from Hacker News

Cocktail party ideas

by Naac on 2/2/22, 10:47 PM with 110 comments

by JackFr on 2/3/22, 3:00 AM
I worked deep in the mortgage backed security industry for a decade before the financial crisis and for some years since. I know a lot about it, and some big events firsthand. I find that people are interested in my thoughts on the causes until they hear them: while there were some really bad actors at the margins, the bulk of the crisis was caused by many, many people making good-faith, rational decisions which in hindsight proved foolish.
Of course I could be wrong — consciously or unconsciously I could simply be voicing my own bias. But I think at some level people prefer a simple narrative with a hero and a villain regardless of whether the narrative is true.
by dustintrex on 2/3/22, 1:02 AM
There's a classic cocktail party icebreaker related to this: when you ask the usual awkward intro question about what somebody else does, and they tell you "X", reply with "wow, that sounds really hard!". They'll almost certainly tell you "yes!", explain a bit about why it's hard, and now you have a genuine conversation going.
by BurritoAlPastor on 2/3/22, 12:19 AM
The core point about people systemically underestimating the complexity of any field outside their own is well taken. Joseph Conrad writes: "Men earning their bread in any very specialized occupation will talk shop, not only because it is the most vital interest of their lives but also because they have not much knowledge of other subjects. They have never had the time to get acquainted with them."
However, if I were to decline to speculate on any matter on which I lacked an expert-level understanding, the number of subjects on which I could hold a conversation would dwindle to virtually nothing, and I'd be much more boring to talk to at these cocktail parties. So, I intend to continue to spitball blindly, just for fun.
by emtel on 2/3/22, 12:32 AM
It’s not surprising to me that people underestimate the complexity of fields not their own - I do it all the time myself.
What I think would be more interesting is the question: when are outsider critiques or suggestions likely to be valid? To stay with the construction example, it is clear that construction in the US is more expensive than it needs to be in many cases - railroad construction costs are famously many times higher in the US than in other industrialized countries. Is there insider knowledge I don’t have that would make this observation fallacious?
And what about cases where one isn’t simply pointing to a counter example? Are there cases where outsiders have made arguments from first principles that were correct, despite their lack of expertise in the field?
by acrump on 2/3/22, 9:07 AM
This reminds me of what Socrates said in his defense at his trial. He told the court that he was wise becase he knew the boundries of his own wisdom; and that when he would speak to experts in the city he found them only to be wise in their own fields, yet suffering with the falicy that they were wise in the fields of others.
"At last I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew many fine things; and in this I was not mistaken, for they did know many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom"
https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/apology/full-text/apol...
by exolymph on 2/2/22, 11:56 PM
Relevant classic that's been on HN many times: Reality has a surprising amount of detail http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...
by Avalaxy on 2/3/22, 1:28 AM
What kind of lame parties does this guy go to? I expected an article about dope things to make a cocktail party more awesome. Like fireworks, or a poker table.
by vincentmarle on 2/3/22, 12:18 AM
> People often discuss the standard trendy topics (some recent ones I've observed at multiple parties are how to build a competitor to Google search and how to solve the problem of high transit construction costs) and explain why people working in the field today are doing it wrong and then explain how they would do it instead.
This is exactly why I moved away from SF. Can't stand these alpha nerds trying to one-up each other at parties.
by dahart on 2/3/22, 1:13 AM
> No one thinks about moving the starting or ending point of the bridge midway through construction. […] But Hillel interviewed a civil engineer who said that they had to move a bridge!
My local Department Of Transportation has this notice on the info page of the bridge construction project nearest to me:
“This is a design-build project, meaning the design and construction will happen simultaneously, which allows DOT and the contractor to include the most innovative and current construction solutions while ensuring a quality product.”
by friedman23 on 2/2/22, 11:35 PM
Absolutely everything has more complexity than is visible on the surface. Just go in with that assumption and you wont make yourself look like a fool. I also often find you only really look like a fool when you confidently make incorrect statements and denigrate others. Making incorrect statements / assumptions with the openness to learn from a small horse instead of a high horse is admirable not foolish.
by wink on 2/3/22, 10:26 AM
I think the author has a few too many misconceptions about the programmers' misconceptions.
"How long will it take to implement search here?" "Wait, why does it take longer than a week, Google can do it".
Things I've heard an actual Product Owner once say. Please tell the the one automobile engineer who was asked to make a car in a week.
So yes, I absolutely believe that /some/ programmers will say that their work is so complicated and like engineering, there are just a lot of seemingly exaggerated examples that have actually happened. I'm not saying it's harder. I'm just saying there are classes of problems that should not happen in civil engineering.
Project is halfway done, written in Python. Someone: "Can we not switch to Java?". I would equate that to "The metal bridge is halfway done, can we switch to wood?". This is not inferring that this is the most concerning problem in a problem, and that's my gripe with this article. And the moving bridge is also an exaggerated example taken for shock value. How often does that really happen? And would you put a random engineer of medium seniority in charge of this?
