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That’s actually very good


"I decided to depart after recognizing the profound sense of disillusionment and dissatisfaction JeanHeyd experienced due to perceived unfair treatment and deception. The depth of this unfairness, reaching a level that I perceived as unjust, deeply resonated with me. This situation highlighted a need for better communication and understanding within the community, prompting my decision to step back. I express my deepest regret over these circumstances, and I sincerely hope for improvements in our conduct and interactions going forward."

-- another version by ChatGPT


The previous generations didn’t exactly set a good example for healthy, impersonal and professional argument.


But still, they did create (and sometimes even use) tools that at least make it possible – tools which far too many members of the youngest generations, and their organisations, seem to have abandoned or never even knew they existed in the first place.


Are there any communities that are really based on merit?


Pretty much every human community has to be to some extent, with the exception of communities that face no external competition. Non-meritorious communities subject to competition quickly disappear.


“…to some extent…” is, i think, the most important piece of your reply.

sure, merit plays some kind of role, but so do many other things. what so many comments in this discussion (and every other discussion surrounding this issue over and over and over again ad nauseum) really seem to want to ignore is the many other factors that play into long term group/project success.

merit alone? hardly ever, if ever.


What? Non-meritorious communities are known to last literal millennia.


Caltech's undergraduate community was, at least in the years I attended.


“Do these people not realize how annoying their process is and how talented people don’t have to put up with crap like this?”

Easy. They select for compliance, not skill.


"We don't need smart ones. We need loyal." -- from a classic Soviet sci-fi book [0] which wasn't really about a different planet.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_to_Be_a_God


Then they have no business complaining about how hard it is to find qualified candidates.


“ Qualities like duty, loyalty, initiative and industriousness are deemed weaknesses.”

Wherever you look, loyalty is for suckers. Be it as employee, car insurance or cell phone plans. Only the new guy gets respect.


Everybody is hoping to acquire lazy and complacent suckers, who won't switch to another employer or cell phone/insurance provider even though the terms they're getting are no longer on par with what the market offers. This strategy largely works too, as I've worked with some exceptional developers working for really meh salaries. They don't think about leaving, too.


>who won't switch to another employer or cell phone/insurance provider even though the terms they're getting are no longer on par with what the market offers. This strategy largely works too, as I've worked with some.

Acquiring competitive market rates and competing in market rates isn't always easy or even reasonable. Sometimes it takes significant effort due to barriers and some of these barriers were erected by companies. Take the modern interview process. Weeks of evening prep time, lots of applications/artificial networking/cold calling/recruiter responding, the time/emotional/ mental energy to step through several hoops, etc. and all this for a chance to compete at a position that probably isn't all that great anyways beyond TC.


Do you have friends?


That sounds a little rude as a bare question. But it's a good one. Because friends (real ones that would drive to to the hospital) are where we start to rebuild this mess.


I'd drive pretty much anyone to the hospital if they asked. I also ask rude questions ¯\_(0.0)_/¯.


Well done. Rude questions are good. If anything there aren't enough of them.


Not the OP, but mixing employment with friendship can be difficult to navigate.

I know from personal experience that is is possible for a friendship to survive adverse shocks involving money. But it is difficult, it does change things permanently, and it seems rare that it survives at all.


> mixing employment with friendship can be difficult to navigate.

This is only true if you both dont either have eachother as a priority or act hypocritically in light of that stated value.

Losing $100 to a false friend is a great way to pay your enemies to get lost.


I'm thinking specifically of a situation where things were much less clear-cut, and involved far more than $100.

It is easy to make grand declarations. But when ethical considerations are not very clear-cut and you're talking real pain, you really figure out what a friendship is worth.


“ That said, companies are often wrong to hire externally as they misattribute their problems to their employees instead of to their own leadership. It is easier for them to blame others instead of themselves.”

After talking to a lot of managers it really seems that a lot of them are deeply skeptical of the people they themselves have hired.


The same happened in CA with some stores being open and others closed. Why was Home Depot open? It made no sense in terms of spreading the disease . It was just arbitrary BS.

