This sounds like someone standing on a sinking ship asking why everyone onboard needs to be given their share of available tools to help plug the leaks, when those tools could be used to create surplus for those having tools.
Those who benefited from the carbon emissions at the cost of others on a per capita basis need to take accountability of funneling the accrued capital to those who are suffering because of it.
If the argument is that we should now pay up for our ancestors not having the foresight to understand that industrializing during the 19th and early 20th century was going to have a negative impact on the environment, then I also expect other people to pay up for their ancestors during the 19th, early 20th, and even late 20th century not understanding that having a lot of children would have a negative impact on the environment.
I don't know why the lens you view this through is retributional, us vs them, or about taxing success of developed nations or rewarding people of a particular geography. Population growth is not an independent variable, it depends on availability of arable land, resources, education, urbanization, regulating structures/incidents. All human populations tend to have similar trends based on the above. Just because someone draws a line on the map around a lot of arable land doesn't mean it is overpopulated.
Climate change is going to effect every one even if those in developing nations suffer disproportionately. The quicker we transition our energy architecture away from non-renewables the better off everyone is. Those with surplus capital have the power to make this happen faster by helping those without. The alternative is choosing to suffer by delaying this with an us vs them narrative.
And more seriously the argument is that if we on the lottery and our ancestors did the damage before we understood it, then yes, we don't get to keep the benefits from other people and have _them_ foot the bill of avoiding further damage via stifled growth. That social contract doesn't work.
Nevermind that _right now_ per capital emissions and pollution and leads to similar policy implications. It's not just our ancestors overconsuming , it's us
The profound number of changes are in tact only if those changes aid in the natural selection of the organism against selection pressure.
Such changes are replicated more successfully (more offspring) making the change/mutation more resilient to disappearing from the genepool.
Over time any organism that's living/thriving is going to have a lot of these mutations stacked on top of one another in a resilient way(size of population with the same mutations). Any mutations that are disadvantageous to natural selection and proliferation are weeded out of the genepool (go extinct)
> So if you fail to reproduce you will break that billion year old chain of evolutionary success.
I’m responding to this and saying that’s not an accurate way to frame it. I’m saying you are participating in evolutionary success even if you don’t reproduce. For example, a more social family where there are siblings that don’t reproduce and instead invest in the success of the reproductive sibling’s offspring is still evolutionary success and would be being selected for through your whole families reproductive success as a whole rather than your individual success.
The argument being made here is similar to the argument that sterilizing would result in removal of genes from the pool - it doesn’t work because gene selection is very complicated and doesn’t solely rely on individual reproduction.
I'm currently more focused on spreading good memes to the next generation.
Memes like kindness, empathy, planning ahead, being honest with yourself (and preferably others), communicating your intentions clearly ahead of time, and how good parenting takes more emotional labor and emotional intelligence than, say, the kind of parenting that solely consists of yelling when the parent does not receive the desired response from the child.
Genes are not the only thing the next generation needs.
I like this argument because it frames the “self”/“you” as an illusion—instead, there is a more distributed self. I recognize that there are arguments against this argument — but you point out that DNA identity is pretty distributed as well. Neat.
My mistake, I presumed incorrectly, that the argument you were making came from a place of defensiveness, rather than a more holistic framing of evolutionary success. Thanks for providing further clarity.
No it's not, it might be acceptable in a few societies but in a vast majority of societies across the globe sex work is both frowned upon and illegal.
You are naive if you think all prostitutes are willing participants that chose this as a career. Across the world forced prostitution/sex work is fuelled by human trafficking of women and minors.
In an ideal world human beings should be free to make their own choices based on their context and society free to judge them based on it's context. One can't have it both ways. One cannot have absolute individual freedom within a social substrate and be an accepted member of said society without adhering to the norms of the social contract, what ever that might be.
I didn't claim sex work in all countries is a result of human trafficking. I said forced prostitution is fuelled by human trafficking.
>"In some countries, sex work seems to be illegal and problematic. But in other countries, it's regulated and successful."
My take is similar to yours, I'm just communicating to the original commentor that the societies where sex work is legitimate, regulated and safe is a minority compared to the societies where it isn't.
> I said forced prostitution is fuelled by human trafficking.