Disclaimer: I am not saying programming is harder or special. I've worked on construction sites and I've seen my fair share of ridiculous requests. But people are often simply persuaded a lot easier if you point to a physical wall and explain the problem, versus software where you need to start explaining at the very beginning. Sadly, often also for customers or product managers.
by supernova87a on 2/3/22, 4:19 AM
I have a counter/corollary(?) to the idea that often people don't know what they don't know or assume that their surface knowledge can accurately understand a field, and they should stop making such bold statements:
If an executive with some great new idea or strategy not grounded in the full detail were to pay attention to the all the details, they might never try or get anything new done. Because if you listen to and empathize with all the details of how complicated something is and how there's this subtlety or that follow-on issue, you start to accept all the reasons it can't be done (either at all, or quickly). So in some cases, you only get progress because of persisting in ignorance that you can do something new that breaks the rules.
Of course I don't mean doing something that is structurally or physically impossible -- just in cases where the legacy of "why it can't be done" has created inertia that stops progress if you accept it a little too much.
by Hermitian909 on 2/3/22, 2:48 AM
I see this in HN in regards to education. Education in the US leaves much to be desired, and there are many ways we could improve it, but the complaints here rarely touch on the most dire problems e.g. comments like "what we really need to do is bust the teacher's union" which is an insane complaint compared to the fact that most schools teach reading wrong as policy by mandating the three cueing system be taught instead of phonics[0].
[0] https://fivefromfive.com.au/the-three-cueing-system/
by matsemann on 2/3/22, 11:09 AM
> The predictability of a true engineer’s world is an enviable thing. But ours is a world always in flux, where the laws of physics change weekly.
Heh, I also disagree with this quote, but for a different reason than the author. I mean, what's nice about CS is that's it's pure, deterministic, straight forward. It's like doing basic physics problems and the text states "assume zero air resistance and zero friction". We have the simple laws of physics.
I don't envy those having to deal with the messiness of the real world. They have it far harder than me as a programmer.
by tompccs on 2/2/22, 11:47 PM
People mistake schoolchild-level analogies for the way the real world works all the time. Kids grow up disillusioned that the neat causal view of history with a strong moral arc they learned at school is a gross simplification, and assume they've been hoodwinked as opposed to just talked down to. Likewise, schoolchildren learn a simplified version of physics and mistake that for the real thing (for example, believing that water has set freezing and boiling points rather than phase boundaries on a pressure/temperature plot). Actually, there is probably a trap which certain people who pay a lot of attention in school but never deeply pursue any subject outside of it fall into, which is to grossly overestimate their understanding of things. Whereas the class bozo is probably closer to the mark in his assessment of his own abilities.
This cocktail party observation is definitely common in certain circles, but I think particularly American culture, where maverick thinking is so highly prized. This type of thinking is a true wellspring of innovation, but is not accessible to the vast majority of people. It does remind me of this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/675/
I'd also caution against being too harsh in such people, especially in informal situations. "Why don't you just..." type questions are actually a great way to improve your understanding of a field, and should be taken in the spirit of curiosity, and not necessarily as an indicator of extreme hubris.
by dfan on 2/3/22, 12:35 PM
There was a fun Hacker News post last year that consisted just of searching HN comments for the phrase "why not simply": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27415725
by gnicholas on 2/3/22, 2:52 AM
+1 for the appendix reference to Scout Mindset. It's a really great read, with practical steps you can take to start down the path of scout mindset thinking.
https://www.amazon.com/Scout-Mindset-Perils-Defensive-Thinki...
by imwillofficial on 2/3/22, 2:10 AM
The author misses the point that at parties, people are talking to connect and socialize, not solve world hunger, despite the topic at hand.
by midenginedcoupe on 2/3/22, 11:30 AM
This could have just as easily been titled "HN comments". The amount of woefully uninformed soap-boxing on here is staggering!
by crsv on 2/3/22, 12:48 AM
The author seems insufferable at cocktail parties.
by cycomanic on 2/3/22, 7:18 AM
A good friend worked as a the transport manager for for a smallish ecological diary producer. When the original owners sold the business, the new owners (a financial consortium with some food experience) brought in a new executive team in, who had previously worked together to create direct to consumer food startup (something like hello fresh IIRC). Initially my friend was very excited because the owners looked like they wanted to really grow the business.
Unfortunately it became soon apparent that the execs mainly had "cocktail party ideas" about changes, "we created a new business in this area that didn't exist before, which is much harder than running an established business. therefore we know best. How hard can it be". So the production manager and my friend soon became the naysayers because they said when they thought things wouldn't work. Soon after they both were made redundant, but the business is now very close to going under.
