thank you.
15,346 karma · joined November 2, 2016
The thing to remember is that nations and nationalism are the centrepiece concept of politics today, but this is new.
Medieval politics was all about kings, lords and lordships. Not nations. National sentiments may have played roles, but secondary. Like the role race, class, ideology or whatnot today. Important, but nowhere near as central as nations.
The King of England wasn't very English much of the time.
The competing claims on england & france originate with Normans. They were if scandi origin, became powerful in France. They conquered England, Jerusalem, Cyprus, parts of Italy, etc. England became the house's important, long term procession... but they weren't English. They spoke french and claimed Viking ancestry.
Circa 1800 was a transitional period. Republican nationalism was exploding. Being a German house (Hanover) ruling England was becoming an issue. Royals started to adopt (previously derided) English folkishness. They raised their children in English, started speaking in a native accent, eating English foods and publicly participating in English activities.
You can still see this today, with British royals engaged in symbolic national "customs" like Scottish tartanry, Welsh language or whatever.
England wasn't claiming lordship over France. The king of England was. Up to 1800-ish, the king himself wasn't English. Not culturally and not by self-definition.
We what we really want us to watch the real angry wrestler/boxer actually go for the owner.
Or... We want to see the entertainer/wrestler fight a real match for once. Or Elon Vs Zuck.
We're hard to please.
But yeah... In some cities, your best plan is probably to park at the hotel (perhaps on the outskirts) and use trains.
A national olympic team (or any competitive sports team) using KPIs probably would not experience these problems. They might get over-exuberant and over optimise slightly. Athletes might game the system slightly. But, it's unlikely that a professional sports team degenerates to levels of KPI affliction like an average corporation.
No matter the corruption, olympic teams are made up of people who really want to win medals. Athletes, Coaches. Dieticians. Managers. Administrators. Etc. They're not angels, they're just not as focused on appeasing their boss, managing up, and such.
Group size plays a role. C-level distortion fields play a role. The orgs age. etc. Legibility. "Market" feedback loops. It all ads up to an organisation that can take any management tool and make it pathological.
A commercial example of resilience to bullshit is a classic factory, that ideal "Firm" we based out economic models on. "The job" of manufacturing objects is legible, can be effectively reduced to component parts, measured and optimised. The feedback loop any significant successes and failures is effective.
A young startup with a "lets make it work together and we'll all be rich" vibe can probably use KPIs effectively. There are lots of example, and we intuitively know how this is going to go.
I think it's time to look at some microeconomic questions with the reverse of conventional logic. Why does the financial services sector have sop many employees? Not because of the marginal profit value of the least employee. Because of the revenue. A company with $Xbn and a fat profit margin is (often) going to employ lots of people because it can. At this point, all you need is to lower efficiency to achieve the required output.
Game of Thrones, with its campy portrayal of regal titles and announcements, kind of drives this point home. European aristocracy, especially those derived from germanic and other barbarian cultures, held titles like collectibles. Lordships accrued rather than expanded. The could be dispersed and often were.
If you watch Queen Elizebeth coronation, the list of titles would shame Daenerys Targaryen. It's quite surreal. Queen of Jamaica, Empress of India, Defender of the faith...
Even the 20th century version was not unrelated to real politics, but as you go back, this reflected real political power and machinations. Every title had different rules, different arbiters, and disputes led to actual wars.
In HN-space, it is at its most abstract, idealistic, etc. At the practical level this services is aimed at... it might mean compliance, or CYA. Less cynically, it might mean something mundane. MSFT's guarantee, a responsive place to report security issues.
Workers want lots of things. Eg money. It's a negotiation.
One of the best tactics to learn about negotiations is negotiating on multiple fronts. Did salary negotiation turn sticky? Shift to negotiating for days off, or title... on the employer side.
One reason that this works is that negotiations have their rationale/objective side and partially contradicting other sides.
Case in point, the value of an employee, particularly a specific employee at a particular time... can be extremely high relative to alternatives. The alternative can easily be spend 12 months paying salary equivalent cost without the benefit.
Lots of positions are hard to adequately fill. 12 months of hiring, training, fail, rehiring, etc. That can easily be your mean alternative. It's very common that someone good leaves a team and 12 months later you have not really replaced them.
Yet... That reality rarely translates to practicality outside of executive comp. Investors certainly act this way, but hr doesn't. The rationale of rehiring cost and risk/difficulty of hiring are understood... but there are still limits to the number they are to put on this. It's never 300%. It's 10% or maybe 25%. Willingness to pay correlates to value, but it isn't proportional.
