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Could you elaborate? I think back in the 90s when I was a teenager I thought it to be a good thing that there is a rise in status for a class of people charact

Could you elaborate? I think back in the 90s when I was a teenager I thought it to be a good thing that there is a rise in status for a class of people characterized by clear thinking.

estimator7292 1mo ago
[dead]
embedding-shape 1mo ago
The older I get, the more I realize how many problems in society is because there are different "classes" of people. The more we can eschew that, the better it becomes for most people. While yes, I also see myself as having "clearer thinking" than many people , maybe because of the thousands of hours building and maintaining software, I'm not of the impression that my life deserves a higher status than others merely because of this. It's not "they think right and they think wrong", it's just "everyone thinks differently, but it's all valid thinking".
- elmer2 1mo ago
  We all should be in the same 'class', but some people will be paid more for a job that takes intelligence or years of study. The older I get, I realize some people never change, will always have the same backwards or harmful thinking, and I avoid them instead of just accepting it.
  - embedding-shape 1mo ago
    > some people will be paid more for a job that takes intelligence or years of study. Sadly, it seems so, even if the effects of the jobs on daily life differ a great deal sometimes. The world would succumb faster if we had no garbage collectors, yet they get less pay than a programmer who the world could easily survive without? Makes no sense to me.
    - GTP 1mo ago
      The basic services that keep us alive (e.g. farmers producing our food) tend to also be "easy" (it is physically demanding, but doesn't require years of study to start and you quickly learn by doing). This also means that the vast majority of people would be able to do this kind of jobs. Our economy pays more for scarcity, i.e. jobs that are in demand and at the same time require more qualification, so that the number of people needed in that position tends to be less than the current amount. Both views have sense, they just start from two different points.
      - Tanoc 1mo ago
        From having worked with farmers, the actual logistics of running a farm are very complex. Farming's no longer an easy job because the demand for productivity means you have to harness a whole stable of technologies and understand to some degree advanced finances, floral biology, geotechnics, and meteorology. And yet farmers still get paid little relative to the breadth of knowledge and skills required for running a farm. It's just that farming is still considered a blue-collar job because it was the domain of the poorest for millenia, where as software engineering in any form is relatively new and thus specialized and so considered white-collar.
        GTP 1mo ago
        You're right, running now a farm that is profitable and can stay on the market is very different from doing so 200 years ago. But knowledge is just one aspect. The other aspect I mentioned is having less people in the field than what the market asks for. In the specific case of farmers, I think that modern farms are so much more efficient that we need way less than before, even if the world's population grew. So, while there's a gap between the knowledge required and the earnings, I think this can be explained by farms having a much greater output now, and so the market doesn't ask for more farms than what we have. This could be false at a global scale, but I think it is true at a country-level scale in most of the developed countries. Hence why farmers aren't paid much in those countries.
        1mo ago
  - deadlast2 1mo ago
    Is that ever the case I think we believe in it as an ideal but never see it. For instance a doctor in Pakistan that moves to the usa and ends up driving a taxi.
- bananaflag 1mo ago
  I thought it more in the sense of: if a clearer-thinking group has higher status, then clear thinking would be encouraged among the population. (This did not happen that much, ofc.)
- vanviegen 1mo ago
  > "everyone thinks differently, but it's all valid thinking" I don't agree that all thoughts are created equal.
27183 1mo ago
I would not characterize software people as particularly "clear-thinking".. there's a huge buzzing cloud of unexamined cognitive biases and thoughtless herd behavior that swirls around every software organization I've worked for.
- win311fwg 1mo ago
  I'd even go as far as to say that software people, as a group, are particularly bad at clear thinking. What software people tend to be great at is thinking within a space where the inputs are already clear. But where the inputs start messy, they typically struggle to find clarity more than most others.

Could you elaborate? I think back in the 90s when I was a teenager I thought it to be a good thing that there is a rise in status for a class of people characterized by clear thinking.

estimator7292 1mo ago

[dead]

embedding-shape 1mo ago

The older I get, the more I realize how many problems in society is because there are different "classes" of people. The more we can eschew that, the better it becomes for most people. While yes, I also see myself as having "clearer thinking" than many people , maybe because of the thousands of hours building and maintaining software, I'm not of the impression that my life deserves a higher status than others merely because of this. It's not "they think right and they think wrong", it's just "everyone thinks differently, but it's all valid thinking".

elmer2 1mo ago
We all should be in the same 'class', but some people will be paid more for a job that takes intelligence or years of study. The older I get, I realize some people never change, will always have the same backwards or harmful thinking, and I avoid them instead of just accepting it.
- embedding-shape 1mo ago
  > some people will be paid more for a job that takes intelligence or years of study. Sadly, it seems so, even if the effects of the jobs on daily life differ a great deal sometimes. The world would succumb faster if we had no garbage collectors, yet they get less pay than a programmer who the world could easily survive without? Makes no sense to me.
  - GTP 1mo ago
    The basic services that keep us alive (e.g. farmers producing our food) tend to also be "easy" (it is physically demanding, but doesn't require years of study to start and you quickly learn by doing). This also means that the vast majority of people would be able to do this kind of jobs. Our economy pays more for scarcity, i.e. jobs that are in demand and at the same time require more qualification, so that the number of people needed in that position tends to be less than the current amount. Both views have sense, they just start from two different points.
    - Tanoc 1mo ago
      From having worked with farmers, the actual logistics of running a farm are very complex. Farming's no longer an easy job because the demand for productivity means you have to harness a whole stable of technologies and understand to some degree advanced finances, floral biology, geotechnics, and meteorology. And yet farmers still get paid little relative to the breadth of knowledge and skills required for running a farm. It's just that farming is still considered a blue-collar job because it was the domain of the poorest for millenia, where as software engineering in any form is relatively new and thus specialized and so considered white-collar.
      - GTP 1mo ago
        You're right, running now a farm that is profitable and can stay on the market is very different from doing so 200 years ago. But knowledge is just one aspect. The other aspect I mentioned is having less people in the field than what the market asks for. In the specific case of farmers, I think that modern farms are so much more efficient that we need way less than before, even if the world's population grew. So, while there's a gap between the knowledge required and the earnings, I think this can be explained by farms having a much greater output now, and so the market doesn't ask for more farms than what we have. This could be false at a global scale, but I think it is true at a country-level scale in most of the developed countries. Hence why farmers aren't paid much in those countries.
        1mo ago
- deadlast2 1mo ago
  Is that ever the case I think we believe in it as an ideal but never see it. For instance a doctor in Pakistan that moves to the usa and ends up driving a taxi.
bananaflag 1mo ago
I thought it more in the sense of: if a clearer-thinking group has higher status, then clear thinking would be encouraged among the population. (This did not happen that much, ofc.)
vanviegen 1mo ago
> "everyone thinks differently, but it's all valid thinking" I don't agree that all thoughts are created equal.

27183 1mo ago

I would not characterize software people as particularly "clear-thinking".. there's a huge buzzing cloud of unexamined cognitive biases and thoughtless herd behavior that swirls around every software organization I've worked for.

win311fwg 1mo ago
I'd even go as far as to say that software people, as a group, are particularly bad at clear thinking. What software people tend to be great at is thinking within a space where the inputs are already clear. But where the inputs start messy, they typically struggle to find clarity more than most others.