo.gl/Li9FSf29kXJWJLxW8), you'll see
| that it's been redesigned since the picture in the post.
| The current street view picture is from Feb 2023; the
| picture in the blog post also appears to be from street
| view (given the translucent quadrilateral near the fence)
| but presumably from before 2023. So...it appears that the
| bike lane _was_ redesigned in a way that reflects two of
| my biggest complaints that were based on the outdated
| picture. Doesn 't that sort of vindicate what I was
| saying? Why did they change it if the original design was
| ok? Like why didn't they do it the right way in the first
| place?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The sharpness of the corner is the same, which is TFA's
| real biggest complaint. Yours may have been the sign.
| watwut wrote:
| Bikes has a thing called breaks. You are not helpless on
| the bike and if you are, you are really behind the
| maintenance.
|
| And yes, roads for cars are intentionally build in a ways
| that makes high speed obviously unsafe at places.
| ieee2 wrote:
| Yes, the less sharp angle of the described bike-lane would
| imply that biker can get into the sidewalk in high speed
| without issue and harm a pedestrian easier.
| drunner wrote:
| Yeah, that's why when pedestrians have to cross where cars
| are that there is always a stop sign to make sure their
| high speed won't harm a pedestrian /sarcasm.
| bccdee wrote:
| ...we _do_ put stop lights at pedestrian crossings on
| high-speed streets. They look like this:
| http://www.pedbikesafe.org/PEDSAFE/cm_images/PedHyb1.png
| nicce wrote:
| I would even argue that the current design of the bike line is
| better than the one suggested by the author.
|
| It forces the biker to slow down and reduces the collision
| risks with others in the line.
|
| It is selfish to think only about the biker coming from the
| hill. The biker that thinks it is okay to drive 20mph in that
| situation.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| You can accomplish both with the right design.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| By not merging the cycling and walkway, sure. That would be
| a better design.
|
| But presumably real world limitations forced them to merge
| the two at this point, and forcing cyclists to slow before
| the merge is of obvious benefit to the safety of
| pedestrians and cyclists. Not to mention that road
| construction crews can't fabricate an infinite array of
| curbs and affordances as a simple practical limitation.
|
| As others have cited, the author seems to have an
| "everything is an easy fix" perspective to the world, at
| least when viewed as their own requirements and needs being
| the only consideration. In reality, loads of people care
| immensely about all the things that they think are easy
| fixes, but the fixes aren't nearly as easy as they think.
| Like, anyone who has ever listened to a user tell them how
| their app could be made much better knows this, when all of
| their suggestions would diminish usability for almost every
| other user.
| drunner wrote:
| Yeah, that's why we put sharp turns at the bottom of roads
| too.
|
| It is selfish to only think about the driver coming from the
| hill. The driver that thinks it is okay to drive 45mph in
| that situation.
|
| Do you see the irony of your statement.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| We put sharp turns at the end of roads.
|
| If you have a high-speed road merging into a slow one
| without some indication that it's ending and a sharp turn
| at the end, you have a road that kills people.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| He does not care
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| LEDs last longer, but cities took the savings to add even more
| blue light, so the lifetime doesn't matter.
|
| The light pollution has absolutely increased because of the
| amount of LEDs that have been installed. This is well
| documented.
|
| Also, the sodium line spectrum is easy to filter out for
| astronomy, broad spectrum blue LEDs add light pollution there.
| bill_joy_fanboy wrote:
| This post is massive copium.
|
| If you can't take a look around the U.S. and see that cynicism
| and apathy are running wild here, then you are either deceiving
| yourself or you live in an area that hasn't experienced
| collapse acceleration yet.
| pdimitar wrote:
| There are also LED lights that are more pleasant to look at and
| don't blind you.
|
| OP's point stands: nobody cares. Nobody even thought about it
| for a minute. Everything are items in a spreadsheet.
|
| Took me less than a minute to ask a lady in the lights store I
| visited two months ago to sell me softer, more yellow, LED
| lights. I still save a ton of electricity but my lights are not
| blinding me. This awful bright-blue-ish white light is bad for
| our brains btw, but that's a much bigger topic that I will not
| engage in.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Thanks for this. My parent's neighborhood has these purple
| lights and they are terrible. I never cared enough to do even
| the slightest bit of to understand why this problem is the way
| it is, until your comment.
| gspencley wrote:
| > But sure, just assume it's because everyone is stupid.
|
| He didn't say everyone was stupid. He said that no body cares.
| There is a very big difference between the two.
|
| I tend to agree with him. Yes we can find examples, most
| commonly when it comes to safety standards, where there are
| systems in place that prevent the really bad stuff from
| happening. But why do those systems and checks need to be put
| into place? Because a lot of people simply do not care and
| would cut corners if their jobs didn't depend on them following
| the standards.
|
| The problem with broad sweeping generalizations is that they
| never apply to all individual cases. It doesn't change the fact
| that the broad generalization is, well, broadly and generally
| true. Most people don't care about almost anything other than
| getting home to their families or pets. Most people will even
| happily admit that. It's not even that they're lazy necessarily
| (though a few people are). It's that they are working in what
| is, to them, "just a job / pay cheque." That's not even always
| a problem. It's just a fact of life that is as true as taxes
| and death. It's worth acknowledging because it is something
| that needs to be accounted for after identifying or choosing
| your fault tolerances. The systems and standards that you cite
| are the result of acknowledging this fact of reality.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| One thing I want to point out is that white light has worse
| effect on light pollution than warmer light, at least as far as
| astronomy goes. If you ever go to a stargazing party you'll
| notice everyone uses red flashlights if they need to see
| anything in the dark because it doesn't drown out the
| starlight.
| xiande04 wrote:
| That's because the warmer the light, the less it is affected
| by Rayleigh scattering. In other words, shorter wavelength
| (i.e., bluer) light scatters more. This is the same reason
| that the sky is blue.
|
| Animals are also more sensitive/more attracted to bluer
| light. These harsh white LED street lamps are a death
| sentence for moth species.
| scosman wrote:
| I'm a big bike lane design nerd: that bike lane design
| absolutely sucks, and in more ways than the author mentions.
| The person designing it didn't care.
| bccdee wrote:
| The bike ramp example was insane to me. OF COURSE it's not
| built so cyclists can zoom up onto the sidewalk at 20 miles per
| hour without slowing down. That's how you turn a pedestrian
| into paste.
|
| Really, you should be dismounting and walking your bike onto
| the sidewalk, but if you're going to ride your bike up that
| ramp, absolutely do not do it so quickly that you risk
| crashing.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Everyone defends stupid decisions because they comply with
| existing standards and no curb is above the law. That doesn't
| change the fact that it's a bad design, and ain't nobody got
| the time to file an exemption appeal.
| 65 wrote:
| This article is dumb.
|
| Maybe the bike lane is that because of real world engineering,
| regulation, or design limitations?
