Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by opportunity cost - <AUTHOR> https://erikbern.com/2020/03/10/never-attribute-to-stupidity-that-which-is-adequately-explained-by-opportunity-cost.html <comment><USER3> Y'all missing the most important paragraph in the whole article:

 _> I spent many years working in a satellite office. A lot of the time when I had some deep technical disagreement about something, I'd fly to the main HQ, and go out for dinner with the other team. I wouldn't even talk about technology, just about random stuff. Once they knew me, and realize I was a human (and not a faceless blob), most technical disagreements tended to go away. People are more likely to assume positive intent and not malice/stupidity/laziness._

Building relationships is important important to get bug fixed/features built. Bug prioritization isn't a just a technical nor a business exercise.

Now, I want to hear which company this is that this guy could just "fly to HQ" (I'm assuming Microsoft Back in the Day) but the geographic gaps aren't always that large... :P

<comment><USER4> I've always believed telecommuting needs the remote equivalent of the golf course. There are certain human elements that cannot be built over a Zoom call, but do not inherently require a physical presence.

I have never started a company and I was hire #76 at my current place, but if I were to start something remote, I would find a game or hobby appreciated by all the founders and make sure that remained a bedrock of our culture.

<comment><USER5> I see the good intention behind all of these, but also feel there is the other side that is too often overlooked.

Going on golf courses together, dining with the team etc. are the traditional recipes to create trust. But it's walking that fine line between personal and professional life, while also bridging the technical abilities parts and the personal chemistry parts.

I understand we are all human and personal feelings have an impact on work, it can't be extracted up to a point. I'm just not sure we should see it as something that should be perpetuated, moved online or adapted to new environments if those were by default devoid of these elements.

Basically I'd hope we can prioritise other ways to create trust than building personal bonds (TBH, being good at one's job for a decent amount of time seems plenty enough to me)

<comment><USER6> "But it's walking that fine line between personal and professional life, while also bridging the technical abilities parts and the personal chemistry parts."

This is called networking and I don't think it's going away anytime soon.

I'm a consultant and I get along very well with the director of engineering where I'm working now. When cuts happen, I won't be the first to go. The first to go will be the people that have no relationship with upper management.

Career advancement isn't all about the job that you do.

"Basically I'd hope we can prioritise other ways to create trust than building personal bonds (TBH, being good at one's job for a decent amount of time seems plenty enough to me)"

Being only good at one's job is a great way to keep your current job and position forever. If that's what you want, it's fine. However, if you want to get into management or advance, you need to get noticed and build relationships so your potential can also be noticed.

<comment><USER7> > This is called networking and I don't think it's going away anytime soon.

It's never going away. It's human nature to trust and favor the people you know over those you don't.

A friend of mine who was one of the top salesmen in his outfit would eat his lunch at his desk to save money. But he wasn't getting promoted, while others were. He eventually realized the "do lunch" socializing with coworkers was essential to success.

The idea is to adapt to reality, it's far easier than to try to change human nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This rings really true with my experience at a startup. Everyone involved in the product could see it's weaknesses, we just didn't have the manpower to change them.

I've definitely fallen into the "attribute to malice/stupidity" trap as well, even when I _know_ that the people responsible are working flat out, if you're not in the trenches it's so easy to say "but it's so simple! I could do it in an hour". It's something you have to constantly keep in check.

Honestly, I think the prioritisation thing is absolutely the most important thing any team or company can do. The person working on a feature almost never has the overall context to accurately prioritise. The next feature or bug on whatever they're working on will always feel more important than someone else's problem. Building a working environment which empowers people to work towards a common goal - and not just whatever feels important to them in the moment - is really hard.

<comment><USER9> On the other hand, the importance of a specific task can sometimes be adequately assessed only by a narrow group of people, making it difficult to convey the importance to the larger organization. This usually falls in the realm of performance, "rare" bugs (especially non-deterministic bugs) and code quality.

Such "invisible" work may be difficult to justify over "visible" work, yet is crucial for the long-term quality of the product.

There is a decades-old ERP system (that shall remain unnamed), which to this day doesn't use foreign keys in its database. The consequences of this are not immediately visible, but are very serious in the long term, including data corruption (which I have actually seen with their customer) and (somewhat counter-intuitively) performance ([https://stackoverflow.com/a/8154375/533120](https://stackoverflow.com/a/8154375/533120)).

Having had a glimpse of their internal culture, I'm not surprised. Any "foreign key champion" would have been quickly assigned to "more important" tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't get the use of the terminology here.

Opportunity cost is the cost associated by not reaping the benefits of an alternative not being picked. This is a cost from the perspective of the party making the choice.

So in this story, 'opportunity cost' is not an _explanation_ why something didn't happen. It is a side effect of something not happening.

You could say the real opportunity cost in this story is the startup teams having a bunch of unhappy users. The _explanation_ for the missing features is simply: they did something else.

So better: "Never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by prioritisation"

<comment><USER11> _> So in this story, 'opportunity cost' is not an explanation why something didn't happen. It is a side effect of something not happening.

>You could say the real opportunity cost in this story is the startup teams having a bunch of unhappy users. The explanation for the missing features is simply: they did something else._

The "opportunity cost" _is_ an explanation and your suggestion of shifting the label "opportunity costs" to apply to something else such as "unhappy users" is just adding to the misinterpretation.

Let me try to bridge the gap between what the author wrote and your critique of it...

Think of "explanations" as different levels:

\- level 1: Why is feature X missing? _Because they did something else._

\- level 2: Why did they do something else? _Because of opportunity costs._

\- level 3: Why are there opportunity costs? _Because no company has infinite budgets, infinite programmers, and infinite time, and therefore, they must choose what _not_ to work on._

\- level 4: Why does the company not have infinite <anything>? _Because that 's what economists, philosophers, theoretical physicists, etc have observed in the visible universe so far and that's the framework of reality we're stuck with for the _practical_ purposes of running a company on Earth._

The level 1 cause & effect is "correct" and "true" but also _trivial, obvious, and uninteresting_.

The level 2 cause & effect is what the author is trying to explain.

The levels 3 and 4 start getting into metaphysical discussion which might be intellectually entertaining but hard to apply to real life.

<comment><USER12> I think the level 1 explanation isn't entirely trivial, actually. There are several level 1 hypotheses one might have at that point.

"Why is feature X missing?"

1\. They decided to do something else, and by extension, not this (e.g. because of opportunity costs)

2\. They decided not to do anything (e.g. because the product is abandoned)

3\. They evaluated the possibility of adding feature X, and decided it doesn't make sense now, even if the resources to implement it were available (similar to the above 2 but it means feature X is unlikely to get implemented without some external thing happening to make it make more sense)

4\. They evaluated the possibility of adding feature X, and decided it doesn't make sense ever (e.g. because it directly cannibalizes their primary business model)

If you would like feature X as a customer or potential customer, you may care which of those is actually the case. If you are responsible for a large chunk of their revenue, and feature X is make-or-break for you, 1 and 3 are ok scenarios for you, but in scenarios 2 and 4 you're unlikely to have much luck. If you are evaluating whether or not to start using this product, scenario 2 may be alarming enough to make you choose another product entirely, and scenario 4 tells you important things about their business model.

The article is suggesting that people overestimate the probability of explanations 2, 3, and 4, and that most of the time explanation 1 is the real one, especially for obvious shortcomings in a product. By the author's evaluation, explanation 1 is "opportunity cost", explanations 3 and 4 are "strategic reason", and explanation 2 isn't really covered (though it could fall under "opportunity cost" if you stretch).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I believe this is one of those things that are really hard to understand unless you have experienced it first hand. Although I always knew how important prioritization is, I understand it way better since working on my resource-constrained side project. You often fail to appreciate just how many obviously good things you can't do because there are even more important things to do.

Or, to quote Steve Jobs: "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are."

<comment><USER14> It's much more obvious with side projects because there is no one else to blame. You have a complete view of the picture.

I find personal projects very humbling. Even with no one stepping on my toes or setting unrealistic requirements, I still make dumb mistakes and write subpar code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is such an important concept. I was just explaining this to product/leadership the other week:

"It's not a matter of convincing me we should do this. Obviously, we should. But we also have a hundred other things that we should do, and a few dozen things that we need to do. So it's not a discussion of 'should we'; it's a discussion of understanding how important this thing is in relation to all of the other things."

Triage and prioritization is hard.

<comment><USER16> I had a kind of... manipulative co-worker who often tried to work around the Product Owner. He'd come into my office and ask, "Can we do <some feature>?", hoping to trigger my inner engineer to be interested in how to solve that problem.

