> If your solution to some problem relies on “If everyone would just...” then you do not have a solution. Everyone is not going to just. At no time in the history of the universe has everyone just, and they’re not going to start now.
I kind of disagree with that. Everyone has "just started doing" a ton of things in history. For example:
* Brushing their teeth, about a hundred years ago
* Regularly washing their hands, maybe 150 years? Less?
Etc.
Of course you can find people who still don't/do all of these and any other examples you come up with. But the point is that society as a whole has changed their view of these things, and what was abnormal is now normal. Which I'm pretty is what the "if people would just" folk really mean. Nobody is dumb enough to expect 100% of people to change 100% of the time, and it's unfair to their intelligence to assume that's what they mean.
Edit: removed one example that was too emotional and distracted from the point.
The core message of "everybody will not just" is that you need to think about why people haven't already just, and address that.
With tooth-brushing and hand-washing people actually didn't know it was that good for you. So massive public health education campaigns about how they prevent acute illnesses turned out to be enough to get significant adherence. That both are very low-cost / low-burden / low-effort activities are also reasons that education on the benefits was enough.
(And educating the next generation of children to instill proper tooth-brushing and hand-washing as habits remains a perpetual ongoing effort; kids do not "just" either, they need to be educated the same way.)
Compare this to many "why won't everyone just" issues where the information is already out - merely re-proclaiming stuff already known by the audience that-will-not-just, and expecting that to turn the needle, is nonsensical.
* I don't think there's actually any scientific studies proving brushing works, but the toothbrush definitely sheds microplastics into your body. Same with flossing.
* I don't see the need to completely obliterate all bacteria living on the surface of a part my body just because I touched my penis for a minute.
* I don't use shampoo either, it was brought from India just 200 years ago. Anti-dandruff shampoo isn't real and we don't even know exactly what causes it.
Brushing your teeth is the opposite of an "if everyone would just" problem. You do it for yourself, you benefit from it, and you aren't affected much by whether everyone else is doing it or not.
> The argument for voting is very Kantian: “act so that if everyone acted so…” and “if no literally one voted then voting would matter again” but if literally no one voted the government wouldn’t maintain legitimacy. And in any case this is not an actual causality. When you vote you don’t magically cause everyone else like you to vote, you are a distinct agent with distinct internal thoughts. Your individual actions have only very weak externalities beyond the direct consequences of your choice/vote.
> Unfortunately the delusional thinking behind voting crops up in leftist inclinations in general. They want to build giant organizations, giant armies, with individuals all acting in low return-on-investment ways, in hopes of aggregate impact. They don’t search for opportunities of high impact individual direct action.
I was getting into an argument with some people who were yelling at me for voting third party in the USA federal election. Because I'm a Texas voter it's my fault the state won't turn blue. "If all Texas non voters voted, and if all third party voters voted democrat, the state would turn blue." And if only people would just stop committing crime, if only people would just not steal from their employees, if only people would just Do The Right Thing...
Anarchist: "If everyone would just stop forming governments"
>but if literally no one voted the government wouldn’t maintain legitimacy
This is why no one takes anarchists seriously.
Now, the problem is not voting for first parties. It's lack of mandatory voting, and FPTP voting. Change it to ranked choice and suddenly third party votes wouldn't be wasted votes.
Thanks for the link. As someone who feels disenfranchised with a countercultural thread running through, a lot of it resonated with me. I do tend to vote third party as well (maybe not this election given the state of the GOP) — after all, it’s your vote, why give it to someone you don’t agree with?
Though I will say that if you didn’t vote, then you don’t get to complain about the system because after all by not voting you’re rejecting a core tenet of the system. I gotta read more things out of this library, this is fun to noodle on.
Deciding not to murder and not to steal have measurable real-world effects. Voting in a way that results in no change does not. Voting on principle only works when you have proportional representation.
You should vote in a way that moves the needle the way you want it to move.
It is possible to get everyone to just, it’s just that it only works with smaller sets of everyone. Everyone everyone would certainly never going to just, but you could just pick a smaller everyone (like everyone in this room or something).
I can get a few people to do a lot of things, and a lot of people to do a few things, but it's rarely 'just'. You have to acknowledge that it isn't free and it might not be easy, but convince them the rewards are worth the effort often and significantly enough that if once in a while they aren't, it still comes out in the wash.
Except they don't. They aren't sitting up in their ivory towers thinking: "if everyone just did X, then everything would be better". No, they are executing plans to get to that outcome. They are recruiting people, coercing people, killing people, manipulating people, seizing power, etc. All working toward their goal.
If someone says "just", it means they believe the presented solution is less complicated than some existing proposal.
