> Right now, we have (most of) my undergrad classmates' dream industry. They drink constantly [1], skip lectures, scrape by on their homework with AI, complain about classes, grind Leetcode to get internships, and eventually get their diploma. It must feel like walking around in a literal dream, where your footsteps have no weight, like Wile E. Coyote near a ledge.
There is a name for this in sociology: anomie [1].
In times of great change, the set of norms and rules that we take for granted as an organizing principle of our lives get uprooted. It's as if all of the pieces and tokens and rules of the board game we played our whole lives are swept off the table to make room for a new game, but the new game has not been set up yet. In that interim, we all feel a sense of unease. It is our turn to move, but we don't know the rules of the game or what moves to make. We feel intense pressure to play the game well, but don't know how.
In the past, these transitions have ended and society has generally returned to some sense of stability. A new board game gets set up, new pieces doled out, we learn to play the new game. I hope we get to that point with AI soon, but the revolutions seem to keep coming faster and faster.
When I went to college for CS, I was on a scholarship that required I keep my GPA. To have a little insurance for that, every semester I took a random extra easy intro class. That way, if I was bombing a hard class, I could drop it to keep my GPA while still being a full-time student.
One semester, I took Intro to Sociology and it was a revelation. I ended up completing all of the courses required to get a minor in sociology within a couple of years. I dropped out before I ever got close to finishing my CS major.
I wish more people knew sociology. It affects our lives more directly and profoundly than possibly any other science, but it's mostly unknown by the masses.
Good question. It's been over twenty years at this point, and we skimmed a lot of texts in the classes I took. The one that actually stuck with me was Erving Goffman's "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life", but I don't know how much that would still resonate.
Emile Durkeim's "Suicide" is famous in sociology because it helped kick off the entire field of study. It was, I think, one of the first works to consider how a profound individual action (suicide in this case) might be largely determined by the surrounding social structures.
I don't know what a good introductory book would be.
munificent · · focus · HN ↗
There is a name for this in sociology: anomie [1].
In times of great change, the set of norms and rules that we take for granted as an organizing principle of our lives get uprooted. It's as if all of the pieces and tokens and rules of the board game we played our whole lives are swept off the table to make room for a new game, but the new game has not been set up yet. In that interim, we all feel a sense of unease. It is our turn to move, but we don't know the rules of the game or what moves to make. We feel intense pressure to play the game well, but don't know how.
In the past, these transitions have ended and society has generally returned to some sense of stability. A new board game gets set up, new pieces doled out, we learn to play the new game. I hope we get to that point with AI soon, but the revolutions seem to keep coming faster and faster.
It's a psychologically difficult time.
[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie
ryandvm · · focus · HN ↗
munificent · · focus · HN ↗
One semester, I took Intro to Sociology and it was a revelation. I ended up completing all of the courses required to get a minor in sociology within a couple of years. I dropped out before I ever got close to finishing my CS major.
I wish more people knew sociology. It affects our lives more directly and profoundly than possibly any other science, but it's mostly unknown by the masses.
PsylentKnight · · focus · HN ↗
munificent · · focus · HN ↗
Emile Durkeim's "Suicide" is famous in sociology because it helped kick off the entire field of study. It was, I think, one of the first works to consider how a profound individual action (suicide in this case) might be largely determined by the surrounding social structures.
I don't know what a good introductory book would be.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]