Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
Everything is a system. The economy, society, relationships, nature, traffic.<p>You don&#x27;t need math to reverse engineer a system. You just need to pay attention to it. You can say the right words to make a date happy. You can figure out which lane is the fastest route, better than Google Maps can. You don&#x27;t need an app or data - your brain is a wonderful data processing machine.<p>Don&#x27;t be angry at the people who are benefiting from a system, or at the system itself. Most just end up that way, the same way a river meanders towards the sea, or an electrical current tries to find ground.<p>Fixing&#x2F;improving a system often requires deep understanding of it. An action here will cause a response there. People often document it, but few will do a proper design.<p>If you don&#x27;t fix a system, few will. Most people are reactive to it and try to live with it as background noise.<p>If you don&#x27;t control a system, it will control you. You don&#x27;t have to change its fundamentals, just move out of the way of harm.<p>Neatness&#x2F;order is a way to understand a system. All systems tend to fall to disorder. Disorder is not always a bad thing. Order is very expensive, and only serves as better documentation to those who do not understand it. Very often, excessive order is a symptom of someone who does not understand or control it.