8 ms·
Neijuan
- JumpCrisscross 6d agoHas it been measured? Or is this more of a qualitative critique?
- hirako2000 6d agoIt isn't pointing at particular system to blame. But if you feel like it's raining, it probably is.
- netmare 6d agoThere's a Greek proverb disputing the latter: they are spitting on him and he thinks it's raining.
- klibertp 6d agoInterestingly, an almost identical proverb exists in Polish ("him" is replaced with "swine" canonically, but it's often replaced by a person's name). It's used to suggest that someone is either too dumb or too self-assured to accept criticism. Is the intended meaning similar in Greek?
- netmare 5d agoYup, it's exactly the same.
- JumpCrisscross 6d ago> It isn't pointing at particular system to blame It's hypothesising a phenomenon. I'm looking for a measure. The phenomenon is intuitively correct, but also suspiciously attractive. Sort of like the bullshit-job (or corrupt-bureaucrat) hypotheses, where every job or public official one doesn't like can be conveniently terms bullshit absent any rigour.
- lensecat 6d agoIn western thought, this is mostly related to the concept of involution. The most famous study is on Javanese farming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Involution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Involution In terms of software development, here's a blogpost from 2025, by a professor at Sussex Uni: https://stunlaw.blogspot.com/2025/07/involution-and-artificial-intelligence.html https://stunlaw.blogspot.com/2025/07/involution-and-artifici... There are also some studies in China on the concept but I'm less familiar with that literature.
- JumpCrisscross 6d agoThank you for the Berry post. Has anyone tried to test his hypothesis? My gut feeling is it will check out, particularly for AI chats. Input measure is easy–you have time and text quantity. But output value is more difficult...I'm wondering if there is a good case where this could be observed.
- lensecat 6d agoI'm doing a PhD in sociology of work (I have a background in software development) and want to do such a study on software development with AI, but as you say it's quite hard to find a good setting, because it's hard to operationalise quality. I have been thinking of measuring it along these lines perhaps... https://www.gitclear.com/the_ai_code_quality_maintainability_gap https://www.gitclear.com/the_ai_code_quality_maintainability... But they have a closed sourced software so I would have to find or create an open one in that case. Happy to hear if you have any ideas on study design!
- JumpCrisscross 6d agoWhat if you looked at scheduling? Like, an assistant or agent scheduling a calendar something? It's atomic, and one can't usually add value beyond a low threshold. If we're seeing more words–or tokens–used over time for a task which one cannot reasonably argue has gotten more complicated in that time, it would be direct evidence of involution. If you can relate that to competition for VC dollars or customers, that takes you over to Neijuan.
- nixon_why69 6d agoIn China, one could look at hours of homework, work hours etc and conclude there's a reason the term was coined.
- anovikov 6d ago"1920s style crisis of overproduction with Chinese characteristics"
- DoggoMz 6d ago[flagged]
- jamessb 6d agoFor context, this article has probably been posted as it is linked to by the "Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?" blog post [1] currently being discussed [2]. [1]: https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/9/7/astra-why/ https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/9/7/astra-why/ [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49654229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49654229
- mark_something 6d agoIME, when words like this become common, it allows people to identify them more easily, so it's a good thing to introduce such words.
- torginus 6d agoWhat I love about the Chinese is how incredibly aware and self-reflective they are about the wheel of suffering they are building for themselves.
- yorwba 5d agoThe people building the wheel of suffering and the ones complaining about it may both be Chinese, but they're not the same person.
- nixon_why69 5d agoIt's not even a person, it's a system. There's a million people behind you who will take your job if you don't grind, and that goes for your boss as well.
- anovikov 5d agoI wonder what happens to China when this factor disappears. China workforce peaked in 2016, and city workforce will peak in the next few years. With the economy still growing, acute labor shortage is less than 10 years away.
- threecheese 5d agoDon’t forget General Tso!
- wangxili1997 5d ago[flagged]
- 0wis 5d agoDefinitely a concept that should be diffused and discussed in France, especially in preparation of next elections for which anti-capitalist sentiment is quite high.
- ZeroGravitas 5d agoThis came up a lot recently in regards to competition in the solar and EV spaces. And yet, the competition generated cheap power and transport that was clean and didn't rely on foreign actors. Making life easier for many Chinese people. It felt like the manufacturers had learned too much from western corporate media which is always moaning about competition and horrified at the thought of things getting cheaper if that would affect the sacred next quarter profits.
- api 5d agoWow it’s a proper word for software engineering and platform complexity over the last 30 years.
- sunrunner 5d agoI usually reach for Verschlimmbesserung [1] to describe that. [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Verschlimmbesserung https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Verschlimmbesserung
- stronglikedan 5d agoAh, good old v17g!
- lopsotronic 5d agoFor docs, see also "Darwin Information Typing Architecture" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Information_Typing_Architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Information_Typing_Arch...
- gcanyon 5d agoI'm surprised that article doesn't reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race
- kjshsh123 5d ago>When capital owners are driven by competition they must work increasingly more for little or no marginal gain despite falling prices for consumers so price fixing or 'price leadership' becomes impossible. A lot of the people in the comments here seem to miss that this explicitly isn't about workers or feeling overworked and if anything should make the average consumer better off.
- matheusmoreira 5d agoWhat's the point of serving this average consumer if we won't end up better off though?
- kjshsh123 5d agoWe are all consumers.
- yorwba 5d agoThe next sentence is "On a personal level, neijuan reflects a life of being overworked, stressed, anxious and feeling trapped, a lifestyle where many face the negative effects of living a very competitive life for nothing."
- kjshsh123 5d agoYes, for capital owners.
- handle584 5d agoOverworked Chinese workers have been making western consumers better off for more than two decades now. Chinese domestic consumption is very low even among developing countries, negligible compared to its gigantic export. Upon joining WTO one prerequisite is 5 days-8 hours work week, while presently in China you often find 996 schedule instead, with factory workers even worse with 12 hour shifts and 2 days off a month. It is simply sweatshop in the 21st century again, a hallmark of Neijuan.
- 5d ago
- tantalor 5d ago> Goldenweiser uses Māori decorative art as an example. The development of art was done within the framework of already existing patterns. The final pieces were elaborate and complicated in appearance but fundamentally the same as existing art. Jeez, what an asshole.
- tancop 5d agoIs there a way to only apply this to corporate profits but not the labor market? A world where production and labor demand is constantly growing but returns stay flat would be a great one.
- mikhael28 5d agoNeijuan as a word has transcended itself; it now means many different things, to many different people, in many different contexts.
- simplisticelk 5d agoSemantic diffusion strikes again.
- mikhael28 5d agoLearned a new expression today, thanks for the comment.
- mcphage 5d agoThis reminds me of Santayana's quote: “Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.”
- rye_pan 5d agoInvolution is competition over a fixed pie. If the labor pool really shrinks, the pressure eases without anyone deciding to stop.