> Unfortunately, people just love to see asses in seats.
A related problem I've noticed to this attitude is people's acceptance of it as a "fact of life." I work with a ton of people who recognize that time-in-seat is a meaningless metric, but somebody above them cares about it and they refuse to outrightly act like it's bullshit. I've been told by my manager that my time in the office is important not to him, but to our CEO.
> "we've observed that if you do this this, then that happens" statements
The whole endeavor of making science "map to reality" seems wholly misguided to me. Really, it's a set of predictions and outcomes. That's why the phrase "nature of reality" when applied to science irks me. Science isn't searching for the "nature of reality" and it couldn't find it even if it were. Science is about predicting the future ever more accurately.
Why am I supposed to want to track my temperature? How could that benefit me?
It's just data collection for the sake of data collection. Nobody is going to use the temperature data. It doesn't benefit anybody trying to snoop on you. It doesn't benefit you. It's just a stupid feature that you can throw in and market as "neat."
>I doubt any level of wrongdoing within the US Government could shock me anymore.
Worse is that less and less of the population sees any of the things they do as wrongdoing. After all, they're not doing it for power grabs or control - they're doing it to keep us safe and stop the terrorists and catch the paedophiles!
Mass surveillance is one of the first signs of a totalitarian state. History is easier to read about than to learn from. "Not this time." or "That wouldn't happen in {currentYear}" are the defenses.
I'm sure those were the same defense several centuries ago. But this time will be different!
I'm really scared of what the world will look like in another 2-3 decades.
A related problem I've noticed to this attitude is people's acceptance of it as a "fact of life." I work with a ton of people who recognize that time-in-seat is a meaningless metric, but somebody above them cares about it and they refuse to outrightly act like it's bullshit. I've been told by my manager that my time in the office is important not to him, but to our CEO.