|
| Perhaps the author should appreciate the bike lane existing in
| the first place. It's better than no bike lane.
|
| I get the sense a lot of these cynical types feel a desperate
| need for control over every component of their lives. Relax, some
| things aren't perfect but they're probably better than they were
| a hundred years ago. Progress takes time, accept that it takes
| time.
| loopz wrote:
| For caring you need empathy.
|
| I hear people all around me all the time be boastful of how much
| they don't care. It's a competition.
| CuriousRose wrote:
| I'm so glad that someone else had the patience and articulation
| to write this article so that I didn't have to (as a personal
| venting exercise). My personal takeaway of the mutually shared
| frustrations in poor design has been apparent since maybe the
| 1990's onwards. It is very sad to see throwaway consumerism,
| permeate culture to the point where from an industrial design POV
| you need to buy vintage or ludicrously expensive appliances to
| have a beautiful and functional product that is also reliable. In
| the past decades, companies like Braun were able to bring beauty
| into the house, where now Temu disposables have taken their
| place.
| willvarfar wrote:
| Saying engineers don't care is victim blaming. The way to survive
| at a company with "blah blah incentives" is to _not care_. You
| have to stop caring until you have an opportunity to move to
| another job.
| nyokodo wrote:
| I recently spent some time in the ER in a criminally underfunded
| and understaffed public healthcare system. People in quite severe
| pain were languishing waiting their turn but the nurses went out
| of their way to show a semblance of care and humanity to the
| patients and even apologize to them when they didn't have to and
| weren't expected to. Maybe that overall situation shows that key
| people in the society or government don't care but clearly the
| frontline people still care. I choose to focus on them and do my
| little bit to make things around me a little bit better when
| maybe no one expects me to either.
| doubleorseven wrote:
| Zooming out of your own world is a gift that can be taught. You
| have a gift that 100% makes your life easier, with the side
| effect of the occasional frustration.
|
| I feel compassion for those people who live in their own body and
| keep hitting walls.
|
| You can help people care, it's your path.
| cafed00d wrote:
| The 12 years or so I have lived in America I have observed that
| people always keep the door open for those walking behind them.
| Always. Everywhere. DC, Boston, LA, New York, Seattle, Cupertino,
| everywhere.
|
| Nobody cares about anything. Somebody cares about something.
| Everybody cares about everything.
|
| I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. This makes me
| optimistic. At least, its nice that people care to hold doors
| open : )
| r0ckarong wrote:
| 90% of "not caring" is actually external limitations where trying
| to overcome those would so far outweigh any benefit or even
| tangentially have anything to do with the original problem, that
| you must be a lunatic to waste energy trying to change it.
|
| His "snowball of care" doesn't work if your 1% effort needs to
| put out the house fire first.
| veltas wrote:
| Thanks for complaining about McDonald's self service, which is
| truly dreadful and just gets worse (no I don't have the app, why
| would I want something _you_ people made on my own phone, stop
| asking!).
|
| Another "they don't care" is the TV screens that have the menu on
| in the background, that used to have menu and prices when you
| went up to order, and now display "cool animations" half the time
| so you can't read the menu while you're up there ordering and
| have to wait and look like an idiot for the menu to come back.
| vv_ wrote:
| My experience is that such indifference comes with seniority.
| Unfortunately most people tend to try and change things outside
| of their control, ignoring what they can change and quickly burn
| out. With that said:
|
| > It's painful to work with people who don't care if you care a
| lot, and eventually I left because of it.
|
| This really hits home as it's happened to me several times.
| Eventually, you stop caring as well and just cruise through. On
| the flip side, stress has gone down by quite a bit :)
| pards wrote:
| > It's painful to work with people who don't care if you care a
| lot, and eventually I left because of it.
|
| I have a few people on my team that do not care and seem to be
| incapable of caring. I'm trying to get them removed but it
| takes _months_.
|
| In the meantime, I'm deeply worried that the solid performers
| will find other opportunities and leave because they can find
| new jobs in a few weeks.
|
| The Dead Sea effect in action [0] (and HN responses [1]).
|
| [0]: http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-
| the-d...
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23166786
| rgovostes wrote:
| One thing that depresses me is how ugly our cities have become.
| Buildings that go up are designed with a total lack of aesthetic
| intention. In Seattle, ostensibly there is a design review
| committee for multifamily and commercial buildings, but it
| doesn't appear to have made the city look any better, and their
| 2025 goals include "streamlining the Design Review process to be
| quicker and less costly for applicants, and reducing the number
| of projects that are required to go through Design Review."
|
| This is the committee that's supposed to care about this, and
| they don't. And the architects don't because they're not being
| paid to make a beautiful facade. And the developers don't because
| they want to finish construction as quickly and cheaply as
| possible. And the residents of the city don't care because
| they're apathetic about living in a beautiful environment.
|
| What kills me though is that we travel to landmarks in New York
| City or Florence or wherever, and gawk at the beautifully-
| designed old buildings and charming plazas, and seem to lack the
| recognition that _we could live in places just as beautiful if
| somebody cared_.
|
| It doesn't really have to cost much more. I used to live in a
| 20th century building originally built as a schoolhouse. The city
| architect, who was budget-constrained, still made a point of
| including decorative brickwork. 120 years later it was by far the
| most attractive building on the street.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| > One thing that depresses me is how ugly our cities have
| become. Buildings that go up are designed with a total lack of
| aesthetic intention. In Seattle, ostensibly there is a design
| review committee for multifamily and commercial buildings, but
| it doesn't appear to have made the city look any better, and
| their 2025 goals include "streamlining the Design Review
| process to be quicker and less costly for applicants, and
| reducing the number of projects that are required to go through
| Design Review."
|
| > This is the committee that's supposed to care about this, and
| they don't. And the architects don't because they're not being
| paid to make a beautiful facade. And the developers don't
| because they want to finish construction as quickly and cheaply
| as possible. And the residents of the city don't care because
| they're apathetic about living in a beautiful environment.
|
| There is a tradeoff between affordability and aesthetics.
| Lengthy review processes make housing more expensive. Seattle
| cares, but it cares more about affordability. With the cost of
| housing right now I think that's the right call. Who cares how
| beautiful grand buildings appear when you have people living in
| the street?
