Mastodawn

Cat Hicks Jan 2, 2025

People are not neutral observers of their environments; people + their environments create interactions, and the same environment can be sampled by different people with extremely different OR extremely shared perceptual filters because of our shared (or conflicting) social identities.

This is why it is neither about individuals, nor about "systems without individuals"; it is about multisystems models that understand emergent interactions (sorry! it's way harder)

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Cat Hicks Jan 2, 2025

Some thought leaders in software seem to get a lot out of saying "just ask the engineers!"

Sorry, but this leaves questions: which engineers? Why the engineers? The engineers at what point in time? Ask them what? What is the variance among engineers in how they are reading the question? What if the group of engineers is all entangled in a specific organizational narrative at a certain point of time?

Usually it comes back to "I'm just automagically right and so are my friends, specifically"

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John Schrag Jan 2, 2025

@grimalkina As a boy who happened to be good at math, I was always told that I was Special and Smart - completely ignoring the vast lacunae of knowledge I had in other (undervalued) areas. People assumed I was generally smart, because I could do one thing they found hard (likely only because math is taught so badly). I think a lot of people raised like that really internalize the idea that they are just generally smarter, and a lot of other people foolishly believe it too. (I suspect it’s more true of males because of social bias, but I’m sure you know better than me about that)

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Cat Hicks Jan 2, 2025

@jvschrag oh this is a funny synchronicity as I was just talking about this exact dynamic and how it can be damaging to people on either side of it

https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/113759611342790492

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Cat Hicks

@jvschrag and, I appreciate your sharing & the amount of self-knowledge it must take to navigate this. I think there is a deep loneliness in being seen in only one way even when that way is "good" (for certain societal outcomes and opportunities), and I generally sense a kind of unhealed loneliness in people who are deeply committed to the idea that everyone else is a fool (because honestly....what a terrible world to create for yourself)