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Comment by SketchySeaBeast | Hacker News Reader

We're watching the ultimate destructive expression of the comp sci "oh, we can just automate that" hubris.

Thought process: “In theory auditing a government agency is simple. I can write assembly for a computer with millions of moving parts. How hard could it be to debug an organization with twenty thousand employees that need support to configure their own email? I spent literally two weeks watching accounting channels on YouTube, so with my mighty developer ultrabrain, this should be a snap. If only developers had time to work on these problems the world wouldn’t need all of these suits.”

People might read that and think I’m being hyperbolic, but I had someone on HN argue that their debugging skills rendered them better at medical diagnosis than doctors, and better at fixing cars than mechanics, by their own totally objective genius developer standards.

That's exactly how they think. Coders tend to employ systems thinking to a fault, where they reduce something very complex to fit a too-simple mental model. It's like going into a room with a lion and thinking it's a house cat because they're both shaped the same. Failing to take note of the key differences will quickly lead to your demise.

Right. Like I always say — you can create a simple solution to any complex problem if you ignore enough pertinent factors.

Can't speak to doctors, but I've been a mechanic and yes there's some large overlap in debugging skills between a good mechanic and a programmer, a mindset of wanting to understand how things work, and breaking down the problem into manageable parts.

Sure. There’s overlap with a lot of things. This developer said that it was (paraphrased) ‘hard for him to take people like mechanics seriously because they lack his superior debugging skills.’ There was no attempt to draw similarities. He was simply saying that developer smarts were the best smarts and they trumped all other smarts.

I can’t tell you how many times developers have tried to explain cooking concepts to me knowing I’m a classically trained and experienced chef. Or explain design to me knowing I have a design degree and years of experience doing it. Some developers just have unending hubris.

Well, some professionals fail at being counter-examples.

I’ve worked in several professions, with dev being the longest— I’ve encountered more bullshit and incompetence from devs than any other industry I’ve worked in except for tech support. I’ve heard developers saying they’ll simply ‘pivot’ if the big productivity machine eats up their corner of the dev market. Oof… They’re looking at a rude awakening when they see how preciously developers are treated compared to most other employed adults, and how badly they underestimated the unseen complexities in other people’s jobs.

"Move fast and break things", where the "things" are laws, economies, lives, infrastructure...

Automation of dangerous judgement or management decisions is never something a computer should ever do. It's also the cargo cult of worshipping technology as a panacea for social and organizational problems that is itself a problem. Furthermore, the lack of resistance amongst the apolitical functionaries is depressing. I have a bit of hope though that the rage and the furious, righteous anger of federal judges will compel the US Marshal Service to do what is necessary to restore real law and order, and that the DOJ's new flunky won't be able to stop ethical, professional execution of their sacred duty.

And we will be caught in the resulting cultural collateral damage.

Not to mention financial. Its all but inevitable this will have expensive financial fallout, likely for individuals and the government.

I am absolutely gobsmacked that the markets simply don't care about any of this.

They muscled through COVID, they're gonna try and muscle through this.

It's in essentially every person with power's benefit for the number to go up, so everyone ensures the number goes up. See also: Bitcoin pricing.

Those muscles got their energy from government stimulus.

the markets are, at this point, entirely divorced from the average citizen

plus most of the market doesn't move much, and even in the S&P 500 it's only a handful of companies that see serious gains. And they happen to be tech companies whose leadership "kissed the ring".

Their MO is to play as many angles as they can simultaneously.

Wait till March.

Right now this is basically the dead body in motion.

Yes! Exactly. :(

Just like Web3 and decentralized tech got a bad rap because of Luna, FTX and other centralized grifters. First they came for the decentralized BFT developers, and I piled on, because I wasn’t decentralized…

Who among us has not thought "I could rewrite twitter in half a day in rails"?

The grace which saves us all is that we do not have the power to follow every idiotic impulse and see it's horrible effects.

I found "Forbidden Planet" to be quite helpful in seeing that idea put forth in film- it's quite good and left an impact on my thinking around these kinds of things...

Unrelatedly, I am starting to feel like I am living in a timeline where we're seeing the collusion of two men who have been cursed via "may the gods give you everything you ask for." Perhaps a whole culture of that, in fact.

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