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > Who cares how beautiful grand buildings appear when you
| have people living in the street?
|
| Where's the followup part that the money saved on decorative
| brickwork is being used to fix homelessness? Because if it
| isn't, then this is a non-sequitur.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| Do you think New York and Florence have those beautiful
| buildings because their local design review committees had high
| standards? I don't.
|
| I think aesthetics should nearly always come second to other
| concerns, except in very specialised cases. For a start, it's
| largely a matter of personal taste. "Streamlining the design
| review process" is something I wish was more of a priority
| where I live. Those rates (local property tax) dollars are much
| better spent on almost anything else in my opinion.
| buzzardbait wrote:
| Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Also, there is often a
| tradeoff between aesthetics and affordability. The cost of
| living has gone up, and most people struggling to climb the
| property ladder would happily sacrifice the former for the
| latter. With respect, this falls squarely in the category of
| first-world problems.
| rgovostes wrote:
| The ugly townhouses going up in my neighborhood cost $1.3M
| each. The apartments are $2500/mo and up. It doesn't have
| anything to do with affordability but it is convenient for
| the developers that people think this is the excuse.
|
| > this falls squarely in the category of first-world problems
|
| I'm talking about one of the wealthiest cities in the first
| world.
| presentation wrote:
| I've gone the other way. I moved to Tokyo, most of the
| buildings are copy-pasted and objectively ugly. But taken
| together it forms an extremely functional city, so it's a dream
| to be here.
| tmvphil wrote:
| I am much more depressed by our crushing lack of new housing
| construction that keeps cities unaffordable for the middle
| class than I am about new buildings not being sufficiently
| pleasing to my eye.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| In NYC at least, the low point of architectural beauty was in
| the 1960-2000 era. In the past decade or two I think there has
| been a lot of really quality architecture going up. The current
| aesthetic issue plaguing the city is the onerous regulations
| that result in unneeded scaffolding being put up around
| buildings for months or even _years_.
| surrTurr wrote:
| > The McDonald's touch-screen self-order kiosk takes 27 clicks to
| get a meal. They try to up-sell you 3 times. Just let me pay for
| my fucking burger, Jesus Christ. The product manager, the
| programmer, the executives. None of these people care.
|
| They absolutely do care! But they have competing interests.
| fullstackchris wrote:
| But their _are_ some people who care. I've been busting my ass in
| the software world for over 10 years, documenting it as I go.
| Largely everything I give away for free, or at the very least
| offer a free tier. I cant control what other people do, but I can
| keep chugging along doing the best that _I_ can do.
| d--b wrote:
| And yet:
|
| People who care too much are angry.
|
| People who care too much fight over stupid things.
|
| People who care too much self-righteous.
|
| People who care too much are intolerant.
|
| People who care too much are not adaptable.
|
| People who care too much are bullies.
|
| People who care too much are trolls.
|
| People who care too much write rants on their blogs.
|
| People who care too much are miserable.
| smusamashah wrote:
| What's sticking out to author like a sore thumb is a normal for
| majority. One _can not_ imagine a better way of things until they
| have experienced a better one. Even if they are badly bitten by
| one, majority still can 't come up with any better idea.
|
| It's not that nobody cares, they just don't know any better.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| I mean, it's a symptom of scale right?
|
| When you deal with a wide variety of people, constraints, etc you
| develop processes to deliver output. The DMV is that way for a
| reason, sidewalks get made a particular way for a reason
|
| And that's that, you don't rethink it every time. It's all
| transactional. human APIs interfacing with other human APIs
|
| It's a long cry from the old timey village where you had people:
| Bob was the only baker, and your neighbor. You also need his help
| to shovel your driveway. But he needs your help to make house
| repairs and get eggs from your chickens. If you don't care then
| you have longer term personal consequences.
|
| That's not the case today - if you don't care and deliver subpar
| experiences, people rant then move on to their next transaction
| and you to yours. You aren't affected one bit in the long run.
| (Assuming people don't have a choice - if they do then you do
| care just enough to get the sale)
| parasti wrote:
| I wish I had billions of sheer force of will.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| My instinctive, gut reaction is to hate this article, because I
| suspect its written by the kind of person who thinks they are
| better than everyone else.
|
| But on deeper reflection I think they are actually right. Our
| civilisation became great because people took pride in their work
| - and not just at the crop level: the average poor tailor or
| cobbler would take 100x more pride in their work than the average
| government employee today. This is a problem -- I suspect largely
| caused by the internet and technology warping people's reward
| mechanisms - and it needs addressing.
| bibelo wrote:
| I totally agree with the article and the examples. Problem here
| in France is the same: many people do not care. I would not say
| it's a majority, but a minority is enough to ruin other people's
| lives.
|
| I'm really annoyed by the noise. From the deafening motorbike
| engine in the street, to the idiot with his speaker vomitting rap
| music, to the neighbor having a party until 3AM, they do not
| care.
|
| Why is that? Mostly because modern western civilizations promote
| a me-first culture. Look at these personal developpment books:
| it's mostly about caring for yourself, barely about the others.
| When it's about the others, it's to advance your interests.
|
| We do not learn from infancy to put others' interests first.
| Basic principles and values like selflessness are taught NOWHERE.
| When a problem arises here in France, you get yet another law to
| restrict and punish. We should just teach peoples to care for
| others.
|
| I'm longering for a world when people care, where people who are
| "lovers of themselves", "not open to any agreement, without self-
| control, without love of goodness" will have disappeared,
|
| and where "there is more happiness in giving than there is in
| receiving", where this is applied: "All things, therefore, that
| you want men to do to you, you also must do to them", will be the
| standard.
| ceth wrote:
| I agree also with most of the rant but the part about
| state/municipal jobs looks a bit unfair to me. If you have ever
| volonteer or worked for this kind of job, you could find that
| many people are so ungrateful: only few care to answer polls or
| attend public meetings, almost nobody cares about the why. But
| when something changes, lots of loud mouths shout rants like
| this one. People sometimes don't imagine how hard this is to
| have basic consensus on anything when there is lots of people
| in a group. Doing anything is also so complicated nowadays with
| the numerous parts involved in any decision, each one having
| their own priority set and timelines, the constraints of the
| law...
|
| The care is certainly not the only reason of having broken
| things.
| dustypotato wrote:
| It's not just the West. I'm Indian and it's 2x worse there.
| moktonar wrote:
| Welcome to capitalism, where people care only about one thing:
| money.
| gunian wrote:
| reality as a whole doesn't care caring and creating perfect
| producrs a fundamentally flawed system is a contradiction
| openrisk wrote:
| People obviously "care", as in: we are social animals. We
| survived and thrived through coexistence and caring.
|
| But how do you scale "caring" to huge and complex societies where
| vast numbers of individuals pursue a vast number of (possibly
| conflicting) interests?
|
| When it appears that nobody cares its more a manifestation that
| the amount of systematic care we have invented and organized is
| not matching the need.
|
| One powerful but ultimately limiting tool we invented is money.
| You can think of it as tokenizing care. "I have cared for $x
| worth of cleaning you now you care for $x worth of feeding me in
| return".
|
| Many of our caring problems link to the primitive and
| oversimplifying traits of financialization. Which - in addition -
| over time have become grossly abused by shrewd operators.
|
| Parents don't need to get paid to care for their babies and no
| amount of money will produce equivalent quality of care.
|
| Elon does not care about others hundreds of billions of times
| more than a "normal" person does.
|
| But the organizational failure from monetizing everything is only
| one pathology. There are many others:
|
| As social animals we also care a lot about power structures.
