I've written another essay about my mad #PostScarcitySoftware #Lisp system.

"We don't need to know, or have known, these people to build on their work. We don't have to, and cannot in detail, fully understand their work. There is simply too much of it, its complexity would overwhelm us.

We don't know. We don't care. And that is a protective mechanism, a mechanism which is necessary in order to allow us to focus on our own task, if we are to produce excellent work."

https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2026-03-20-Dont-know-dont-care/

Don't know, don't care

Modern computing systems are extremely complex. It is impossible for someone to be expert on every component of the system. To produce excellent work, it is necessary to specialise, to avoid being distracted by the necessary intricacies of the things on which your work depends, or of the (not yet conceived) intricacies of the work of other people which will ultimately depend on yours. It is necessary to trust

The Fool on the Hill
@simon_brooke I liked your essay. PS the link to the 2006 essay in the start of the article is broken.

@met thank you! Will fix.

All the posts on the #PostScarcitySoftware project are here:

https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/tags-output/Post%20Scarcity/

I see I've written the justification for 'Don't know, don't care' twice... I should reread the older one and see how different it is from what I wrote today!

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Random thoughts on politics, fiction and software; occasionally interesting.

The Fool on the Hill