Sure it's a loose analogy, but keeping with it: You're gonna starve either way. Might as well try to do something about that.
2,771 karma · joined October 8, 2015
It's kinda like saying "I'm starving, but I won't eat any of the food on this table because I don't like it".
What?
I can maybe see how this is reasonable if you don't vote but also spend significant time/money investing in trying to bring about candidates who you feel do represent what you want. But, most people with this opinion seem to simply do nothing. That's a pretty childish stance to take, it seems.
As much as you might not like it, the reality is that you only have so many ways to influence things, so you should probably at least put the bare minimum effort in and vote. If you can't be assed to do that, well, I think you forfeit your right to complain about the situation.
Hackers is a hilarious and fun over the top movie but I don't think it changed the way anyone thinks about technology.
I think it's pretty lame to say "Well, we shouldn't save one particular being because we're not maximally saving the most beings!".
Accept what we can get, and work with that. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Mathematician, OTOH, does kinda usually imply that, or at least implies you do something that likely requires beyond undergrad level education.
Also in the "not sure if this is bad satire or just bad" camp
But that just doesn't generate the clicks like "Amazon is evil" does.
It just... doesn't make sense. On some level I think people want to think this way because it avoids blaming ourselves for failing to elect representatives and pass legislature that would've prevented these problems. Or even do that now. That's hard, though! It'd be so much easier if companies just "Did the right thing™".
Of course, they won't, they never have, and we should never expect they will. Organizations will almost always seek to do whatever is best for them, everyone else be damned, and we as a society need to plan for that. Turns out it's just not so easy.
It's too easy to point the finger at some specific entity rather than our structural issues. Pet peeve of mine.
Even your analogy is lame, because it's not like that. The "money" is what you're looking for. It's like being mad that your wallet is so stuffed with pointless expired gift cards that you can never find the money, that'd be a more accurate analogy.
> We live in a culture where millions of people want to get rich quick — exhibit A: cryptocurrency, something that has no intrinsic value except as use as a form of exchange outside the banking system
I mean, a lot of people argue that is the value.
I dunno, I think you might be surprised by how many people genuinely do not seem to understand it. It's valuable to them if they are willing to listen, problem is a lot of the time they really aren't, hence their problem.
From a business standpoint I find it fascinating. It's about as perfect as an example it gets of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Music player UI is a solved problem. At some point they should've just said "welp, don't need a UI team any more" and just never touched it again, but that would mean people admitting they don't really serve much purpose. About as pure an example of a "bullshit job" as is possible.
The comparison is more like google drive, or whatever MS's version of that is now. At that point the distinction seems relatively minor to me.
Many people thought they'd be doomed without Jobs but they've seemingly been doing just fine still (ignoring many valid criticisms here, of course, but talking about the general population).
Which I really find fascinating. Aside from their arguably better stance on privacy, I don't really find there's much at all to love about Apple products beyond they look quite nice, generally. In fact I actively dislike a lot of the way they dumb down interfaces, but I acknowledge that's something the vast majority of users won't ever care about.
Is that really all there is to it? The consistency of aesthetic is enough to win? I've always found it to be an interesting question, why they continue to be so successful.
Who defines "should be earning"? You?
Currently, we let the market determine it. It's fine to say you don't like that system, but that's the argument you should make, not "Big game companies are unfair". They're just playing the game the way we set it up.
Alternatively, you could maybe argue "I believe it is possible to make AAA games, pay high salaries, and actually make profits all at the same time", which would be an interesting take, and you could maybe explain how.
But saying "this is worker exploitation" is an uninspired, unproductive argument, IMO.
I have 16 tabs currently open in firefox on my MBP. Everything is snappy.
On my desktop (which to be fair, is very powerful) I have maybe 40 or so tabs, the majority of which never get loaded because they are saved by by the tree-style-tab extension, and I don't visit some of the subtrees often.
Literally the only webapp I use that feels slow any more (after I stopped using Gmail) is Notion, and they know they have perf problems. Like you mentioned, these things are slow (Gmail, Notion, Jira, whatever) because they... suck. Gmail is/was just as awful on my powerful desktop as it is on the laptop. I just don't get what this buys me.