| Organized violence and destruction shows that caring about others
| is not universal behavior in time and space.
|
| Above all, intrinsic traits are groomed in childhood in a
| positive feedback loop. An educational system that reinforces
| caring behavior does not fall from a coconut tree. It needs to be
| cared about.
| advael wrote:
| A lot of this is attributable to the way our society is designed
| at a high level
|
| With the exception of a tiny number of people in exceptionally
| autonomous jobs (either working for small organizations or in
| high-powered roles) both government and corporate bureaucracies
| optimize everything they can for efficiency and replicability at
| a massive scale, which means that their processes are ironclad,
| most people have no ability to make decisions that matter, and
| caring about the results of those decisions cause them either to
| break protocols and be punished, or try and fail to create
| different outcomes under those constraints. Most people are
| unable to choose a job that does better than this and still
| support themselves. Thus, most people spend a significant chunk
| of their life, the part where they're supposed to be the most
| engaged and alert, under a condition of essentially learned
| helplessness
|
| Increasingly, people's options are restricted in terms of what
| they can do outside of work too. A lack of third spaces means
| that most socialization takes place in your home, your friends'
| homes, or more realistically, an internet platform that is
| designed and controlled by the same bureaucratic drives. Digital
| platforms for things like payments, combined with monopolization
| of most sectors of the economy, has made commerce involve fewer
| meaningful choices and salient interactions for the "consumer".
| Increasing use of digital mediators for other interactions and
| increasing control exerted by the companies that run these
| mediators create fewer meaningful choices they can make there,
| too. People often cite the high degree of convenience of many
| everyday activities as a quality of life improvement that past
| humans couldn't imagine. This might be true, but the way it's
| implemented comes with a tradeoff at every turn with meaningful
| choices. We have in many contexts traded knowing things and
| deciding things for having a company do it for us, and I say "we"
| because this is by and large a tradeoff that most people didn't
| individually choose
|
| A lot of people get this idea in their head that most people are
| stupid. But even people who aren't particularly educated or
| bright have a lot more vibrancy, a lot more ability to care when
| they have autonomy than even very educated and intelligent people
| do when they don't, and autonomy is a muscle that can grow with
| use and atrophy with disuse. The design of modern societies has
| drastically limited the ability of people to act autonomously, to
| choose most things that matter, in a ton of contexts that take up
| most of most people's time. Of course they don't care. But like
| most systemic issues, this author is so unwilling to consider
| systemic solutions that even after walking up to the brink of
| seeming to get that this isn't a problem you can just solve at
| the ground level by caring yourself, the conclusion is still just
| that people suck, most of them, but somehow individually. Like
| many people who think they're surrounded by idiots, the author's
| one example of someone who "cares" is a literal billionaire who
| is personally responsible for creating similar immiserating
| authoritarian conditions in workplaces he runs and for people who
| use the products of his businesses, a textbook defector who has
| claimed more autonomy for himself exactly by contributing to the
| systematic ways in which others are deprived of it. There is no
| way to solve systemic problems at an individual scale
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Don't worry.
|
| People can't have nice things, so they get grumpy, unhappy, and
| stressed. This creates a market for therapists and dietary
| supplements to offset stress.
|
| And why care? The second law of thermodynamics will inevitably
| march on. Let's dissolve in entropy now!
| motoxpro wrote:
| There must be a name for this bias. "Everyone else's stuff sucks
| but the reason my stuff sucks is because someone is keeping me
| from doing good work"
|
| Other people are always the problem. It's like the anecdote that
| most people think they are better than average drivers. "L.A. has
| bad drivers, but not me. The quality of everyone's output is
| down, but not mine."
|
| Ask an engineer why their code is bad and they blame past
| engineers or managers, ask past engineers and they blame time
| constraints, ask managers and they blame bad engineers, ask a CEO
| and they talk about boards and stock price
|
| It's always really interesting to see.
| xigency wrote:
| Well, we live in a punitive culture that ascribes great social
| value to appearances.
|
| To your example, if I tell my friends that I had a tough day at
| work because the old code was broken I will get more sympathy
| then if I say I wrote some shitty code last week and it made my
| day awful.
|
| Another example, in a minor traffic accident, it might be nice
| to say "oh I'm sorry that was my fault" but I would be
| penalized by my insurance carrier for making such a statement.
|
| We have successfully integrated the results of capitalism and
| game theory directly into our language. And I believe that has
| a knock on effect: people's actions follow from their thoughts
| which are influenced by the set of things they're allowed to or
| not allowed to vocalize.
|
| We have aggressively evolved away from anything like humility
| or empathy being expressed in this culture because we punish
| that behavior.
| monophonica wrote:
| Illusory superiority - "a cognitive bias that causes people to
| overestimate their abilities compared to others"
|
| We have really developed an entire culture in the US around
| illusory superiority. It seems like the average person in 2025
| thinks they are above average in basically everything.
|
| I think this is a big reason why sports betting has taken off
| the way it has in the US. Every sports fan basically thinks
| they are way above average in their understanding of sports.
| ragazzina wrote:
| >The McDonald's touch-screen self-order kiosk takes 27 clicks to
| get a meal. They try to up-sell you 3 times. Just let me pay for
| my fucking burger, Jesus Christ. The product manager, the
| programmer, the executives. None of these people care.
|
| The author could stop eating at McDonald's and send a message to
| the company with his behaviour. But he does not care.
|
| >The guy on the hiking trail is playing his shitty EDM on his
| bluetooth speaker, ruining nature for everyone else. He does not
| care.
|
| The author could ask the guy to turn off the music and make the
| hiking trail more pleasurable for everyone. But he does not care.
|
| Et cetera. He cares for views on his blog so he writes on his
| blog.
| montag wrote:
| Y'all seem to willfully miss the point.
|
| A lot of people are just not very conscientious.
| 0xEF wrote:
| I get where you are coming from and also got the impression
| that this guy is just bitching about people not doing things
| the way he wants them to.
|
| But, I catch myself doing this sometimes, though the motive for
| my gripe may be a bit different. The music on the trail one is
| a good example, since I like to hike. Generally speaking, most
| people are respectful out on the trails because we are all
| there for a similar reason; to connect with nature and relax
| our mind/spirit while we get our dose of motion medicine. It's
| an immersive experience, but that immersion and the comradery
| that comes with it is broken by people who disrupt the serenity
| of the experience by not considering how their actions effect
| other people around them.
|
| If I apply that to the examples, that "nobody cares _about the
| impact of their actions on the lives of others_ " it clicks.
| Yes, it's heavily cynical, but it is hard not to be, most days,
| which is why I hike (among other hobbies) to get out of my own
| head and shed that default cynicism for a bit.
|
| Maybe the author feels that way, but didn't articulate it well
| enough? Or maybe it's just a hard thing to convey since it
| always appears as just bitching about the way things are. I
| guess I empathize, but would have approached it differently.