He finally got tired of me saying, "Given enough time and resources, yes, we can do pretty much anything! Talk to <Product Owner> about what we SHOULD do."

<comment><USER17> And probably the moment you do it, he'd take all the credit from you too.

<comment><USER16> Well, no, he wasn't that much of a jerk, thankfully.

<comment><USER17> Good. When you said manipulative, it suddenly brought back memories :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I learned a lesson about opportunity costs while worked at an IT company. When I started, the company managed the IT for small companies, most being three to five people companies. We had full control of decisions so we kept them up-to- date with the latest best practices. I'm sure there was a bias of the types of companies who went with us as we charged more than competitors.

We started to gain larger clients. We thought that a 5,000 person company would be ahead of the 5 person company when it came to technology. Not so. Here is what we learned: there are political risks for changing technology. A CTO (these are not tech companies) would wait until people were complaining so extremely that people would have to feel that changes were good. It all arose from that bias most people have about change being bad unless it is ten times better.

<comment><USER19> This is so true. I've been in plenty of small business that are trying to do the best and their constraints are usually based on the ability of early hires.

Big companies have inertia to deal with for every change and once you get burned by something trivial that gets blamed for problems, you get very shy about improvements.

I'm in the process of building a system that had to make alot of compromises based on existing expectations. It's probably a year away from being where I want it to be because every change is so slow...

It's frustrating to defend these decisions every time someone comes along and notices how hard it is to use the system. I have to explain that every part of the system is broken out currently to find issues and fix them, the end goal is to stack everything together, but right now all the sausage making is on display and frankly it's appalling...

(edited for readability) end goal is turning a push button system that had to be carefully monitored for breakage (while it was running after hours) into a staged system that gets checked and verified during business hours, but still fires off after hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> You often hear people in engineering teams say something to the effect of "I can't understand why this was built this way. It's been done stupidly", but invariably there's some key piece of contextual information that's missing like, as you say, there simply wasn't enough time.

I also wrote about this recently: [https://timwhite.digital/building-software- sharing-knowledge](https://timwhite.digital/building-software-sharing- knowledge)

<comment><USER21> Well, the "I can't understand why this was built this way. It's been done stupidly" can also be a case of Chesterton's Fence:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton's_fence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton's_fence)

<comment><USER20> Yes, exactly. The point I make in my article is that stupidity isn't at all as common a reason (for why something's been done a certain way) as we'd like to think it is. I think the true split is about 80/20.

This is from someone who's had the [dis]pleasure of working on all manner of steaming piles of rubbish.

If there are any Junior devs reading this, Chesterton's Fence is a great concept to understand and abide by!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I mostly disagree with this.

At a certain point it becomes inexcusable, and I personally never judge them as being stupid or lazy, I just attribute it to lack of empathy.

It's painful for people that have to regularly deal with something not straightforward (over complex) or just plain old messy (no concern over what it would be like to revisit the code for anyone, even themselves).

Ruins my day(s), and it takes some mental gymnastics to justify serial offenses of this kind (e.g We got it done , that's what matters - great, but you slowed down velocity at every later stage).

Lastly, I think when you find yourself asking 'why is it done this way', you'll notice it's a pattern. It's never a few pieces here and there where you can reasonably understand, it's always endemic throughout the codebase.

So sure, not stupidity, just a pungent disregard for others.

<comment><USER23> False corporacy makes people do stupid things

A casual company culture is an implied pungent disregard for others and it comes with its own pungent smell of entitlement too

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Some of the worst managers I have worked for didn't understand opportunity cost. Good idea to test during a job interview or before starting a partnership. Nothing more maddening than working for an Ahab chasing whales.

<comment><USER23> Or a canine chasing tails

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> In IP law, if I see terrible work product that cost my clients $5-$25K in waste, I try to be charitable and remind myself that sometimes there is context that I am not aware of that may have been the cause. Such context may be client driven immutable deadlines, client-side delays, client-side lack of communication, and so on.

In reality there probably was incompetence bordering on malpractice by the prior firm that did the work. But you never know.

If $100Ks (and multiple years) have been wasted, I know it is incompetence bordering on malpractice. Especially, if the firms that did the bad work have well known brands.

In professions like law, medicine, or professional engineering prioritizing is important and useful but providing shoddy work product or corner cutting should be unacceptable. And often corner cutting is malpractice.

In software development I used to push hard to get people to focus on getting from A to B efficiently while using an architecture that supports flexibility rather than over-engineering from the beginning. It seemed to work well.

Though I did run into some managers/directors/VPs that would carefully listen to a reasonable proposal and ignore it or in one case do the opposite. I always took that as the sign to move somewhere else. Eventually leading me to go law school.

</comment><comment><USER26> I worked with a company last year that consistently made poor decisions due to lack of resources, especially time. Sometimes "opportunity cost" was used as an excuse for a lot of things. Now sure if you have a few different immediate options and a lack of capacity you will be forced to choose certain options and ignore others. Scarcity is a real thing and I'm not arguing otherwise. But the bit that might be classified as stupid was that very little thought was given to hiring or any form of capacity planning. As such I think just categorizing this as "opportunity cost" would be missing a very important part of the bigger picture. People can make decisions that impact the amount of resources that are available and over a longer period this is especially important. If you consistently find that you are passing up on profitable opportunities it shows that you may have a very profitable situation to hire people, if you don't pay any attention to that you risk making opportunity costs a self fulfilling prophecy.

<comment><USER27> It sounds like they were focusing on the urgent at the expense of the important: [https://www.eisenhower.me/eisenhower- matrix/](https://www.eisenhower.me/eisenhower-matrix/)

<comment><USER28> Yes, although note in the Eisenhower matrix, you "delegate" urgent but less important tasks. If there's no one to delegate to, that falls apart a bit. Now, if you're so under-resourced that you're doing nothing but putting out fires, that's a problem. And you probably have to add resources (of whatever type including delegating to a third party), fix root causes, or decide that what you're treating as urgent really isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What if the opportunity cost is borne out of malice? I briefly worked as a quality control microbiologist at a manufacturing facility. We were constantly understaffed and unable to meet requirements. Heaps of missed opportunity to improve things. But my feeling was the the company didn't care beyond the facade of having some micro testing. There was always talk of improving things, but things never improved.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is then made even more frustrating due to the asymmetry when the opportunity cost for you for not having your problem fixed is much higher than for the person you are trying to reach.

Or, more succinctly, asking `Who has the problem?' has helped me over the years to adjust my expectations, because more often than not, it is me who has the problem, and not the person I am reaching out to.

<comment><USER17> The part that sucks the most is when opportunity cost of not doing something is "globally" high, but the other party only optimizes locally for themselves.

You will see, especially at work, when you have something that makes a ton of money, but people will be uninterested because it doesn't benefit them as much. At that point you require lots of escalations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > "People love to conclude that something wasn't done because they are stupid, > or possibly lazy.

This happens about 95% of the time when you don't know a certain person/team."

I used to do plant floor support in a manufacturing plant. Over the radio, people treated me like an idiot. When I walked out to the plant floor they treated me like a genius.

</comment><comment><USER32> I usually find that when I have to go "why is this the way it is, that's stupid!" I usually end up finding out that there is (sometimes was) some design constraint I wasn't aware of that caused to to need to be that way, and actually it makes sense.

<comment><USER23> Hear hear and that is usually some trifling corporate rumour that keeps circling and lending itself legitimacy but nobody recognizes as hearsay and everybody accepts as fact

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > I've found that neither malice nor stupidity is the most common reason when > you don't understand why something is in a certain way. Instead, the root > cause is probably just that they didn't have time yet.

Ok, let's leave security for later!

<comment><USER34> And even that is sometimes the right decision.

I personally experienced an important delivery being delayed several days because the tech lead wasn't happy with the security settings on the database server. If the DB was accessible outside our internal network or contain any information that wasn't publicly available, I would have understood.

<comment><USER35> Someone that concerned with security is either fanatical, or they've been burned by it before.

I also will not sign off on security concerns unless they are correct. I'm happy to let management override me, but I won't back down and say things are finished when they aren't.

IMO, your tech lead wasn't the problem here. Their boss was. Their boss decided that the security was more important than the delivery date, or they decided that they didn't care enough to get involved, which amounts to the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The issue that I see is that the benefits of implementing something the "stupid" way (e.g. it's faster or easier to implement) are often enjoyed by different people than those who have to bear the associated future pain.

<comment><USER37> Then it becomes an externality.