Thinking about it, that's a good point. "Unforced" (eg voluntary or better term) prostitution seems like it wouldn't have anything to do with "human trafficking", as they'd be kind of anathema to each other.
There is certainly scope for a more intelligent and nuanced discussion to be had here than what reads like a junior engineer's half baked rant on the uselessness of engineering managers.
Yes there are awful engineering managers just as there are great ones who are force multipliers for their teams. I've known great engineering managers who were great engineers who naturally became an interface for their teams and some who weren't very technical but were great people managers that got great outcomes for individuals and teams.
Org design, culture, complexity, needs determine the necessity of an engineering management function. Do orgs and engineering management functions become dysfunctional? Yes. Can this be resolved by just eliminating the management layer? Hardly.
Sure, and I'm a staff+ level engineer who has worked at darling unicorns and big media/tech and made a ton of money. I earned that equity payoff. Now I'm working on my own projects and paying for myself to live in SF, so you're free to have whatever opinion.
I know what I'm saying, and out of a dozen plus managers I've worked with over just the last 6 years (re-orgs because they have way too much time on their hands) only 2 have been excellent, and 1 somewhat all right. It isn't my fault that even with terrible engineering managers, I managed to never get below the max rating on any performance review. I know what I know, and I'm good at it.
The bigger companies get, the worse quality of talent that comes in. Most late stage+ employees are there to rest, vest, and cruise. Don't be naive.
The worst part of this is the more and more levels of management that get put in. People start coming in who have spotty technical understandings, but talk a whole lot that sways people who only need a high level understanding of what is going on. Imo this is due to people who cannot operate efficiently nor in a lean manner. Everything needs to be overly complex for them, to prove they’re something.
Again, I'm giving my experience as a competent engineer and I at one point managed 4 people for a few months before I stopped because I was leaving meetings that were a waste of fucking time with other managers. Literally people stroking each other's ego in a passive aggressive way instead of talking business and ensuring their teams succeed. Not to mention the ways they talked about their reports and literal games on how promotions work.
I am super passionate about removing the unnecessary complexity bloat and drama that bad management leads to.
I don't know why you feel the need to give people your background/ability/level to bolster your argument. I'm sure you can string together a coherent argument without the need for an appeal to authority. I'm not calling you a junior engineer, merely observing that the quality of the argument you are making being worthy of a junior engineer's rant.
>The bigger companies get, the worse quality of talent that comes in. Most late stage+ employees are there to rest, vest, and cruise. Don't be naive.
Straw-manning much? I don't see any part of my original argument making a point to the contrary or even addressing the notion of org size.
But I'll bite -> An alternative way of looking at this dynamic in large tech orgs is, that the org sets up a game where people who play the game well can succeed (interview well, do what looks good on impact resumes and against perf rubrics ) without contributing much to the success of the org.
Blame the game not the player, the rest and vesters are resting and vesting because they are achieving optimal utility within the interview/perf/promo game the org has setup, hence dysfunctional orgs.
It's not that flat organisations/startup aren't dysfunctional or that large orgs always end up being dysfunctional but I agree with you that larger engineering orgs often tend to be dysfunctional in many similar ways.
> I don't know why you feel the need to give people your background/ability/level to bolster your argument. I'm sure you can string together a coherent argument without the need for an appeal to authority. I'm not calling you a junior engineer, merely observing that the quality of the argument you are making being worthy of a junior engineer's rant.
You dispelled them as giving a rant that denotes inexperience. They gave their experience as a counter.
Because I can? Also I don’t have power right now so I go to HN at such times to kill time.
As for the game, I’m all in. I love the game and it’s fun. I’m super competitive and have no problem going back to lobby after a bad game to find a new lobby. I’m playing ranked/hardcore/we it’s called, not single player or un ranked. I’m not a gamer so idk the terms.
As for the late stagers it’s just my observation. It’s what I have observed and they definitely spend more time doing the same things. Usually because they’re doing anything but the work. They have nothing to lose nor any tangible stake.
At small scale there’s no ego. Software engineers answer support queries and help with sales. The goal is to turn your shares from a penny or less to $100.
At late stage is when all the middle management bloat comes in.