| keyle wrote:
| The last time I asked someone to turn down the music they
| dropped their bag to their feet and headed straight to punch me
| out.
|
| Maybe the wisdom is to just not care, and know you'll die soon,
| who cares.
|
| Every generation is a shitshow after the next.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| This is why concealed carry is so important.
| egorfine wrote:
| > The author could ask the guy to turn off the music
|
| People who tend to blast their music on a loudspeaker are not
| exactly the kind of people who are going to accept the message.
| ragazzina wrote:
| Doesn't this work for every point then?
|
| > Programmers should speak up against managers who want to
| upsell fries, but they don't care.
|
| Managers who tend to upsell fries are not exactly the kind of
| people who are going to accept the message.
| egorfine wrote:
| Broadly speaking yes.
|
| The goals of managers (and business in general) are profit
| maximization, and of course upselling exists exactly for
| that. And if a manager decided that we need to add another
| upselling screen then it's more or less futile to disagree
| from the position of a subordinate employee. The decision
| has been thought of and made.
| prmph wrote:
| It's even worse. Many people find it odd if you _do_ care
| t0bia_s wrote:
| It's also a question of competence. Many do things that don't
| understand. And don't even try to understand it.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| > Don't take anything here too seriously
|
| 550 comments later...
| agal wrote:
| I moved to Norway 5 years ago and I can say pretty confidently
| that everyone cares here. I haven't been to Japan so can't
| compare to that, but I haven't experienced any of the not-caring
| examples you described at all.
| helboi4 wrote:
| I really do not care but that is because the economy has
| incentivised me to get into work I don't care about. It is
| completely unprofitable to do things I do care about. So I don't
| do them. So everything I do do, I don't care about. Of course, I
| would hope if I was a doctor or sth where I really affected
| people's lives, I would care just for their sake if nothing else.
| But I'm a developer. It's really not that deep. Let me be an
| artist without me and my sick mother going homeless and I would
| actually care.
| presentation wrote:
| If everybody followed their hearts deepest passions, we'd all
| be starving.
| helboi4 wrote:
| I do see your point. But that is why what the article
| describes is an inevitable problem.
|
| Edit: I also do think that if I didn't do my job, nobody
| would be starving, and I am greatly overcompensated for it.
| Doctors, nurses, teachers, farmers... all of those jobs that
| are wildly more important for society to function are way
| less paid than my job fixing bugs in a corporate website,
| which is a fundamental flaw in the system if the aim is to
| incentivise people to keep society running well. For example,
| I know someone who is a doctor who is trying to leave to work
| at a hedge fund because the work is so under-compensated.
| This is a massive problem.
| prmph wrote:
| But your work may contribute to a product that helps a
| doctor, nurse or teacher do their job.
|
| Even if it does not directly do that, maybe your fellow
| workers use the income they get from the company existence
| to raise their kid who becomes a doctor, nurse, etc.
| helboi4 wrote:
| This does not solve the problem that people are
| compensated based on the ability to create profit and the
| trendiness of the industry, not on usefulness. If I allow
| a kid of someone in my company to go to med school and
| then they drop out of being a doctor because the pay
| sucks and become yet another
| financier/dev/consultant/middle manager/entrepreneur of
| fairly useless business, then the system still failed.
| prmph wrote:
| Yes, I understand where you are coming from, and public
| workers should definitely be paid better, but I'm just
| focusing on one part of your argument which I find
| specious.
|
| I'm saying you have a skewed idea of usefulness. Relative
| usefulness can only be properly evaluated when you look
| at the big picture.
|
| The fact that you are not seeing the immediate usefulness
| of what you are doing does not necessarily mean much.
| Even a comedian can be incredibly useful if he helps
| stave of mental and emotional distress that could
| contribute to burn out or shoddy work among those doing
| the supposedly more "useful" work.
| helboi4 wrote:
| I don't have a skewed idea of usefulness, you are just
| trying to justify your loyalty to a system that will fuck
| any logical priorties over for profit in order to cope
| with our current reality. I'm coping by having a job that
| is not very useful but makes profit, but I am not fooling
| myself to believe this system is virtuous.
|
| And yes I would say an artist or comedian is far, far
| more useful than a middle manager at a company managing
| devs fixing minor bugs on a website for a superfluous
| business. Back to my original point, I would probably
| give more to society as an artist than a dev. Some people
| would bring more to society as a dev than an artist,
| mind. In a world where we got paid just to be actually
| useful, there would be less devs and they'd all be better
| at their jobs.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Unless you can find a person who's deepest passion is feeding
| others.
| djeastm wrote:
| I don't know about that. We might not have all the choices
| for eating we have now, but there are a lot of people (even
| in my own family) that like growing/ hunting for, and serving
| food for some reason. At this point we have all the resources
| and knowledge to produce the food needed to survive, but it's
| in human (animal) nature to always want more than nature
| provides.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Yeah I think a lot of people care about that stuff.
| bccdee wrote:
| Yeah but most people aren't farmers. How much economic value
| gets tied up in investment schemes? How many people worked
| for years on crypto or the metaverse or what-have-you--
| projects that only existed to boost stock price, rather than
| because anyone needed them?
|
| Our society doesn't optimize the lifestyles of its citizens.
| It optimizes stock price, which leads to an economy where
| everyone works a lot, even on things nobody needs, in pursuit
| of returns for investors. Does the Silicon Valley VC unicorn
| portfolio model actually help anyone other than VCs and
| founders?
| helboi4 wrote:
| Exactly. A lot of people would be bring more value to
| society doing literally ANYTHING else than working on the
| metaverse or something but they won't get compensated the
| same for the actually useful stuff.
| silexia wrote:
| Doctors usually only care about money, and use regulatory
| capture to get it. That's why the US spends 27% of GDP on
| doctors and hospitals even though we only see a doctor mostly
| an hour per year.
| stanleykm wrote:
| 27% of gdp on doctors and hospitals, are you sure youre not
| missing a middleman or two in there?
| silexia wrote:
| Look it up.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Sorry, I'm British so I have a totally different perspective.
| Healthcare is mainly public here and the salaries suck.
| Nobody becomes a doctor to be rich. They become one because
| its a decent job and they want to help people. Of course you
| can be a private doctor but this is seen as publicly
| shameful. So I think that proves that there are other reasons
| people become doctors. Anyway, the issue in the UK is, the
| salaries used to be good but just not excellent, and would
| become excellent with a decent specialty. They also were
| guaranteed an excellent pension for their service to the
| country. Now doctors I know make just above minimum wage and
| I make basically double them as a junior dev (not at FAANG
| and devs aren't paid 6 figures over here, I make less than
| PS50k). This has come from years of defunding public services
| from people who believe in the power of capitalism to....
| create more finance bros and 1x engineers?
