The Power and Beauty of Incrementalism | Hacker News Reader

The Power and Beauty of Incrementalism

supernuclear.substack.com

81 pointssurprisetalk42 comments

That's also the beauty of evolution–there's no goal in that search algorithm, just open-ended incremental exploration which eventually grows beautiful things.

See Kenneth Stanley's book Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25670869-why-greatness-c...

This is the second time someone has recommended this book on HN so for sure it can't be a bad read. I will be starting it tonight

The book may be a good read or bad one, I am unfamiliar with it. However, terrible recommendations are made on HN all the time, as well good ones, so I’d caution against “recommended a few times on HN” (on its own!) as an indicator of much anything.

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EDIT: changed wording from “multiple times” to “a few times” to be more clear.

It may be an indicator of popularity / mindshare of certain ideas. It says little about the ideas' substance, but may still be very important in practice, if you deal with people.

The git cli tool is mentioned countless times over many years on HN, surely an indicator that it’s in popular use by the commentatorship here.

I’ve seen many (seemingly informed) mentions of the jj cli tool in the last year — not unreasonable to conclude interest in it is growing among folks here, and enough to pique my curiosity.

I responded to:

   This is the second time [I’ve seen that] someone has recommended this book on HN

From Ken Stanley's wiki

>He left both Uber AI Labs and the University of Central Florida in 2020 to lead the Open-Endedness team at OpenAI as a Research Science Manager.

I've always found that an "evolutionary" approach to design is important[0].

[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/evolutionary-design-specificati...

> That's also the beauty of evolution–there's no goal in that search algorithm,

Yes there is, there's a fitness function, both in biological evolution and evolutionary algorithms

That is not a goal. It is an adaptive strategy to meet changing constraints.

I’d argue it isn’t a strategy either. You can’t not be subject to it.

There’s no goal in biological evolution. Being subject to natural selection based on the present environment is an inevitability.

You could argue that mutation isn’t inevitable, but its presence and degree is subject to natural selection as well.

Incorrect. The search algo has a goal: to find out. You just think it has no goal because you didnt think in quantum.

In a time when people are becoming less social and more isolated, I think creating communities like this is super cool.

I am in awe how people can talk about buying 1.8 million homes like it's nothing big.

Per the table, that was 4 homes and 5 adults. That's $450k/home and $360k/person.

I wrote about this a decade ago

https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2945077

woah this seems like tribalism run riot.

How about just living, and learning to deal with, the rest of society.

Yeah, it seems easier (and healthier?) to make friends with your current neighbors than to try to build a concentration camp of friends.

In this age, is living next to "10 besties" really needed?

I have one neighbor that I'm really close to - yay! I can borrow their wheelbarrow, or they can borrow my sprinkler attachment, without asking, and return it promptly (to remain friends!). We watch each other's dogs on vacation. All of this is much easier than if I had to use a farther-away friend.

But my other neighbors are just ... small-f friends. Friendly. I would even consider asking them to borrow a cup of sugar.

But as nice as it would be to have ALL my besties nearby, we do just fine with phone calls, texts, social media, and seeing each other at events.

I do agree with the advantage of incremental change. I suck at completing big tasks. But if I view each step as a small task, I can get there.

How many of them would you trust to watch your 8mo old while you go out with your spouse for a few hours? Or would be willing to take your kids to school? Or help you repair the rotted subfloor in your bathroom?

I don't understand why most comments here are perversely interpreting the goals of the article. Obviously you have different life and relationship philosophies, no need to knock people doing it the way they want.

I'm not knocking anyone. I'm asking if this is as important as it used to be.

Also, I'm the one who watches my closest-friend neighbor's kids in emergency sitations. I've pointed out that physically+emotionally close relationship ARE important.

> But as nice as it would be to have ALL my besties nearby, we do just fine with phone calls, texts, social media, and seeing each other at events.

I don't recall the article, but I remember reading an anecdotal piece where someone talked about how they met up with either their close friend or sibling like 10x more once they moved from 20 minutes away to a few houses down the street. It was like once every day or 2 vs once every two weeks.

> In this age, is living next to "10 besties" really needed?

When did "need" become a pre-requisite for doing something you "love"?

In this case, hanging out as adults in a way that reflects many happy childhoods. Where your best friends were all walking distance. Where you could do things spontaneously with them. Spontaneously and regularly do nothing with them (i.e. hang out while doing whatever each of you were going to do anyway).

