Comment by core-questions | Hacker News Reader

Comment by core-questions | Hacker News Reader

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> a return to a professionalized work environment, one in which sociopolitical and personal opinions are kept to oneself and the focus is purely on the work.

This (a) may or may not really have existed in the austere sense you're describing it, and (b) if it did exist, it existed in a world where people had much stronger community life than they do now. In a world where everyone is atomized, where nobody knows their neighbours, nobody attends church (and if they do, their neighbours don't, so it doesn't achieve the goal), and so forth... is it any wonder that people have turned to those who they spend 8 hours a day with for some sort of socialization?

If we "return" to not discussing anything with our peers and just being professional robots, to avoid 'chaos', we'll have lost our last healthy outlet for this sort of thing. Expect more depression, more radicalization, etc. when the only people who provide you with what feels like genuine social expression are those you find online who agree with you already.

> it seems to mostly result in chaos

I attribute this far more towards the current climate of virtue signalling: being outraged or outraged-on-behalf-of-others brings you social rewards, stimulating the part of your brain that evolved to feel good when you are socially accepted. We're abusing our own chemical reward mechanisms in an unhealthy way; where in the past people used to have thicker skin and knew it was unacceptable to get outraged in a professional environment, now people see it as part of the package, and HR backs them up.

You want a return to professionalism, let's fix that, rather than stripping work of its social components.

> If we "return" to not discussing anything with our peers and just being professional robots, to avoid 'chaos', we'll have lost our last healthy outlet for this sort of thing.

Absolutely not. It means your healthy outlet will be with your friends, those mututally selected for compatibility, and in contexts where such discussions are presumably welcome.

As opposed to the workplace, with people brought together by happenstance to cooperate productively, despite personal differences that are irrelevant to the production process.

> I attribute this far more towards the current climate of virtue signalling:

In many a historical era, tiny theological or political disputes have set neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother.

In the aftermath, the solution that civilized societies evolved was: don't discuss politics or religion! It worked. Let's restore it.

I wonder if that was one of those solutions that only worked because of the state of technology at the time.

We didn't need to legislate certain privacy guarantees because they were simply expected and we didn't anticipate machine learning.

Similarly, we could rely on boundaried social contexts since we didn't have the ability to look into each others lives through facebook, nextdoor, etc.

So that solution might more have been a stopgap coping mechanism to delay our need to find another better solution, like societally learning to better respect each others differing backgrounds and values.

> your friends, those mututally selected for compatibility

I have those. I'm very conscious, though, that that's not true for everyone, and it's hard to maintain these things later in life as everyone moves around and becomes too busy with their own lives.

I can see "virtue signaling" if the chief motivation is to actually signal your virtue to an unrelated audience for the purpose of rewards.

But that's different than a scenario where someone is proportionately reacting to something outrageous by sticking up for someone to the actual offender, or sticking up for someone to the group that can resolve the offense. Those situations seem more analogous to outrage in professional situations when people targeting their actions in a way that might actually help bring about a positive change. (As opposed to posting it on Instagram.)

I think our chemical reward mechanisms are more often hacked by rewarding promotion of conflict, rather than rewarding promotion of resolution.

> where nobody knows their neighbours, nobody attends church

In America, plenty of people know their neighbors and have their phone numbers for security purposes, and over a 1/3rd of Americans attend church. So, in the context of discussing an American company, these are very off-the-mark statements.

To the extent that this is a conversation centered around google and other big tech companies, do you think 1/3 of FAANG employees attend church?

As someone who has attended several churches in Silicon Valley over the last decade, I would put the percentage closer to 5%.

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