
Creeping normality - Ismair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality
======
meuk
This is also why it's useful to hire new people once in a while and _pay
attention to what they think_. A new, junior hire will note many of the same
things as an expensive consultany. With the difference that people actually
listen to the observations of the consultant , while they expect the junior
dev to get used to things.

~~~
iforgotpassword
+9000

I'm "using" our interns for this. First task is to create a document where
they're supposed to write down everything that seems odd, overly complicated
or broken. Even though they're sometimes in their third semester only, this
pretty much always brings up something that can be improved on the spot
without refactoring a dozen components.

But also for all the things that were actually just a case of the intern being
inexperienced or too naive it's great for them to go back to this document
after three months and see how their understanding changed over time.

~~~
ssivark
> But also for all the things that were actually just a case of the intern
> being inexperienced or too naive it's great for them to go back to this
> document after three months and see how their understanding changed over
> time.

Seems like a fantastic exercise, with benefits both ways. In hindsight, this
seems so simple and powerful that I wonder whether it's a commonly accepted
onboarding exercise for new team members, especially junior ones. If not, it
probably should become.

------
Ididntdothis
This is presented mainly in a negative context but from my experience almost
all change happens this way. You slowly get used to it. I still remember when
people were saying that a mobile phone was a luxury item normal people don't
need or that they would never do online banking.

~~~
jpindar
Oh, there are still people who are indignant, or at least puzzled, that a poor
person could possibly own such luxuries as a mobile phone or a flat screen TV.

~~~
Aeolun
I was amazed when seeing this in India. Until I learned that a phone plan with
unlimited data costs the equivalent of $3 a month there.

Suddenly it becomes like the best investment ever. Even if you have nothing
else, you can still be connected to the internet and all it’s joys.

~~~
bibyte
What ? The cheapest flat LCD TV plus cable service costs about 100 dollars.
And the monthly subscription is about another 2 dollars. That's not enough to
buy the cheapest smart phone.

People in India certainly can afford that. In fact many teenagers these days
buy $250-300 (average) smart phones. Also keep in mind I am talking about
rural India.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
This is what I don't get. If the median income is about ~$1600, how does
almost everyone have a $200 phone?

If you assume a phone gets replaced every 3 years -- with service -- that's
about $110 per year, or close to 7% of a person's total income.

In the US, median income is ~$32k -- $26k after taxes. If you make the same
assumptions, a phone would cost about $580, or close to ~2% of a person's
total income.

So it seems like not so big of a deal, especially for something so valuable.

But the teen part is what piqued my interest. India is MUCH younger than the
US. Women participate in the workforce at a MUCH lower rate. And household
size is MUCH larger. If you factor all of those things together, it means that
for like 60% of families with children, you have a single earner with a spouse
and 2.9 children. If everyone's got a phone, that's more than 40% of your
household income. THAT seems insane.

~~~
esotericn
Consider the amount Americans spend on cars.

If I had to, I would spend 10% of my income on a smartphone / laptop /
whatever without even thinking. It simply pays for itself.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
I CANNOT believe how much Americans spend on cars. As an American, I just do
not get it.

Whether you're rich or poor, people spend INSANE amounts of money commuting. I
get it that our public transit is garbage. I just don't get how much people
pay to commute instead of moving somewhere that makes better economic sense
(even within the same metro, where you can keep all your roots -- your family
and friends and eat at your favorite restaurants and all that).

------
tunesmith
I think the bulwark against it is a society being clear on what its moral
axioms are. Like in the US, "all men are created equal", where we understand
"men" to mean "people". There are certainly forces in the US that do not want
to accept this as true, but the existence of the stated value and national
identity helps to defend it. Same with the bill of rights.

And on a personal level, identifying ones own values and principles explicitly
and reviewing them periodically can help guide one's path as society changes.

~~~
nabla9
Smoking in the public places was just few decades ago, very common and it
seemed like impossible to move. Now even thinking about going back is absurd
idea.

Today people defend 'basically harmless stuff like:

1\. Force physical mutilation of children crazy reasons is OK if there is not
much physical harm. Circumcision of boys is seen as OK in countries where it's
common and normal. Others can see it as crazy cultural thing.

2\. Physical punishment of children is OK because I turned out just fine.

