For years now I have been consciously limiting my enthusiasm when presenting things I've learned to others after being bitten by this problem. Some personal examples:
* linux - the freedom it gave me to build my own computing astounded me. I praised it in every direction only to find people that want all the benefits with no effort. I had to configure their systems to prove linux was any good. When I started telling them the benefits require personal tinkering I was attacked for "being an elitist" and linux was said to be actually full of things that don't work. Now I present it as a geek thing that is of no relevance to the general public.
* motorcycles - I now have the following presentation when people ask me about my experience riding: "It's not like on TV, when it's hot you sweat, when it's cold you freeze, when it rains you're wet and it's quite dangerous on top of it." That's after my enthusiasm convinced some people to buy motorcycles and crash because they didn't take riding seriously enough. They thought they where cool toys.
I think its better to present enthusiasm alongside frustration in sortof a story arc:
- Inciting incident: see an opportunity to do something cool.
- A Conflict Arises: run into a roadblock -- be honest about the frustration.
- Satisfying climax: solve the problem and are able to do the thing. Genuine excitement.
I think that lets you get across your emotion of excitement, while also being honest about the facts on the ground-- Linux does genuinely involve a fair amount of config struggles. The hard part is that debugging can be quite a long and winding road, so it is hard to compress it into a concise enough narrative to hold people's attention through it.
I guess I mostly agree, but this part has me wondering:
> Linux does genuinely involve a fair amount of config struggles.
Am I
- insanely lucky?
- forgetful?
- or do I just have very limited scope of what I want my Linux machine to do (non competitive fps gaming, development, mail, simple spreadsheets and word processing) ?
- or have I just been very unlucky with my Windows installations for 15 years?
- or am I just born to be a Linux user?
Since Ubuntu 06.06 I've found one or another Linux easier to install and use than Windows.
I remember having to install an official package (915 something?) to get my resolution correct back in '06.
I remember a bit of struggle to get it working in dual boot once secure boot came (but only because I wanted dual boot).
The last year I remember learning that balena etcher is now the way to make bootable usbs.
Meanwhile on Windows it is a constant struggle each time I get a new machine. It keeps getting better but with two or three exceptions there's always something that makes it laggy, even on high end laptops. Solving it might hours of work and weeks of calendar time, and sometimes there's notjing I can do and I just have to wait for an updated driver.
In my eyes the advantage of using Wimdows is that the IT department will support it. On the other hand I also only need support when I work on Windows.
(Have used and supported Windows since 3.1, so I know it better than many others even if I don't line it : -)
My son has a Windows laptop, and I run Linux, and I have far more problems being "tech support" for his Windows laptop than my Linux laptop.
Most recently trying to upgrade his laptop to an SSD and clone his existing drive turned into massive frustration as his drive didn't have a second drive slot and the USB->SATA adapter that came with the SanDisk SSD just caused error messages on Windows, while Ubuntu instantly recognized the drive with the same adapter.
Turned out you had to dig through forums to find some random link to a download patching something to get it to work on Windows, and most of the recommended solutions I saw was to forget Windows and clone with a Linux live CD (I was about to, just as I stumbled across the link).
That's pretty much what I've come to expect with Windows.
I remember when it used to be the reverse, and I used Linux despite assorted driver and software problems. Now that's what it feels like to try to help my son with his laptop, with the only redeeming feature being that not all the games he wants runs on Linux.
That's not to say I don't occasionally have issues with Linux too, but mostly because I run a very unconventional setup - my few small problems start once I start tearing out the parts of Ubuntu I don't want; such as replacing the desktop environment with bspwm.
And occasionally I run into driver issues - the individually led controllable backlights on my laptop keyboard doesn't have a Linux driver... But not with anything that matters to me. Don't get me started on last time I had to deal with printer drivers for Windows.
What used to be lengthy checks to see if all hardware worked has now been reduced to a quick search and "some random person on a forum says it mostly worked" means it's almost certainly going to be flawless if the post is a couple of months old, with sufficient certainty that I've bought my last 3 laptops on that basis without regretting it.
A while ago, Microsoft deprecated Windows System Image backups[0], and, on some Microsoft page I can't find now, they recommend third-party software for OS backups. (Although, weirdly, the option is still present in Windows 10, and, AFAIK still functions???) How astounding when, in Linux, you can just `dd` the Windows drive to another and the clone works perfectly (didn't even trigger any Windows activation DRM for me)! This resonates with your anecdote.
However, the average person probably isn't comfortable (dare I say should be trusted?) with block-level utilities that can wipe the wrong drive at the drop of a typo. To propose that they should be comfortable with a terminal at all is, to put it kindly, delusional, and it's a great example of the post's mythical excellence.
