I find the 'learn to see systems' skill to be one that brings me the most benefit. Being able to see not only how, but _why_ a system works the way it does, from not only a technical but business perspective is incredibly valuable.
I have the most difficulty with the 'learn to see what others see' point. It can take me a long time to see why non-technical people have some of views they do (regarding tech, requirements, etc.) Usually this comes in the form of them ascribing more value to something then I do. For instance, uber - to me its an unlicensed taxi service. To others I know, its the best thing since sliced bread. Many of the 'Unicorns' spark this reaction from me. Which is probably why I'm not retired on a private island somewhere :-P
I actually lived in Manhattan for years...
My girlfriend at the time used to take a 'gypsy cab' from the Bronx to downtown everyday. Though, I admit when I lived in Staten Island it is was an issue.
Thing is, companies are not servicing those areas because its not profitable. That makes me extremely leery of claims that gig drivers can make minimum wage ( or more) in those areas. I feel the drivers are basically subsidizing the ride companies profits.
edit: which means, I ultimately feel these companies will go out of business.
Aren't the investors still subsidizing the cost of the rides? It will be interesting to see how much those less profitable routes cost when Uber starts trying to monetize.
> Thing is, companies are not servicing those areas because its not profitable. That makes me extremely leery of claims that gig drivers can make minimum wage ( or more) in those areas. I feel the drivers are basically subsidizing the ride companies profits.
Are licensed cabs not serving those areas because it's not profitable, or are they not serving those areas because other areas are more profitable and the licensing regime's medalion limits mean the more profitable areas won't be saturated with (licensed) taxis.
Unlicensed taxis could mean less profitable, but still profitable realms are able to be serviced, because there are more taxis. It also makes it more possible to profit because the prices aren't fixed, and some of the costs of licensed cabs can be avoided (at possible peril).
It does seem like mostly a scheme to subsidize rides (and vehicle leases) by investors, with little benefit for the drivers. I also am deeply suspect of the long term health of the current unlicensed taxi services; but there's certainly potential.
>>Are licensed cabs not serving those areas because it's not profitable, or are they not serving those areas because other areas are more profitable and the licensing regime's medallion limits mean the more profitable areas won't be saturated with (licensed) taxis.
Personally, I'd vote for 'not profitable'. Not every place that lacks decent cab service is limited by medallions. I'd personally guess that most places lacking service are small towns and suburbs. In those cases, I don't think lack of medallions is an issue.
Also, personal anecdata - I take Lyft about 5-10 times a month with the same stops each time. I have never gotten the same driver twice. This just makes it feel like a big ponzi scheme to me, with fresh drivers coming in as old drivers wise up and move on...
TBF - I use doordash quite a lot also, and have the same experience with 'dashers' - never the same one twice.
I have to keep reminding myself that everyone isn't like me.
In my private talks with myself, I refer to this skill as modelling other people well: in effect, I'm trying to build models for different kinds of people.
There's lots of different kinds, and a few broad types show up, explaining most of their (general / broad) actions.
This is still very much a work in progress for myself too, but would be very interesting to see if I get somewhere substantial.
>I have the most difficulty with the 'learn to see what others see' point. It can take me a long time to see why non-technical people have some of views they do
One way I've thought about this is a difference in understanding patterns.
Imagine that you can see a picture of a landscape. You can see the sun in the sky, rolling hills covered in grass, and a town in the distance. You can probably reproduce this picture. You might not be able to draw it well, or maybe at all, but you could at least describe it.
Now imagine a picture of some English text. You can reproduce this rather accurately. Maybe even from memory.
After that, imagine a picture of text in Dutch. You can reproduce it when you can see it, but you'll probably have difficulty recalling it. The patterns don't make as much sense, because you don't understand Dutch.
Now, imagine an image of Japanese text. Reproducing it, even when it's right next to you, would be difficult. The patterns that make up the text don't make sense to you. You don't have enough experience with Japanese to even try to put pieces together to describe it to someone. You can forget about trying to memorize it.
Now
Think about people with different language backgrounds looking at these same images. They might be looking at the same thing, but they will see something different. People who aren't familiar with Japanese and Korean might not even be able to tell these two languages apart! They look very different, but with no experience they both look like squiggly gibberish. It comes down to a difference in experience with different patterns.