Closing the beaches was stupid too. If there ever was a safe place then it was the beach or state park wheee uou are in the open and the window blows.


Home Depot was open because people need to fix shit around their house if you want them to stay home. What's arbitrary about that?

I agree with you about the beaches. But in the early days, we didn't really know what worked and what didn't. People said 6 feet apart was safe enough indoors because "droplets containing the virus fall to the ground".


It was arbitrary because small hardware stores had to close, while big ones could stay open. Also, because in most states someone in the governor’s office just went down a random list of professions or business types and decided on the spot whether to shut them down or not. That’s the very definition of arbitrary and capricious. It also fails the rational basis test, since the government hadn’t even come up with a rationale for why certain businesses have to close while others can stay open. Or why a Walmart could have a 500 people in it, while churches were limited to 10 people at a time (regardless of the size of the church’s building, even), etc.


I didn't know about small hardware stores being forced to close. That's the arbitrary part then. If it was a question of space, they should've been allowed to continue business with curbside pickups.

Religion and community are important. But congregating inside a church building is not something that needs to be prioritized during a pandemic. Schools and daycares first.


> But congregating inside a church building is not something that needs to be prioritized during a pandemic. Schools and daycares first.

Not everyone puts priorities in that order. For many people, religion is much, much more important than daycare.

Plus, any order which treats businesses differently is going to be arbitrary. If you can go to a school but not a bar, then that is arbitrary.


> If you can go to a school but not a bar, then that is arbitrary.

It literally is not. I don't think you understand what "arbitrary" means. It's not "I don't see the difference".

> For many people, religion is much, much more important than daycare.

So have the service in the parking lot of the church. Or on an open field, the way JC used to preach. Not having daycare is far more disruptive to far more people objectively. Way more people go to school and daycare every day, than go to church. Way more people depend on having a school or daycare to send their kids to, than go to church.


> I don't think you understand what "arbitrary" means. It's not "I don't see the difference".

Arbitrary here means that the rule wasn’t decided rationally. The government must typically establish a “rational basis” for any rule that they want to impose on people.

It is commonly understood that being indoors with a lot of people increases the risk of transmitting a virus between those people. The risk is understood to go up when more people are present, but it is also higher when the building is smaller than when it is larger.

Thus, a rational basis for the maximum occupancy of a building during a pandemic would be based on the number of people per square foot. A rule such as “1 person per 100 square feet” treats both large and small groups fairly, as well as treating large and small buildings fairly.

When we look at specific rules that were actually in place during the pandemic, we often find that there was no such rational basis. The rules were instead arbitrary. In NYC, churches were limited to a flat 10 people in the building at any one time, regardless of the size of the church building. This limits a large church more than a small one, and thus the rule is arbitrary. It would have been no more arbitrary if they had rolled dice to pick the number.

Similarly, the same rule in NYC did not apply to big–box hardware stores. A Home Depot could have hundreds of people in it all the time! No matter how important hardware stores are, this is an arbitrary distinction. There is no rational basis under which the virus is dangerous to a group of 11 people who are in a church, but not to a group of 11 people who are in a Home Depot. The relative importance of churches and Home Depots is not important. What is important is that the difference in how the rule applied to them was arbitrary.


> The relative importance of churches and Home Depots is not important.

It absolutely is. The risk between churchgoing and Home Depot shopping, or going to school vs a bar may be equivalent, if we accept your analysis. But when taking risks, we also consider benefit. Risk for little to no benefit is best not taken. Risk for benefit may be worth taking, depending on how much benefit. If you can't accept this basic principle, there's no point in continuing this discussion further.

Education/childcare and having a habitable home are more important, objectively, than getting drinks or worshipping in-person inside of a building. Safe alternatives for the latter existed - drinking beers on your porch, or having church services in a field.


Not everyone judges the importance of things the same way. If it is ok to force churches to meet outside (and many churches did), why not force Home Depot to move their goods outside to sell?

