Readit NewsBased on my own experience, here are a few reasons (could be a lot more):
1. Unlike most developed countries, in India (and many other develping countries), people in authority are expected to be respected unconditinally(almost). Questioning a manager, teacher, or senior is often seen as disrespect or incompetence. So, instead of asking for clarification, many people just "do something" and hope it is acceptable. You can think of this as a lighter version of Japanese office culture, but not limited to office... it's kind of everywhere in society.
2. Our education system mainly rewards results, not how good or well-thought-out the results are. Sure, better answers get more marks, but the gap between "okay" and "excellent" is usually not emphasized much. This comes from scale problems (huge number of students), very low median income (~$2400/year), and poorly trained teachers, especially outside big cities. Many teachers themselves memorize answers and expect matching output from students. This is slowly improving, but the damage is already there.
3. Pay in India is still severely (serioualy low, with 12-14+ hour work days, even more than 996 culture of China) low for most people, and the job market is extremely competitive. For many students and juniors, having a long list of "projects", PRs, or known names on their resume most often the only way to stand out. Quantity often wins over quality. With LLMs, this problem just got amplified.
Advice: If you want better results from Indian engineers(or designers or anyone else really), especially juniors (speaking as of now, things might change in near future), try to reduce the "authority" gap early on. Make it clear you are approachable and that asking questions is expected. For the first few weeks, work closely with them in the style you want them to follow.. they usually adapt very fast once they feel safe to do so.
I've found that this is also true of American engineers, particularly those fresh out of college. So many people have internalized that open curiosity will yield no result at best and direct punishment at worst.
Which would be great, if the mechanism and prize for "voting" were something other than people's basic means of survival.
Gambling addiction isn't bad because there's something wrong with predicting outcomes, it's bad because it causes people to lose all of their money.
"Kalshi, but with a maximum order size of $1" would be great. Kalshi, with a maximum order size of oh crap I can't pay my rent this month, is very bad!
Saying that the house is playing the game against you is equivalent to saying that Nintendo is playing Super Mario Bros against you.
If the risk taken can, in principle, be shifted in your favour (i.e. to produce positive expectation) through application of skill, then it isn't gambling. For example, in my mind, betting on whether you will win a game of chess is not gambling. On the other hand, if you cannot influence the outcome in your favour through skill, then it is gambling. Roulette is generally a good example of this (with the caveat that in some very specific circumstances it's possible to beat with skill).
If we're limiting the definition to merely risk-taking (you might win or you might lose) without factoring in skill, then virtually everything in life becomes gambling. For example, you gamble when you deposit money in the bank because it might go bust.
There's also the legal definition, in which case it's just a matter of checking whether the jurisdiction you are in considers the activity to be gambling or not.
This would be more accurately framed as "parking illegally", which is the sort of thing for which you occasionally get a ticket placed under your windshield wiper, not the sort of thing for which armed, masked agents violently arrest you.
Even if it's not intentional, I find that the enshittification seems to run along these lines.
The things that finally drove it home for me this year were "peppermint bark" and "ranch dip". I used to buy this stuff or use the premade. This year I worked out how to do them properly myself.
People raved about both. But I noticed that they ate far less of them (including myself!). My suspicion is that the difference was that I used actual chocolate and actual buttermilk. I suspect the extra fat made people sated and they quit eating afterward.
I'm finding this applicable to more and more foods. I'm no genius chef, but simply using standard ingredients causes people to eat very differently.
It's a worrisome addiction pattern. I'm still not sure if it indicates something that's been done to the food or a serious problem with my thought patterns.
Good that they changed their statement and took the right action. Even better for the community for stepping up and 'forcing' Bose to do so.
Sources: https://web.archive.org/web/20251201051242/https://www.bose....https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/10/bose-soundtouch-home...