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It's interesting to think Microsoft was around back then too, taking approximately 14 years to regain the loss of approximately 58% of their valuation.

In practice, it seems that politics generally takes precedence over problem solving. If you look into the psychology of it, neither politicians nor voters are really incentivized to solve big problems. This is especially true for big problems that will take more than an election cycle to solve.

It seems to me that it would be easy to support an argument that suggests more big problems could be solved if incentives were better aligned toward problem solving and if competent people, not professional politicians, were chosen to solve them.


Maybe I'm autistic, but in this thread is appears that one side is making a rational argument, and the other is an appeal to emotion.

A feeling of a community is not a contract. Complaining about losing that community changes nothing; and I believe that's the point GP is making.


This is just one example that was made public due to the federal case, but there is no doubt that this kind of activity is quite common in corporate America at all levels. https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-netflix-executiv...

A solid understanding of behavioral psychology may make it obvious, but like you mention, one could also just open a newspaper.


> we're headed to a world with humans, livestock, and the few species...

It looks more and more like we're headed toward a world where we'll regenerate extinct species in labs; and grow our steaks in meat factories. If we no longer need cattle farms, it's possible we'll vote to preserve more lands.


I’m usually the last person to take this side of a discussion but I don’t see how feasible since:

  - the existence species regeneration does not imply the incentivize to regenerate and manage the vast majority of extinct species  
  - lack of gene samples for vast majority of species  
  - we don’t and are not very close to having a viable model for environment and species fitness so we can’t accurately model what specifies to regenerate  
  - new species populations have to be managed before and after initial release 
  - land and labor capital investment


All completely correct.

It has been extremely difficult to reintroduce functionally extinct species (ie, regenrate populations in zoos, and then reintroduce them to their original habitat). The animal culture piece is really big.

But probably the biggest issue is that, in almost all cases, the problems that led to extinction in the first place - lack of habitat, poaching, etc - rarely get better with time.


Is there any evidence this has any traction, is actually feasible (the reintroduction part), and is not merely a publicity stunt for some biotech startups?

I think a more realistic point of view is that once a species is gone, it's truly gone, and that we should worry about keeping alive those still existing, because there's no "undo" button.


i've always wondered how these plans to bring back extinct species intend to copy the non-genetic factors that made a species what it was.

early life experience learning from parents/siblings are essential for knowing how to properly behave in their environment.


That, and also how they expect to keep any species they manage to "bring back" alive (use of quotes because even that is questionable; the recent stunt with the "direwolves" didn't really create direwolves).

Which ecosystem are these species going to inhabit? How can we keep them alive when other currently existing species are at risk or going extinct?


I hope so. In the meantime, we should try to preserve as much natural genetic information as possible, even assuming we can vet the species back.


You might even say that some neurodivergence is an adaptive strategy to quickly identify a potential threat.

Many sapiens like to believe they are good people, but they don't like to to think about what that really means. It seems we are talking about a filter that identifies such people very quickly.


I believe you, and this has been know for decades. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10928755

The underlying truth here is worse than 'majority of educated are illiterate'. Collectively, we've built these delusions into our culture. Perhaps there is less suffering this way.


This is wild, but is exactly what I'm talking about. Only 13% of adults were proficient in reading prose or documents. Thirteen!

I knew "most" American adults couldn't. I didn't realize it was 87%.


I've seen projects that failed, or were killed, likely at least in part due to a culture that encouraged poor quality and tech debt. This is preventable, and for no additional up-front engineering effort or time investment.


I think this is the most common failure mode I’ve seen, short of a failure to find a proper product-market fit.

It’s just really hard to overstate how much damage a bunch of crappy code can have. Even with the best of intentions. I must say I strongly disagree that this is “never a problem”.


One of my managers was fond of the phrase, “a project is done when nobody is willing to work on it anymore.” That can be because of a number of reasons, including that the money is gone, or it sucks your will to live.


Yes, parent says "people leave" as if it is not a problem in itself; you lose the time it takes to train these people, and they probably take some knowledge about the products with them. Or maybe we are actually talking about commodity developers?

But I'm curious about how one prevents this dysfunctional culture.


At my last job the people motivated to fix the clusterfuck were the first to leave. Except me because I’m a masochist apparently.


Yep.. They/we get miffed, and twisted, stalled. Then they get dispassionate, and leave.


We’re talking about different scales.

At a big company “you” don’t lose anything. You only lose if you’re a fool trying to fix dysfunctional culture when you’re not even close to C level.


You said that right! Absolutely. It's one thing to fix a mess in a culture that cares. It's darn near impossible to fix it if the culture around is hostile, indifferent, or any of the other 82 million other reasons organizations come up with to not care. In that situation you can end up being the pariah despite good intentions engineering and otherwise like satisfied customers.


Change usually has to come from the top and the bottom and meet in the middle to really have a chance.

Little guy can't do it, and neither can speeches from the bosses.


> Is there something here about the role of (and lack of in this case) deliberate and intentional practice?

Something like 50% of college graduates in the US are considered functionally illiterate, despite an enormous number of opportunities for intentional practice; and despite presumably knowing, at least somewhat, of the benefit of attaining more advanced literacy. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10928755

When I think of poor drivers, I think their incentives to become a good driver are much higher. After all, their own lives and the lives of their loved ones are at risk.


> Some clever business people sees this trend and starts ordering junk...

Similar to lower quality made-for-outlet products produced by major brands. With the bins it seems to approach gambling on some level. Like raffle tickets, except when you lose you also have to dispose of some trash.


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