That conversation should be a significant part of software development, and usually the answer is "no we can't just do that, because it wouldn't do what we are trying to do", or "yes, but it's not actually as simple as you seem to believe". Sometimes the answer is "yes, we can just do that" and everyone should be glad when that is the case.
If you can't handle normal engineering criticism, then you are an imposter. Real engineers generate alternatives, and evaluate alternatives proposed to them.
I really think you should consider what is implied by the word "just". When you say "no we can't just do that" it implies that you think someone will have missed the obvious. This may fall under "normal engineering criticism" to you, but I can assure you that some people will not see it as such and they won't like it. Which makes it a poor fit for good team communication. It will probably also make you disliked. It's obviously not always an negative word on its own. In your "yes, we can just do that" example it's fine. It's, however, also unnecessary as you could say: "yes, we can do that" and retain the full meaning.
> If you can't handle normal engineering criticism, then you are an imposter.
It's not normal engineering criticism though. "Just" is (in)famously known as a term that you use when you're overconfident while missing the whole picture. In many universities around here they will teach you about the dangers of it. Because it's really not good engineering to not do your analytics before suggesting solutions. I think most of us are guilty of using it. In my current team we laugh about it. We have a sort of swear jaw mentality when someone uses the term unironically, usually called out by the person who did it themselves. It's now a term we mostly use it as an internal joke, however, and people are never going to miss an opportunity to call the most complex challenges "just" in the most hilarious way they can.
For some reason, I found myself unreasonably upset at the suggestion that I should avoid a word solely because people will assume it indicates malintent. But after taking a step back to reflect, I realize it's not a big deal to avoid one word. I'm perfectly capable of condescension without having to rely on any specific word.
I've come around to that conclusion on other verboten words, if other people don't like them it's not a big deal for me to stop using them. And I suppose it's less typing to push to main than it is to push to master.
Agreed, and I've also come around to the inverse conclusion: if there are words people would like me to use (someone's preferred pronouns, the in-house terminology, the name someone introduced themselves with) then it's not a big deal for me to use them.
It's weird to frame this as some imposition and that you're doing a favor to everyone by being a thoughtful communicator. Language is all about thinking about how what you say is going to be reflected in the minds of others. If you aren't already doing that constantly you are a bad communicator. You can choose to say things that sting intentionally if you want, but doing so because you haven't thought about it is just poor form.
Please stop using contractions. As a non-native English raised English learner the use of the contractions is difficult to hear the distinction at times.
Would be nice if I could just flip a switch and stop using all language that I want to cut out.
I am currently working on getting rid of "I think" and ending statements with a "haha" (I hate this one). Sometimes I write a work message like: "I think we can just create a new token for it haha" and I want to slap myself. haha.
If I wrote that sentence as "We can create a new token for it" instant boost in respect from my peers and director level promotion in the works.
OP: Well it's not always as simple as that. How will you get to the gym? Will you drive or ride a bike? What if there are other people using your usual weight machines, do you wait or do cardio? If you're working out after work, will you need to bring a change of clothes? How will my diet affect my workout? And how can I track my fitness to ensure I'm making progress?
Sometimes the answer is to just inject that JavaScript snippet. Of course all the follow up questions that OP mentioned to injecting that JS snippet are valid. But that is part of the "just". The person "just"ing that has assumed that you will consider all of those caveats and there should be no issues, because after all, why would there be if millions of people already use it without issue? It's up to the engineer to just do it, or push back if it's not actually as simple as it seems.
What's wrong with this? That seems like proper usage to me. What the author has an issue with seems to be snobby, snarky, or sarcastic usage of the word "just."
Sometimes, the best answer is in fact "just add a DNS record."
The author should just write that instead of this long blog-post that gives the impression of someone easily offended.
No, the problem is oblivious use of the word “just”. As in “just add a DNS record”, when said to an audience that has never setup a website. The idea here is that we (people who write instructions) are so bad at knowing our audience, and so bad at knowing if we’re one of the ones who are bad at knowing our audience, that it’s safer to just avoid using just entirely.
It's not about written instructions to an audience who has never set up a website though, it's about an "engineer" and a "senior engineer" on the same team talking to each other.
Just in a statement is insulting if the other person has no idea why the statement is true. Why don't you just, in a question, is insulting if the suggestion is a good one.
It might "just" be simple to you, but that could be with your years of knowledge. Write for your audience. If it's an informational blogpost? "just" might annoy people who do get confused because they think it should be easy. "Just" make the app.
Step 1. Draw a circle.
Step 2. Just finish the lion.
Why can't you draw from my instructions?