Anyway... WFH is currently an extremely irationale space. No one is being quite honest about it's full benefits, costs, risks, etc.
It's a benefit that neither employee or employer is usually comfortable about outright "negotiating," like offering less money for remote.
So... WFH is not-negotiable-for salary benefit that is #1 or #2 on both parties' priority list, second (often prior) to salary. Unlike other primary benefits, employees know who gets what.
Currently, it's all about perceived negotiating power.
... and sure it is. I certainly am not hoping for Meta to succeed in owning the metaverse.
That said, the sentiments can add up to an impulsive "roast em!" habit that discourages risk taking, even risk thinking. It's ultimately much easier and less interesting to consider how things can fail than how they can succeed.
Possibly, though my intuition is the opposite. I don't think social norms are "fundamental" in a strict sense. They're just important. That said, the reasons not to jump in the deep end is because it makes fundamental-unsovlvable problems indistinguishable from advanced problems that will be solvable later.
IE, if someone is using smart glasses for work or some other activity where they are useful, they might expand their use into other activities.
You could not have invented Tinder or snapchat in 1994. User density, camera, ubiquity, and other hardware issues matter. Besides technical issuaes, culture also had to develop before people felt comfortable using real names, posting pics and meeting people from online. If everyone already posts on facebook, the world may be ready for online dating, online therapy, etc.
So... I think we should go easy on the dunking. These things must be tried to succeed. Failures like Google glass get so much criticism no one wants to try.
That said, these give us to types of (maybe instructive) failure. Glass looked too much like a headcam to be used casually. These put looks first, but aren't responsive enough.
The application both products targeted is there proverbial deep end. The bar is very high for a device mounted on your face as part of daily life.
Performance has to be flawless. The frustration caused by a small lag, voice recognition or whatnot is extremely magnified relative to a phone or pc. Same for aesthetics, comfort, etc.
All that without a very clear picture of how people will use the device.
I do think there's room to succeed in this space, but I think the innovations need to come in steps. Going for the mass-production, mass-appeal, everyday usage device before you have a successful predecessor... You need to hit multiple bulls eyes.
A sports, adventure or camera centric product has much better odds. Those activities already allow "gear."
The problem is that it's a race to the ultimate product, and making an intermediate may be just free market research for apple/meta/etc.
- Code does the thing and is at 90% polish
- *or 80%, 50%, etc. This is a quality issue. Off topic, IMO, as this is about completion, not quality or polish*
- Ship the feature to 3 enterprise clients boss promised for Q3.
- Now you are at the point this post is about.
Now your job is to communicate. Understand who's involved. Listen to them. Communicate to them. Write a few emails well formed, high effort emails. Do presentations, live tutorials, assisted user sessions. Have goals in this space.
Within a "job," people can be very insulated from the brutality of the last 10%. It's possible (also comfortable, normative, etc) to read the paragraph above this one and say "not my job." That can apply to software, research and lots of other areas.
"Think outside the box" is usually presented in neutral ways that don't challenge us emotionally too much. That's a play version. The real box is our definition of the job, task, project, etc. Real, objective success is usually dependant on stuff outside this box. Success is when the client uses the software, likes it and gets benefit. Sales thanks you. Your boss is happy. Everyone gets a raise and they bring back pizza Tuesday.
An impossibly broad definition of success is emotionally impossible. It's too hard, too much failure, too little success, too much. Being so broad, it can also disconnect our alignment from the company's. Even in academia, the broadest possible betterment of science is not usually a workable POV.
So... the workaround is to expand and/or break out of the box at strategic points. Shipping is such a point. That allows you to have your (necessary) box but not totally neglect aspects outside of it.
Bad fences, worse vowels. Nice tea ladies, and good grass. Difficult place names. Easy adventuring. Mostly harmless.
...not following all the way to lions. The list of reasons for a lion's fence to be high & strong enough to hold a lion, presumably, has more than just "lawyers" on it.
Kiwis are strange though, who knows. Maybe reduced liability reflects in large carnivore caging more directly than in places with cultural aversions to getting eaten.
I'm starting to think NZ just doesn't understand lions, fences or something. Are we all talking about the same cat?
This is a security/law enforcement issue.
No borders (from their POV), puts internet businesses above the law... which it sort of does. The global village happened, but global authority did not. There are no clean resolutions to some of these tensions.
There are lots and lots of things that affect or arguably affect either of these.
