
Life is Not Always An Engineering Problem. - lexilewtan
http://lexilewtan.tumblr.com/post/26882718391/life-is-not-always-an-engineering-problem#disqus_thread
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gall
With all due civility, this is stupid. The fact that we as a species are short
staffed and short on time doesn't mean that engineering strategies are
inappropriate. On the contrary, they're the only game in town. Triage and
problem selection are themselves algorithms with defined optimisation
criteria. That you take issue with the selection of those criteria (e.g.
elegance, aesthetics) by people trying to solve their personal pain points
doesn't repudiate the framework.

~~~
smackjer
IF engineering strategies are not always inappropriate, does that necessarily
imply that they are always appropriate?

I think the point of the post is that there's more to life than "frameworks".
Not every problem is worth solving, and not every problem is an engineering
problem.

~~~
lmm
What's a non-engineering problem? The examples given in the article, love and
happiness (I don't believe in free will), certainly are engineering problems;
or rather, treating them as engineering problems (the "lifehacker" approach)
will generally lead to greater success.

As for some problems not being worth solving, sure. But that's a key facet of
the engineering/lifehacking approach: don't prematurely optimize, and don't
try and optimize anything until you've figured out how to measure your goal.

So unless you have an example of a problem where engineering strategies don't
apply, I'm going to keep applying them.

~~~
smackjer
The question isn't whether problems should be solved using engineering
strategies -- in general, I agree that they should. Rather, it's whether
everything in life is an engineering problem.

Here's an example: When I was 18 I wanted to listen to some new music. This
was when we got our music on CDs, and we didn't have algorithms like iTunes
Genius to help us find something we might like. I bought something just
because I liked the cover art. Fortunately I ended up liking the album. (It
was this one: <http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/dink/dink/>)

~~~
lmm
Which shows... what, exactly? That a non-engineering approach to music
discovery is better? No, you got lucky. That your music discovery procedure
was adequate and not worth investing time to optimize? Sure, but that's an
engineering judgement.

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angersock
Not a very convincing article.

    
    
      "Love, or happiness, and free will certainly aren’t. Or for 
      that matter, a lot of other “problems” being solved on the 
      internet today. Simply put, we can’t dedicate our energy to 
      fixing it all. Nor should we.
    

While I don't necessarily disagree with this sentiment, presenting it without
elaboration or support is sloppy. Additionally, what are these other
"problems" being solved on the 'net that aren't problems? Yes, yes, _we_ might
know what they are, but that really out to be mentioned.

Sloppy, sloppy.

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deveac
"But colloquially, the word “hack” seems to have lost its way syntactically.
What once stood for elegance and rebellion under the hood of the machine has
since taken on a new meaning; namely, in the form of mashups, toys, and even
life as a whole. It’s as if for the first time, every problem is an
engineering problem."

I don't think the word 'hack' has lost its way, but rather it has expanded its
meaning. Every problem is not an engineering problem, but I think that the
expansion of the term reflects a cultural change where we are looking at the
world around us and ourselves, and seeing (where we didn't before) engineering
problems that actually _have_ been there all along. It's a shift in
perspective, and without even speaking to whether or not that is a good, bad,
or neutral thing, I _do_ think that there are many aspects of our lives and
world that are engineering problems that were not looked at this way before.

"Life is not always an engineering problem. Love, happiness, and free will
certainly aren’t."

Obviously (to me anyway) life is not always an engineering problem, but
happiness often is, by any definition. A patient seeking treatment for
clinical depression is the very portrait of 'happiness as an engineering
problem'. Outside of the medical field, there are entire industries devoted to
'self help' and improvement of one sort or another. Millions stacked upon
millions of people walk into stores, pull a manual off the shelf, and follow
instructions on how to attain happiness. I think happiness as an engineering
problem is actually a lot more common than it seems at first blush.

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dimitar
This reminds me of Hamdy Taha and his textbook on Operations research, who
proposed that simpler approaches should be approached first:

 _Responding to complaints of slow elevator service in a large office
building, the OR team initially perceived the situation as a waiting-line
problem that might require the use of mathematical queuing analysis or
simulation. After studying the behavior of the people voicing the complaint,
the psychologist on the team suggested installing full-length mirrors at the
entrance to the elevators. Miraculously the complaints disappeared, as people
were kept occupied watching themselves and others while waiting for the
elevator._

update: fixed formatting.

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wink

      If developers tried to solve every problem the 
      way that life hackers try to add shortcuts to 
      their life, they would get nothing done.
    

Can't agree more with this sentence.