> Risk for benefit may be worth taking, depending on how much benefit.

This is true. We each judge both the level of risk of each action we take, and the amount of benefit we gain from it. It is an _individual_ decision whether or not to go into a building, based on our _individual_ level of risk tolerance and our _individual_ benefit from whatever is in the building.

As a result, we long ago decided that if the government wants to step in and ban something that is risky, it must always have a rational basis on which that level of risk is determined. This prevents the government’s decisions from being arbitrary, and from favoring one party or group over others. (There are other requirements as well.)

For example, at some point we decided that crowded buildings were too large a fire risk. The government decided to allow the fire department to regulate the maximum number of people that could occupy every room of every building. In order to prevent this from being arbitrary, the fire department must base their determination on the actual fire risk: the materials the building is made from, the rate at which fire can spread in those materials, the number and size of the exits from the building, etc. The purpose of the building doesn’t matter: a church with 10,000 square feet and fire doors gets exactly the same maximum occupancy as a store with 10,000 square feet and fire doors (all else being equal; a real store would probably get dinged for having a bunch of additional flammable material in it).

It doesn’t matter that some buildings are used for frivolous purposes like entertainment while other are used for serious business. The fire doesn’t care about that, so neither can the fire department. This protects everybody against corruption and abuse of authority. Suppose the Fire Marshall was a crazy Fundamentalist, and arbitrarily decided that your bar should have a maximum occupancy of 2? You’d be out of business, and quite angry. By the same token, suppose the Fire Marshall was anti–religion, and arbitrarily decided that your church should have a maximum occupancy of 2? Same result. The rational basis rule is intended to protect us all from oppression at the hands of our neighbors, even when we have differing ideologies.

A virus doesn’t take into account the importance of the building when it infects people, and therefore pandemic restrictions on occupancy cannot take that into account either.


> why not force Home Depot to move their goods outside to sell?

Because a lot of products can't stay outside. It would be incredibly disruptive to operations. Not to mention that many stores, including Home Depot, did start offering curbside pickup to reduce risk.

Fire danger is omnipresent and essentially forever. Pandemics are not. So your analogy doesn't apply. I don't even know why I'm bothering. F it. Have a good weekend. Pretend you won the argument.


Then why?


Then why what? Can you elaborate a bit?


Sorry, why would he do this? If he wasn't doing it thinking it would help then what?


I’m not sure which person you are referring to, but it doesn’t matter if someone thought it would help. That’s not sufficient.

The rules vary somewhat from state to state, but in general a government order must be narrowly tailored to serve a legitimate government interest, there must be a rational basis for how the order will actually serve that interest, and it must not be arbitrary or capricious. It has to have all three or it’s out. Notably, “I thought it would help” isn’t quite on the list.

If you can explain why something might help, then that could form your argument for the rational basis test (although it would be better if you could explain how it _will_ help, rather than how it _might_ help). But the order had better meet all the other requirements as well.

There are often other requirements as well. The agency writing the order must have the explicit authority to do so. Some types of orders are limited ahead of time by legislation. For example, many states have a written maximum amount of time that any order based on a state of emergency can last. Etc, etc.


A small hardware store in town went out of business because they were forced to close. Same for a lot of other small stores. I could understand reducing number of people in the store but closing totally while keeping others open simply didn’t make sense. I think the exceptions had more to do with successful lobbying than with health reasons.


People were rabidly cheering it on too. Police going around shutting playgrounds and arresting parents for playing outdoors with their children, while at the same time the politicians they voted for were constantly and egregiously shown to be flouting the rules on frivolities, parties, travel, fun. And there were excuses for the politicians and bloodlust for the commoner trying to exercise or raise their child. Absolutely flabbergasting.

I used to wonder how on earth nazis and communists and the like were able to seize power and control of a population, and now I've seen it. Covid has been a really amazing learning experience for me.


“I used to wonder how on earth nazis and communists and the like were able to seize power and control of a population, and now I've seen it”

That’s how the US has worked for a long time. See the war on drugs and mass incarceration, laws against black people and extreme political polarization. There was always a group of “others” that people wanted to get punished.

