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I can’t help but feel that your reductive description of child-free people says more about how you see your own choices than it does about theirs. Surely a sufficiently-motivated child-free person can use their advantages wrt time and money to not be fat, ugly, and jaded. More time for exercise, more money for travel, etc. And there are plenty of people with kids who are fat, ugly, low-energy, and jaded – I’d argue that number taken proportionally is probably even higher than it is for people who chose not to have kids, provided they made that choice consciously and they take initiative in life to make meaning out of it.

This whole category of blog post where people ask ChatGPT about themselves and then act surprised when it gives inaccurate responses is really uncompelling. The purpose of this technology is to grasp and synthesize information on general topics of use to everyone – science, engineering, literature, language/semantic competency, etc – not to have godlike knowledge of every person who ever existed. As a feature, the only person who would expect or want ChatGPT to dispense accurate information about some random blog poster is said blog poster.

I agree with your sentiment here. I felt like this article could have been really interesting with some more detail but it seemed mostly like fluff around the core idea “some people have experienced weird bugs”. I’d be curious to see how those weird bugs actually connect in a slightly more technical manner to the jobs of the SREs, but it’s just sort of stated as self evident.

I subscribed to the MIT Technology Review a while ago looking for that kind of analysis and I feel like they coast off of the MIT affiliation and the clean Helvetica font/aesthetics of the site while generally providing low-information content. Maybe I’m not the target audience.

While the notion of treating these systems as “sociotechical” rather than purely technical is probably a good move wrt actually improving people’s lives, I can say from my own experience in academia that there are still way too many academics working in this field who don’t think it’s their problem. I’ve personally raised these types of issues before and been told “we’re computer scientists, not social scientists”, as if “social scientist” is a derogatory term. The biggest impediment here is, in my opinion, overcoming the bloated egos of the people who think the social impacts of their work are somehow out of scope. All is well as long as you can continue to publish.

> Elon Musk has moved the needle much more than all of the universities combined it seems like.

This is incredibly narrow-sighted. How many of “Elon Musk’s” (really, the people he employs) achievements have been made possible by foundational scientific research funded by public grants and made available to the broader community? I would argue a nontrivial amount. Much of tech entrepreneurship is technology transfer, not foundational. These are all parts of a complex ecosystem and no one piece is solely responsible for moving the needle.

You sound like you have had some bad experiences – if so, I’m sorry for whatever happened to you. I felt compelled to respond because I don’t think your statement is objectively true, and is in some ways harmful. While finding good relationships and showing vulnerability to others are indeed difficult (and we DO get burned every once in a while, believe me I certainly have), there are other people out there who are worth knowing. It can just take time to seek them out, time to identify them, and time and vulnerability to get to know them. Nonetheless, I hope your lifestyle is a happy one that works for you.

I made it a few years on the gov side of this equation and had to quit. Like you say, there are certainly lots of bright people…but just as many (if not more) lazy and willfully ignorant people punching the clock and keeping the money faucet turned on regardless of the quality of output, if only to pad their performance reviews (executed x dollars managing project of y size) and keep their budgets from being cut. This attitude is insidious too, as I found myself becoming guilty of the same apathy and laziness around the time I decided to break free and throw myself back into more challenging and meaningful work.

If development in this space is driven only by the same unregulated, profit-motivated organizations that have created our current social media status-quo, what’s to make that utopian outcome any more likely than it was for the current Internet?

Phrasing your thoughts this way is tedious and melodramatic. What is anyone supposed to glean from this comment? How are they meant to respond to it? Just plainly say what it is you want to say and deal with the consequences. Are you suggesting more people should be going to church?

Sounds like you’re looking for a government job, or a government contractor job. The bar in that domain is fairly low and the benefits and work/life balance are good, but it usually comes with certain lifestyle expectations (no drugs, in some cases passing a rigorous background check for security clearance).

Hell, why not get rid of ethics entirely? Especially since people have been arguing about this for thousands of years already. And really it’s been pointless if you think about it, considering we can’t just answer it like a math problem. What good has it done us, other than forming the basis of modern societies, jurisprudence, religion – basically the substrate upon which humanity is built. We’ve clearly moved past the need for it though.

> More and more I distrust non-technical people. It just seems that if someone doesn't come from a technical background, their modus operandi is simply to take stock of the social situation in their field, rather than try to look at the evidence. If they do come from the technical side, then they have a choice, so it's not all smooth sailing either, but at least there's a chance they'll listen to facts.

In the context of a team environment, where you need to rely on others to either manage or handle their delegated tasks effectively, I can see the merit in this. It’s not uncommon of course to have a non-technical founder who is more adept at bending social realities to their whim than competently managing a technical effort.

The risk I see in adopting this attitude whole-cloth though is that it seems to preclude seeing folks from the humanities, social sciences, etc. as having any value whatsoever in tech domains. Sure, we should all base purely technical decisions on the “hard facts”, but another part of understanding reality is to accept that much of what technical product development produces ends up in the hands of users and ultimately has potential to affect individual well-being on a large scale. That’s not to mention its unforeseen but often demonstrated impact on societies, governments, and markets.

The enabler for much of the regrettable status quo – rampant tech addiction and vanishing personal privacy, among other things – is myopic, tech- and facts-centered thinking that seeks to solve fine-grained problems at all costs without considering the broader social impact. The unfortunate truth is that the soft sciences must base their reasoning on things a little less certain than the laws of physics (which, since you mention Kuhn – those are also subject to change), but I believe they still have a seat at the table if we have any hope of building a happier, more sustainable, and more ethical future.

My question is, how do we bridge that mistrust?