This idea applies to basically everything in life. Be it understanding tech, playing sports, riding a bike, or playing video games. People's past experiences will influence what they can recognize and reproduce in those activities.
If you want to experience this distance yourself then I recommend playing some video game where you can significantly improve at the game quickly. Something like Super Hexagon. At first, you'll fail. You'll fail within the first few seconds over and over. In minutes, however, you'll fail less and less. Soon, you can go a whole minute without failing. You do this on a few different occasions and suddenly, it's difficult for you to understand how you couldn't do this right from the start. After all, the game is quite simple! It just wasn't simple for you at the time.
One of my new-decade resolutions as we have just entered the 2020s is to keep a better lab book. Just a continuous stream of context, things tried, things that worked, things that didn't work, where I got information from, who I spoke to about things, decisions.
Do you use a digital labbook? If so what do you use?
I am currently trying MS OneNote. Just pasting everything in. Pictures, screengrabs, thoughts parameters. But I am wondering if there is a better alternative.
This is the kind of writing GPT-3 will help us auto-generate in the future, freeing up these deep systemic thinkers to go on with their mission of changing the world.
I like the expression "insight porn" for this sort of thing, since it describes both the relationship readers have with it as well as the outcomes (or lack thereof)
I feel like the documentation/source code skill works the other direction too. A lot of software engineers who grew up as hobby coders before doing it professionally seem to have a hard time going to the documentation, and will start refactoring stuff to figure out how it works.
Sure, it's possible to approach code in that way, but to me it's similar to never developing taste. The defining characteristics of the software (the documentation) is for many intents and purposes simply illegible to them, and they're basically saying "I'll know the entry / extensibility point / bug when I see it."
I interview for this in part by asking the interviewee what the most interesting new features are about recent versions of X language.
I like looking through documentation, but between knowing how to read documentation and knowing how to make sense of code, the later is more important, because the code is always there [1], and documentation is often missing, outdated, inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading.
When you have documentation you can trust to be accurate, complete, and up to date, it can be very helpful to use it though.
[1] unless you're building on top of binary only software, and you're not comfortable with reverse engineering
As a corollary to the idea of taste, I've noticed that the most interesting people tend to have very definite tastes and views of the world. Moral relativism and its associated themes are generally not only a dead end but also an illusion since they imply aesthetic and moral choices in and of themselves.
I think a thing you have to be careful of here is that “taste” does not imply a single optimal solution. It’s entirely possible to have very definite tastes and views while acknowledging there are other equally valid viewpoints that doesn’t mesh well with yours.
For example I may love and have a highly developed taste for “western” style classical music and have little appreciation for microtonal Indian classical music without believing it is somehow inferior, yet at the same time believe that not all music is equally good. This isn’t exactly the same as moral relativism that you call out but related.
In each case, you don't interact with or think about Indian classical music or whichever music you don't see as equally good. The only difference between the two is a vague, undefined abstract hierarchy that has no effect on behavior. In other words, a trivial, almost infinitesimal difference. In the end, the actual choice and action to pursue certain things is a far more definite statement as to what a person actually values and respects.
Not so - you can respect something without dedicating your own time to it; you have to really - there isn't enough time for everything. In subjective areas where we rely on a sense of "taste" , this multiplicity is often inherent.
Preference is much easier to map to your actions, but does not imply you think it's the only way. To go back to the analogy, I can think the other form is equally interesting, but realize I haven't spent enough time on it to really differentiate things at the level I can with my preferred form. There is no question where my preference lies, but that does not imply I think it's a superior form. Presumably if I thought it was an inferior form, I might change preference.
I hate that clay pot metaphor it gets trotted out to justify everything and I dont find it particularly insightful. I feel like in software the take-away should be "throw away your crappy previous attempts and keep iterating" but usually people use it to argue "dont plan anything and ship the poorly built prototype"
I would tell those people the good pots weren’t the first ones, they were the last ones. Which suggests smashing the poorly built prototype and starting over.
In other words I read it as an elaboration on “practice makes perfect.” Or, there’s no substitute for experience. (100% true in my... er, experience, across several different fields.)
One of the first pieces of advice I got in my career was about a study on expertise. (Wish I had a reference.) The authors wanted to know what made the experts different from the non-experts. You know what the difference was? Reps. That’s it.
