I guess in order to change this for the better we need a common goal that everybody can identify with and work towards that. Deep down most people know we're heading in the wrong direction but it's easier not to change course as there is no direct benefit. And this consequently means that something will need to break so drastically that everybody is affected and can't keep doing what they were doing before.
I work with pedagogies, teach, write curricula, coach, manage, mentor, consult, speak publicly, polemicize, and sometimes work as a full-stack web developer, architect, ontologist, and more.
Sorry for the lengthy reply, but this is an extremely important issue, of which simplified coding is a very insignificant example.
A common goal is easy. How about our survival as a species, which necessarily permits our survival as individuals? You might think that the survival instinct comes into play. But you'd be wrong.
The success or failure of our species depends on what a large number of humans choose to do. No individual can make an observable dent. No one. So there is a significant risk involved in bucking the group.
What if you do everything right, and this comes at a cost to you – perhaps even a large cost – but no one else does the right thing so you suffer twice? Logic would indicate that we should do nothing like everyone else. Of course, most of us are busy making things much, much worse, so doing nothing might be an improvement.
But the problem with this is that everyone else is in the same bind. So when we choose to do nothing, we are effectively becoming that "everyone else" that we used to justify doing nothing ourselves. It's a vicious circle.
This is a well-known dilemma, although few people seem to think about it much and what it portends for humanity. It is called the Prisoner's Dilemma and it has to do with acting selfishly vs. selflessly.
When everyone acts selfishly, everyone suffers: i.e., we go extinct. But when some act selfishly and others selflessly, those who act selflessly suffer more, while those who act selfishly appear to profit, or at least suffer less. I say "appear" because we still go extinct. The selfish ones simply "die with the most toys".
That's actually a great little quip – "he who dies with the most toys, wins" – because it should make immediately obvious to anyone but an utter infant that it is infantility we are discussing here. After all, who plays with toys?
The only way out of the Prisoner's Dilemma is for everyone, or nearly everyone, to act selflessly. And sadly the only way to get that outcome is to punish those who act selfishly. As most of us are quite selfish, why would we want to punish selfishness?
So this is the problem, and it is evident at every level of our society: from the actions of states all the way down to the way individuals interact on a software development team or the way enterprises are run.
Selfishness is the nature of the infant. There is nothing wrong with this. Infants must be selfish to survive. It is only when they have acquired the skills necessary for independent action that they can afford to become selfless. The stronger and more independent the individual, the more selfless that individual can be.
Selflessness is the nature of the adult. Adults understand the Prisoner's Dilemma, but instead of shifting the responsibility onto the other players, they take it upon themselves. This is a distinguishing characteristic of adulthood: adults embrace and assume accountability for their actions. In short, an adult always does the right thing. If you do wrong things knowingly, then you are not an adult by definition.
You can propose other definitions for an adult, redefining adults as infants, but you're simply playing semantic games and fooling yourself. It doesn't matter what terms we use. Call it enlightened vs. unenlightened if you prefer. What is important is does-the-right-thing-invariably/does-not.
By this definition virtually everyone on Earth is infantile. We do wrong things daily and we know it. We act on impulse. We indulge our worst whims. We are infants. I like that term best because "grown ups" – those who got older but no wiser – can't stand being called an infant. It hurts. It really gets our attention.
As infants, we continually make the wrong choice in the Prisoner's Dilemma.
The game cannot be changed, but that is what everyone wants and is waiting for. That's everyone who says the problem is the "system". Sorry. It isn't. We are the creators of the system and we can create a different one. We decide the system. The system does not decide us.
We cannot invent a system in which everyone doing "wrong" things works out well for us as a species. Or even as individuals – hoarding and wasting obscene amounts of desperately-needed resources is not "winning", but putting lipstick on the pig. You lost everything, and your hoarded wealth is just the consolation prize. Oh, someone once said something smart about that ... For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
This brings up an important point. We all already know the answer to all these silly questions. The problem isn't that we don't know what do do; it is that we desperately don't want to do it.
So the solution to all of these issues, from war, climate change, pollution, violence, exploitation, etc. all the way down to parenting, working on a team, running a corporation, or, yes, writing simpler code is simple: grow up. Work assiduously to become an adult human being as soon as possible.
We must be the solution. Each of us must make the right choices. It must start with me, not finish with me.
Immediately, most people will respond with "that's never going to happen". OK, you're probably right. So then we're screwed. So just STFU and wait for the end. There is nothing else we can do. I prefer to think that we can do something and that this is just an excuse made by whiny infants and cowards.
The other very popular answer is to attack the messenger: So what are you doing? Here we see the classic, infantile "you first" response. People who say this want to be the last to grow up. But what other people do is irrelevant. I am either and adult or I am not. If I'm not, then I'm either striving to become one or stubbornly remaining an infant. What you do has nothing to do with me.