This is the current meta I see:
- Linux only offers "excellence" to A.) EXTREMELY SIMPLE users who never stray from compatible use cases (which is a surprisingly unsafe assumption) and B.) EXTREMELY ADVANCED users who aren't sufficiently advanced for BSD and can overcome any Linux software compatibility issues or elide them by forcing themselves to use possibly suboptimal alternatives.
- Windows only offers "excellence" to AVERAGE users technical enough to debug in vague, indirect, salt-over-the-shoulder ways (like practicing neuromedicine), but not technical enough to feel comfortable with terminals or desire stuff like more comfortable programming workflow. (Also, bonus: it covers virtually all prospective user software and hardware.)
> - Linux only offers "excellence" to A.) EXTREMELY SIMPLE users who never stray from compatible use cases (which is a surprisingly unsafe assumption) and B.) EXTREMELY ADVANCED users who aren't sufficiently advanced for BSD and can overcome any Linux software compatibility issues or elide them by forcing themselves to use possibly suboptimal alternatives.
Yep. Something like that, except I wouldn't say extreme neither for simple nor advanced, and I never felt it was any more suboptimal than Windows for the last 10 - 15 years:
Linux is for "grandparents" and enthusiasts. It might not be for AD domain admins, accountants with Windows only software, designers who need the lates Adobe products, people who are into competitive gaming (yet, I think).
This is said as a former enthusiast and not yet a grandparent. I am in the happy position where I can leave the system alone - and be able to fix it if it finds a way to break anyway.
Actually, most of the advice to clone the drive was Linux live-cds that boots right into a cloning tool, like Clonezilla Live.
The only reason I didn't jump at it was that I by a fluke didn't happen to have a USB stick or CD to write to handy to install it when I needed it, or I'd have done that.
Windows System Image wouldn't have helped - before applying the patch I had to dig through forums to find, nothing on Windows recognized the device at all.
This is really great advice. I have always read about story telling being important for presentations etc. but somehow never thought about it in such a setting.
Well they are - in the sense that the practical value is very limited and there are better alternatives in every regard (even in the ideal scenario where you live in a place with excellent riding conditions and limited parking which benefits a bike - a scooter is going to give you easier riding since it's automatic, less maintenance, more storage capacity and will be plenty fast for commuting if you get 300/600cc ones).
Perhaps they are two completely different dimensions, imagine the x-axis being the "toolness" of something and the y-axis being the "toyness" of something.
A nuclear reactor is something that would have a very low "toyness" score, i.e. you wouldn't "play" with it.
A plastic toy car would have a very high "toyness" score, as it is literally designed to play with (by kids).
I kind of fear my analogy of two different dimensions breaks down here because I'm left wondering what things would have a low "toolness" score ...
Presenting things as they are and stating limitations first seems like a good way of avoiding the issues mentioned in the article.
Rather than hooking people with benefits and then disappointing them with the cost, only those who remain interested after they are familiar with the downsides will stay and listen. It also serves as a good time saver for both parties.
I don't know, sometimes presenting the costs second is still okay. I literally had the following conversation with my son this morning, who is a very picky eater:
Me: Today's school lunch is serving a giant chicken nugget. Will you eat that?
Son: Yay, okay, I love chicken nuggets!
Me: There's a bun involved, you can ignore it.
Son: ::shrugs:: okay
He hates sandwiches. If I had lead with the cost, that he'd be getting the breaded chicken patty in the form of a sandwich, he would have refused. Now, he'll happily set the bun aside. Kids are weird. But, I guess adults are too.
The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was sitting in a cafe when a waitress approached him: “Can I get you something to drink, Monsieur Sartre?”
Sartre replied, “Yes, I’d like a cup of coffee with sugar, but no cream”.
Nodding agreement, the waitress walked off to fill the order and Sartre returned to working. A few minutes later, however, the waitress returned and said, “I’m sorry, Monsieur Sartre, we are all out of cream — how about with no milk?”
It also lets people set themselves up to engage with the thing in a way that works well for them.
If they go into it thinking "oh, this is like installing windows" and then their expectations violated, they will be frustrated.
If they go into it thinking "oh, this is a way to get more out of a computer, if I'm willing to do some debugging." then they can think "well, I'm the type of person that does things best when I've got a solid theoretical grounding. Let me go get a book first." or "well, this could be a puzzle, let me get a sandwich before I attempt this."
Working with Linux is indeed frustrating at times, but it can be well-worth mustering the frustration-tolerance. But to do that, you've got to know yourself and know what you're getting yourself into.
That's what I do now when people ask me if they should have kids. I always say the same thing: All the benefits are intangible and all the drawbacks are tangible.