Now, as someone who has taught a technical, challenging, and all-encompassing field—by which I mean a field that covers not just a knowledge domain but also psychomotor skills and personal values—I can tell you that some people do bring more natural ability at the start. But even those folks don’t achieve mastery without the reps.
> In the world of immigration policies, letting some specific people in is better than letting no one or everyone in. The middle ground is better than the extremes.
I've actually long wondered if this is true.
Freedom of movement obviously works at the city level, up to 1 million or so. It obviously works at the megacity level, up to 10 million. It obviously works at the individual state/province level up to 40+ million. It obviously works at US scale (350M). It obviously works at EU scale, 800 million. It obviously works at India's scale, 1.3 billion people.
Why is it that if you tried to open the border literally any wider than it is right now, it would all fall down?
It's never made sense to me.
There are huge disparities in wealth and income within America, right? America's poorest state has a median income of 45K (Mississippi) and it's richest state has a median income of 80K (Maryland). Why doesn't everyone just move to Maryland? Or better yet just move to San Francisco (median 112K). Obviously there's factors other than economics keeping people in place.
Many European countries have generous welfare programs, and have open borders with other EU countries with far less generous ones. It works.
One common approach is to mandate having worked at least one day in the country in question in order to be able to use welfare programs, and keeping things like unemployment benefits proportional (with a cap, of course) to previous income in the same country.
> Many European countries have generous welfare programs, and have open borders with other EU countries with far less generous ones. It works.
Actually it has caused a lot of resentment in the richer countries and it was one of the contributing factors to Brexit, as well as the rise of new far right parties in France and Germany.
It's also notable how Europeans reacted to non-European migrants who attempt to enter the EU while fleeing the war in Syria.
I wouldn't say the EU has migration very well figured out.
I think it could be because labor laws differ much more between nations than they do between states. There's more room for corps to drive down wages by outsourcing labor to nations that don't have labor laws.
> There are huge disparities in wealth and income within America, right? America's poorest state has a median income of 45K (Mississippi) and it's richest state has a median income of 80K (Maryland). Why doesn't everyone just move to Maryland? Or better yet just move to San Francisco (median 112K). Obviously there's factors other than economics keeping people in place.
That's still a relatively small difference compared to places where incomes can be $100/year or much less. I definitely think there's room for more experimentation in this area, but it's probably not as simple as "just open the borders".
Yes, although it's interesting to note it that one interesting effect of opening borders would be to create a massive incentive for wealthy countries to establish this baseline. I don't think just opening would work because the short-term shock would be too great (+ nobody in those countries would agree to do it), but I do think eroding borders in some way may be necessary to get people in wealthy countries to take the needs of those elsewhere seriously. Currently we tend to have some level of wealth redistribution within countries, but very little between them.
So would you favor making it illegal for talented people to leave regions of the United States that are unusually dysfunctional? Should people born in Detroit have to stay there to rebuild the region?
I disagree that people should be disallowed from leaving a warzone because if they were allowed to leave all that would be left is the warmongers.
That outcome seems like the most humanitarian and egalitarian in a warzone. I wouldn’t want to describe to an about-to-be rejected asylum seeker that everyone is actually better off if they are left to die in their place of birth as opposed to living freely in any other part of the globe.
Yes, you’re right it doesn’t make any sense, there’s no real reason it wouldn’t work. You’d have to rethink national and supranational government at that point though.
It's the ghost of merchantalism, really. What matters to a nation or empire historically is putting more stuff - goods, ships, people - "on the books", and calling that the wealth, but annexation and political incorporation as the way of accomplishing this gradually fell out of favor as we entered the modern period and turned towards productivity metrics. But you can create a scenario where your accounts - you being "whomever holds political power" - are inflated relative to others by enforcing favorable borders and terms of trade, so that you wield more productive forces relative to everyone else. And that's been the strategy of industrial-colonial countries.
If you are for global productivity, rather than local wealth, then open borders are the way, but they come with all kinds of other political challenges since they put the world on a course to unification more generally.
I've wondered this for some time too, and I think the issue is culture. Ask anyone who's moved continents (or even say from somewhere like Manhattan to New Mexico) and they'll probably tell you there's a culture shock that requires adjustment, even sometimes in the little things. Everything from how the banks operate, what days and times grocery stores are open, and how to get around with what transport all the way to bigger things like ease of socialising with locals or a new language (not to mention nearby family help/responsibility).