Why should sales stop littering when development is the one cleaning up the highway?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> His statement about bigcos doesn't really jibe with mine. Bigcos are just as concerned with opportunity cost as startups, at least if they're concerned about earnings at all or are run well. You will not have headcount to attack all the problems you have at once, and you'll constantly be chasing revenue/COGS-R opportunities instead of fixing those UI glitches QA found 2 years ago that have workarounds. The day you stop chasing opportunities is the day your headcount gets taken away. It's simply not worth paying someone 6 figures to tackle those issues.

<comment><USER39> Startups will often have many obvious relatively simple things they're not doing. They're moving very quickly, but they have a small team and have to ruthlessly prioritize.

A larger company is generally not moving as quickly, and the scale of the things that they're choosing not to do for opportunity-cost reasons gets much smaller.

I worked for a money transfer startup at one point. You could use it on Android and iOS but not on desktop/web. We just hadn't gotten to it yet. If they're successful but still mobile-app only in five years, though, I'll expect that it's for reasons like "we looked into web but fraud rates were much higher" instead of it just being a matter of priorities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> There's a lot to like in this article. I like how the author tries to remove manipulative motions (correspondingly paranoia) from the context in hopes people can see truer. Nontheless (I am 25+ years in software dev),

\- some 20pct of people think the office is where politics and games are played. Thus they try to play it better. That's because openness at the office is usually quite low. Such people are unmoved by push back thinking themselves the smarter, grayer haired guy. Survivors of this kind of BS actually are smart, and do have experience with effective but distorting coping skills

\- software should be a formal science. It's not almost all the time

\- the chief issue unaddressed here but smartly lead up to is the management function: as the normal scenario is that resources are vastly drwafed by problems what do we say no to?

The management question when examined is complex and when it unfolds to systemic issues that are chiefly human not technical viz any of the corporate histories on quality improvement in the 80s/90s esp with company turnarounds. Ex. Detroit, Xerox, IBM under gerstner. While technical issues remain on the table, sustained under performance is ultimately rooted in management and company culture.

</comment><comment><USER41> I tend to agree with this. I do think that this article (as with most) brushes far too easily over the tension between tech debt and new features.

It's not uncommon to have a product person (or even team) that spend tons of time doing analysis to find high-value features. When they show up with some slick Powerpoint/Excel thing that says "If we build this feature we make $BIGNUM", it's extremely difficult for some dev (or dev manager) to come up with an effective counterargument for working on tech debt. Partially because it's not their main job, and partially because quantifying the impact of tech debt is extremely difficult. And it's very easy for that to happen every single planning cycle, even while everyone makes appropriate noises about tech debt being _super important_ and we're _totally gonna address that_ but we just can't justify not going for that $BIGNUM cash first!

I wish I had a solution for that - I don't. If anybody else does I'd love to hear it. :)

</comment><comment><USER42> I agree, but only partly. Yes, prioritization is likely the explanation for a lot of things. It's absolutely true that the responsible team cannot do everything you'd wish.

But, sometimes there's stupidity at a different level. Just because someone is _making an effort at_ prioritization doesn't mean they are _doing a good job of_ prioritization.

It's hard to tell from the outside (where you lack the relevant knowledge), so you're kind of forced into giving them the benefit of the doubt. But sometimes that internal tools bug which they never get around to fixing is eating up 5 minutes of every employee's time every day for 2 years, and it adds up to a lot of wasted time, and they should have prioritized it but they didn't. Maybe because they didn't appreciate what the cost was, or maybe because they had some bias toward certain kinds of tasks, or maybe some other reason.

</comment><comment><USER43> Wow.

Well put. I'm going to use this. It feels quite true that when analyzing the behavior of any entity (and to a lesser degree, a person) it's rare to take _time_ into account. If something wasn't done it's either stupidity, malice, or something-I-don't-understand. It's refreshing to think that it might just not have happened yet, and perhaps never will because there will always be more important things in the pipeline.

So perhaps this idea is a corollary of my own pet aphorism: "Things take way, way, waaayyy longer than you'd think". Everything seems simple and easy until you set to actually do it. The kicker is that even looking back on my _own_ work, I sometimes can't understand "What took me so long?!"

</comment><comment><USER44> Like when I asked my friend when we were kids: why don't you have money? And he said we have money, but it's for something else. I said well what could be more important than this? (Forgot what "this" was, most probably a new PC.)

</comment><comment><USER45> So the fact that I can't filter my Amazon search by price until I choose one of multiple plausible "departments" is attributable to Amazon simply not having enough software engineers to spare for the past decade? I doubt it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Inefficiency is a form of stupidity and always being busy is a form of inefficiency

</comment><comment><USER46> If something is more valuable than the opportunity costs it is stupidity not to pursue it .If something is less valuable than the opportunity cost it is stupid to mention.

</comment><comment><USER47> > Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by > opportunity cost

"Why didn't we invest in long term issues?" (say virus research...)

Because I can make lots in finance this quarter."

As I understand it humans have (at least) 2 really big problems in rational thought: 1) A bias towards the short term and 2) unknown unknowns (cue Nassim Taleb)

Never attribute to higher order stupidity that which can be attributed to lower order brain functions.

</comment><comment><USER48> _" It might seem obvious the way I put it that opportunity cost is the thing to blame. But it's not."_

You just have to look at the k8s hype to see that _it 's not_.

In this industry, I often have the feeling that people are fetishizing complex solutions even if the problem at hand doesn't require them.

But I have to admit, it's not easy to focus on the problem space and really work out what is needed. Most people do too much or not enough.

</comment><comment><USER49> "Listen, we just had better things to do than securing our database and customer data. It's not that we don't care about the effect this leak has on the affected individuals, it's just that you can't make money by providing secure systems, so we prioritized animated emojis higher"

</comment><comment><USER50> Similarly, people sometimes don't change their opinion on an issue - <USER2> because they're stupid, but because changing your mind about something takes work, work takes resources, and these resources are already invested in something you perceive as important.

</comment><comment><USER51> I think the author is saying "opportunity cost" when he really means "ROI".

</comment><comment><USER52> Bernhardsson's razor. Someone should make a Wikipedia entry for that.

</comment><comment><USER53> As a JavaScript developer I find the stupidity versus opportunity cost virtually impossible to distinguish. After all, its how I involuntarily became a developer in the first place.

I was hired by Travelocity late in 2007 to be a designer. In early 2008 I was a UI developer and if I wanted to continue to be employed I would have to figure it out. JavaScript developers, at least competent ones, were nearly impossible to find, so it made sense for the company to convert me into a developer instead of struggling to hire somebody who probably couldn't do the job anyways. Keep in mind this is before jQuery became popular, before JavaScript became fast, and before massive MVC frameworks did your entire job for you. Competent JavaScript developers were nearly impossible to find for what companies were willing to pay. Also, keep in mind that at that time JavaScript developers earned about half what a Java developer earned but had a wider distribution of responsibilities to account for. My incompetence that first year writing logic was a profitable opportunity cost to the employer.

As an aside I can remember Google Web Toolkit (GWT) from that time. It would compile Java logic to JavaScript, which was great for barely competent Java developers who couldn't figure out JavaScript. The compiled JavaScript was garbage though. The logic was a mess that often broke. The people who generated that code were afraid of it and hid from it leaving nobody to own or maintain it. It was like some horrid combination of pride, insecurity, hubris, and negligence rolled up in a ball. Was this an opportunity cost or just stupid, it is a challenge to distinguish.

Fast forward to modern times and people who write JavaScript are easy to find and are paid much better. Actual JavaScript developers are still almost as rare though. Most people who write JavaScript are not actually JavaScript developers, but rather something like: Angular, React, or Vue developers. They do not write original code, but supplement a framework. If you put a gun to these guys heads and told them they had to write an application without their favorite framework they would happily take the gun from you and shoot themselves in the face. They have no idea what the DOM is, how to architect anything, and in many cases writing any original logic scares them to death.

In many cases people who write JavaScript have absolutely no idea what to write, so they only write browser facing single page applications, because that is the preference of their pet framework. To be fair some of the React developers might possess some vague half notion about the DOM, but they would call it a virtual DOM and get angry when I ask them to find _" virtual DOM"_ in the standard DOM specification. In fact many technical requests that are explicitly outside the immediate documentation of their favorite pet framework might make these developers immediately angry (inwardly insecure). This folly is commonly known and accepted as an opportunity costs so employers set the expectations very low and don't ask for such things. The stupidity and incompetence are also distinguished by hiring employers during hiring and candidate selection whether they are looking for a Node.js developer or a UI developer even though its all the same language.