| codeulike wrote:
| Seems to me that bike-lane-onto-pavement transition is designed
| to be deliberately awkward so that the cyclists have to SLOW DOWN
| before they join the pavement and share the space with
| pedestrians
| brap wrote:
| >DMV
|
| >software [...] found some regulatory capture
|
| >a large healthcare company that engages in regulatory capture
|
| >municipal governments
|
| >department of transportation
|
| >Street lights
|
| >airport
|
| What do they all have in common?
|
| I think he dismissed "incentive systems" way too early.
|
| I would also argue that people not following the law (e.g. not
| picking up their dog's poop) or proper laws simply not existing
| (e.g. playing shitty EDM on a trail) have the same root cause.
|
| _Governments_ don't care.
|
| It's still amazing to me how some smart people still want the
| government to manage an even larger part of their lives when we
| should clearly be pushing in the other direction.
|
| Of course they only want this when The Party I Agree With(TM) is
| in power, not so much when it's The Party I Don't Agree With(TM).
| sunaookami wrote:
| Thank you to the author for putting the feeling I have had since
| years into words. It's not just the US that is this bad, it's
| also in Europe. Just looking at the COVID pandemic tells you all
| you need to know about countries where people care and where they
| don't care. Maybe the west emphasized individualism too much? See
| also: Communitarianism -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communitarianism
| bjornsing wrote:
| Yeah the pandemic was very enlightening, in a not so positive
| way.
| mda wrote:
| "We have examples like Elon who, through sheer force of will,
| defeats armies of people who don't care. For his many faults, you
| can't say the man doesn't care"
|
| Yikes.
| Pete-Codes wrote:
| I don't think it's wise to assume everyone is going to be perfect
| at their job. Yes, that bike line sucks. But haven't you ever
| made a mistake at your job? Expecting everything to work
| perfectly in life is a recipe for misery.
| dspillett wrote:
| People are often not compensated enough to warrant the mental
| energy of caring more, or the effort or making those around them
| care.
|
| Sometimes people did care, but they left because they didn't want
| to deal with the rest who didn't any more, and found better
| conditions elsewhere.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Rhe bike ramp thing is likely intentional. You don't want a bike
| doing 20mph on a sidewalk with pedestrians and the ramp forces
| bikes to slow down.
| n00b_heal wrote:
| Why don't people care? Maybe because they can't anymore? Look at
| the skyrocking number of silent quitters, of people doing the
| bare minimum. Look at the perpetual doomposting from the media
| since around 2015. The world is in a perpetual decay, it's not a
| single bit the same as it was pre 9/11. The world most of us grew
| up in is lost.
|
| So why care? If the past decade was nothing but disruption,
| change, disruption, change, why would anybody put in "constant"
| effort? Many still do, as I hear from the medical professions and
| those running the grid. But man, if those higher up the ranks
| won't start to listen to the friendly outcast from the bottom,
| things will become worse and worse. They either don't listen or
| they listen to the outcast that hates them. Both are ways to make
| the world worse.
| jll29 wrote:
| The fact that there are reasons for things that they are how they
| are is one thing, and it's true he does not elaborate - but I
| take it his point is one of general attitude: U.S. Americans are
| different from Japanese. I would not say either group cares less;
| instead, they probably care about different things (different
| cultures have different value systems; the weight put on
| individual versus society plays a large role here, too).
|
| It's easy to spot problems everywhere, especially if you are an
| analytical mind. Somebody else might care, but they may not
| perceive things as problematic to begin with.
|
| Different people have different levels of sensitivity and
| granularity of perception: I buy "just cheese" when my wife buys
| "Gruyere francais medium-aged" and don't you dare getting her the
| wrong brand.
|
| Then, some people actually _like_ the things how they are, so
| there are differences in opinion and personal taste, heck, some
| may even financially _benefit_ from the status quo financially
| (distinguish those who don 't care to help make change happen but
| would enjoy it if others did the work from the ones who genuinely
| don't care about either outcome, and both of them sit next to a
| third group, who do not what that change, full stop.
|
| The post was more than just a rant: he notices where he lives,
| his community and him do not have "value fit" (to borrow and
| modify the concept of "product-market fit", since this is HN),
| and he is comtemplating a move. But when he says he won't move to
| Japan (where in any case he would always be an outsider) he is
| looking for middle ground - so I read his blog post as a "search
| query aimed at human blog readers", a call for information to
| find out where may be more likeminded folks, which is a good
| idea, given his situation.
|
| That people do not see the need for change, one former co-worker
| of mine calls the "fish bowl effect": a new person joins a
| company, and they see everything that is broken immediately. But
| all the other people who have been there for 20 years don't get
| it. Like a new fish that joins the aquarium, who blurts "hey
| guys, the water in here is pretty dirty!" and all the other fill
| shake their head about such a weird statement, "What is he
| talking about?" They have been around for so long, they can't
| even perceive the water as "not clear" anymore, perhaps a
| survival adaptation to avoid permanent state of frustration.
|
| So I wish all readers of HN that they will never become that kind
| of fish who stops seeing things! (Belated happy New Year, too.)
| epolanski wrote:
| People barely care about their family nowadays, a huge amount of
| people don't even care about themselves, how can we care about
| anything really?
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| It is really more about culture.
| Havoc wrote:
| It's not a case of not caring, but rather caring about something
| else more. If you live in a country that emphasizes profit and
| watching out for self as priority then yeah you're not going to
| get a whole lot of wholesome selfless community minded behavior.
|
| It's not really a fault of the individual but rather a necessary
| consequence of the collective priorities.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| trying to fix half this stuff would burn you out, the other half
| would leave you jobless
|
| I tried to fix the neighborhood playground and it took 2 years to
| get funding for a renovation that might happen 2 years from
| now... I gave up pushing for it because I don't have the time
| anymore... who knows if it will happen
|
| most americans don't have a strong enough support system that
| gives them the space to care
| rayiner wrote:
| This is the official motto of the Microsoft Teams and (New)
| Outlook groups.
| Dansvidania wrote:
| > You might think "something something incentive systems". No. At
| my big tech job I had the pleasure of interviewing a few
| programmers who worked for a large healthcare company that
| engages in regulatory capture. Let me assure you: They. Do. Not
| Care.
|
| How does the second part of this paragraph disprove "something
| something incentive systems" ?
|
| I am sincerely curious, as I can't make the connection myself,
| and of course "something something incentive systems" would be
| exactly my argument.
| runeks wrote:
| Seems like the title of this post ought to be "nobody cares about
| the things _I_ care about "
| bjornsing wrote:
| > The doctor misdiagnoses your illness whose symptoms are in the
| first paragraph of the trivially googleable wikipedia article. He
| does not care.
|
| This one is the hardest for me to digest. But I've seen it first
| hand a couple of times (here in Sweden), so impossible for me to
| dismiss.
|
| Personally I think it's an incentives problem, but one consisting
| of a lack of negative consequences. Once incompetence (and
| sometimes what I'd even call malevolence) reaches a certain level
| feedback mechanisms are overwhelmed: those who do care can no-
| longer impose negative consequences on those who don't. Their
| boss doesn't care either, their careers progress just the same,
| they make the same money, their jobs are just as secure. It
| snowballs from there.
