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They like me? I find this surreal.
Aug. 9th, 2011 08:14 pmMy Hip Knitter shirt design has been climbing steadily in the ranks for two days now. It's at 34th, out of over 200 contenders.
When I hoped to at best make top 50, I was telling myself that the voters are Philistines, and it really doesn't matter because sometimes taste has nothing to do with quality, and so on. And now I'm like, "YEAH, they recognize my incredible awesomeness." Silly pattern-matching brain. Hush. But squee! I'm up in the top 40 with the mostly-good designs, where people look at them and stuff!
Work is going okay. I've survived 4.5 weeks of ambiguity and random reports, with apparently about another 3 to go before we start settling down to having any idea what my routine tasks are on this project. I really, really, really, really do not do well with the marketing aspects of this job. I am the last person to ask about how to make a shoe sale look clickable.
If you've been a job situation like this before, and found good strategies for dealing with the "I don't speak marketing and I am not the target audience" problem, I'm all ears.
Similarly, I've realized a lot of problems I have with my own responses to Internet arguments are based in not having formal philosophical training. I'm feeling a big gap in my toolbox there. The gap is shaped like this: I know the fundamental principles I want to live by. I know that my actions can affect one or more of those, usually in conflict. I know I need to identify those effects to the best of my ability and have some way of weighing the costs. I also need to get better at identifying when a principle doesn't apply, it's just a strawman or a false echo.
I took an Ethics class in college but they were doing everything in proofs, and I was really good at both geometry and algebra, so I just solved for conclusion and never absorbed any of the concepts we were manipulating. It wasn't deliberate, they'd just put some really easy logic problems in front of me, and how those would apply to real situations wasn't brought up long enough to stick.
So when I spend $X and Y hours doing a craft project and there are people starving out there, or I'm running into the basic truth that all writing contains fail and if I'm going to publish I'll just have to decide on an acceptable contaminant level, I have dramatically insufficient tools for holding comparative values in my head and choosing what I consider Right Actions.
I'm pretty confident I'm on my personal right side of the line for personal pleasure vs. sharing resources, for example, but I can't spell out why. What I've learned more than anything from social justice discussions is that my first instincts on anything unquestioned are wrong more than half the time. I'd like to get better formal tools for questioning.
How does one do that? Do any of you know of good books on personal ethics and how to define and test a set of principles? Classes? Particularly excellent blog series?
When I hoped to at best make top 50, I was telling myself that the voters are Philistines, and it really doesn't matter because sometimes taste has nothing to do with quality, and so on. And now I'm like, "YEAH, they recognize my incredible awesomeness." Silly pattern-matching brain. Hush. But squee! I'm up in the top 40 with the mostly-good designs, where people look at them and stuff!
Work is going okay. I've survived 4.5 weeks of ambiguity and random reports, with apparently about another 3 to go before we start settling down to having any idea what my routine tasks are on this project. I really, really, really, really do not do well with the marketing aspects of this job. I am the last person to ask about how to make a shoe sale look clickable.
If you've been a job situation like this before, and found good strategies for dealing with the "I don't speak marketing and I am not the target audience" problem, I'm all ears.
Similarly, I've realized a lot of problems I have with my own responses to Internet arguments are based in not having formal philosophical training. I'm feeling a big gap in my toolbox there. The gap is shaped like this: I know the fundamental principles I want to live by. I know that my actions can affect one or more of those, usually in conflict. I know I need to identify those effects to the best of my ability and have some way of weighing the costs. I also need to get better at identifying when a principle doesn't apply, it's just a strawman or a false echo.
I took an Ethics class in college but they were doing everything in proofs, and I was really good at both geometry and algebra, so I just solved for conclusion and never absorbed any of the concepts we were manipulating. It wasn't deliberate, they'd just put some really easy logic problems in front of me, and how those would apply to real situations wasn't brought up long enough to stick.
So when I spend $X and Y hours doing a craft project and there are people starving out there, or I'm running into the basic truth that all writing contains fail and if I'm going to publish I'll just have to decide on an acceptable contaminant level, I have dramatically insufficient tools for holding comparative values in my head and choosing what I consider Right Actions.
I'm pretty confident I'm on my personal right side of the line for personal pleasure vs. sharing resources, for example, but I can't spell out why. What I've learned more than anything from social justice discussions is that my first instincts on anything unquestioned are wrong more than half the time. I'd like to get better formal tools for questioning.
How does one do that? Do any of you know of good books on personal ethics and how to define and test a set of principles? Classes? Particularly excellent blog series?
