Life is Not Always An Engineering Problem.

With all due civility, this is stupid. The fact that we as a species are short staffed and short on time doesn't mean that engineering strategies are inappropriate. On the contrary, they're the only game in town. Triage and problem selection are themselves algorithms with defined optimisation criteria. That you take issue with the selection of those criteria (e.g. elegance, aesthetics) by people trying to solve their personal pain points doesn't repudiate the framework.

Not a very convincing article.<p><pre><code> "Love, or happiness, and free will certainly aren’t. Or for that matter, a lot of other “problems” being solved on the internet today. Simply put, we can’t dedicate our energy to fixing it all. Nor should we. </code></pre> While I don't necessarily disagree with this sentiment, presenting it without elaboration or support is sloppy. Additionally, what are these other "problems" being solved on the 'net that aren't problems? Yes, yes, <i>we</i> might know what they are, but that really out to be mentioned.<p>Sloppy, sloppy.

"But colloquially, the word “hack” seems to have lost its way syntactically. What once stood for elegance and rebellion under the hood of the machine has since taken on a new meaning; namely, in the form of mashups, toys, and even life as a whole. It’s as if for the first time, every problem is an engineering problem."<p>I don't think the word 'hack' has lost its way, but rather it has expanded its meaning. Every problem is not an engineering problem, but I think that the expansion of the term reflects a cultural change where we are looking at the world around us and ourselves, and seeing (where we didn't before) engineering problems that actually <i>have</i> been there all along. It's a shift in perspective, and without even speaking to whether or not that is a good, bad, or neutral thing, I <i>do</i> think that there are many aspects of our lives and world that are engineering problems that were not looked at this way before.<p>"Life is not always an engineering problem. Love, happiness, and free will certainly aren’t."<p>Obviously (to me anyway) life is not always an engineering problem, but happiness often is, by any definition. A patient seeking treatment for clinical depression is the very portrait of 'happiness as an engineering problem'. Outside of the medical field, there are entire industries devoted to 'self help' and improvement of one sort or another. Millions stacked upon millions of people walk into stores, pull a manual off the shelf, and follow instructions on how to attain happiness. I think happiness as an engineering problem is actually a lot more common than it seems at first blush.

This reminds me of Hamdy Taha and his textbook on Operations research, who proposed that simpler approaches should be approached first:<p><i>Responding to complaints of slow elevator service in a large office building, the OR team initially perceived the situation as a waiting-line problem that might require the use of mathematical queuing analysis or simulation. After studying the behavior of the people voicing the complaint, the psychologist on the team suggested installing full-length mirrors at the entrance to the elevators. Miraculously the complaints disappeared, as people were kept occupied watching themselves and others while waiting for the elevator.</i><p>update: fixed formatting.

<p><pre><code> If developers tried to solve every problem the way that life hackers try to add shortcuts to their life, they would get nothing done. </code></pre> Can't agree more with this sentence.