The better pay and frequent incompetence are opportunity costs, because somebody has to write this code. The business need is present and so factors are adjusted to ensure delivery of necessary business solutions while reducing hiring risks. It made sense to hire people who could get by just writing minimal logic over a framework tool, because developers are interchangeable assets of the business that come and go rapidly in the marketplace. When there is a shortage of talent you take what you can and ensure it is commonly replaceable. It should also be stated the conditions for hiring developers were well in the developers' favor because the business need was clear and businesses could afford to hire more people while enjoying the longest running bull market in history.

I suspect, though, this party is over. We now exist in a period of rapid economic contraction unlike anything in history. Before the recent bull market developers primarily existed to provide automation. The value of most developers was in the reduction of expenditure on the employer's internal operating costs. During this bull market that value became lost as the lines between automation and product creation frequently blurred. Regardless employers just knew they need people to write code and could happily afford it.

COVID has put many developers out of work and economists are anticipating the economic hardships will continue for about 2 more years. From a business perspective developers are expensive cost centers. Developers do not add to the revenue of the employer. They only exist to substitute business expense for automation. The people who actually generate revenue are called something like sales, marketing, or merchandising. So, for a hiring manager of a business struggling to stay afloat why would they hire 12 barely competent people who write a few lines of code here and there for a framework SPA when instead they could hire 2 or 3 developers at a slightly hire rate that focus on automation in general? In other words the safe expectation moving forwards is to expect that developers will require more from fewer developers or will find a completely different medium with which to engage their users/clients. With many developers suddenly out of work talent is no longer rare.

The opportunity costs have drastically changed in response to market pressures. The employers who will most rapidly adapt their hiring and use of developers are those under greatest financial pressure. The employers who are currently safe from market pressures, whether by their essential status or cash liquidity, will not feel this pressure and will become the new dinosaurs as they retain older and less efficient ways of shipping products.

<comment><USER54> What I realized is that companies that think developers are a cost, are not really software companies. Maybe they need software, but it's the same way one needs a visit to the doctor: you go because you have to, you have no passion for it.

What really upsets developers is the extra work that is generated by managers that should not manage anything really.

If you are competent enough to be able to create from zero and deliver a software product/service it seems the only way is to have your own product/service.

<comment><USER53> I have never worked for a software company. Most of my career was in travel: Travelocity/Sabre, Southwest, Orbitz, Expedia and now I work for a bank. Developers are a cost center even for software companies. It isn't developers at Microsoft that are selling Microsoft products.

A software company is one that generates revenue directly from the software they write. In that regard I do not consider Facebook to be a software company, their revenue is from advertising and media. They are a software company the way CNN is. I consider Google to be a software company because their revenue is from micro-auctions to their search engine.</comment></comment></comment>


Uber not criminally liable in fatal 2018 Arizona self-driving crash: prosecutors - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-crash-autonomous/uber-not-criminally-liable-in-2018-fatal-self-driving-crash-prosecutors-idUSKCN1QM2O8 <comment><USER2> > Vasquez, the Uber back-up driver, could face charges of vehicular > manslaughter, according to a police report in June.

> Based on a video taken inside the car, records collected from online > entertainment streaming service Hulu and other evidence, police said last > year that Vasquez was looking down and streaming an episode of the > television show "The Voice" on a phone until about the time of the crash. > The driver looked up a half-second before hitting Elaine Herzberg, 49, who > died from her injuries.

Though there's something to be said about watching a video as opposed to paying attention to the driving, the job of a "back-up driver" seems to be highly aligned with something akin to a CCTV monitoring job. In that industry, they recognize a "vigilance decrement" [1] occurs within 15-30 minutes, at which point a person basically can't effectively continue monitoring. It's recognized as a best practice to limit the duration anyone is watching a screen and regularly rotate people's tasks [2].

As the self-driving technology gets better, of course people's trust will go up and they'll pay less attention. My guess would be the first hour or so you're in a self-driving car, you will be hyper-vigilant and probably even get a rush of adrenaline everytime it approaches an intersection or pedestrian or makes a turn into moving traffic. After a while -- say dozens or hundreds of hours of no incidents -- of course your vigilance is going to go way down, while your boredom goes way up. Apparently for some people, eventually to the point they feel comfortable focusing on something else.

All this to say, it's surprising this doesn't seem to be taken into account -- specifically, what practices did Uber put in place to avoid this known problem? Did they put a human in an impossible situation, where they expected someone to sit and do nothing for maybe hundreds of hours and then suddenly react within a few hundreds of a second when something went wrong?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilance_(psychology)#Vigilan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilance_\(psychology\)#Vigilance_decrement)

[2] [https://www.securigroup.co.uk/news/understanding-the- challen...](https://www.securigroup.co.uk/news/understanding-the-challenges- of-cctv-monitoring)

</comment><comment><USER3> Leter from attorney here: [https://docdro.id/eFGP3bb](https://docdro.id/eFGP3bb)</comment>


Let's Encrypt: An Automated Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.abetterinternet.org/documents/letsencryptCCS2019.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Since its launch in December 2015, Let's Encrypt has steadily grown to become the largest CA in the Web PKI by certificates issued and the fourth largest known CA by Firefox Beta TLS full handshakes. As of January 21, 2019, the CA had issued a total of 538M certificates for 223M unique FQDNs, and there were 91M unexpired Let's Encrypt certificates valid for 155M unique FQDNs. This represents more unique certificates than all other CAs combined. (Except where otherwise noted, analysis in this section is based on data from that date. For Certificate Transparency data, we count certificates by the SHA-256 hash of the tbsCertificate structure after removing CT poison and SCTs to prevent double counting pre-certificates and certificates.)</comment>


Ask HN: Is this normal practice from Facebook? - <AUTHOR> I've been contacted from fb for a position in London with the excuse that they're hiring 1k+ people [1].
Everything seemed legit from internal recruiter contact details and procedure: I've got a lot of reading material from them, set online meetings, etc...
I did the first coding interview and the interviewer has been overly positive throughout the 40 minutes we talked. One day later the former recruiter told me I didn't pass and now he's refusing to give me a more detailed feedback claiming that "due to compliance policy we are not able to provide you with the detailed feedback on your interview"
So...it's this for real or this is some sort of very refined scam (no idea what may be the end goal tho)?
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-europe-business-idUSKBN1ZK0G4 <comment><USER2> The nicer they are in the interview the more that tends to indicate you will not receive an offer.

I used to wonder why this was, but kept seeing these types of anecdotes pop up again and again.

The best conclusion I have come to, which makes some sense, is that when you do well in an interview yet also some factor means you won't be moving on...the interviewer out of guilt feels compelled to be extra nice to you.

</comment><comment><USER3> It could be a multitude of reasons. Try not to think of it as a robotic pipeline even though it appears that way. The interviewer could have been sincere but there are a lot of hard decisions / politics / etc. behind the scenes:

• The hiring manager for the team(s) could have been mandated to put in a hiring freeze

• You may have provided an optimal solution but the interviewer couldn't see himself working with you everyday — at the end of the day this is what it's all about you want to hire someone you are able to work well with everyday. Not likely the case here though something to consider

• Budget could have gone down

• Headcount reductions

• They night have found a better fit candidate

• Things might be chaotic as even if you do hired your can't come into HQ until the virus passes

• [Insert any other reason here]

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, it's normal to interview people and it's normal for some subset of those people to fail. It's standard practice not to provide specific feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> (I'm not being sarcastic, just want to understand) what's the point in saying "OK perfect interview" and then discarding without giving feedback? why would I risk applying again if I do not know where I failed?

<comment><USER5> To avoid an emotional confrontation with the candidate. 95% don't meet the bar, but they would be offended if they were told how they really perform. Some may even sue back if they happen to be in some minority group. Companies like FB don't have a shortage of very qualified candidates, so you not applying again is just irrelevant to them. The sign of a perfect interview is when the interviewer realizes that you know more than him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "overly positive throughout" means thats how you felt but not necessarily how interviewer felt. Usually, FB's phone screen expectation is to do 2 coding questions (yes in 35-40 mins!), written as close to compiler ready as possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> by "positive" I meant that the interviewer was actually saying "good job", "optimal solution", "you're doing great", "the recruitment team will get in touch with you about next steps"

indeed there were two questions that they asked me to code, even though they didn't want to actually compile/run the code

<comment><USER7> "The recruitment team will get in touch.."

