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Comment by silicon2401 | Hacker News Reader

A related development I find interesting is the increasing denial of accountability. More and more, people focus on the ways that things aren't their fault or focus on things that they can't change. It's to a point where IMO people are basically treating themselves and each other as children, with the tired old mantras that children often use: it's not my fault, they started it, everyone else is doing it too, etc. It doesn't matter too much to me. I've always focused on the ways I can improve myself and my life without worrying too much about how things could have been better if XYZ. But I do think the people who participate in this aspect of infantilization culture may be holding themselves without even realizing it.

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Thanks for your comment! fwiw, pls note that your critique would apply equally to any concern that society wishes to "push up the stack". Collectivizing challenges (rather than individualizing them) is what pretty much all societal progress is built on...

But that process will always look like people saying "this isn't my fault" and focussing on "something they can't change [by themselves]".

Anyhow, not saying your intuition are wrong (there are degrees I agree with), but just noting it has some fuzzy edges that point toward some weird truisms

We probably just have different viewpoints, and the "fuzzy edges" may be areas we don't agree. I am very aware of what my views are, whereas you imply I may be unaware. I find it useful to not waste too much time worrying about challenges and instead focus on solutions and opportunity. This has allowed me to come from childhood poverty into an adulthood that successfully provides me the life I want, without hangups or emotional baggage. If other people find success through different strategies, that's great. But as I said, I can't help but think that many people are only holding themselves back by focusing on things that are out of their control

Interesting. Perhaps you're right of disagreement. Yes, the world is definitely filled with two sorts of thinkers along this axis we're alluding to, that's for sure.

My analysis: A focus on "challenge" is the framing someone takes when they're more enamoured with the infinitely wide possibility space around any system (* raises hand * guilty), while "solutions/actions" tend to be valourized when someone is more interested in the point of collapse of the possibility space, where possibilities condense into reality.

Both are the right and wrong tools at the same time imho. Too much of either is dysfunctional. I'm certainly dysfunctional in some situations with my predispositions, but superhuman in others. I assume there are also some places where you feel maladapted (though perhaps your neurotype doesn't translate this into uncertainty of your values, as mind does).

Honestly, I feel much of the work of a holding societies together is sorting out ways to allow these two types to work together, and reciprocate value between their styles. It's a tension that exists in all systems at all levels of organizing matter (eg. brains navigated this with lateralization into hemispheres), and society isn't special.

We're both wrong and right, and just need to at least see that as true, and maybe not try to claim too much authority for our own camp. (Maybe ubiquitous social welfare IS claiming too much authority.)

Anyhow, thanks. I appreciate your perspective, and it humbles mine.

I think the other side of the coin is that we're moving away from people hiding incompetence through bravado, scapegoating, and what gets neglected when people engage in the game of pretend called "we're all grown ups here". The fact is that people are on a lot of different levels of emotional maturity and function. Even the same individual at difference points of their life and in different contexts. Age only loosely correlates with real maturity, real ownership of responsibility, etc. It's kind of silly when we can plan for all sorts of failsafes and redundancy in architecture and software but neglect to do so with humans, who are always error prone.

Also, it is useful to talk about systemic problems that are much larger than what any individual can fix just by being extra diligent.

I see your point though, that something being nobody's fault can be just as damaging as spending an egregious amount of time trying to assign blame (the traditional way of things). My opinion is that responsibility, and being able to take some flak for when that ownership goes awry, should be conditioned like exercise. Taking none is like never exercising, and it's very unhealthy. Throwing 1000 pounds of weight on someone suddenly because of a pathological need for the group to have a scapegoat doesn't make that person better, though. It just crushes them and it's a net loss for the group. That weight and stress should be shared. We need to cultivate the real maturity to take and give some blame constructively, and recognize all extenuating factors, so that people neither get infantilized and helpless nor simply squashed because of a systemic problem that the group just doesn't want to address.

Accountability and blame are two vastly different concepts. As an executive I’m accountable when my team messes up. Blame doesn’t even come into it.

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