Related to many interesting/crazy things being lost to history because the observer/actor is too busy to record them, and the things that do get reported consequently not representing reality... (And maybe a little relevant to the somber news events on this Monday.)
Many major religions prohibit making a show of good deeds. You're supposed to do it secretly, so that your intentions are pure.
But other people only see when a good deed is reported, so we're getting a distorted version of reality.
Some of these are reported for good reasons. But the worst form would be what social media kids are bombarded with: things like the clinically oblivious "influencers" who make videos of themselves exploiting a homeless person with a "charity" stunt.
One way to do good, while also letting people be inspired, is to do it anonymously. For example, the donation in a large crowd of them, or the anonymous rich-person's donation to a good cause (not a vanity university department named after yourself!), or any of the countless ways that one person quietly helps someone else.
You'll never know most of the times someone else helped you out, and most of the times you helped out someone else will also never be known. That's OK.
If you ever have the occasion to jump into an icy lake, to save a busload of photogenic schoolchildren and puppies, then you must try to get out of there right after, before anyone's phone dries out. Then the story will be about people simply doing the right thing, even an amazing thing, and fading back into the crowd. It'll be one of the best stories ever.
There’s an old xkcd joke about how some grand problem in information theory has probably been solved on some mundane business task without the author even knowing what they’ve done.
lol - thaught about this so many times in the past two years as I read thousands of papers and realizing that a poor engineer may have to deal with 2-3 discoveries a day without having the time (nor the math background) to deal with their deeper meaning and every time they see the "grand picture" it gets burried in the backlog maybe even stoned as NIH syndrome..
I always find it funny when some FP programmer ridicules others for not understanding monads, when in fact, those riduculed may have more extensive experience using them without knowing they are called monads.
After spending a little more time on both history and philosophy of science, I realized this is generally the rule rather than the exception, across all fields and functions
Many major religions prohibit making a show of good deeds. You're supposed to do it secretly, so that your intentions are pure.
But other people only see when a good deed is reported, so we're getting a distorted version of reality.
Some of these are reported for good reasons. But the worst form would be what social media kids are bombarded with: things like the clinically oblivious "influencers" who make videos of themselves exploiting a homeless person with a "charity" stunt.
One way to do good, while also letting people be inspired, is to do it anonymously. For example, the donation in a large crowd of them, or the anonymous rich-person's donation to a good cause (not a vanity university department named after yourself!), or any of the countless ways that one person quietly helps someone else.
You'll never know most of the times someone else helped you out, and most of the times you helped out someone else will also never be known. That's OK.
If you ever have the occasion to jump into an icy lake, to save a busload of photogenic schoolchildren and puppies, then you must try to get out of there right after, before anyone's phone dries out. Then the story will be about people simply doing the right thing, even an amazing thing, and fading back into the crowd. It'll be one of the best stories ever.