Everybody says that all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm guessing here but it many cases the interviewers(not only recruiters) are taught to act positively. Also if they are choosing between you and someone else they don't what to discourage you from applying.

Someone said that the company doesn't care about you in particular, but they do care about more people applying. It's just larger pool to choose from.

</comment><comment><USER9> Legal concerns and limited time are among the top reasons you might not get feedback if rejected for a job. They are concerned it can be used or misconstrued by the applicant to demonstrate discrimination in the hiring process. Many employers follow this advice and consider it safest to avoid providing any feedback

<comment><AUTHOR> I see, that would make sense, thanks for replying

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What was the coding question?

</comment><comment><USER11> This might be due to a potential looming recession from the pandemic.

<comment><USER12> Ugh I hate to agree but it does seem like they're stuffing their pipeline just to have extra cattle at the gate in case the gates open up...</comment></comment>


Why Do People with Depression Like Listening to Sad Music? - <AUTHOR> https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/04/24/why-do-people-with-depression-like-listening-to-sad-music/ <comment><USER2> My experience of this was that the sad music could connect to where I was, and once I had connected, I could actually slowly shift my mood by gradually changing the music (had to be gradual though).

I kind of stumbled on that, and it worked for me, though in hindsight I can see how it could be seen as a form of musical therapy.

The really essential point though, is that in order for this to work I had to begin with songs that actually matched my low mood (Radiohead and Portishead seemed to consistently do the trick)... trying to shift out of a low mood by playing a happy song directly did not work - it was just jarring.

I imagine that in doing so I was unconsciously reproducing one of the best impacts of certain kinds of therapy: creating the acknowledgement that yes, I feel the way I feel, that is mirrored by my environment in some way, and it's not something I need to hide or feel shame about. The music helped me feel that without needing to reveal anything about myself.

<comment><USER3> I've been doing this for years! I have a dozen or so playlists that start off with very sad music, become melancholy, then bittersweet, then hopeful, and finally happy.

Almost always does the trick! But you have to have time to kill.

The way I see it is like rescuing someone stuck on the ocean floor. You can't just bring them up! Your body has to adjust to the changing pressure. Slowly and slowly you change the mood, allowing time to ease in.

<comment><USER4> This works in conversation, too. There's something powerful about the experience of diving down to meet someone in the low place they're sitting in, while keeping a bit of yourself apart as a lifeline - you can sync up with them by observing and validating the way the world looks to them from that hurt or scared place, then, step by step, help bring them closer to the surface by suggesting a little bit of a broader view at each turn in the conversation.

But yes: you really do have to have some time to kill, and it can be tricky to set up an environment in which a sustained, unpressured conversation can occur.

(What you are describing with your playlists sounds like the soul of DJing. Perhaps you might try playing with a controller sometime, if you haven't done so already.)

<comment><USER5> Not only in conversation, it's the way to bring people where you want emotionally, be it music, poetry, cinema or any form of art.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My first thought seeing the headline was of this quote:

"What came first – the music or the misery? Did I listen to the music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to the music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?"

\- Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

Also relevant from the book:

"People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss."

<comment><USER7> Maybe I'm wrong but broken heart sad seems a lot more transient than older generations of sad music like, say, Pink Floyd's The Wall and The Final Cut. I would wager it's really not a problem.

<comment><USER8> Floyd have their own broken heart sad songs (Wish you where here, nobody home, and lotsa others). Though the Final Cut was a flop, and barely listened to/mentioned today, so kind of transient itself.

But of course tons of 70s and 60s era music are "broken heart sad" as well -- it's not like some unique today phenomenon. Broken heart sad takes a good 50% of all songs since time immemorial...

If anything, today it's not "broken heart sad" anymore, but some hip-hop/pop version of "how cool/rich I am" or "how badass I am", looking at the charts.

<comment><USER9> Wish you were here is not a broken heart sad song. It's about disillusionment.

<comment><USER8> Not broken heart from a lover, but broken heart about a friend. Still a broken heart.

<comment><USER10> Syd Barrett supposedly

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In my experience, music that matches my mood makes me fee less alone.

I had some tough times when I was a teenager, and didn't seriously get into music until I discovered Rammstein(my favorite band to this day). To most people, it's very brutal sounding, often angry, sometimes depressing. My parents had no idea why I listened to some German guy growling in front of "rock music".

My whole world was changed because, finally, _someone else expressed how I feel_. Now, the lyrics themselves are often grotesque or even silly, but I didn't understand most of it and what they were saying didn't matter to me anyway. I was comforted by the fact that these guys could put into music what I could fail to put into words or deal with in my own life.

Simply speaking, I find such music to be _cathartic_. Actually, lots of different moods of music can be cathartic, but negative music sticks out in that category because we're expected to listen to music that "lifts us up". I think that's why I actually become _more_ depressed by listening to happy music when I'm sad; it's as if the world is telling me that I _shouldn 't_ feel the way that I do. Having my feelings recognized by music is about as good as having someone tell me that it's okay to feel bad about my situation.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think it goes further than just music.

There is something that I have noticed in my life, when it comes to the people I'm drawn to and the people that are drawn to me. We all tend to share a particular similarity, in that we end up being 'darker' people in one way or another. When I say 'dark' I dont really mean like 'emo' or 'goth', but in the way that our humors are usually darker, and we all have either dealt with or are dealing with some kind of despair. I think it's a feeling of 'not being alone' when you are with someone who 'gets it', and it's a sort of warmth that you dont come across much in the day to day. I dont think dark people just like dark music, I think dark people like other dark people.

<comment><USER13> That's generally been my experience, too. I have had depressive stretches and pulled out of them, but have always been consistently a "dark" person. Dark doesn't mean unhappy.

It isn't that I "only see negatives", as I've been told endlessly, or just have a dark sense of humor. It is also related being relatively good at security analysis, architecture and troubleshooting - I tend to naturally focus on faults and limits, and reach for a systemic view first. And any time you look at human systems, that's depressing. (That was a joke, there.)

Musically, I used to be more exclusively "dark". That's changed as I've gotten older, but I still find most pop grating. The last few months I've been more on an active listening jag, after thinking I noticed Erik Satie-ish influences on Brian Eno, and then Laurie Anderson and Robert Fripp. (Eno acknowledged this in something I read, I'm less sure about Anderson. Fripp may have just been responding to Eno.)

<comment><USER14> I think the emphasis on faults and limits rather than on the peak of the bell curve (where 'normal' people reside) is the hallmark of critical thinking in general.

Circumspection isn't a 'dark' perspective per se, but one that deliberately resists 'going with the flow', which is assumed by all promotional efforts like PR and advertising. The conventional 'embracing of the light' is inseparable from groupthink, IMHO.

Any excess of optimism or advocacy raises my inner defenses and sets off alarm bells. In this, The Age Of The Internet, that thinking isn't 'dark'; it should be common sense. But it's all too uncommon, I fear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Responding to the headline: Because depression isn't sadness, it's a mental illness that causes a numbing, hollowing feeling that robs you of joy. In my experience, it's more akin to _despair_ than sorrow.

Feeling _anything_ (even sadness) can help make it easier to cope with it if you're unable to seek effective treatment.

Which is most people, probably. Most people I know who have depression can't (or won't) seek effective treatment, usually because of cost prohibition.

</comment><comment><USER16> Purely anecdotal but when I'm feeling down / sad I find that happy music annoys me where as sad music soothes me. Music too far out of my current mindset clashes with it and causes negative feelings in me.

</comment><comment><USER17> As a songwriter, I wonder why I write so many sad songs. Like, a _lot_ of them. Really, really sad songs.

I just wrote one last week, inspired by a scene from a science fiction novel. It tells the story of a small fleet of spaceships fleeing a doomed Earth for the stars, and one ship attacking the rest and killing their crews in order to steal their fuel and spare parts. It's not just that what they did is a crime... they knew it was wrong, did it anyway, and feel terrible about it, but they also knew that if they didn't do it, another ship would have done it to them. So it's all guilt and shame from making a totally selfish decision.

Why would I write that way? And it's not like this is an unusual subject for me.

Part of it, I think, is that I do a very good job of covering up some deep depression in my day-to-day life. I'm a much sadder person than I appear to be.

<comment><USER18> > they knew it was wrong

I know which book series this was part of, and this action was the correct one to take. I feel as if the entire point of the book is that at some point, we need to make collective decisions, and when we do so, we all need to share in the responsibility of those decisions.

The decision not to protect each human life as some kind of infinite well of value is an unusually narcissistic form of collectivism, I think, and only possible in highly developed nations. I believe that at some point, the reality of resource depletion or pollution, possibly war, will come to a head, and we will have to abandon this view.