Look up Ikigai. It's often visualized with a Venn diagram. The point being, the more positive facets that cover your work or life, the more profoundly happy/satisfied you are likely to be. There is no reason to stop adding facets such as "live my daily life with my best friends".

This comparison feels like it's in very poor taste. The article doesn't promote any kind of ostracizing and certainly isn't promoting that anyone in the community is forced to be there. Making friends, especially with people who already probably have their own social lives, tends to be a lot harder than maintaining friends. It's completely valid for people who are already in each other's social circles to plan to live close to each other.

My partner and I moved into a house on a pretty secluded street of a very suburban township. There are 5 houses on the block. We're friendly with everyone but we're all in very different periods of our lives. Two of the houses have younger kids, one has older kids, and one is empty nesters. They're all super nice and we're friendly, but none of them are coming over to lift heavy weights in the garage while Creed is blasting.

> They're all super nice and we're friendly, but none of them are coming over to lift heavy weights in the garage while Creed is blasting.

Tell me when and where, I'll bring the pre-workout.

Just dial into the harmonics generated by the voice of Scott Stapp combined with the rev of a 1993 JDM Impreza WRX and let it be your guide.

How can this be interpreted as "tribalism"?

This is simply a response to a lack of resources (time, energy, etc) to develop deep relationships during the stage of life when one can afford permanent housing. Modernity has made this harder than ever before.

If this doesn't apply to you, consider yourself truly privileged.

How can it not be, where you want to build an enclave of 'like' people (alike in friend connections, education, outlook, not only race, which is what you seem to assume).

It's a stage of life where you should be branching out and meeting 'other' people, not just surrounding yourself with college buddies, and further cloistering yourself in that bubble.

> How can it not be, where you want to build an enclave of 'like' people (alike in friend connections, education, outlook, not only race, which is what you seem to assume).

There's a strong implicit assumption here that stranger neighbors are not 'like' people. For the most part, this is not correct. If you buy a $2m home, your neighbor likely also has a $2m home, is also well educated, also has a high-paying job (probably in a similar field to you) and more likely to be the same race as you.

Same if you buy a $100,000 home.

The point is that all kinds of people have the option to live in the same area. Sure, people gravitate to some extent to their own 'class' of people, but making that an actual goal, and exclusive, seems wrong.

> The point is that all kinds of people have the option to live in the same area

Well not really. Very few people have the option of buying a $2m home. But I get your point.

> Sure, people gravitate to some extent to their own 'class' of people, but making that an actual goal, and exclusive, seems wrong.

It's a big stretch to go from "I want my friends and I to all live close to each other" to "I want to create an exclusive community for my class of people".

But this is the stretch being made - 'how to build a friend compound' not just 'how to live close to friends'.

You're doing way too much assuming on who with, when, and why folks are doing this.

I'm not really assuming anything, but simply taking the 'friends' part at face value.

Perhaps I should be assuming more.

Friend compounds are typically the ultimate echo chambers. It sounds fun, until you have a vastly controversial opinion. Suddenly, you are no longer a friend, you no longer feel welcome in the very place that you live.

The less you know about your neighbors, the better. They could be whoever you want them to be.

Not sure why you're down-voted. This idea, while good hearted, seems nuts.

Venture out into the world, and stay in touch with good friends. Simple?

This is a bad take for a few reasons. You are implying that moving close to friends is not 'Living and learning to deal with the rest of society'. That is a false premise.

Second, living in community of close friends is a massive improvement in quality of life for everyone involved. This is as much biological as it is spiritual. You can either do that by becoming close to strangers that live nearby or living nearby people that are already close to you. Given that the average adult from the US moves over 11 times[1] in their life, the solution is self evident.

Lastly, using tribalism here is misguided. That implies a in and out group. Why use that word instead of 'communalism' which implies helping each other.

1. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-many-times-the-aver...

It's talking about building a 'friend compound', so of course there will be an in and an out group.

It's one thing to agree with a bunch of friends to live close-by in a particular city, but something quite different to create a 'friend compound' or 'bestie street', ie something obviously exclusive.

And I begin to wonder if 'friend' is a cover of some kind. Are these swinger communities? Or hasidic enclaves, or mormons or whatever?

The people appalled by this practice have good reason to be and I don't think the people who support it are considering the consequences, which aren't necessarily bad but subject to one's own political ideology. And by that I mean the general ideals that a person has on how people should materially cooperate and not some popular label imposed by a two-party system, for example.

I wonder what the responses would be if you asked the people in this "bestie row", their raw opinions on concepts like "diversity", "inclusivity", or whatever.

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