|
| At least here in Sweden it's taboo to say it, but I think we just
| need to get back to individual negative consequences for not
| caring.
| ggddv wrote:
| In the US your insurance is literally worthless. Doctors make
| more money referring doctors to bullshit specialists then doing
| their job. I think you're right about Swedish cheese. It does
| taste better.
| bjornsing wrote:
| Not saying the US system is better. But the basic problem
| that people just don't care is fairly ubiquitous in the West
| I think.
|
| Maybe catholic countries are doing a bit better. I sometimes
| get that feeling.
| Sloowms wrote:
| This is a great way to get all doctors who care out of the
| profession.
|
| Healthcare is always going to have the most severe consequences
| when mistakes are made. Diagnosis are also hard and there are
| many risks with treatments. If you are going to demand
| punishment for mistakes consider punishing yourself next time
| you make a normal mistake at your job.
| bjornsing wrote:
| The thing is, I care a lot when I make a mistake. To me some
| kind of "punishment" wouldn't make a dent. I already imagine
| I do get "punished" for my mistakes, in the form of
| reputation and missed opportunities down the line (even if
| that may not be strictly true).
|
| But if you don't care and you expect zero consequences, then
| yes: "punishment" would make a dent.
|
| And to be clear, the kind of "punishment" I think is needed
| is e.g. that a regulatory authority keeps a score of severe
| misdiagnosis that is publicly accessible. Every doctor would
| probably have a few in their career, nothing to worry about.
| But if you routinely misdiagnose patients then it's going to
| add up over the years.
| patrickwalton wrote:
| When people ask me what cope is, I'll be pointing them to the
| comments here.
|
| All of the things he mentions really could be better. It's lazy
| and careless to say that there's a constraint so something had to
| be bad. Every engineering problem has constraints.
| pammf wrote:
| Title could be "Nobody cares about the same things that I do". Or
| simply "Nobody agrees with me", which also would be exaggerated,
| but slightly less myopic.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _I 've met a few people that work for municipal governments.
| Not politicians, just career bureaucrats deep in the system. I
| ask them what their favorite part of the job is. They all say
| "stability" or "job security" as their #1. It takes 18 months to
| get the city to permit your shed? They. Do. Not. Care._
|
| This is dumb. Of _course_ people enjoy job stability. It 's
| irrational to draw a line from "I value being able to feed my
| family" to "I do not care about actually doing my job".
|
| And beyond that, does the author actually _know_ why it takes 18
| months to get a permit? Does it actually take that long? Or is he
| doing a stand-up bit, and that 's just a line that's designed to
| elicit the 2 seconds of laughter from the audience as a
| punchline?
|
| > _But I 've come to accept that I just don't have the
| disposition to fight all the time. I'm not a fighter. I care a
| lot and I just want to live in a place where other people care._
|
| So the author cares, but is sufficiently burned out that he's
| done caring. I wonder what he'd answer when he finds his magical
| Japan-like community - presumably one with stability - and is
| asked what his favorite part of living there is.
| shreyansdoshi wrote:
| | Does such a community really exist? Where everyone cares? Or at
| least a | supermajority? Or does it need to be built?
|
| Yeeahhhh... I'd stay as far as possible from Miami.
| jordanpg wrote:
| This entire article is code for "regulations are bad."
| NoGravitas wrote:
| I mean, you talk about the problem, and everybody loves you and
| rushes to agree with your observations.
|
| You talk about the [underlying reason for the problem][1] and
| everybody hates you.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation
| byyoung3 wrote:
| I actually believe the DMV workers care that it does actually
| suck (eg. they want it to suck haha)
| flpm wrote:
| It's a sad realization. When our culture only values profit as a
| measure of success there is a strong incentive to cut down costs
| (now) in exchange for quality (that will only be perceived in the
| future). It slowly moves down the threshold, bit by bit, until
| you suddenly realize how much we all lost for a few very rich
| people to become a little bit richer.
| _madmax_ wrote:
| Guy lost me when he mentioned Musk is caring. Of course he
| cares...about his fortune and his power hunger.
| i_love_retros wrote:
| On caring as a software developer:
|
| I like to think I care about putting out good quality work, but,
| the nature of agile and especially standups and reviews means I
| am under pressure each day to be able to say I have completed a
| jira story.
|
| If that story's acceptance criteria doesn't say "take the time to
| make this perfect" which of course it doesn't, and mr big balls
| bullied us into it being pointed a 2, then am I going to spend an
| extra day or two really making it perfect with perfect test
| coverage etc? When I am surrounded by (competing with)
| contractors who don't have to do anything other than churn out
| sprint work and rack up points?
|
| On Japan caring so much:
|
| They live in a society where pretty much everyone's ancestors are
| from the same geographical location, they all look similar, they
| are basically a nationalistic society, they all feel "Japanese"
| and they all pull together in the same direction more or less.
|
| America on the other hand...
| i_love_retros wrote:
| America glorifies hustlers and hustle culture. Society is about
| bragging and showing off how successful you and your family are
| compared to everyone else. What do you expect then? Of course no
| one cares enough to do more than they have to to get ahead of the
| other guy!
| bloomingeek wrote:
| In my experience, most people don't care because they are lazy.
| Initiative on the job requires effort, IF they're allowed to have
| initiative. If someone is put into a thinking job, but are more
| suited to have an assembly line job, failure will ensue.
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| "You're at the airport. There's a group in front of you on the
| escalator taking up the full width, preventing anyone from
| walking by" take the stairs
| bitcoin_anon wrote:
| My hot take on this is that it is due to a lack of energy. I
| liked the phrase "a will to have nice things."
|
| We all want the nice things. However, they require
| conscientiousness. People who are run down and lack energy
| struggle with conscientiousness.
|
| So why are we all rundown and lacking the energy required to have
| nice things? There are many reasons, some controversial.
|
| One that is not so controversial is the industrialization of
| food. As the quality of food that our mothers consume has
| degraded, so have their offspring. I believe in TCM this concept
| is called maternal jing, or the essential life essence that you
| receive from your mother. Healthy moms breed a healthy populace.
| This is a problem generations in the making that keeps getting
| worse.
|
| One that is more controversial is the impact of banking. Money is
| the life blood of society, and we've given bankers the right to
| siphon off our blood as they see fit. Generations of wealth
| transfer from the working class to bankers has left the populace
| anemic.
|
| Japan has it better because they have maintained a more
| traditional way of life.
| iandanforth wrote:
| The sad thing about this article is that they can't be happy
| making the world a better place, instead they focus on what other
| people aren't doing.
|
| "I am proud of my work" >> "You should work harder!"
| semilattice wrote:
| I agree with that.
|
| US is becoming a culture of 'Good enough'
|
| This is very prevalent in Eastern Europe, near east, probably
| China and India, not sure. Certainly not Japan.