<comment><USER19> What book series is this from? Or even better, what specific book? I'd be keen to read it.

<comment><USER17> _The Three Body Problem_ , by Cixin Liu. The scene is actually from the second book in the trilogy, _The Dark Forest_ , but they are really meant to be read in order, and I don't think _The Dark Forest_ would make much sense without reading _The Three Body Problem_ first.

Outstanding books, highly recommended if you like old-school hard science fiction. I'm currently reading the third book in the trilogy. But when I read this one scene... I had a song a day later. It really knocked me out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Because "sad songs say so much" as Elton put it. It's probably considered a bit corny now, but it's dead-on.

"From the lips of some old singer

We can share the troubles we already know

...

If someone else is suffering enough oh to write it down

When every single word makes sense

Then it's easier to have those songs around

The kick inside is in the line that finally gets to you

And it feels so good to hurt so bad

And suffer just enough to sing the blues"

<comment><USER21> When I write lyrics, it's only ever because something frustrates me. And I love serious lyrics in general... but I'm also _really_ grateful for people who just see the good in the world and sing about it, like Bob Ross, but for music. That's just not me though.

> _If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for > comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful > thinking to begin, and in the end, despair._

\-- C. S. Lewis

> _Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If > the book does not shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother > reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? > Good God, we 'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make > us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. [..] A book must be the > ax for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe._

\-- Franz Kafka

> _You don 't write those books because you hope those things will happen. You > write those books because you think they might happen.. but you'd rather > they didn't._

\-- Margaret Atwood

Such are the thoughts with which I console myself, but still, this is the kind of person I make my stuff, which is solely "against", _for_ :

> _To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on > the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of > compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this > complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it > destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places > — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives > us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning > top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small > a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an > infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings > should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous > victory._

\-- Howard Zinn

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If something hurts, we usually stop doing it (feedback loop), unless there is something else at play: some short term positives, like taking drugs. So depression (even without music) persists because it actually feels good in the short term. I remember when I was a child, and was crying, I could cry myself even more, by just thinking negative thoughts, it kinda felt good to 'release'. Music amplifies this, so I would say this is why depressed people 'enjoy' sad music. Then, I was taught not to have self-pity, and didn't really care to be sad any longer. Instead I chose to solve the problems or move on if they're not solvable.

It's helped me. What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER23> I can relate to pop music just fine but those tunes are shallow compared to the information packed songs from Radiohead. But I've never loved Radiohead for their melancholy. Only for their outstanding musical abilities. They also seem to be bright, clever, intelligent even, judging from their lyrics and interviews. I don't consider them dark. I consider them bright.

I've been depressed tons of times. I'm bipolar, they tell me. But even outside of a depressive state I return to those artists that try a little harder than those who aim for the top lists.

I think most other people who are depressive by nature, when they feel good about themselves they shy away from things that remind them of themselves in a depressive state. But I love being depressed. It's a much better feeling than being manic.

<comment><USER24> Electric Light Orchestra. Music with a futuristic, but mixed pessimistic and bright outlook. And the orchestral contribution makes the backbone of it.

If you like Science Fiction (especially reading it) you might like this too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It always seemed self-evident to me that people who are depressed generally dislike being entrenched in "happy" settings (e.g. seeing happier people around them) because it reinforces feelings of isolation. I don't see why music would be any different.

Put another way, misery loves company.

</comment><comment><USER26> Same with depressing literature. When I am in depressed mood then listening/reading depressing material gives me peace. When you have depression you generally don't get much acceptance so it's nice to be allowed to be as you are and not constantly being told "lighten up".

</comment><comment><USER27> When I'm fairly depressed, my goal is just to get to neutral. Trying to skip strait to happy is counter-productive. In that state of mind, happiness doesn't seem attainable or even real, it is a lie and a facade. Trying to talk myself into being happy is at best empty hype, as I can't genuinely embrace or believe the words I am saying. Happy music, or happy environments are likewise unembracable. When surrounded by them when depressed, I inevitably just retract into my head. This is a waste of time at best - being around people or participating in an activity but not present or enjoying it. At worst it can lead to spiraling negative thoughts that drag me deeper down.

Listening to "sad" music on the other hand can be very theraputic. Sometimes, it intensifies the feelings, confronting them, pushing through them, burning them inside of me. Othertimes, I melt into the music, letting go of my thoughts and feelings, letting them seep calmly out of me. I think it partly depends on exactly how I'm feeling: self-hatred or hopelessness or numb. Either way I come out the other end with a sense of relief, and evened out.

At this point I can move onto activities that are enjoyable, but not ones that are taxing (eg socializing) or which require lots of decisions to second-guess (eg coding), or can be frustrating (eg video games). For example, reading or whittling are good stepping-stone activities for me. Listening to upbeat music at this point can also help to continue the progression to a happier state, but I have to be careful not to overshoot with music that is too happy or driving.

</comment><comment><USER28> My impression is that sad music tends to have more substance than happy music. Happy pop music is especially guilty of this where: "it's the summer, everyone is having a good time etc..."

I'm really drawn to metal because it creates something beautiful out of difficult emotions. I actually don't get the association to anger at all, it's like saying people who like watching action movies are psychopaths.

I would argue that more art is rooted in pain than in happiness.

<comment><USER29> Fundamentally, there's no _narrative_ , in the sense of a story or an emotional journey, without conflict. Luke may blow up the Death Star, but Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru got BBQ'd, Obi Wan died, and a lot of friendly pilots were vaporized along the way. And that's a relatively _happy_ movie.

Moreover, to the extent that art is to help us grapple with difficult things, well... happiness isn't that difficult. Now, good circumstances but unhappy anyway? Then you've got something to build a story on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> My dad often said, "When you are cold, eat ice cream. It lowers your mean temperature."

That said, we always knew he just wanted ice cream.

</comment><comment><USER31> Personally I find that I can use certain sad music to push _through_ vague mopey depression into a state where I can _do_ something about it.

If I just sit there being sad and useless I'm gonna start feeling sad about how long I've been sitting there _moping_ and it's a horrible downward spiral.

If I lay there on the floor in the dark with headphones on listening to a double album full of exquisitely constructed instrumental crystals of particular flavors of sadness then I am likely to actually start _crying_ and find some _release_ from the endless circles around the mental drain. Or I might also start laughing at what a caricature of an emotion I'm being by doing this - and then the sadness is banished in another way.

Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works, Volume 2" is my go-to album for this. That or Nine Inch Nails if I want to be more angry. Which probably tells you a lot about my age.

<comment><USER32> Getting sad enough to cry is a good technique, because tears from strong emotion have been found to carry stress hormones with them out of the body.

Crying also releases endorphins which can help you recover from a feeling of sadness.

So yes, it's pretty reasonable to feel mopey but unable to extricate yourself until and unless you can push yourself far enough to cry, at which your body's own biology lifts you out of feeling mopey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> As usual in reporting and PR around brain/mind science, the "why" question posed in the title is not even remotely addressed or even approached by the study. That would, of course, require a theory about why people feel things at all, and why the feelings feel like they do and not some other way, which we are still woefully ignorant about.

The greater (and more general) question here is: why do humans seek out things that make them feel negative emotions? People watch horror movies wanting to be scared. They watch romantic comedies knowing that they will cry sad tears at some point. They read stories containing evil villains who kill and cause great suffering.

</comment><comment><USER34> Doesn't this presume that "sad music" is - in fact - sad?

There's plenty of music I will sit and listen to that my daughter asks me to turn off because it makes her sad, but I find very uplifting. Examples:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUpvEgJEn94](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUpvEgJEn94)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIcR7Xkysds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIcR7Xkysds)

There are plenty of other examples as well. All the studies reveal to me is that we're all wired a little different. Shocker.

<comment><USER35> Yeah, I've noticed the same thing. "Sad" songs make me feel better. I'm not sure why.

<comment><USER14> I think music is a mirror that provides contrast.

If the music is more depressing than you are, you feel less depressed. But if the music is happier than you are, you appreciate that you're more unhappy, and that makes you feel worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is this that people with depression crave sad music, or that music meant to elicit pathos has found its target audience?

> The controversial implication is that depressed people deliberately act in > ways that are likely to maintain their low mood.

How is this remotely controversial? Finding something you like is not the same as liking your state or disposition for depression.

> "… may reflect a desire for calming emotional experience rather than a > desire to augment sad feelings."

So, we've basically confirmed that people get pleasure out of liking things? This study seems weird.