The same principle is why I try not to teach any game as "Simple", even when it is to me. Some people cannot follow rules to a game, no matter how simple, and then are frustrated when the "simple" game doesn't come to them. Why add that layer of negativity?
words mean things. What's really the benefit of adding in "just"?
Your claim is that people are too easily offended and so maybe these people will be (too) easily offend by the word. So what's really the benefit of using the word?
It adds clarity that you're proposing an alternate solution precisely because it's simpler/less work and not as a general alternative. It's a qualifier. think of it as shorthand for "Wouldn't it be easier if..."
"Just" is a useful word and concept. The main reason people say it is that it promotes clear communication. Sometimes, I wonder if people who don't like the word "just" just don't like what the word implies.
Of course, one can use the word "just" in a cynical or abusive way. Banning the word does not in any way solve that problem. Some people are cynical and want to say things cynically. Some people want to do some abusing. Don't curtail English itself to solve a problem with bad intentions.
I often use the word "just" when I want to communicate that I think there might be a simple solution. It is not wrong to communicate that!
I often use the word "just" to indicate that one reason is much more important than any other reason as in "maybe you just don't like people to imply that you've missed an obvious solution." This may be the truth. Don't try to tell me I cannot speak the truth.
Do not unjustly criticize the proper use of "just."
When I worked in robotics at JPL, "just" was a running joke. We all tried to avoid using it, because we were all aware that it was a strong indicator of underestimating a challenge. We'd still catch each other using it all the time.
I agree. In this case, we felt that use of a particular word in a particular context reflected a mindset that many of us were trying to avoid. And, it became a fun game.
Readit News
> If your solution to some problem relies on “If everyone would just...” then you do not have a solution. Everyone is not going to just. At no time in the history of the universe has everyone just, and they’re not going to start now.
* Brushing their teeth, about a hundred years ago
* Regularly washing their hands, maybe 150 years? Less?
Etc.
Of course you can find people who still don't/do all of these and any other examples you come up with. But the point is that society as a whole has changed their view of these things, and what was abnormal is now normal. Which I'm pretty is what the "if people would just" folk really mean. Nobody is dumb enough to expect 100% of people to change 100% of the time, and it's unfair to their intelligence to assume that's what they mean.
Edit: removed one example that was too emotional and distracted from the point.
With tooth-brushing and hand-washing people actually didn't know it was that good for you. So massive public health education campaigns about how they prevent acute illnesses turned out to be enough to get significant adherence. That both are very low-cost / low-burden / low-effort activities are also reasons that education on the benefits was enough.
(And educating the next generation of children to instill proper tooth-brushing and hand-washing as habits remains a perpetual ongoing effort; kids do not "just" either, they need to be educated the same way.)
Compare this to many "why won't everyone just" issues where the information is already out - merely re-proclaiming stuff already known by the audience that-will-not-just, and expecting that to turn the needle, is nonsensical.
* I don't think there's actually any scientific studies proving brushing works, but the toothbrush definitely sheds microplastics into your body. Same with flossing.
* I don't see the need to completely obliterate all bacteria living on the surface of a part my body just because I touched my penis for a minute.
* I don't use shampoo either, it was brought from India just 200 years ago. Anti-dandruff shampoo isn't real and we don't even know exactly what causes it.
Outwardly I'm a pretty normal person.
"Why can't you just..."
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/william-gillis-the-c...
> The argument for voting is very Kantian: “act so that if everyone acted so…” and “if no literally one voted then voting would matter again” but if literally no one voted the government wouldn’t maintain legitimacy. And in any case this is not an actual causality. When you vote you don’t magically cause everyone else like you to vote, you are a distinct agent with distinct internal thoughts. Your individual actions have only very weak externalities beyond the direct consequences of your choice/vote.
> Unfortunately the delusional thinking behind voting crops up in leftist inclinations in general. They want to build giant organizations, giant armies, with individuals all acting in low return-on-investment ways, in hopes of aggregate impact. They don’t search for opportunities of high impact individual direct action.
I was getting into an argument with some people who were yelling at me for voting third party in the USA federal election. Because I'm a Texas voter it's my fault the state won't turn blue. "If all Texas non voters voted, and if all third party voters voted democrat, the state would turn blue." And if only people would just stop committing crime, if only people would just not steal from their employees, if only people would just Do The Right Thing...
>but if literally no one voted the government wouldn’t maintain legitimacy
This is why no one takes anarchists seriously.
Now, the problem is not voting for first parties. It's lack of mandatory voting, and FPTP voting. Change it to ranked choice and suddenly third party votes wouldn't be wasted votes.