I bet if Trump had been a little smarter he would have got away with a lot more while people cheering him on. But it seems a lot of political institutions are eroding so maybe the next strongman will be able to go way further.


Yes that seems to be how it goes. Drum up irrational fear, lay the blame at the others, create hatred against them, then it becomes almost a self-sustaining mass psychosis. Intellectually I understood that's basically how it works, I guess I just didn't want to believe it.

People didn't care that vaccines didn't stop the virus spreading, they didn't care that insignificant transmission occurred due to individuals or small family groups enjoying the outdoors, they didn't care that some people were as irrationally scared of the vaccines as they were of covid. It wasn't about any kind of measured response designed for the real greater good. They wanted to see those hated others suffer and be punished for their heresy and audacity.


Is fear of dying irrational? I mean, it's going to happen to us all anyway, so does it matter if it's via airborne virus or whatever it is that conservatives fear is going to kill them?


Fear of dying of covid because someone is taking their child to play in a park certainly is.


And was the contagiousness of covid perfectly understood as soon as it was discovered?


Certainly by the time vaccine mandates came around, we had a pretty good idea of the contagiousness and lethality of the disease.


At that point, they had also taken the caution tape off the playground by me. I'm unaware who mandated that. As far as I can tell, many aspects of the disease and vaccines are still quite controversial, though it seems to me that vaccines are helpful.


You've got cause and effect backwards. Societies have to overreact to pandemics, because those that didn't got wiped out - eventually. Enforcement of quarantine and similar measures through extreme social norms is a necessary adaptation to the threat of plague; civilization wouldn't be able to exist without it.


No I don't think I do have it backward.


What was the point of writing that?


It was commensurate with your reply. What exactly is the cause and what is the effect that you think I have backwards?


You think that the authorities are creating an internal enemy to sow division. I am saying that the visceral reaction to plague is an instinctive human universal, not something that has to be cultivated.


> You think that the authorities are creating an internal enemy to sow division.

They do and have done so many times throughout history.

> I am saying that the visceral reaction to plague is an instinctive human universal, not something that has to be cultivated.

Fear is an instinctive response to many things, and that can be and is manipulated.


[flagged]


> Citation? This seems like an anti-mandate talking point more than a reality.

This isn't in good faith so it's clearly not going to change your opinion about anything. It's trivial to google and it was not an uncommon story in the news over the past few years. Literally the top google result of my first trivial search:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-officer-arrested-park-throw...

> January 6th?

Also a bad faith non-sequitur.

If you have any actual coherent and rational questions or comments about what I wrote, I am more than happy to talk about it. Sadly you don't appear to be intellectually equipped to cope with pondering these issues though.


> fun.

Its an amazingly corrupting kind of power, the ability to dictate the way others can have fun.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cYPm__73XI I still remember this video that was widely circulated. The bans were never more than politicians wanting to look like they were doing something.


Why do firefighters have no effect on tourism? Without them you can not run a city. Same for many other jobs like garbage collection.


Well clearly there is an elite class to whom body autonomy is granted, and an underclass who must follow arbitrary and capricious rules. OP appreciates that celebrities and entertainers are our betters and should not be held to the same standard.


Yes exactly. You are allowed to infect people with a deadly pandemic if you're rich, but if you're poor you have to risk personal medical consequences or lose your remote job.


Reality is that not letting Kyrie play basketball cost New York millions, and firing a firefighter doesn’t. Tons of people lose their jobs when entertainment acts close because the performers aren’t vaccinated. Money talks, does that mean celebrities should not be held to the same standard? Not really, it just means that holding them to the same standard would cost more than adams was willing to pay, whether it was the right thing to do or not.


This is the issue. Politicians claim it about health and saving "grandma", but when the number of dollars get big enough, all that goes out the window.

So apparently getting vaccinated is critically important, but not more important than money.


I don't think this mandate had much to do with body autonomy, but job autonomy, which yes, rich people have quite a bit more of.