In areas with easy migration I think there's less of a cultural shift that a person has to go through in order to make it work. That's why it works within cities and states/provinces, and Europe and India could fall into this as well. Even when it is legally and logistically possible, how many people actually do make the move from NY to New Mexico or how many French decide to work somewhere like Germany?
Is this similar to delayed gratification? I find it much easier in general to do the 'boring' meeting prep and get stuff out of the way so I can relax later.
I think this is just a corollary of having your priorities straight. You'll likely prioritize the most important things first if you have a clear goal of what you want.
So, you're doing whatever sequence is better. It's a general case of the example you mention:
With one permutation (yours), you can get everything done.
With another permutation (relax first, meeting prep later) - you might be leaving the prep for the last minute.
There's some cases when the first permutation is better - when you have enough energy, say, and the meeting is important.
There's other cases when the second permutation is better - when, say, you're already low on energy and the meeting isn't that important - so you're prioritising relaxing.
There's more examples on the linked page[0]
An example of neither delayed gratification, nor priorities:
Permutation 1: Accusing someone of spewing non-sense, then understanding what they really meant.
Permutation 2: Understanding what they really meant, and then, if necessary, accusing them of spewing nonsense.
Permutation 2 as a habit leads to better outcomes. Mostly.
Namaste Yoga (DVD set sold on Amazon)
Best Yoga series I know. Combines synchronized breathing with movement/meditation. Especially nice to do after a hot bath, when muscles are warmed up.
I find it strange that this blog author keeps submitting these listickles to HN until they hit the front page like this. To me that seems like this is less good content and more blogspam. See for yourself: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=neilkakkar.com
Not cool. It sets a bad precedent for the community by trying to game the (unwritten) rules. In equilibrium, HN is drowned by blogspam and people leave HN.
To be fair it does seem pretty random when stuff gets taken up and when it doesn't. AFAICT sometimes content that ends up very popular is ignored the first few submissions.
One of the things I've struggled with implementing these life skills is dealing with the cost of failure/trying new things. Both as a monetary cost (switching degrees, studying "non-essential" humanities topics like philosophy), and the cost that we are mortal, and there's only so much time to explore, develop taste, etc.
Can someone please offer me a counterpoint, or counter-perspective?
Actually, I think one of the most important skills that people should be learning/improving these days (not on this list) is the ability to parse dubious sources for elements of truth. (/irony if that is a thing.)
Consider the recent events in Washington; almost everything you read about it is heavily slanted in some direction, whether deliberately or accidentally. Good luck finding anyone just reporting/analysing the plain old (actually complex and unsimplifiable) truth, with no narrative filtering.
75 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadI have the most difficulty with the 'learn to see what others see' point. It can take me a long time to see why non-technical people have some of views they do (regarding tech, requirements, etc.) Usually this comes in the form of them ascribing more value to something then I do. For instance, uber - to me its an unlicensed taxi service. To others I know, its the best thing since sliced bread. Many of the 'Unicorns' spark this reaction from me. Which is probably why I'm not retired on a private island somewhere :-P
Thing is, companies are not servicing those areas because its not profitable. That makes me extremely leery of claims that gig drivers can make minimum wage ( or more) in those areas. I feel the drivers are basically subsidizing the ride companies profits.
edit: which means, I ultimately feel these companies will go out of business.
Since the ride companies don't make any profits... this cannot be a true statement.
But that felt like just rubbing it in :-P
Also, they all seem to be trying to pivot to delivery and self-driving cars, so I guess they have doubts about profitability with the current setup.
Are licensed cabs not serving those areas because it's not profitable, or are they not serving those areas because other areas are more profitable and the licensing regime's medalion limits mean the more profitable areas won't be saturated with (licensed) taxis.
Unlicensed taxis could mean less profitable, but still profitable realms are able to be serviced, because there are more taxis. It also makes it more possible to profit because the prices aren't fixed, and some of the costs of licensed cabs can be avoided (at possible peril).
It does seem like mostly a scheme to subsidize rides (and vehicle leases) by investors, with little benefit for the drivers. I also am deeply suspect of the long term health of the current unlicensed taxi services; but there's certainly potential.
Personally, I'd vote for 'not profitable'. Not every place that lacks decent cab service is limited by medallions. I'd personally guess that most places lacking service are small towns and suburbs. In those cases, I don't think lack of medallions is an issue.