You add more and more levels where the level above just wants high level updates. Then managers have associate, manager, sr manager levels. Then you have director, associate director, etc. each level is a sad reminder of what could have been possible. People are more concerned with becoming managers instead of contributing. It’s why many companies become stagnant imo.
Personally I’m done working at companies bigger than 5k people. I was already feeling the pain at like 2-3k people. I can’t imagine working somewhere with 50k plus people. Sounds like hell.
I can’t wait to meet one of these mythical force multiplying engineering managers one day. Over the last decade as a senior engineer my experience has been that a mediocre engineer will begin to compensate for their shortcomings by becoming more involved in project management, usually spending most of the engineering time in jira land. Then their manager, who likely did the same damn thing, says “hey you look like management material!” and the cycle continues.
Lockdowns did help flatten the curve, many countries health systems were overwhelmed regardless, but without lockdowns the fatalities and outcomes for severe cases would have been an order of magnitude worse.
-> personal experience: I survived only because I was able to get an ICU bed at the right time as did millions more in my country. Millions more didn't because the health systems were overwhelmed.
It's hard to take your argument in good faith when you offhandedly say stuff like this -> "A lot of that stuff turneded out to be fabricated, but it spooked a lot of folks."
Look at the hell china is going through right now and the hell we went through(India). The wounds are still deep and fresh, loved ones dying because they can't get a bed, or oxygen. Bodies rotting because crematoriums couldn't handle load and cities ran out of firewood.
I think there is room for discussion about the merits and demerits of various public/social policies around the pandemic without reducing it to a binary point of view and making it evidence based instead of offhandedly invalidating the pain and suffering of millions over the last few years as "fabricated".
> Lockdowns did help flatten the curve, many countries health systems were overwhelmed regardless, but without lockdowns the fatalities and outcomes for severe cases would have been an order of magnitude worse.
There's no evidence to support this assertion, and plenty of evidence to the contrary e.g. Sweden.
> It's hard to take your argument in good faith when you offhandedly say stuff like this -> "A lot of that stuff turneded out to be fabricated, but it spooked a lot of folks."
Like all your other assertions this one feels self serving for your point of view when a rudimentary google search provides references to the alternative.
Consensus on efficacy of lockdowns flattening the curve with relevant bibliography.
N of 1 as in what worked in Sweden (ranked 3rd in the global healthcare index and has a population lower than some cities in india) does not in any way shape or form meaningfully imply what would be good for the rest of the world (though it might certainly inform it)
I wasn't referring to the presence of fake/false/sensational/agenda driven narratives or your allusion to them, I was referring to your following offhanded assertions.
" Lockdowns were there to reduce the secondary consequences from running out of capacity.
That was the claim, certainly. But as we predicted, this never actually happened anywhere in the world - not even in places where people live in poverty, and healthcare is virtually non-existant."
It's arguments like this one in Nature that destroy confidence in public health. You claimed the article reflected a consensus, but it starts by saying that lots of papers show no lockdown effect and there's no agreement!
Also read the citations. They make a lot of uncited assertions (worthless), and then their primary evidence is Flaxman et al, it's a joke paper. Read it, they made a model that predicted 3 million deaths and when it didn't happen said lockdowns were the reason. Their methodology is wack. They had to hide Sweden from some of their graphs because it broke their model, they had to claim that shutting major sport/music events was magically effective in Sweden but nowhere else because their model just assigned all the reduction to whatever the last government decision happened to be. Google for it to find more criticism of their methods. Nature do admit the paper was criticized but don't tell you the type of problems.
While I agree with the points you are making and think they are important, they could have been made just as effectively without resorting to an Ad hominem format. Though the quality of civil discourse on HN has degraded over the years, HN is still the one of the places I expect to live upto a higher standard.
(I'm sorry to any readers that this comment is not adding anything materially useful to the wider discussion)
Noted. I'm not sure how to make the same points without saying that some of the statements were weasel words, but if you could suggest a different way to make the same points, I'd appreciate it.
(Apart from anything else, I know that raising the other party's heart rate is a terrible way to change their minds).
I think you were half way there taking charitable view on one of the arguments, I think taking a charitable view on the commenter's perspective/intent would have gotten you all the way.
With that adjustment, I think you can go from "weasel words" to "Your perspective might be flawed..."