|
| Culture - is what people do when nobody is watching (or they
| think that nobody is watching) (I am stealing this definition
| from somewhere else).
|
| So changing from good-enough culture to 'We are closer to
| perfectionists, culturally' -- is a big change that would take
| generations.
|
| To be honest -- I am not if there is a 'one thing' that would
| drive this, may be it is an instinct, something built-in, more
| prevalently, in specific ethnics groups but not in others? if it
| is an instinct, then it should be preservable during immigration.
| Are the Japanese when living for more than on generation in a
| 'good enough culture' preserving the perfectionist traits ?
| noname120 wrote:
| That's quite literally the reason #1 why I moved to Switzerland.
| It's the only place in Europe that I know where people _care_
| about doing things well.
| aksophist wrote:
| This post is angry detritus. I'm sorry someone upset you recently
| Grant, but seriously?
|
| Billions of people care. And if you bother looking for them,
| you'll find them. Most of the problems he describes result from
| complex systems being challenging and individuals having limited
| ability both to comprehend and influence them.
|
| And no I don't mean "this software module is complex" complex. I
| mean, "this social problem has hundreds of interacting
| incentives, changing any of them in isolation makes things worse,
| and it will take years and millions of dollars to change things,
| all while political winds of change are trying to blow down the
| consensus to tackle the problem."
| hermannj314 wrote:
| The world is what it is today because 1% of people do care. Or
| more probably, 5% of people care for about 20% of their life.
|
| Whatever you do today, through action or inaction, it will ripple
| through eternity with both intended and unintended consequence.
| ixtli wrote:
| this is such a US coded essay and to anyone else i think it would
| be like "you really need to get outa there"
| mrbonner wrote:
| What make OP think they do not care? They apparently care about
| themselves more than anybody else to not care about anyone else.
| What is it called: selfishness!
|
| I ran out of (good) things to watch on Netflix so I watched a
| couple of Japanese drama shows (TBS product I think). At first it
| seems boring as heck: no sex, no violence. But after a while, I
| think I got hooked. The usual theme is always something around
| respect, self-sacrifice, leaving a place better than when you
| found it kind of feeling. It is just a departure from the usual
| US based drama.
|
| Is it just the general direction we in the US live everyday for
| the last decade?
| dustypotato wrote:
| Was just thinking about this the other day. I feel vindicated
| that I'm not the only one who thinks this.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| My gut says that it isn't a lack of caring, or anything
| nefarious.
|
| I think Hanlon's Razor is handy here:
|
| "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
| stupidity".
|
| In this case I'd modify it slightly, as I don't think it is
| stupidity at play, but ignorance. It takes activation energy to
| address ignorance, and its too easy to kill activation energy
| inadvertently. It could just be that the person who could fix it
| is not aware of the issue, and everyone else just looks at it and
| thinks, wow, someone should do something.
| golly_ned wrote:
| I had the great displeasure of working with a colleague who
| thought he was the only one who cared. He told me flat-out that
| "its OK to care!" during a disagreement.
|
| I did care. I just cared about different things than he did. He
| cared about fixing little hinks in code that drove him made. I
| cared about fixing things users cared about and would notice.
| efitz wrote:
| Many things that suck, like DMV, do so not because nobody cares,
| but because incentives are aligned in a way to make things work
| the way they do.
| megamix wrote:
| Now this is another Luigi right here
| totaldude87 wrote:
| Mindfulness of others is a very rare trait.
|
| but once you start accounting for what the other person is going
| through, none of these may look as bad as they are.
|
| A person could've lost his dog and want to free his mind by
| working out and forgets to put the weights back! one time its
| fine! few times its OK! happens every day, someone has to
| intervene!
| bflesch wrote:
| This is an amazing post, it resonates a lot. Good on you for
| calling it out.
| agent281 wrote:
| Let's keep cycling between articles about how nobody cares and
| how everyone is burned out until we can see the pattern.
| jsrozner wrote:
| Rich (relatively?) software bro wants other people to care more.
| Does not reflect on the economics. Everything is economic. Tech
| has exacerbated the hyperfinancialization, enshittification, and
| general reduction to meaninglessness of every action.
|
| Caring requires time and energy. Most tech companies aim to
| consume every freaking instant of your life (or else they serve
| the other tech companies that do that). For many people there is
| little time or energy left to care (or there is a _sense_ that
| there is little time or energy left). Gotta hustle more, gotta
| hurry up so I can look at my phone.
|
| Caring is not financially rewarded. Caring is generally penalized
| because no one else cares, so you're just wasting your time. How
| many ppl in this world can say this: "There are legal jobs I
| would not take, no matter how much they pay, because they make
| the world shittier." Caring doesn't make you money, and money is
| what the world wants. Until that changes, the problem persists.
|
| Fix the values, fix the world
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Give me a single actionable item that will enable me to fix the
| values of anyone else and I will move the world.
|
| "Fix the values, fix the world" should go on the wiki page of
| examples of things that are easier to say than to do
| tammer wrote:
| This person is missing that modern global society is rigidly
| organized around principles of competition. It's not the case
| that people don't care -- instead we are systemically pressured
| into putting all of our care into getting one over everyone else
| and taking care of our own. A society organized around different
| principles would give us the space to care about our collective
| wellbeing. Hopefully one day we'll get there.
| jrflowers wrote:
| I love looking at the About Me section of a site when I read a
| blog post that can be summed up as "The world would be
| objectively better if I were simply put in charge of it" because
| it's always like "When I'm not blogging I'm working on chat with
| a blockchain for scooter thieves" or whatever and in this case
| our new overlord is "a founding engineer at Row Zero where we've
| built the world's fastest spreadsheet"
| truth_seeker wrote:
| extremely relatable ! thanks for sharing.
| IndexPointer wrote:
| A McDonald's kiosk is a masterpiece of engineering perfectly
| designed to make as much money as possible. It's by no means
| lazily made or without afterthoughts or care. Every detail in the
| interface has was decided after tons of experiments and hours of
| meetings.
|
| They do care a lot, but about the wrong thing.
| ike2792 wrote:
| In my experience it isn't individuals not caring as much as there
| is no one individual accountable for making these kind of
| decisions. Whomever designed the bike ramp probably followed a
| set of curb-and-ramp regulations set by some committee, thought
| they were stupid, but then remembered that the last time he
| pushed back it was a huge hassle and he got reprimanded by his
| boss. The committee people probably cared about the rules in
| general but didn't foresee all use cases and didn't make their
| rules flexible enough.
| fasterdoge wrote:
| I think there's an undertone of why should I care? or the idea of
| motivation. In Japan, theres definitely a social pressure to
| care, only because you'll become ostracized if you don't. In the
| west there are phrases from pop culture such as,"If it ain't
| broke don't fix it, Welp not my problem, ..." So the question is
| where does this stem from. Why do we not care?
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