Iris

My first article from Wellington: it's about some weird things I've noticed about tech people and their weird phobia of observation and empirical thinking.

https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/tech_empiricism_problem

Tech's empiricism problem | deadSimpleTech

The tech industry has extreme difficulty integrating information that doesn't have its source in an overtly rationalist process. In practice, this means that we tend to think that if you can't give a logical chain of deductions that proves that something is the case, your information is worthless. The issue with this is that day-to-day, in the tech world and outside of it, the vast bulk of the information we use to make decisions isn't this kind of information.

deadSimpleTech
Mar 15 at 7:29amWeb
Show threadLyallMar 15
@iris_meredith Welcome to Wellington! Good luck with your job hunt; I work remotely for an Australian company these days so I probably can't help directly, but I'd be glad to do anything I can to help you settle in.
Show threadzygmydMar 15

@iris_meredith

RIght on the nose with the hostility to empiricism. Also suddenly a whole lot more past conversations make a lot more sense.

Show threadChris SiebenmannMar 15
@iris_meredith Thank you for this. The rationality/empiricism split gives me a new good framing for computer security, for what I've in the past waved my hands about and called "math versus people", and now I feel like I understand how and why that split happens so often and so predictably.
Show threadItamar Turner-TrauringMar 15
@iris_meredith Have you read Robert J. Thomas' "What Machines Can't Do"? He talks about a similar dichotomy, in the area of manufacturing, where the tension is not coding vs DevOps, but design vs manufacturing. But at least the time he was writing, the political hierarchy was similar. He suggests that engineers need not just an aesthetic of product (which maps somewhat to what you call rationalism) but also an aesthetic of process (mapping somewhat to empiricism).
Show threadIrisMar 15
@itamarst I haven't, but I'll be sure to dig out a copy now!
Show threadJeremiahMar 15

@iris_meredith this is probably also why people (myself included) feel like the question "Is there a point to understanding things?" is in contention in the software industry right now.

https://social.coop/@chrisjrn/116172307048728544

Show threadHenriMar 16
Great piece! This lays out why I like reverse-engineering so much: it's basically a perfect setup for inductive/empirical research. And it could help explain why many coders are so resistant to developing security outlooks.
I'm also curious how you square deductive mode worship with the actual practice of say mathematics, which famously is an empirical/intuitive creative process where deductive reasoning is largely left to the "boring" part of actually writing down proofs. A programming parallel is the way "taste" is valued.
Show threadIrisMar 16
@unusual_thoughts Oh, that's easy: nobody gives a shit about what practicing mathematicians actually say or do.
Show threadKilroy_Was_HereMar 16

@iris_meredith

One of the things I am eternally grateful for is not going into a computer field. The more I find out about it, the more I see how inhumane it is, in the sense that it seemingly relies on exploitation, in the sense that it continually debases itself, never giving any consideration for any higher nature or higher thinking, and in the sense that it neither considers humanity - everything must be sacrificed to The Machine, for The Machine is always good, is sanctum lux suprema.

Show threadPoligofsky 🇨🇦 .. 🚫🤖6d ago

@iris_meredith Good article. It's nice to read someone's attempt to understand the problem.

May I offer a tangential interpretation?

Empiricism enables us to cope with a key feature of the world: uncertainty due to complexity. While computers can help do statistical analysis, the typical computer programmer prefers to see life as mechanical and computational ("rational"). They don't like uncertainty. Thus the rise of their new weird ideologies.

The future is incalculable (except in contrived, reductionist scenarios) because reality is characterized by complex systems. We can describe their features qualitatively, and probabilistically. But we cannot predict their macro behaviours with certainty. So we use heuristics, which "rationalists" do not like. Heuristics being a feature of "empirical" and "induction"-based thinking.

Rationalists reject chaos and complexity. The implications disturb them. Whether education can address this, I am skeptical. Moreover, rationalists control the education system.