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Comment by jackgolding | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone else noticed how much this min-maxing is effecting all different areas of the world? I played the last World of Warcraft expansion and got to the stage where I could start raiding (Blizzard is trying to make this easier to break into for casual players) and 95% of raiders only wanted to raid with those who had already done the raid before and had an item level higher than anything the raid drops!

I find this really frustrating in the arts and entertainment space - the bar for entry seems to be getting higher and higher because of these ultra competitive optimisations. I guess the difference now is that people view making video content on the internet as a career (or at least a way to make money) rather than just as a hobby.

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I was talking with a colleague at the coffee machine, telling him how this weekend I went to the supermarket to do the groceries, and how it was a pain to carry bags around.

He replied 'I haven't stepped in a supermarket in months, I do all my groceries online. It is much more efficient'.

I have to admit I felt dumb for not optimising my time like he does. But reflecting on it, I feel sad that our private time is becoming a soulless corporate enterprise where everything has to be optimised.

The real question is what you do with the extra time this affords you.

The real real question is why he was complaining about the difficulty to carry bags around.... carts were invented fulfill that purpose.

But even the modern grocery store is soulless, compared to what preceded it. In my typical trip, I talk with no one.

I go to the same cashier every Tuesday. Yesterday was Yolanda's "Friday," and she was very excited for the "weekend." She asked me how my camping trip went. She was going to have tacos for dinner.

If you choose to value relationships with the people around you then the world doesn't have to have changed very much at all.

Yeah, but there are many ways to achieve this without the grocery store. There's nothing special about it as an irreplaceable social hub.

My point is, compared to going to the butcher and baker, who are artisans running businesses that are to some extent expressions of theirselves and maybe even their heritage, a supermarket is relatively soulless.

Save the time and do something like dance, art, or sports.

Why soulless? Your life is what you make it. Build meaning yourself.

I've always found it a bit odd when people are singing elegies to the joys of human contact in... a supermarket checkout line. There's no point in my life in which that was a serious source of "human contact" and I think anyone who can't say that has a problem that needs immediate addressing. One that can't be fixed by complaining about how impersonal shopping is now.

I do see human contact in the grocery store... it's between the employees of the store, who know each other, and actually have some sort of relationship, not with the faceless masses that transiently stream through. Of course they don't get to just chat the whole time, but humans being humans, they manage to find some time.

I don't find joy in a supermarket checkout line, but I have witnessed joy in some people (customers, mostly older, who found a way to stand out from the masses and have a face). Perhaps those who take the time to sing elegies actually do find personal joy and fulfillment even a checkout line even if you and I do not.

It's like the difference between working in your bedroom and working in a coffee shop. Sometimes you just want to be around other people.

To provide an opposite opinion, I know I can do all of my groceries online, but I enjoy the experience of going grocery shopping. I like picking out my own produce and meat and seeing what's there. Sometimes I see something, buy it, and look up later how to make something with it. I don't get the same experience online. But I also like making food and try to make things from scratch. Is it efficient? Not in the least? It's an experience I enjoy though.

Your private time is just that, yours. I tried doing the over optimizing and in the end, it stressed me out way too much.

Completely agree. Like real world personal KPIs drain the fun and dynamic nature of a team trying to solve problems together.

I recently started playing Sea of thieves and it is a breath of fresh air. There are no gameplay changing items, and no real purpose to grinding, meaning the journey and execution of your goals are the focus. Sure you are getting sweet loot, but when it boils down to it there is actually no real purpose for getting more gold in the game.

It really shifts the focus and also means there is no "perfect play" or wholy correct way to play the game.

Your WoW observation reminds me a lot of my current job search experience.

We're looking for someone with 5 years experience in driving a 2016 Toyota Corolla.

...or equivalent degree!

And what you'll find is that the most rewarding raids, and jobs for that matter, are the ones that people take a chance on you and you perform better than expected.

I thought people would make that conclusion!

I feel like the unfortunate part is that the most visibility-optimised content isn't often the same thing as the best content. So if you just set out to make a Good Thing it gets lost, unless you also do other things that are seemingly unnecessary (like adding a silly face to your YouTube preview).

I feel like the unfortunate part is that my kids are far more certain that "YouTuber" is a viable career than "physicist".

They are probably right. After a PhD, and 2-3 postdocs you end up being 40, out of the domain, and the most probable job available will be data analytics for a bank, when your real dream was the Nobel prize...

"Mechanical Engineer" is going to remain a viable career for any kid interested in physics for the foreseeable future.

this is my point exactly - I find the same thing with the arts (people optimising for grants or to get on a label rather than their best work)

>So if you just set out to make a Good Thing it gets lost, unless you also do other things that are seemingly unnecessary (like adding a silly face to your YouTube preview).

Right, so you can boost the signal (curators, youtube face, clickbait title) or reduce the noise (lesser crappy content). Reducing the noise seems to be harder when so many people have this false confidence that their half-baked ideas are worth sharing.

> I played the last World of Warcraft expansion and got to the stage where I could start raiding (Blizzard is trying to make this easier to break into for casual players) and 95% of raiders only wanted to raid with those who had already done the raid before and had an item level higher than anything the raid drops!

I was Raid Leader and Guild leader (my guild was second on the server) in WoW and it was always like that. It's about time optimization, raids are really hard for newbies, they stand in shit and some of the raids on early stages are for example DPS oriented (kill the boss before he enrages etc) so you need to have good gear and know your rotation. When raid wipe because of you after 10 minutes of boss fighting and then again same thing on same boss happens, people get angry because you are holding them down, the whole team. If someone has 60 minutes that day to clear whole raid then he wants to play with experienced people and not to wipe very often.

You should do LFR first couple of times, all dungeons and special daily quests to get around your BiS gear from non-normal+ raid sources. You should watch on youtube guides to know how to fight particular boss too, you should come prepared for raid.

Yeah I was talking about LFR I think

The uncontrolled/unchecked monetary incentive is starting to cause things to get out of controll.

I recently spotted a channel that features what seems to be animal traps (for mice, snakes, fish etc). All of their videos have hundreds of thousands of views, and all are 100% fake. It's hard to know if you're not outdoortsy, but they're all fake. Essentially they're not just producing garbage content, they're also intentionally damaging the perception and world model of the people watching their videos. Why is this "allowed" to run? Why aren't the knowledgable people calling them out? Because Youtube completely destroyed the comment feedback system. Negative comments and critisism is burried, new comments and unpopular/harsh comment are deranked, so all you get is dumb catchy comments that increase view time.

Of course this is only the top of the iceburg in a sea of garbage content, but it shows where we're heading, and it'll only get worse with the proliferation of machine learning tools, especially lifelike text-to-speech technologies.

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