An attitude which I've found to be curiously pervasive amongst self-proclaimed egalitarians and socialists.


FWIW, there was a vocal contingent of Marxists on Twitter who saw the mandates for the erosion of worker power and rights that they were, and vigorously opposed them. Richard Wolff even came around eventually, as well as Jimmy Dore after having his own personal run-in with the nasty side effects which are all too common with these vaccines.

Sadly, though, some of the most awful scapegoaters of the unvaccinated were indeed on the "left." Noam Chomsky even said they should be excluded from society completely, and if that meant they couldn't even obtain food, well, that would be their problem.


[flagged]


Tried 5 minutes and it just seemed like the usual "Dore had a different provax position and then changed his mind," and "he doesn't read articles with the pro-vaccine gloss which the commentator would consider 'truthful' ". Some "Dore's position is popular and therefore making him money and therefore a grift" thrown in for good measure. Is there some point in the 50 mins where they actually lay out a case that he faked his vaccine reaction?


He didn’t read the article and point out why he disagreed, he literally misquoted the article (multiple times) to make it seem like it said something it did not.

Even if you say “well, that’s just one article” the 50 minute video demonstrates this is a pattern of Dore’s.


Because they can be replaced by vaccinated people I guess and if one or two can’t that’s ok because they’ve still got all the other ones. Kyrie and the Yankees can’t be replaced.


I’d be willing to bet I could more easily find a team full of people to swing a bat or throw a ball than a couple thousand people willing and able to rush into a burning building.


Can you get people to pay to watch them?


> Same for many other jobs like garbage collection.

Spoken like someone who hasn't been to New York. I love the city, its a fun and vibrant place. But they have some unusual trash policies (primarily they don't have alleys so trash has to be dumped on the main sidewalk) and wherever you go its not uncommon for the sidewalks to be lined with trash waiting for pickup.


I have been to New York and I have also seen Paris during a strike of garbage collectors. It gets ugly very quickly once collection stops.

The number one thing I have noticed in New York was they seem to make trash collection as loud as possible ideally at 3 in the morning :)


How would they collect trash efficiently during the day when many streets are packed. Not to mention the extra traffic a slow moving often stopping garbage truck would cause


I enjoyed programming in the 90s and early 2000s but I feel it’s turning again into tedious grunt work with scrum, agile, yaml configuration files and needlessly complex systems.


You should seriously look in to changing companies.

I'm not trying to denigrate you in any way, I myself switched from working at $BIG_BANK to a more lithe type of company and 90% of that bullshit went away.

Agile + Scrum stuff are minimal and now consume ~4.5% of my week instead of ~12.5%, I'm not spending half my "dev" time babysitting and maintaining giant applications no one really understands in full, and instead work on a bunch of little serverless applications, maybe half of which I do actually understand and can explain end to end.


This is one industry where reinventing the wheel is quite the norm. It's good for all the developers - it keeps them working. Older devs can work on legacy systems, and newer devs (or devs picking up new skills) can recreate systems with the new tools and languages.


If you really find the agile processes you're using are adding tedium, why don't you do the agile thing and tailor them to your specific context?

But I imagine we're probably using the same word to describe very different things.


The current implementation of Agile in most cases is pretty much the opposite of agile as described in the agile manifesto.

In my team we have reduced the process to having a simple backlog which we work through. But I have seen other teams where you spend enormous amounts of time on planning but it’s frowned upon if you think any further than the next sprint. Just check off tasks without any thoughts about long term architecture or strategy. Basically just a sweatshop with replaceable “resources” (the company doesn’t hire “people” anymore but “resources”)


There is no current implementation of Agile though, Agile was an umbrella term for a variety of different practices. I don't think you can blame it if it's been poorly implemented.

Granted, that is most of what I see: poorly implemented agile everywhere, usually half embracing SCRUM. I think that has more to do with the typical command and control nature of upper management though.


You need to nail one use case really, really, really well and impress people. When they ask about other things you can then state that they are in development.


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