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by erulabs
1501 days ago
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I always try to imagine a really reasonable reason for why people believe things like that. One that I can imagine is that humans are extremely biased towards seeing inefficiency. We seem to have a much easier time spotting problems than recognizing the product of years of slow labor. It makes sense: if we were able to appreciate the slow accumulation of value, we'd just stare at any living creature all day, totally enthralled. Instead we see suffering, the parts of the world life hasn't conquered totally yet. As an evolved creature that perspective seems very reasonable. It's why it's much easier to walk around a city and spot an empty balcony, high up in the sunset, than to appreciate the city itself. "Someone should be enjoying that balcony! Why is the rich owner somewhere else, and there are thousands of us pedestrians wishing we could spend just a moment up there? Inefficiency!" is a much more viral thought than being completely overwhelmed by the amount of human effort your eyes are looking at. If we could properly understand it we'd all just be weeping with gratitude and humility all the time, and that wouldn't be productive at all! Being biased towards negative emotion should be assumed to be the default. So liberty didn't have to be devalued - it just hasn't been properly valued yet! Much more optimistic :) Sorry for long reply! |
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One underlying cause for complaining about the waste of others is status seeking, of which virtue signalling is a part of.
People don’t have to be reasonable, but your effort is admirable.
I think engineers look at the world with different eyes, as you say. I find our infrastructure systems as profound - and also the beauty of how our interfaces with those systems hide deep complexity. The average person doesn’t see flushing a toilet as amazing technology, nor understand the vast number of lives saved by civil engineering (doctors are window dressing on society).