More communist propaganda? Let's delete this crap and keep it off Hackernews. It was so nice here until all the losers showed up. Hopefully the author of this article will buy a gun, stick it in their mouth, and do us all a favor.
Not much to critique, though it would have been nice to see the author outline the hegemonic nature of the idea that competition between individuals is the natural state of the world.
Is that the natural state of the world? Seems like group cooperation is the natural state and our ability to collaborate in larger groups than any other species is what allowed us to rise to the top. Excessive individual competition leads to both combatants taking injuries and then dying of infection or being too weak to fend off predators.
See: flocks of birds, ant colonies, prides of lions, shoals of fish, pods of whales, any social, religious, military or financial grouping of humans, clownfish living with sea anemone, birds cleaning crocodile teeth, hermit crabs finding empty shells, bees pollinating plants etc
Even the introduction to this article is deeply corrupt. It describes the authors partner, an architect, an their constant attention to the flaws of others work and designs of structures. I’m sure many of us can relate to this feeling, within our own fields of expertise. However, the author seems to insinuate that if only we could overrule each individuals ownership and individual freedom to design and build their own things (buildings, wine racks, social structures), that society could be better.
Meandering, pointless, and ultimately futile without a readily-accessible thesis? Absolutely.
But the fact is, nobody single-handedly builds much of anything of consequence anymore. To call out the architecture metaphor is absolutely necessary! But perhaps for different reasons.
I'd be much more willing to trust what a society builds if everyone involved had a voice. Do I get to own my work when I design for Blizzard? Do I get agency over what I've built? And where does this end?
Technicians and a minority of engineers alike raised concerns about O-Rings before a certain disaster... If only we gave them some level of oversight over their own work, the Challenger Disaster would never have happened.
To suggest that any O-Rings anywhere are the responsibility/property of those NASA engineers is equally inane as divorcing the creator from their work. And yet, under our current intellectual property laws, this is too often the reality.
The sole architect is a strawman of a metaphor outside of very specific contexts. And even within them - who trained this architect? What reference documents do they use? Who assigned the purpose for the building? While these inputs are not enough to carry ownership, they are enough to quit pretending some lone figure is a "creative genius" that cannot be outperformed by a team on larger-scale works.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 39.0 ms ] threadSee: flocks of birds, ant colonies, prides of lions, shoals of fish, pods of whales, any social, religious, military or financial grouping of humans, clownfish living with sea anemone, birds cleaning crocodile teeth, hermit crabs finding empty shells, bees pollinating plants etc
Meandering, pointless, and ultimately futile without a readily-accessible thesis? Absolutely.
But the fact is, nobody single-handedly builds much of anything of consequence anymore. To call out the architecture metaphor is absolutely necessary! But perhaps for different reasons.
I'd be much more willing to trust what a society builds if everyone involved had a voice. Do I get to own my work when I design for Blizzard? Do I get agency over what I've built? And where does this end?
Technicians and a minority of engineers alike raised concerns about O-Rings before a certain disaster... If only we gave them some level of oversight over their own work, the Challenger Disaster would never have happened.
To suggest that any O-Rings anywhere are the responsibility/property of those NASA engineers is equally inane as divorcing the creator from their work. And yet, under our current intellectual property laws, this is too often the reality.
The sole architect is a strawman of a metaphor outside of very specific contexts. And even within them - who trained this architect? What reference documents do they use? Who assigned the purpose for the building? While these inputs are not enough to carry ownership, they are enough to quit pretending some lone figure is a "creative genius" that cannot be outperformed by a team on larger-scale works.