[johnnyanmac]

I'd say life becomes more frustrating of you really think this extreme. You realize your values and then realize certain people with contradictoryvalues aren't part of your community, hut obstacles to overcome. Now it's not a team game, it's a battle royale. Not necessarily winner take all, but overall a lot of people will lose more than they win.

A collective sense of "score" is needed to prevent that.

[marcinzm]

It’s got nothing to do with values but value. Are you doing things that provide value. Once you realize the only measure of that is how other people perceive what you’ve done it’s a lot less frustrating. It makes thing more cooperative as you now need to work with others and communicate with others and you know that versus clinging to a siloed invalid notion of value.

[johnnyanmac]

That goes into what my above reply warns about. Of their "value" is something that contradicts yours, you have an obstacle, not a team working towards a goal.

If some manager's value is "I just need to phone it in and retire" and you are misson-driven, you have an obstacle. Now you're going behind the back of the obstacle trying to stand out, and essential work isn't being met. Mamager panics, has to do more work and probably chastises the other person. Each are only trying to follow what their goals "value".

We do need "values", plural. "Values" will help let out singular "value" compromise as needed. So we shift from "I just want to retire" to "okay, I'll male sure the excited one can get on bigger projects while I chill". And let's the "I want to change the world" types occasionally compromise with "okay this person needs help for a moment". It's not crushing dreams but also making sure that other collective goals are met.

[9rx]

> Of their "value" is something that contradicts yours, you have an obstacle, not a team working towards a goal.

The goal is to ensure that for the value someone else can offer you, you have something of equal value to offer to them in kind.

If you are useless blob, that's not an obstacle, it merely means you're not even trying to be a team player. Face life alone if you so wish, but since the dawn of time humans have leaned into social organization for good reason.

[johnnyanmac]

And thars why the social contract is broken. The companies aren't even bothering to reciprocate, so why care about their values if they don't care about you?

You have your own goals and the company considers you a "useless blob", no matter how you align. Becauee the only value they see in you is pushing pencils. . That's how we create a low trust society.

[9rx]

The social contract is broken, but I'm not sure you've correctly identified the cause.

The reality is that a lot of people have truly become useless blobs. Look at Apple's 54 billion dollar cash holdings just sitting there waiting for something of value to cash it in for. That's 54 billion dollars in promises people made to deliver value that they've never made good on. Or, to put it another way, Apple has given away 54 billion dollars in value away for free...

...-ish. Theoretically they can still seek the promises that others made for future value delivery so it isn't technically free is the truest sense of the word, but for all practical purposes it is so. What on earth could you or I ever offer in return to make good on the promise of value we made? I mean, HN tends to be a little more inventive than the general population so maybe you can I can conjure up something at some point. But the average Joe on the street? What are they going to offer to turn that $54 billion promises into actual value? Let's be realistic. At this point, it's never going to happen.

Once upon a time we got this bright idea that if everyone funnelled into university research labs we'd start to all create all kinds of new value to deliver. It was a noble thought, if a bit unrealistic. But somehow that idea got watered down into "go to university so you can get a job pushing paper around", and now the masses don't even understand what value is anymore.

[gsf_emergency_6]

Speaking up for the guy you're arguing with:

"Values" is (one way) how strangers bootstrap trust, "value" is how colleagues (dare I say "compadres") maintain it.

>if everyone funnelled into university research labs

University is an excellent microcosm for analyzing the social compact breakdown, because most of the value has been created by transient workers. With levels of cooperation that any profitable enterprise will laugh at, that value, if properly appreciated, will dwarf GDP.[0]

So I'd agree with GP that values, lack thereof, both internal to academia and of society at large, was the source of the rot.

There's the idea of the long-tail that nobody talks about now, it's still quite relevant, and I'm glad HN is keeping the flame.

[0] seminaries (quasi universities) did a suboptimal values-value tradeoff compared to the Teutonic model. Bell Labs 19xx-1970 obviously had an even better model, surfing on the transience. Internship program was the magic? Values-value resonance? The secret that neither ArcInst nor OpenAI will (re)discover? (Latter too coupled to value!) The profound Ability to capture value from joe and Joe?

Think they were called "program managers" or something.. incubators of valueS. And they didn't need to say what they were working on (contradicting conventional "Apple" wisdom)

i'd love to hear more of your philosophical perspective on IP, historiographic/economic evidence that you've accumulated

[epicureanideal]

> If some manager's value is "I just need to phone it in and retire" and you are misson-driven, you have an obstacle.

This describes the majority of my career in tech, I think.

Maybe not that exact situation every time, but similar goals of manager or team that are not “accomplish the mission”.