Though I will say that if you didn’t vote, then you don’t get to complain about the system because after all by not voting you’re rejecting a core tenet of the system. I gotta read more things out of this library, this is fun to noodle on.
You should vote in a way that moves the needle the way you want it to move.
Deleted Comment
That said, Lopatin below also makes a valid counterpoint.
That conversation should be a significant part of software development, and usually the answer is "no we can't just do that, because it wouldn't do what we are trying to do", or "yes, but it's not actually as simple as you seem to believe". Sometimes the answer is "yes, we can just do that" and everyone should be glad when that is the case.
If you can't handle normal engineering criticism, then you are an imposter. Real engineers generate alternatives, and evaluate alternatives proposed to them.
> If you can't handle normal engineering criticism, then you are an imposter.
It's not normal engineering criticism though. "Just" is (in)famously known as a term that you use when you're overconfident while missing the whole picture. In many universities around here they will teach you about the dangers of it. Because it's really not good engineering to not do your analytics before suggesting solutions. I think most of us are guilty of using it. In my current team we laugh about it. We have a sort of swear jaw mentality when someone uses the term unironically, usually called out by the person who did it themselves. It's now a term we mostly use it as an internal joke, however, and people are never going to miss an opportunity to call the most complex challenges "just" in the most hilarious way they can.
Our language matters more than just linguistically, it matters culturally.
So, when someone wants to delete a word or usage, well it requires a lot of thought about the implications.
Sometimes it's a good thing, a lot of times there is a charged , sometimes political, motivation behind the desire for change.
Nice deployment of 'solely.' I can see you did not want to say 'just because.'
I am currently working on getting rid of "I think" and ending statements with a "haha" (I hate this one). Sometimes I write a work message like: "I think we can just create a new token for it haha" and I want to slap myself. haha.
If I wrote that sentence as "We can create a new token for it" instant boost in respect from my peers and director level promotion in the works.
Dead Comment
OP: Well it's not always as simple as that. How will you get to the gym? Will you drive or ride a bike? What if there are other people using your usual weight machines, do you wait or do cardio? If you're working out after work, will you need to bring a change of clothes? How will my diet affect my workout? And how can I track my fitness to ensure I'm making progress?
Sometimes the answer is to just inject that JavaScript snippet. Of course all the follow up questions that OP mentioned to injecting that JS snippet are valid. But that is part of the "just". The person "just"ing that has assumed that you will consider all of those caveats and there should be no issues, because after all, why would there be if millions of people already use it without issue? It's up to the engineer to just do it, or push back if it's not actually as simple as it seems.
Indeed. "Just" implies an assumption has been made, but it's not clear what assumptions nor whether they are justified.
Which makes it very nice for getting your assumptions checked.
What's wrong with this? That seems like proper usage to me. What the author has an issue with seems to be snobby, snarky, or sarcastic usage of the word "just."
Sometimes, the best answer is in fact "just add a DNS record."
The author should just write that instead of this long blog-post that gives the impression of someone easily offended.
Why not (just) answer with "Add a DNS record." ?
There is weird symmetry here.
It might "just" be simple to you, but that could be with your years of knowledge. Write for your audience. If it's an informational blogpost? "just" might annoy people who do get confused because they think it should be easy. "Just" make the app.
Step 1. Draw a circle.
Step 2. Just finish the lion.
Why can't you draw from my instructions?
The same principle is why I try not to teach any game as "Simple", even when it is to me. Some people cannot follow rules to a game, no matter how simple, and then are frustrated when the "simple" game doesn't come to them. Why add that layer of negativity?
Your claim is that people are too easily offended and so maybe these people will be (too) easily offend by the word. So what's really the benefit of using the word?
Deleted Comment
Disagree with people's heuristics too often and you might find yourself looking for a job.
Just write a better article yourself.
Of course, one can use the word "just" in a cynical or abusive way. Banning the word does not in any way solve that problem. Some people are cynical and want to say things cynically. Some people want to do some abusing. Don't curtail English itself to solve a problem with bad intentions.
I often use the word "just" when I want to communicate that I think there might be a simple solution. It is not wrong to communicate that!
I often use the word "just" to indicate that one reason is much more important than any other reason as in "maybe you just don't like people to imply that you've missed an obvious solution." This may be the truth. Don't try to tell me I cannot speak the truth.
Do not unjustly criticize the proper use of "just."
"It's just so simple" -> "I's mercifully simple".
"It's just only a tiny change" -> "By mercy, it's but a tiny change".
"Just do it" -> "Have mercy, do it".
</ha-ha-only-serious>
ill sell her ine.lol
Outside of slurs, blanket avoidance of words mostly just adds unnecessary obfuscation.