~~~
jchanimal
Driving cars in the city is the new smoking. Our grandkids will look at this
time as barbaric.

~~~
firethief
*Internal combustion cars. Electric cars enable us to avoid polluting the cities by burning coal somewhere unimportant.

~~~
jchanimal
My take is it’s more about killing pedestrians than polluting.

~~~
firethief
Oh. I didn't expect that, probably because in the US car-pedestrian accidents
kill 6,000 people a year [1] and air pollution kills 6,000,000 [2]

1\. [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2018/02/28/589453431...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2018/02/28/589453431/pedestrian-fatalities-remain-at-25-year-high-for-
second-year-in-a-row) 2\.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/04/18/air-
po...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/04/18/air-pollution-
contributed-to-more-than-6-million-deaths-in-2016-infographic)

~~~
jchanimal
But way more than 6000 kids a year don’t play outside because of our
artificially created apex predators.

------
akeck
For example, the creeping normality of using employee burnout to finish AAA
games.

~~~
juliansoto
Or the creeping normality of focusing on game devs crunch when there are other
project based jobs with close deadlines as well

~~~
mwfunk
I don't know of any other industries that have normalized masochistic crunch
to anywhere near the degree that most of the game industry has, and I've
worked in some pretty freaking crunchy sausage factories. The game industry
really takes it to the next level, in part because it's an employer's market-
a lot more people love the idea of being a game dev than there are game dev
positions available, so high turnover rates are actually sustainable for much
of the game industry, leading to some horrific practices.

If there are other industries that are up there with the game industry in
terms of extreme crunch, I'd be very curious to hear about them. I don't doubt
they exist, I just am not aware of them. There's also nightmares like 996
schedules in China, but I've heard that in many cases that's more pretend
crunch for show than actual crunch. In some ways 996 is even lamer because
it's so pointless and dystopian, but I bet many game devs would be jealous of
people who only have to work 72 hours a week and only have to pretend to work
for some of that time.

~~~
vvanders
Only place that I heard was cruncher from my time in gamedev was the animators
who came to us from some of the VFX shops over in the movie industry.

Still inclined to agree, the number of non-crunching gamedevs out there are
shockingly small. It really is celebrated as a right of passage and 'part of
the job' which is infuriating given all the data that backs overwork on
cognitive ability.

------
kbutler
The Easter Island narrative is probably wrong:
[http://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-easter-island-
a-s...](http://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-easter-island-a-
sustainable-society-has-been-falsely-blamed-for-its-own-demise-85563)

"It is generally agreed that Rapa Nui, once covered in large palm trees, was
rapidly deforested soon after its initial colonisation around 1200 AD."

"Throughout the 19th century, South American slave raids took away as much as
half of the native population. By 1877, the Rapanui numbered just 111.
Introduced disease, destruction of property and enforced migration by European
traders further decimated the natives and lead to increased conflict among
those remaining."

~~~
mhb
_The Easter Island narrative is probably wrong_

So is the boiling frog story:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog)

------
bo1024
It's fun to contrast with the opposite phenomenon, which I think also rings
true. As said in Terry Pratchett's book "Making Money":

> People don't like change. But make the change fast enough and you go from
> one type of normal to another.

------
jeremyperson
This reminds me of the frog in the pot/pan concept. Note: the frog did not get
hurt so watch until the end without worrying.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svpsLZDgFK4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svpsLZDgFK4)

~~~
darth_skywalker
It's an interesting concept, but the "frog in the pan" fable has no scientific
merit. [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#Experiments_and_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#Experiments_and_analysis)

~~~
firethief
It doesn't have to work on a literal level. It's a fable, not a recipe.

------
badrabbit
This is how we ended up living in surveillance state.

------
primordialsoup
Another example: people walking around looking at their mobile phones.

