Random things

Re: Intellectual Bargain Shopping

Jeffery Veen quoted Nietzsche:

To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence. - Friedrich Nietzsche

And he goes on to argue that this is another way of looking at the old “users are stupid” adage. He says “Users aren’t stupid, they’re efficient,” and I largely agree. However, this only works because users are generally providing value back, either in the form of payment, feedback, community, etc. This also applies to the “people are stupid” adage, but not in nearly so positive a light. An “efficent” co-worker, or friend doesn’t necessarily provide value back to you. It’s frequently just as likely that they’re efficent only from their own perspective, and they find it much easier to ask me to do whatever task for them, regardless of how long it may take me to do it. This is a good thing to keep in mind, especially in a work environment. It’s frequently not efficent for you to do things for other people even though they would love for you to. It may be more up front effort to teach them how to do something new, but if they’re going to be at your desk every other day asking for it, you need to ask yourself if that’s time-effective for either of you. Sometimes when you tell people you’ll show them how, or point them to documentation, will think this is “putting them off”, and refuse to put in the effort to try for themselves, but I try to emphasize that I’ll be happy to help them with any problems they have, if they give it a try. The flip side is that everyone can’t know how to do everything. There is a large gray area between the specialist and generalist, and both ends are gunuinely useful. Sometimes it does make sense for you to be the goto person for certain tasks, as long as there is some plan for when you’re not around.