The problem with "some effect," based on a econ101 generality, is failing to estimate scale of affect in the 101 model, supply and demand.
You could argue, and this was popular in the 90s, that the solution to housing affordability is education. Better education, better income, housing affordability.
NIMBY related ideas about housing affordability issues are the 2010s version of this. Unlikely to have any measurable impact on housing even if the politically unrealistic polucues are implemented in full.
True, at least in theory, but not significant.
I think the biggest thing we can learn from Malthusean economics is that have a fun last name increases your quotability by 10,000%.
The whole sequential history narrative, the Standard Model, is totally blinkered from its NW european perspective.
"Civilisation," meaning societies that have cities, taxes, writing, big government, roads, aqueducts, and such.... these existed for thousands of years in Egypt, Iraq, India, China, Greece etc. Rome was such a society.
Rome also conquered "The East," and the north african coast... all long established urban "civilisations." When Rome "fell," those civilisations persisted. Persia had "fallen" before them, as had Alexander's empire, Assyria, Babylon, Sumer, etc. etc.
There were good centuries and bad, but they generally stayed "civilised" through thousands of years worth of political turmoil and change. They always had scribes, high priests, princes, infrastructure and such.
England, France, Germany and whatnot.... These were never civilisations. They were, for short periods ruled by Rome. They had some elements of civilisation, but for brief periods with limited reach. It was never culturally rooted or widespread. They were barbarian societies, and continued to be barbarian societies. Writing doesn't "disappear" in europe, it never really existed.
Concepts like Scottish or German renaissance are ridiculous. These were new civilisations being established in previously barbarian societies. They weren't renewing, they were founding.
Urban civilisation is new to NW europe. 200-500 years old. England's "old world civilisation" is only 150 years older than US civilisation.
IIRC, the dark age cliches are opposite of "Malthusian." Malthusian is about exponential growth of populations, economic activity and such while food, resources, and labour compensation cannot keep up.
This is a good example of where these grand theories of Economics, Civilisation and Everything go wrong. We have been doing these obsessively for 200 years. It's notable how we are still bad at it in the same ways.
Malthus, Marx or Milton Friedman and all the rest failed hard, ultimately. Their "schools" become endless apologetics machines, tasked with complexifying ideas originally appealing for simplicity and generality...
For me... I want see questions. I want to see odds and chances. I want to see actual engagement with real tensions, contradictions and problems in both reality and theory.
Private infrastructure? OK... Maybe. Have you examples of private infrastructure abundance? Are there any problems private infrastructure can't solve? Problems private infrastructure creates?
Same for "housing." At this point, pointing to NIMBYism is cliche. It's like blaming problems on corporate greed, inherent government inefficiency, worker laziness or whatever one-liners go do well in your circle. It's not insight, even if it is true.
To be interesting, you need to get much grittier than this. NIMBYism is not limited to real estate, for example. There's plenty of analogy in industry, agriculture, financial services, intellectual property. The rights, desires and demands of existing players conflict with the needs of growth, of newcomers and such.
I'm not saying authors' conclusions are wrong. I'm saying that the questions are contrived to be resolved by preselected answers. They're not curious questions.
Staying with housing and NIMBY... Lets start with a recognition of the central tension. When house prices go up... homeowners, banks, realtors and builders are financially strong. When house prices go down, homeowner wealth recedes.
For newer, younger or poorer homeowners housing price recession is a wipeout because the mortgage/leverage puts a multiple on losses and their wealth is likely concentrated in housing. Banking/finance also comes under stress, because finance is also leveraged and likely concentrates risk. Runs, bailouts, etc. Even if banking is robust, negative price growth means a tight lending market... a local deflation of money.
Even if your mayor had a housing price dial... it's not clear that we'd turn it to "abundance." Affordability would improve. Middle class wealth might tank. Banking might collapse.
Meanwhile.... how "solved" is housing affordability in NIMBY afflicted markets, once NIMBYism is wiped out? It's extremely doubtful, IMO, that YIMBY affects affordability in cities like SanFran or Munich apart from (perhaps) enabling smaller houses/sites. That is affordability though, not abundance, and it is marginal.
This is where econ101 guys tend to fail basic econ101 test. The proverbial Econ101 model is a model. What does YIMBY do on the model? X is quantity. Y is price. Demand trends down with price. Supply trends up. How does this look for real estate? How much does YIMBY add to total supply? 0.1, 1%, 5%?