All the unconditional love you experience and the pure joy and pride of experiencing the little person grow up is simply not something I can explain. I can explain that you will spend a lot of money and time on them, worry a lot and you will lose sleep over all the worry you have.
Is it worth it? I'm obviously biased, so my answer is to be taken with a grain of salt.
It never ceases to amaze me that you have to be so pedantic when saying something like this. I don't want to write a lengthy disclaimer explaining priors and terms - the entire point would drown in unnecessary prose. It obviously applies to normal families with normal parents with normal children. The love and affection from normal children to their normal parents are for all intents and purposes unconditional.
Strongly disagree: it's perfectly normal and rational to not want kids, for the reasons listed above. You don't need to be neurotic, selfish, or lazy to not want kids. Doesn't mean the thought won't cross my mind on the regular, just not something to act on.
I said most, not all. There is something strange or off about most people I know who don't want children, including myself. I'd almost say that the fact that you can stand against the social pressure to get a kid is evidence enough that you are strange in some way, if you can break that norm then you have probably broken several other norms as well.
Now that's a sour argument with pointing to an tiny edge case. There are tons of edge cases - kids born with various diseases, be it physical or psychological, danger to mother etc. And anyway we all die, and so will all the matter in universe at one point...
I've given tons of unconditional love as a child, I've seen it being received by many peers with kids, and hopefully will experience some of it with my own. Even if not, it is still very much worthy for me to have them.
Create life, an unique being which is a mix of you and your partner. Nothing else in life comes close to proper achievement in life, be it professional or personal (and I've achieved much more than was expected from me on all levels).
That's me (and many many people around us who already have them, lives are changed forever and for the better). If one doesn't want them, that's perfectly fine, find your own drive. But raising kids ain't some ancient, obsolete un-cool goal/achievement, in contrary.
> If one doesn't want them, that's perfectly fine, find your own drive. But raising kids ain't some ancient, obsolete un-cool goal/achievement, in contrary.
Nobody said that you shouldn't want a kid, just that it is fine to not want one. Telling people who don't want kids that they are missing out on unconditional love is disingenuous.
> Telling people who don't want kids that they are missing out on unconditional love is disingenuous.
I don't think anyone in this thread has made that claim. Just buy a dog if you want unconditional love. But it certainly is one major "benefit" of having children.
You said you got unconditional love from your kid. Unconditional means that you could replace yourself with any other person and it would have worked out the same. I don't think that is true, lots of parents don't get that benefit. Love from your kids is something you earn through hard work as a parent and not just something you get unconditionally. It is mostly true for dogs though, I agree.
True in developed countries but still not necessarily true in certain societies where you need hands for untrained labor or where children are essentially saleable goods.
Normally it’s bad form to comment on receiving downvotes but in his case I’ll point out that I spent a lot of time in such a country as a kid as I have a parent from that country (although said parent had only two siblings and their family didn’t practice bride price / have kids work to support family etc).
Not all reasons for having a large family are religious; some are just desire, of course, and some are indeed economically rational. That last is part of the reason, I believe, that birth rate drops as wealth increases, and is yet another reason to try to increase wealth for everyone.
My kids are highly scalable. Extrapolating current growth rates, we can expect them to be the largest creatures ever created in 6 years. I value the opportunity at $120B. Profit sharing equity only, no parental rights.
Quite intangible. Insofar as our genes want anything they want us to reproduce but they do so by nudging us in the general direction of reproducing, not, in most people at least, by the conscious wish to reproduce.
Humanity won't go extinct if you don't have kids. What you do is not what everyone else does. Example: If everyone had 3 kids then earth would quickly become overpopulated and billions would starve. But that doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with having 3 kids today.
Not sure if it is a coincidence you mentioning both technology and motorcycles in the same post.
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" is basically a book about exactly this (and much more of course). You might find something in there as well ..
I'm not sure if you mean that the murder was mentioned without reason or if Chris was the victim of a murder without reason. I think it's a bit unclear in the writing style (at least it was to me) that the book is a real story, about a real experience: and so it was terribly sad but (IMO) necessary to mention. Pirsig wrote about an important journey he took with his son and closed it with a mention of the end of Chris' life [0].
To anyone reading this thread, I also recommend Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals [1] by the same author. It's set some time after Zen, as the author struggles with the exact topic of the OP (the fame of the book and the challenges against his "Metaphysics of Quality" [2] that he introduces in Zen). He expands on the idea a bit more and goes into some unclear details from Zen. I thought it was an excellent book, maybe even better than the first.
> Now I present it as a geek thing that is of no relevance to the general public.
As you should. Linux shit DOESN'T work, for a defintion of work 99% of us use. It ate away so much of my time, with the various distros, until I realized how much simpler it is on Windows.