Also, personal anecdata - I take Lyft about 5-10 times a month with the same stops each time. I have never gotten the same driver twice. This just makes it feel like a big ponzi scheme to me, with fresh drivers coming in as old drivers wise up and move on...
TBF - I use doordash quite a lot also, and have the same experience with 'dashers' - never the same one twice.
Haha, me too.
Did I miss interpret and this guy is saying he is in fact rich?
I have to keep reminding myself that everyone isn't like me.
In my private talks with myself, I refer to this skill as modelling other people well: in effect, I'm trying to build models for different kinds of people.
There's lots of different kinds, and a few broad types show up, explaining most of their (general / broad) actions.
This is still very much a work in progress for myself too, but would be very interesting to see if I get somewhere substantial.
One way I've thought about this is a difference in understanding patterns.
Imagine that you can see a picture of a landscape. You can see the sun in the sky, rolling hills covered in grass, and a town in the distance. You can probably reproduce this picture. You might not be able to draw it well, or maybe at all, but you could at least describe it.
Now imagine a picture of some English text. You can reproduce this rather accurately. Maybe even from memory.
After that, imagine a picture of text in Dutch. You can reproduce it when you can see it, but you'll probably have difficulty recalling it. The patterns don't make as much sense, because you don't understand Dutch.
Now, imagine an image of Japanese text. Reproducing it, even when it's right next to you, would be difficult. The patterns that make up the text don't make sense to you. You don't have enough experience with Japanese to even try to put pieces together to describe it to someone. You can forget about trying to memorize it.
Now
Think about people with different language backgrounds looking at these same images. They might be looking at the same thing, but they will see something different. People who aren't familiar with Japanese and Korean might not even be able to tell these two languages apart! They look very different, but with no experience they both look like squiggly gibberish. It comes down to a difference in experience with different patterns.
This idea applies to basically everything in life. Be it understanding tech, playing sports, riding a bike, or playing video games. People's past experiences will influence what they can recognize and reproduce in those activities.
If you want to experience this distance yourself then I recommend playing some video game where you can significantly improve at the game quickly. Something like Super Hexagon. At first, you'll fail. You'll fail within the first few seconds over and over. In minutes, however, you'll fail less and less. Soon, you can go a whole minute without failing. You do this on a few different occasions and suddenly, it's difficult for you to understand how you couldn't do this right from the start. After all, the game is quite simple! It just wasn't simple for you at the time.
It's not just a difference in preferences.
But I've tried now not worry about the process too much and just to get on with actually writing in it!
[0]: https://neilkakkar.com/the-human-log.html
Sure, it's possible to approach code in that way, but to me it's similar to never developing taste. The defining characteristics of the software (the documentation) is for many intents and purposes simply illegible to them, and they're basically saying "I'll know the entry / extensibility point / bug when I see it."
I interview for this in part by asking the interviewee what the most interesting new features are about recent versions of X language.
When you have documentation you can trust to be accurate, complete, and up to date, it can be very helpful to use it though.
[1] unless you're building on top of binary only software, and you're not comfortable with reverse engineering
For example I may love and have a highly developed taste for “western” style classical music and have little appreciation for microtonal Indian classical music without believing it is somehow inferior, yet at the same time believe that not all music is equally good. This isn’t exactly the same as moral relativism that you call out but related.
Preference is much easier to map to your actions, but does not imply you think it's the only way. To go back to the analogy, I can think the other form is equally interesting, but realize I haven't spent enough time on it to really differentiate things at the level I can with my preferred form. There is no question where my preference lies, but that does not imply I think it's a superior form. Presumably if I thought it was an inferior form, I might change preference.
In other words I read it as an elaboration on “practice makes perfect.” Or, there’s no substitute for experience. (100% true in my... er, experience, across several different fields.)
One of the first pieces of advice I got in my career was about a study on expertise. (Wish I had a reference.) The authors wanted to know what made the experts different from the non-experts. You know what the difference was? Reps. That’s it.
Now, as someone who has taught a technical, challenging, and all-encompassing field—by which I mean a field that covers not just a knowledge domain but also psychomotor skills and personal values—I can tell you that some people do bring more natural ability at the start. But even those folks don’t achieve mastery without the reps.
I've actually long wondered if this is true.
