[nonrandomstring]

> It would also be nice to remove the "magically thinking" around machine learning.

To be honest it would be a morally and ethical less dangerous world if we could get our feet back on the ground in relation to digital technologies in general.

> fundamental limits that no one talks about seriously.

I am starting to touch and stumble into the invisible cultural walls that I think make people "afraid" to talk about limitations. I am not yet done analysing that, but suspect it has something to do with the maxim that people are reluctant to question things on which their salary depends. That seems to be a difference between "scientists" and "hackers" in some way.

Going back to Hal Abelson's philosophy, "magic" is a legitimate mechanism in coding, because we suppose that something is possible, and by an inductive/deductive interplay (abduction) we create the conditions for the magic to be true.

The danger comes when that "trick" (which is really one of Faith) is mixed with ignorance and monomaniacal fervour, and so inflated to a general philosophy about technology.

[time_to_smile]

> suspect it has something to do with the maxim that people are reluctant to question things on which their salary depends.

I once worked on a team that spent a lot of time building models to optimize parts of the app for user behavior (trying to intentionally remain vague for anonymity reasons). Through an easy experiment I ran I ended up (accidentally) demonstrating that the majority of DS work was not adding more than minimal improvements, and so little monetary value and it did not justify any of the time spend on this.

I was let go not long after this, despite having help lead the team to record revenues by using a simple model (which ultimately was what proved the futility of much of the work the team did).

Just a word of caution as you

> start to touch and stumble into the invisible cultural walls that I think make people "afraid" to talk about limitations

[hotpotamus]

It's long been my suspicion that much of tech is just throwing more and more effort into ever diminishing returns and I think a lot of us at least feel that too, but the pay is good and you don't have to dig ditches, so what are you going to do?

[nonrandomstring]

Good story. I guess you had done with your work there. Sometimes teams/places have a way of naturally helping us move to the next stage.

Competences work at multiple levels, visible and invisible. Being good at your job. Showing you're good at your job. Believing in your job. Getting other people to believe in your job. Getting other people to believe that you believe in your job... and so on ad absurdum. Once one part of that slips the whole game can unravel fast.