------
vezycash
Boiling Frog experiment. Real frog used - no prop
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRWL8-dn_Uk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRWL8-dn_Uk)

------
kristianp
I was going to add a link to normalization of deviance [1] here, but there is
a list of related concepts on the page:

    
    
        Boiling frog
        Camel's nose
        Gaslighting
        Defeat in detail
        "First they came ..."
        Foot-in-the-door technique
        Moving the goalposts
        Normalisation of deviance
        Overton window
        ''Principiis obsta''
        Salami tactics
        Shifting baseline
        Slippery slope 
        Technological change as a social process
        Tyranny of small decisions
        Change blindness
    

[1] [https://danluu.com/wat/](https://danluu.com/wat/)

------
seltzered_
Interesting to compare against Yurchak's term of 'hypernormalisation' (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Yurchak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Yurchak)
)

------
jpswade
Seems related to hypernormalisation...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation)

------
onemoresoop
This goes both ways. When we progress to a new technology, after the wow
factor we take it for granted. We dont often think what life was like before
artificial lighting, electricity, mass transportation, etc. So whatever it is
that is changing we eventually get used to it, it becomes the new normal. Will
the same thing happen with global warming as it’s slowly creeping on us?

------
deepbreath
Makes me think of the gradual increase of identity politics in mainstream
media, politics and liberal circles, to the point it's driving me insane. Most
people around me seem undisturbed by it though.

------
bastawhiz
I'm reminded of ebay's relaunch:

[https://theuxblog.com/blog/redesigning-user-
experience](https://theuxblog.com/blog/redesigning-user-experience)

------
Invictus0
Similar:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credentialism_and_educational_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credentialism_and_educational_inflation)

------
deevolution
The standard american meat based diet is a good example. Centuries ago the
absurd scale of meat production and consumption could never have been
imagined.

~~~
dualogy
Agriculture is another good example. Ice-age hunters (and their guts) could
never fathom musli or noodles (or even just gruel / paste of pounded seeds).

~~~
Fnoord
I wonder if genetic mutations in general are an example of this.

------
Animats
Flooding in Miami and Venice.

~~~
techer
“In late November of 1968, I spent a few days in a hotel just off the Piazza
San Marco in Venice. At 6 one morning, hearing the loud warning bells, I
jumped out of bed, grabbed my camera and rushed to see the famous Venetian
flood. I stood in the empty and as yet dry Piazza and looked out toward the
Gulf, for I expected the flood tides to come in from the open water. Many
minutes passed before to see that the Piazza was flooding, not directly from
the Gulf, but up through its own sewers. The indented gratings in the pavement
had all but disappeared under the calm, flat silver puddles, which grew slowly
and silently until their peripheries touched and the Piazza became a lake.
That morning I experienced vividly, if almost subliminally, the reality of
change itself: how it fools our sentinels and undermines our defences, how
careful we are to look for it in the wrong places, how it does not reveal
itself until it is beyond redress, how vainly we search for it around us and
find too late that it has occurred within us.”

The under-appreciated Robert Grudin in Time and Art of Living.

~~~
Animats
Yes, Venice has had flooding since at least 1900. But now it's 60 times a
year.[1]

[1] [https://theconversation.com/venice-flooding-is-getting-
worse...](https://theconversation.com/venice-flooding-is-getting-worse-and-
the-citys-grand-plan-wont-save-it-106197)

------
rhacker
Random mass shootings :(

------
fatso784
Could just call it... normalization? There's already a word for that.

~~~
KuhlMensch
I agree.

But for a different reason: I am wary of the originating author.

I personally find Jack Diamond a compelling writer, but it has been pointed
out to me that he tends to play fast and loose when mixing in ideas from
outside of his domain. Thus, I prefer my Jack Diamond, like my Jack Daniels,
dry, and without ornamentation. Which is why I would personally prefer it's
safer for his nomenclature to stay in his books.

------
torvald
Docker!

------
Torkel
Interesting, frogs boiling etc, but... What is up with all of these wikipedia
entries making the front page of hacker news? Has it always been so and I’m
mis remembering thinking this is something new?

~~~
f2f
> What is up with all of these wikipedia entries making the front page of
> hacker news? Has it always been so and I’m mis remembering thinking this is
> something new?

Hehe, there's another name for what you're describing: baader-meinhof
effect...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader%E2%80%93Meinhof_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader%E2%80%93Meinhof_effect)

Everything has a name nowadays. Taxonomies are almost complete :)

~~~
twic
I swear i'm seeing the Baader-Meinhof effect come up more and more frequently
recently.

~~~
taneq
I thought the current rate of references to it was normal? :P