I don't see much hope for humanity – or simplifying coding – not that the latter is of any importance in the larger scheme of things. But I, personally, am doing as much as I can to be an adult. And that applies from how I write my code all the way up to how I live my life. It's actually not that difficult: just do the right thing. Every time.
But I do think simplifying coding (and open sourcing things for that matter) is actually helping people to grow up. Although you need to have an intrinsic drive to do the right thing, it does help if your environment is motivating as well. Making it easier possible to use external "help" is something that in my opinion also contributes to the bigger picture. If we share, educate and converse with the intention to do good (or at least better) we help each other. It's an enormous amount of small things that will ultimately shift the balance.
I work with pedagogies, teach, write curricula, coach, manage, mentor, consult, speak publicly, polemicize, and sometimes work as a full-stack web developer, architect, ontologist, and more.
I hope you're right and that it's not just helping us to build more manipulative toys (antisocial media) or spyware. But I think there are parallel processes here. Context is, as you point out, very important. We're social, tribal animals and your parents were right: your friends define you.
So I'm all for simplification (I have a whole website dedicated to it), but in pursuit of good objectives. Too often we devs focus on the task at hand and never stop to ask, Why? Who does this really benefit? Who does it hurt?
But then the pushback from devs like the folks at Google who resist building more spyware for the NSA is a good sign or unaccountable "AI". (Google's new motto: Do evil. Lots of it. Lie about it.) So devs (and other engineers) are slowly waking up to their responsibility to, frankly, all life on Earth. Sadly, we don't talk about this enough on sites such as Dev.to, and many devs strongly resist discussing it anywhere at all – tuning out or complaining that it's "OT" when it comes up.
In my mind, the survival of life on Earth is never "off topic", and should be the primary thing we talk about. What else is there, really? Otherwise, as I said, it's as if the house is burning, the kids are trapped in the attic, and we're arguing about what color to paint the garage.
Nice chat! I appreciate that you cared enough to continue and weren't scared away by big topics. If only we were legion.
For me the purpose of this post was to ask why a couple times... why do we do all this? what is the actual purpose? What is the actual problem and why do we think these solutions solve that? Stepping back and asking why is probably one of the most powerful and underutilised tools we have as a society. And it's not even about doubting everything... just for the sake of really understanding why we do things.
Looking at the bigger picture and seeing how this community can help improve it prolly merits its own series on dev.to. I would imagine there are more people interested in ensuring the survival of our species :)
Good chat indeed!
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I guess in order to change this for the better we need a common goal that everybody can identify with and work towards that. Deep down most people know we're heading in the wrong direction but it's easier not to change course as there is no direct benefit. And this consequently means that something will need to break so drastically that everybody is affected and can't keep doing what they were doing before.
Sorry for the lengthy reply, but this is an extremely important issue, of which simplified coding is a very insignificant example.
A common goal is easy. How about our survival as a species, which necessarily permits our survival as individuals? You might think that the survival instinct comes into play. But you'd be wrong.
The success or failure of our species depends on what a large number of humans choose to do. No individual can make an observable dent. No one. So there is a significant risk involved in bucking the group.
What if you do everything right, and this comes at a cost to you – perhaps even a large cost – but no one else does the right thing so you suffer twice? Logic would indicate that we should do nothing like everyone else. Of course, most of us are busy making things much, much worse, so doing nothing might be an improvement.
But the problem with this is that everyone else is in the same bind. So when we choose to do nothing, we are effectively becoming that "everyone else" that we used to justify doing nothing ourselves. It's a vicious circle.
This is a well-known dilemma, although few people seem to think about it much and what it portends for humanity. It is called the Prisoner's Dilemma and it has to do with acting selfishly vs. selflessly.
When everyone acts selfishly, everyone suffers: i.e., we go extinct. But when some act selfishly and others selflessly, those who act selflessly suffer more, while those who act selfishly appear to profit, or at least suffer less. I say "appear" because we still go extinct. The selfish ones simply "die with the most toys".
That's actually a great little quip – "he who dies with the most toys, wins" – because it should make immediately obvious to anyone but an utter infant that it is infantility we are discussing here. After all, who plays with toys?
The only way out of the Prisoner's Dilemma is for everyone, or nearly everyone, to act selflessly. And sadly the only way to get that outcome is to punish those who act selfishly. As most of us are quite selfish, why would we want to punish selfishness?
So this is the problem, and it is evident at every level of our society: from the actions of states all the way down to the way individuals interact on a software development team or the way enterprises are run.
Selfishness is the nature of the infant. There is nothing wrong with this. Infants must be selfish to survive. It is only when they have acquired the skills necessary for independent action that they can afford to become selfless. The stronger and more independent the individual, the more selfless that individual can be.