For this definition MacOS, Windows and Linux all work just fine. I prefer to use a combo of MacOS + Linux because for ME Windows doesn't work, always gets in the way, not just the OS but all the software seems biased towards nagging and spamming and attention grabbing and doing stuff I never explicitly requested it to do instead of just sitting there and doing only what I want them to do.
For others even Chrome OS is good enough.
So mind your use case.
A lot of professionals do real work without touching ANY of what you'd call "office" software whatsoever! I'm not even sure what that "Outlook" thing some refer to even is to be honest. ...I DO use Microsoft Excell, but that's it, the rest of that software universe does not exist to me.
Can't tell if trolling or baiting, oh well, I can't bit this one since I have two boxes under my desktop at home, a Linux computer for everything but playing video games, and a Windows 10 computer for nothing but playing video games.
At work I have a laptop with Windows 10 for "serious biz stuff" which means Outlook, and a desktop with Linux for doing actual work. I'm very happy with both operating systems, I wouldn't want to run outlook in the web browser and I'd hate to try to get triple A titles to work in Linux.
Depends of your usage, on my case that's Windows that used to eat much of my time until I got rid of it and things became simpler. That's especially true with the Windows 10 bloat & lack of QA now.
Good description of this particular lifecycle. I'm new to Hacker News and I remember reading (when I joined) about how the platform is taking steps not to become too hip for its own good.
It's mentioned below but boy did Agile fall into that trap. I now cringe when I hear the word.
It sounds like Six Sigma is also in a self-destructive part of the cycle.
1) Consultancies have created a business model around that carrying excellencies from client to the next
2) The most obvious concept coming into mind which was completely abused through this is of course the whole agile (and increasingly OKRs...) movement
3) I still think it does make sense to generalize (not commoditize) concepts and spread them, however there needs to be big disclaimers about context etc
4) A big part of management’s responsibility is to improve the organization continuously, which can be done by getting inspiration how others have been successful
This has broader application than just technology.
I think in all contexts it is good to have a firm grasp of first principles and how to trace back any commoditized excellence back to them.
Also a good understanding of when to apply "beginner's mind" to check if a bit of "expert knowledge" is actually relevant
"need to belong"..."The tendency of people with this need is to weaponize The Thing, and to wield it against those outside the movement and those they do not deem as worthy of inclusion in the movement."
So many examples of this in daily life. People do amazingly vicious things to validate their membership in a movement/tribe/religion/cult/etc.
This is how we survive. Survival is an incredibly deep topic, things people typically think of as unnecessary like hatred are actually done for survival. (not condoning it)
This description fits so perfectly with middle-management-driven org-wide busywork exercises. "[Thing] is important and will take our work to the next level. That is why we are implementing [naive approximation of Thing that misses the point]. Given [Thing]'s importance, we expect you to prioritize this and take it seriously."
A good article. Perhaps ironically, I would summarize the pivotal point of the article as, "be sure your lies will find you out". You could rephrase it as "deceitfulness will come back to bite you".
This applies even if you have good intentions. Honesty often comes with an initial cost that makes people turn away.
I wouldn’t call this kind of creep necessarily deceptive, but failing to manage expectations has essentially the same effect as intentionally creating hollow ones.
Yeah, that same identity dynamic at work. "I identify as a member of this tribe", whether "this tribe" is about The Thing or anything else, leads to weird human social stuff.
Math "proofs" and empirical "evidence" mean that all humans who take an interest in these things have compatible experiences.
Thinking they give us access to truth in some explicit objective universal sense is naive - because we could just be cataloguing our most persistent cognitive and perceptual habits.
The thing is that when people from totally different cultures do math, they come to compatible conclusions. The algorithms in the Rhind Papyrus still work, the ones we understand, anyway. And that's from 1000 years or more before Euclid. This is not true of cooking, fashion, law, childrearing, painting, or religion. So maybe there isn't an underlying objective truth people observe mentally in math, but there's something that has some properties shared by objective truth and not by other human inventions.
* linux - the freedom it gave me to build my own computing astounded me. I praised it in every direction only to find people that want all the benefits with no effort. I had to configure their systems to prove linux was any good. When I started telling them the benefits require personal tinkering I was attacked for "being an elitist" and linux was said to be actually full of things that don't work. Now I present it as a geek thing that is of no relevance to the general public.
* motorcycles - I now have the following presentation when people ask me about my experience riding: "It's not like on TV, when it's hot you sweat, when it's cold you freeze, when it rains you're wet and it's quite dangerous on top of it." That's after my enthusiasm convinced some people to buy motorcycles and crash because they didn't take riding seriously enough. They thought they where cool toys.