This is a trap that software engineers appear to be especially susceptible to. If you hang out in places where they congregate, like Silicon Valley, you’ll eventually hear about solutions to all sorts of problems, from homelessness to the opioid crisis.
Being one myself, I attribute this to solving problems every day and getting rewarded for that, then falling under curse of thinking that since you just solved Very Complicated Problem X, you can probably solve Very Complicated Problem Y, except that Y is in a domain you have so little context in that it seems simple. Dan Luu wrote about this: https://danluu.com/cocktail-ideas/
When the invasion of Ukraine was just beginning, I thought to myself: if only I was a doctor/architect/carpenter/policy expert/general/etc., I could do something. Then I began donating money across a portfolio of charities, which didn’t fully alleviate the feeling of being useless in this situation.
This is a trap that software engineers appear to be especially susceptible to. If you hang out in places where they congregate, like Silicon Valley, you’ll eventually hear about solutions to all sorts of problems, from homelessness to the opioid crisis.
Being one myself, I attribute this to solving problems every day and getting rewarded for that, then falling under curse of thinking that since you just solved Very Complicated Problem X, you can probably solve Very Complicated Problem Y, except that Y is in a domain you have so little context in that it seems simple. Dan Luu wrote about this: https://danluu.com/cocktail-ideas/
When the invasion of Ukraine was just beginning, I thought to myself: if only I was a doctor/architect/carpenter/policy expert/general/etc., I could do something. Then I began donating money across a portfolio of charities, which didn’t fully alleviate the feeling of being useless in this situation.
Yes, this is exactly what I’m trying to convey, well put.
Thank you for linking this, very interesting.