Freedom of movement obviously works at the city level, up to 1 million or so. It obviously works at the megacity level, up to 10 million. It obviously works at the individual state/province level up to 40+ million. It obviously works at US scale (350M). It obviously works at EU scale, 800 million. It obviously works at India's scale, 1.3 billion people.
Why is it that if you tried to open the border literally any wider than it is right now, it would all fall down?
It's never made sense to me.
There are huge disparities in wealth and income within America, right? America's poorest state has a median income of 45K (Mississippi) and it's richest state has a median income of 80K (Maryland). Why doesn't everyone just move to Maryland? Or better yet just move to San Francisco (median 112K). Obviously there's factors other than economics keeping people in place.
Many European countries have generous welfare programs, and have open borders with other EU countries with far less generous ones. It works.
One common approach is to mandate having worked at least one day in the country in question in order to be able to use welfare programs, and keeping things like unemployment benefits proportional (with a cap, of course) to previous income in the same country.
Actually it has caused a lot of resentment in the richer countries and it was one of the contributing factors to Brexit, as well as the rise of new far right parties in France and Germany.
It's also notable how Europeans reacted to non-European migrants who attempt to enter the EU while fleeing the war in Syria.
I wouldn't say the EU has migration very well figured out.
That's still a relatively small difference compared to places where incomes can be $100/year or much less. I definitely think there's room for more experimentation in this area, but it's probably not as simple as "just open the borders".
Maryland has Baltimore. One of America’s poorest cities. Moving to Maryland won’t solve someone from Mississippi’s problems.
That outcome seems like the most humanitarian and egalitarian in a warzone. I wouldn’t want to describe to an about-to-be rejected asylum seeker that everyone is actually better off if they are left to die in their place of birth as opposed to living freely in any other part of the globe.
If you are for global productivity, rather than local wealth, then open borders are the way, but they come with all kinds of other political challenges since they put the world on a course to unification more generally.
In areas with easy migration I think there's less of a cultural shift that a person has to go through in order to make it work. That's why it works within cities and states/provinces, and Europe and India could fall into this as well. Even when it is legally and logistically possible, how many people actually do make the move from NY to New Mexico or how many French decide to work somewhere like Germany?
Is this similar to delayed gratification? I find it much easier in general to do the 'boring' meeting prep and get stuff out of the way so I can relax later.
So, you're doing whatever sequence is better. It's a general case of the example you mention:
With one permutation (yours), you can get everything done. With another permutation (relax first, meeting prep later) - you might be leaving the prep for the last minute.
There's some cases when the first permutation is better - when you have enough energy, say, and the meeting is important.
There's other cases when the second permutation is better - when, say, you're already low on energy and the meeting isn't that important - so you're prioritising relaxing.
There's more examples on the linked page[0]
An example of neither delayed gratification, nor priorities:
Permutation 1: Accusing someone of spewing non-sense, then understanding what they really meant.
Permutation 2: Understanding what they really meant, and then, if necessary, accusing them of spewing nonsense.
Permutation 2 as a habit leads to better outcomes. Mostly.
[0]: https://neilkakkar.com/sequencing-things-in-the-right-order....
How to Trick Your Brain to Like Doing Hard Things – Atomic Habits by James Clear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7w5r5PfBKo
How To Speak by Patrick Winston
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY
Help with Writing: George Orwell -Politics and the English Language
https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...
Philosophy - A Guide to Happiness (7 parts) by Alain de Botton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVA8jX9KQcE&list=PL6EB5455DD...
Namaste Yoga (DVD set sold on Amazon) Best Yoga series I know. Combines synchronized breathing with movement/meditation. Especially nice to do after a hot bath, when muscles are warmed up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7drLSbrHft0&t=2s
I don't submit things more than 4x now. What you see are the remnants of the experiment.
At the same time, I don't think things make it to the front-page if they're bad.
Minutely: The fact that I couldn't game it means it isn't that vulnerable.
Can someone please offer me a counterpoint, or counter-perspective?
What happened to all the interesting, utopian, and downright weird thinking that used to go on in the digital space?
Alternatively, see QAnon sites xD
Consider the recent events in Washington; almost everything you read about it is heavily slanted in some direction, whether deliberately or accidentally. Good luck finding anyone just reporting/analysing the plain old (actually complex and unsimplifiable) truth, with no narrative filtering.