All this story just to say, that this is not just at cocktail parties, but also in work situations people like to discard established knowledge because they think they know how to "disrupt" .
by sampo on 2/3/22, 8:47 AM
Here's an opposite point of view:
"Sometimes the Best Ideas Come from Outside Your Industry"
https://hbr.org/2014/11/sometimes-the-best-ideas-come-from-o...
by soheil on 2/3/22, 3:48 AM
Yes this so much. Also true about when it comes to any subject that people feel like you "know" the solution or at least feel like they know more than the idiot next door. This happens so often, people see the tip of the iceberg and assume they know the shape of the whole thing. I think it's pretty logical to do this, however, otherwise how are we going to make sense of the world? We have to use whatever incomplete information we have to form a hypothesis of what is really true. Are we supposed to outsource our sense making to a third party? I think what Dan is suggesting here is even more dangerous than what the people at cocktail parties are doing. Namely, refrain from forming any conjectures about the state of the world because you could be wrong.
by spirographer on 2/3/22, 7:57 PM
The whole discussion of whether we live in a Matrix-like simulation falls into this category as well. There are so many layers of oversimplification at play in most peoples' conceptualization of a simulated universe that it is hard to even begin to have a conversation about it.
by MattGaiser on 2/3/22, 12:47 AM
On the other hand there have been numerous examples of people who knew relatively nothing about a field and came to completely dominate it.
That is the incredible thing about Silicon Valley. People who knew/know nothing about various industries when starting come to utterly dominate them.
Amazon should never have succeeded. They knew nothing about books compared to booksellers. They won anyway. And then proceeded to utterly crush every other company in retail. And they continue to do so.
SpaceX is utterly absurd in its existence. Utterly absurd. Boeing and Lockheed had way more knowledge and experience. Yet they are about to be pushed out of a lot of launch.
by rq1 on 2/3/22, 3:04 AM
Where are the cocktails? I thought there would be some interesting cocktail ideas
by Isamu on 2/3/22, 1:38 PM
More fun at a party to be had when you find out what a person’s true expertise is and probe that until you find something surprising.
Doesn’t take long to find something that can change your views or offset your ignorance.
by andmarios on 2/3/22, 1:52 PM
Most startups probably start as a cocktail party idea, so although the author is correct, he underestimates the value of the concept.
Also, whilst it is intuitive that someone without expertise in a field is easy to get everything wrong, it is more interesting that often experts also get everything wrong. Sometimes this happens because the problem may affect an expert's field but belongs to another field, or the problem just exists from someone else's point of view.
In Greece we refer to people who always know everything better than experts as couch coaches. :)
by gundmc on 2/3/22, 4:29 AM
I came in looking for fun ideas for the next cocktail party and found an interesting opinion piece. I particularly enjoyed this as someone who has worked in both aerospace and software engineering.
by bradleyjg on 2/3/22, 4:19 AM
I’m sure this is true. But when a project is 7 years and billions of dollars over due (east side access in nyc, in this case but there are similar examples) it seems more than far for the people that have spent that money and have thus far gotten no benefits to spout ignorantly about why. Indulging us seems the least the responsible industries can do.
I’m exchange I’m happy to listen to civil engineers and construction workers theories about why Tesla is taking so long to deliver the full self driving software they’ve been charging for.
by nikisweeting on 2/3/22, 6:55 AM
I feel like even the most egregious offenders I know of in this area are still aware that designing/building planes is far harder engineering than most software projects.
by eyelidlessness on 2/3/22, 4:00 AM
(Disclaimer) I’m not fun at parties.
I don’t think this is fun at parties.
by throwawayarnty on 2/3/22, 1:26 PM
Little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
And as more and more information is distilled into sound bites, tweets, and simplified visualisations, I am afraid more and more people will spend their brain power acquiring little bits of knowledge, never going deeper than a 10-minute TED talk.
The end result will be great cocktail party conversations, but very few people actually solving real problems.
by raldi on 2/3/22, 8:07 AM
So what’s the actual reason that public transit projects are wildly more expensive and slower to build in the United States than in other countries?
by chrisseaton on 2/3/22, 12:12 PM
These seem like the least-chill cocktail parties ever.
by Malic on 2/3/22, 1:39 PM
I can't emphasize enough how much I like a browser's Reader View for web pages like this.
by jiveturkey on 2/3/22, 10:37 AM
a tale as old as time!
by TameAntelope on 2/3/22, 4:37 AM
I noticed how people tend to vastly underestimate a topic's complexity too, but I'm not sure what to do with it. I feel like a constant buzzkill when hanging out with people, and I do my best to hide it, but most of the time I end up thinking about how incomplete our conversation is, and how therefore useless/wasteful it is.
In my more charitable moments, I think that it's good mental exercise, but it's hard to think generously about someone else when you hear them say superficial "I could do better" statements like the topic of this article. How could they be so naïve, to think that they can, casually, upend an entire field? It happens on Reddit (and HN) all the time, too. Every community centered around a creative work is lousy with, "Why didn't they just" style arguments.
Also, not for nothing, but I've never heard the "building an airplane while flying it" analogy used to suggest software is harder than building an airplane. Pardon my cursing, but who the fuck thinks programming is harder than aerospace engineering???
Finally, I found this super duper hard to read all the way through, due to the lack of formatting. I'm assuming that decision is somehow intentional, but it's not a kind one. My eyes hurt. :(
by transitivebs on 2/3/22, 2:24 AM
dunning kruger effect is as valid at cocktail parties as it is everywhere else