Selflessness is the nature of the adult. Adults understand the Prisoner's Dilemma, but instead of shifting the responsibility onto the other players, they take it upon themselves. This is a distinguishing characteristic of adulthood: adults embrace and assume accountability for their actions. In short, an adult always does the right thing. If you do wrong things knowingly, then you are not an adult by definition.
You can propose other definitions for an adult, redefining adults as infants, but you're simply playing semantic games and fooling yourself. It doesn't matter what terms we use. Call it enlightened vs. unenlightened if you prefer. What is important is does-the-right-thing-invariably/does-not.
By this definition virtually everyone on Earth is infantile. We do wrong things daily and we know it. We act on impulse. We indulge our worst whims. We are infants. I like that term best because "grown ups" – those who got older but no wiser – can't stand being called an infant. It hurts. It really gets our attention.
As infants, we continually make the wrong choice in the Prisoner's Dilemma.
The game cannot be changed, but that is what everyone wants and is waiting for. That's everyone who says the problem is the "system". Sorry. It isn't. We are the creators of the system and we can create a different one. We decide the system. The system does not decide us.
We cannot invent a system in which everyone doing "wrong" things works out well for us as a species. Or even as individuals – hoarding and wasting obscene amounts of desperately-needed resources is not "winning", but putting lipstick on the pig. You lost everything, and your hoarded wealth is just the consolation prize. Oh, someone once said something smart about that ... For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
This brings up an important point. We all already know the answer to all these silly questions. The problem isn't that we don't know what do do; it is that we desperately don't want to do it.
So the solution to all of these issues, from war, climate change, pollution, violence, exploitation, etc. all the way down to parenting, working on a team, running a corporation, or, yes, writing simpler code is simple: grow up. Work assiduously to become an adult human being as soon as possible.
We must be the solution. Each of us must make the right choices. It must start with me, not finish with me.
Immediately, most people will respond with "that's never going to happen". OK, you're probably right. So then we're screwed. So just STFU and wait for the end. There is nothing else we can do. I prefer to think that we can do something and that this is just an excuse made by whiny infants and cowards.
The other very popular answer is to attack the messenger: So what are you doing? Here we see the classic, infantile "you first" response. People who say this want to be the last to grow up. But what other people do is irrelevant. I am either and adult or I am not. If I'm not, then I'm either striving to become one or stubbornly remaining an infant. What you do has nothing to do with me.
I don't see much hope for humanity – or simplifying coding – not that the latter is of any importance in the larger scheme of things. But I, personally, am doing as much as I can to be an adult. And that applies from how I write my code all the way up to how I live my life. It's actually not that difficult: just do the right thing. Every time.
And all of us know what the right thing is.
But I do think simplifying coding (and open sourcing things for that matter) is actually helping people to grow up. Although you need to have an intrinsic drive to do the right thing, it does help if your environment is motivating as well. Making it easier possible to use external "help" is something that in my opinion also contributes to the bigger picture. If we share, educate and converse with the intention to do good (or at least better) we help each other. It's an enormous amount of small things that will ultimately shift the balance.
I hope you're right and that it's not just helping us to build more manipulative toys (antisocial media) or spyware. But I think there are parallel processes here. Context is, as you point out, very important. We're social, tribal animals and your parents were right: your friends define you.
So I'm all for simplification (I have a whole website dedicated to it), but in pursuit of good objectives. Too often we devs focus on the task at hand and never stop to ask, Why? Who does this really benefit? Who does it hurt?
But then the pushback from devs like the folks at Google who resist building more spyware for the NSA is a good sign or unaccountable "AI". (Google's new motto: Do evil. Lots of it. Lie about it.) So devs (and other engineers) are slowly waking up to their responsibility to, frankly, all life on Earth. Sadly, we don't talk about this enough on sites such as Dev.to, and many devs strongly resist discussing it anywhere at all – tuning out or complaining that it's "OT" when it comes up.
In my mind, the survival of life on Earth is never "off topic", and should be the primary thing we talk about. What else is there, really? Otherwise, as I said, it's as if the house is burning, the kids are trapped in the attic, and we're arguing about what color to paint the garage.
Nice chat! I appreciate that you cared enough to continue and weren't scared away by big topics. If only we were legion.
Cheers!
For me the purpose of this post was to ask why a couple times... why do we do all this? what is the actual purpose? What is the actual problem and why do we think these solutions solve that? Stepping back and asking why is probably one of the most powerful and underutilised tools we have as a society. And it's not even about doubting everything... just for the sake of really understanding why we do things.
Looking at the bigger picture and seeing how this community can help improve it prolly merits its own series on dev.to. I would imagine there are more people interested in ensuring the survival of our species :)
Good chat indeed!