<comment><USER37> Kurzgesagt had a really great video[1] on loneliness that described the downward spiral that people find themselves in.

> > The controversial implication is that depressed people deliberately act in > ways that are likely to maintain their low mood.

> How is this remotely controversial? Finding something you like is not the > same as liking your state or disposition for depression.

i think that is controversial because it assigns agency to the person experiencing the depression, that they are causing their own depression. but the most common complaint from people with depression is that people are always telling them to "just cheer up" etc etc. this is the same sentiment in a specific context. "if you just didn't listen to depressing music all the time, maybe you wouldn't be so depressed."

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Xv_g3g-mA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Xv_g3g-mA)

<comment><USER36> Now I think we're running into the strange alleyways in our concept of depression. Do people with depression have _no_ agency in their depression? I think it depends.

Depression can be a disposition, ie. someone is disposed to being depressed but not _always_ depressed.

Depression can be a mental state, ie. I'm depressed right now.

Depression can also be a clinical diagnosis, ie. you are lacking such and such chemical balance and _that_ is your depression and you require such and such to "fix" it.

Depression can be an emotion or a feeling, ie. I feel depressed, or that poet is describing or manifesting their depression in their words.

Depression can be a _cause_ and a _reason_ , in the sense that one (an agent) gives a reason for their actions.

The concept of depression has different degrees of agency. In some clinical cases, none at all. That seems controversial until you realize depression is a complex and flexible concept.

This study seems to have not clarified what exactly they are talking about when they describe people as depressed.

<comment><USER37> from the paper's abstract:

> In three studies, _clinically depressed_ participants were more likely than > nondepressed participants to use emotion-regulation strategies in a > direction that was likely to maintain or increase their level of sadness. > (emphasis mine)

<comment><USER36> That clarifies a lot, then, thank you.

In this case, then, I don't think the article from the BPS accurately presented the research in the paper. The fact that they specified that it is clinical depression in the abstract is pretty important to the importance of this study. To elide that seems to bury the lede.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Here is an excerpt from an interview with a music therapist about grief and music (written by a wise and caring friend of mine from long ago): "Music: A Natural Accompaniment to Grief Work: An Interview with Music Therapist Lauren DiMaio, PhD. (Story by Katherine Caldwell)" [https://missionhealth.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/October...](https://missionhealth.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/October_2018.pdf)

"During grief, many aspects of our life are raw and painful. It's common to believe we're better off avoiding them. But magically, on invisible waves of sound, a piece of music can penetrate into pain we swear was carefully locked away. Within a few chords we can go from "doing just fine" to a searing confrontation with heartache. Of course you might ask: why would we purposely want to do that to ourselves? Grief is tough enough without exposing ourselves to tunes that leave us emotionally wrung out. Perhaps it's only to say that music is strong medicine. "If a certain piece of music is unbearable, don't listen to it." says Dr. DiMaio, "Acknowledge that it's not helpful at that time. Accept that the piece is only useful in gauging your place on the grief journey at that time." When confronting the heaviest part of grief, that certain song or hymn, or even a whole genre of music may be impossible to take in. Sad songs of heartbreak or loneliness may, out of respect for our vulnerability, need to be avoided at certain times. Trust your instincts, but don't turn your back on music completely. Fortunately, music takes infinite forms. If sad tunes are off limits, go on a search for a more joyful noise. Surround yourself with music that speaks to another part of you: songs of celebration and gratitude, or melodies that uplift the spirit. If the music you once loved brings you down these days, it might be appropriate to explore new types of music, things you've never listened to before. Changing our internal vibration is what grief recovery is ultimately about on a molecular level. Exposure to inspiring vibrations, even externally, can help us change internally. Finding new music has become easier than ever. Internet searches and downloads make everything published in the music industry readily available, including lyrics."

While grief and depression are not identical, there is a lot of overlap.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm a bit confused with the premise. It seems like the article is assuming that sad music makes people sad, then wondering specifically why depressed people would listen to sad music.

But why would anyone listen to sad music if the premise was true? Isn't it much more likely that the whole reason sad music exists is that it helps people deal with their sadness, not that it _causes_ sadness? Under this hypothesis, it's not surprising at all that depressed people would listen to a lot of sad music.

</comment><comment><USER40> As someone who has experienced this firsthand, I think deep / sad music is a depressed person's form of white noise. It satiates the part of your mind that wants you to actively think about why you hate life and allows you to be neutral for a short while. I'm still perplexed by this going through playlists I made while in college during the deepest depths of my depression.

<comment><USER41> I think in general people revel in the mood they're in and listening to music that supports or amplifies that mood seems common. In a way it legitimizes and validates the feelings they're experiencing by sharing the experience with the music.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > The second part of the study used new music samples: 84 pairs of 10-second > clips of instrumental film music, contrasting happy, sad, fear-inducing, > neutral, and also high and low energy tracks. In each case the same > participants as before indicated which music they'd prefer to listen to > again later. They also heard all the samples again at the end and stated > what effect they had on their emotions. The researchers found again that > people with depression had a far greater preference than controls for sad, > low-energy music (but not fear-inducing music). Critically, though, when > they heard these clips again, they reported that they made them feel more > happiness and less sadness, contradicting the provocative idea that > depressed people are seeking to perpetuate their low mood.

Could we control for the musical complexity structure of the samples ? Something along the lines of "complex musical structures pleases depressed people because it requires concentration and cognitive skills that aren't available for negative thoughts pattern" ?

</comment><comment><USER43> If you're interested in some philosophical perspectives of depression, you may find these pages as interesting as I did:

[http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2038.htm](http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2038.htm)

[http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2037.htm](http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2037.htm)

</comment><comment><USER44> As a volunteer at a crisis center, I can tell you that the thing that people most want to hear when they are sad, depressed, or otherwise in crisis is that they want to validate what feelings that they have. In a word, they are feeling awful and want to sit in that feeling, and the music helps listeners process that feeling.

</comment><comment><USER45> Boomerang effect. You go fast enough into a depressive state to actually feel something, have a good snotty sobbing cry, perhaps with that semi solid yellow stuff coming out of your sinuses, and then come out feeling refreshed and slightly embarrassed hoping you don't enter that state of mind again for a while.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm a really happy person but I love depressing music

</comment><comment><USER47> As miserable as it is to be depressed there may also be something positively reinforcing about it. Anger and hate clearly have that going for them, would it be surprising if sadness does too? If so, listening to sad music may be attractive in that it helps people feel sad.

</comment><comment><USER48> Music with harmonic frequencies is pleasing. The brain itself has frequencies which can be consonant/dissonant. As other commenters have mentioned, "happy" music is clashing/jarring (which is exactly what dissonance is like) when too far out of that mind-state. I think it's likely that the sound inputs are not harmonic/consonant with the brain's frequencies when the mind-state is much different. Thus, it's not just a matter of the degree of consonance of the input, since music sounds better or worse depending on the state of mind one is in, but the degree of consonance that the input induces in the brain's frequencies.

<comment><USER49> > but the degree of consonance that the input induces in the brain's > frequencies

That sounds incredibly pseudosciencey. Why would the inputs of audible sound compare to your brainwaves? Given that light is also composed of frequencies, is there a link there as well, or because the numbers don't align as well, is it disregarded?

<comment><USER48> > Why would the inputs of audible sound compare to your brainwaves?

Why wouldn't they affect brainwaves?

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6130927/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6130927/)

> Given that light is also composed of frequencies, is there a link there as > well

Sure

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17050390](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17050390)

Not saying this is hard-science yet, just a hypothesis (not my own). You can read more here, if interested:

[https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/06/18/quantifying-bliss- tal...](https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/06/18/quantifying-bliss-talk- summary/)

<comment><USER49> There's no doubt that light and sound affect the brain, our sense wouldn't function otherwise, I just have doubts about there being particular resonances or harmonics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I find that actually embrassing the depression and be that music or a sad film and letting those negative emotions have focus in a form of distraction. The upside is that after such exposure, the contrast of reality helps raise the mood. Obviously it's not a golden solution and the level of improvement varies as long-standing life issues are still there.

But instead of fighting the depression and feeling more down as you end up failing your own standards - fueling the depression. I find embracing it, have a dam good cry, have no shame in expressing such emotions and with that cut of much of the fuel that whilst does not soley instigate the depression but more prolongs it. Just helps.