IRL the supply of housing in expensive, established cities usually doesn't change enough to meaningfully affect prices much. Not in theory, or in practice. The demand curve, OTOH, is heavily affected by interest rates, lending practices, buyer confidence in real estate as an investment. Very heavily. Stop lending, crash house prices. See Ireland, 2009.
That's affordability "solved." Or rather, that's "price" solved. Except... rent hasn't decreased. Mortage payments haven't decreased much or for many. Investors are buying everything and homeowners can't get financing. Prices are lower.
We need more intelligent discussion. Not this time magazine, political pamphlet, feel good simplifications. There are real, difficult, tensions. Real trade offs. Real problems that need real tactics. Chalkboard rhetoric based on generalities is pointless. It was interesting in the 19th century, destructive in the 20th and foolish in the 21st.
Something works, culturally, in 1970s place X, and doesn't in 2020s place Y.
Wikipedia, started today, would not be Wikipedia for every reason. Different user culture, different founder culture, finance culture, IP, "truth," etc. Wikipedia started in today's world would start different, go on a different trajectory...
We have an intuitive grasp of this, and are always looking for a more objective/formal/causal understanding... but I don't think it really exists.
In any case, just like with "music these days," and whatnot... sometimes the thing that has changed is you yourself.
Sure... you can also learn everything a Stanford class teaches online. You can find alternatives for the networking aspects, etc. Still... universities tend to be how people do this. You can bodybuild without a gym. Indomitable willpower & a DIY ethic are admirable, but "hacks" are still the way 90% of people get the job done.
I think you are downplaying how hard it is to be social, in various contexts. Alcohol can be used to dull pain. This definitely does occur frequently, especially once substance abuse is the pattern.
This does not negate the earlier comment about lubricating social interactions. That's generally the starting point for alcohol use. Flirting in high school. Being socially adventurous in college. Getting intimate with coworkers.
Substance mediated mind alteration is not new. It's not just escapism or "opium for the masses." There are many real reasons people use mind altering substances. Escapism & "opium for the masses," is, however, usually the mode when/once we're talking about addiction.
If you look at why alcoholics drink, and why high schoolers drink.... the reasons are just different.
What they didn't understand is that "I think you're cute. Wanna go on a date?" is much easier in text. That's why kids always passed notes in class.
These things lubricate high friction social interactions... the kinds of things that people agonize over, regret, etc. You're right, this is alcohol's primary purpose. Most people stay here.
I call this the Good Will Hunting paradox/paradigm... depending on whether or not you have a solution.
During an earlier edtech boom, "flipped classrooms" and similar were the exciting pedagogical approach. "Coaching" often enters the vocab. They all reached these conclusions empirically, seeing it work... Observed efficacy in small settings.
It's technology-related, but I think it's true with old technology too. Books and libraries are where the knowledge is. Books, recorded lectures, software, workbooks... these are all just learning tools.
Anyway... LLMs are definitely and obviously a potential learning tool. I suspect that like previous tools, it will increase the potential of the best students/classes/etc. It will not work as well in mass production.
Take Google. Their one, core cash cow is an oil strike. If you strip away all the unrelated and unesesarry.... It's an 80% profit business that represents most of www's monetisation.
Google already have all the market share. It takes >$10bn to meaningfully affect their bottom line and share price. Few of Google's many investments have an obvious chance of achieving this.
Still... The market (and Google's board) consistently prefer to retain (or avoid realising) earnings.
The fact that Google's growth requires almost no capital also generates an inward capital flow.
Google's culture was a good fit for this. First they let a thousand flowers bloom. Then the cultivated university-like subcultures. They alway knew how to spend big on blue skies.
FB is a little more awkward. They know where the bread is buttered. They invested more tightly around the core money maker, but they get to the same place as Google. Way more capital, credit and discretionary spending than they possibly need. Nothing more to invest in.
Well... All this is resources that aren't spent on manufacturing, tooling, energy, construction, etc.
Take chip fabrication, or computer hardware broadly... It's capital intensive. Factories change slow. Markets change fast. Prices continuously fall. It's a nightmare, comparatively.
I say "capital" but the real shortage is risk. Google/FB/etc are "hoarding" all the risk allowance. Where they can invest in highly speculative projects because the money is just there, analogue businesses are still backed by banks, bonds, specialised investment firms and tightly controlled payback schedules... Not an easy world to innovate in.
The modern system now reaches bedrock very quickly. When we can dig no longer we start depleting all our resources trying to dig anyway.
Reality is that were not getting more out of Google no matter how much resources they draw. That's what capital is to firm, resources. Over resources X and under resourced Y.