Nothing worse than feeling down, and then feeling even more down because your expectation is that you should not feel down. It's a vicious circle of fueling and depressive period. That and worry about how others percieve it and the whole social stigma's of it being a weakness. So being mindful of such a mood and embracing the mood with a good solid cry, whilst not intuitively what you feel will help, actually does. Real key part is that you take control of the depression more than letting the depression take control of you, and by embracing and accepting it you take that step back into a driving seat.

But music is really useful for fixing moods, equally in todays noise poluted enviroments that cause micro-stress (stress you hardly notice but all add up), headphones work wonders. As I have found that stress can and does impact and induce depression. It is identifying those area's of micro-stress and dealing with them that help keep stress in check and with that, depression.

But everybody is an individual, so no solution will work for everybody. Though the side-effects of music are far less than any pharmaceutical offering.

I'd also suggest, try an old album from better times, For me Blondie Parallel Lines does the trick.

Equally some emotionally cold electronic music like some John Foxx renditions help to focus the mood, for me at least. Not what I'd call sad music (though some could), more what I'd class as totally emotionless in many ways.

</comment><comment><USER51> Because it supports how they feel, this is pretty much how the liking works in general.

</comment><comment><USER52> I've always found "happy music" to be boring, annoying, and/or aggravating while what most people would consider angry or sad music is uplifting and can positively affect my mood and energy.

</comment><comment><USER53> I think music has appeal because it's information, albeit processed at a low level, not because it's a mood-altering drug. As with all media, consumers want to feel it's "true". When consuming new information, we need to find something that resonates with our existing understanding to believe its meaningful, and not noise. Somber music feels more like it contains meaning to a person with a somber outlook. Joyful music in that case feels meaningless to the listener, because it fails to connect with what they already understand.

</comment><comment><USER54> It's math! -1 * -1 = 1

</comment><comment><USER55> Wait, is it only depressed people that like sad music? What about stories with tragic endings? There must be a lot of depressed people to have made these things so popular over the years.

<comment><USER52> Nowhere in the article did it state that only depressed people like sad music, just that they are more likely to choose sad music than the controls

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Type O Negative and reboot everything

<comment><USER57> They were one of the very best ever. It's a shame Pete Steel died already.. I heard he was heavily inspired by Lycia, pretty deep too, but not the production level of Type O Negative unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> In the throes of what was, in retrospect, probably depression, I made a playlist of my 'blues', the saddest songs I knew, to try and get a handle on what I was feeling. Somehow knowing I wasn't unique in sorrow helped, as did hearing how others dealt with it, even in such a packaged form.

Lots of other songs hit closer to home, but, somehow, 'Everybody Plays the Fool' by 'The Main Ingredient' always puts me in a better mood when it comes on.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm of the belief that a lot of depression is addiction and accumulated tolerance to the pleasure of being sad. Feeling intense sadness feels really good as your brain releases chemicals to make you feel better.

When feeling sad, a lot of people will tell themselves the worst possible worldview they can conceive to get a surge of deeper sadness and thus relief.

That being said, people tend to listen to music that validates their feelings regardless of the feeling so this isn't surprising.

<comment><USER52> This is absolutely ridiculous. Feeling intense sadness does not feel really good. People do not do things to "get a surge of deeper sadness and thus relief". This reads like someone who has never truly experienced depression, or even known anyone who was genuinely depressed. The implications you are making are offensive, unfounded, and incorrect

<comment><USER7> I'm not saying people seek out being sad to attain pleasure. I'm saying that when people are already sad, pushing the buttons in your brain to explore that sadness results in a positive feeling. Science is already on board that crying releases oxytocin and endorphins. I'm merely suggesting that crying is not absolutely required for the brain offer a similar comforting response when sad.

I further posit that given humans have a tendency to get addicted to any source of endorphins from phone screens to spicy peppers, they can and do get addicted to this one.

If you want to triple down on strictness and say only crying gives pleasure from sadness... sure whatever. I'm not going to make that my hill to die on.

Edit: and note that if someone did accumulate tolerance to natural calming emotional counteragents, that sounds like a very compelling setup for depression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I had an epiphany a few years ago related to this while in the midst of a depressive episode. A friend commented on my music selections: "Why do you listen to such sad music?" It caught me completely off guard because to me these were not sad songs but very comforting. I had no awareness that these songs could be interpreted as sad at that time. Looking back it's obvious, but at the time it was just what I felt drawn to...

</comment><comment><USER60> I've always liked sad music.

But I have to say that I don't associate such music with sadness. Rather more with overcoming things? I am not sure.

When I compose music I focus a lot on half intervals, especially things like major 7th chords and their derivitives.

Obligatory self promotion here: [1].

[1] [https://soundcloud.com/philliplyznav/sonic- safety](https://soundcloud.com/philliplyznav/sonic-safety)

</comment><comment><USER61> Funny I was just thinking about this...

I'm actually more productive with music that has a melancholy tone. But it has to be instrumental, human voices are extremely distracting.

Some Chopin works. Some Boards of Canada works. I also get good results with Studio Ghibli soundtrack music:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LEmer7wwHI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LEmer7wwHI)

</comment><comment><USER62> I've always considered sad music a kind of ally - in lieu of a friend you can be quiet with and share your moment. It's a form of communication, and sad music is sharing, well, sadness. I think it makes isolated people feel less lonely.

I'm also keen to hear the mentioned sad piece "Rakavot" by Avi Balili but it doesn't seem to exist online, does anyone have a reference?

<comment><USER63> Here it is: [https://avibelleli.bandcamp.com/track/trains](https://avibelleli.bandcamp.com/track/trains)

It's from a film soundtrack, used in the opening scene: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoC2PHu5f4I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoC2PHu5f4I)

Apparently, they transliterated the guy's name incorrectly (it's Belleli). I found it by searching in Hebrew at which point google managed to correct my spelling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> When you feel completely disconnected from society, the right kind of music gives you something to connect to. Which is something.

</comment><comment> david-cako The album Lateralus by Tool goes a step further for me. It strikes a balance between depressed and optimistic unlike any other.

</comment><comment><USER65> As a generally-happy person, I quite like happy songs. I tend to like them more than sad or angry songs.

I'm guessing this is because I identify with them so much more. And I'm guessing that sad people identify with sad things strongly as well.

Perhaps "like" is the wrong word in the title. Perhaps "prefer" is better.

</comment><comment><USER57> Maybe because when you are depressed you want to hear something that resonates within you? But what is 'Sad' in music? I think you crave for depth in musical emotions, not particularly 'sad' when you are depressed.

</comment><comment><USER66> In my case, one of the symptoms of my anxiety and depression is to seek out things that make my more worried and sad. It confirms and amplifies my catastrophic thinking. I gather this is a fairly common mode.

</comment><comment><USER67> Depressed people feel lonely. When you hear a sad song, you relate to the artist. Knowing someone else out there has also been in your situation, makes you feel less lonely.

</comment><comment><USER68> In order to successfully replicate, the depression meme must get you to feel depressed in the future. Encouraging an interest in sad music can be a part of that cycle.

</comment><comment><USER69> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily)

</comment><comment><USER70> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X23v5_K7cXk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X23v5_K7cXk)

</comment><comment><USER71> I love the title and then... "This study is unable to speak to why depressed people find low-energy, sad music uplifting"

</comment><comment><USER72> Why do sad people like to cry? I think it's the same answer.

</comment><comment><USER73> Misery loves company.

Music, films, books, they're virtual companions.

</comment><comment><USER74> I find musical experience is sometimes push or pull. Occasionally a sad piece will push into that space, but sometimes you are already sad and you search for music to pull into that place with you.

</comment><comment><USER75> catharsis

</comment><comment><USER76> So Google/Youtube knows when I'm sad.

<comment><USER77> No joke this article came in rescue at the exact time. I don't know if you are aware of the "doomer meme" (painfully relatable) but there are this videos with gosh damn songs that makes you fall in bottomless pit with others and then in the comment section where people discuss their misfortunes. E.g video: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=TNVqOmJc- YY&t=2s](https://youtube.com/watch?v=TNVqOmJc-YY&t=2s)

I think the only way I can fix this is too make videos too and gradually, just like the guy above said make them uplifting:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19743173](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19743173). 1:48 Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 - Strauss and then uplifting music.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> TL;dr: "This study is unable to speak to why depressed people find low-energy, sad music uplifting [...]"

</comment><comment><USER79> LoFi</comment>


Happiest/Unhappiest cities in the USA - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/us-unhappiest-cities_n_5606503.html

<comment><USER2> As somebody who is right now happy in NYC, I call BS on this one. I have no problems with people loving Louisiana, I don't see why I should feel bad about not living there.</comment>