"technical correctness is worthless if you’re solving the wrong problem."
100% agreed
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
158 points (98.8% liked)
Programming
24386 readers
500 users here now
Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!
Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.
Hope you enjoy the instance!
Rules
Rules
- Follow the programming.dev instance rules
- Keep content related to programming in some way
- If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos
Wormhole
Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The article is nice and the finals observations are saddly so true :/ :(
Even LLMs (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT optimize for the wrong thing. They optimize for sounding confident. For sounding like they know the answer. Not for being right. Not for being honest.
Fun read, but odd title for someone punching well above their weight for literally no incentive other than the relish of the challenge. Minimum wage =/= maximum effort... What was the meme about the guy fabricating a set of scary cardboard monsters to cower near? Similar energy.
It makes much more sense if you read the last third or so of the post.
They convert their examples of algorithms optimizing for different or wrong things into direct social commentary on how social media algos optimize for rage, as this is more profitable than something that would optimize for... you know, improving society... many elements of modern tech driven society are optimizing for the wrong thing.
The entire set up of the post is 'i am a computer scientist and my job is i sweep floors in a grocery store'.
That entire setup is a society nonsensically 'optimizing' what it does with workers of various skill sets.
This person did this because they are immensely bored and underutilized, they are underemployed.
IE, the labor market / education system is very badly optimized.
A better optimized society would have them writing a post with them describing a more consequential, practically useful code adventure.
More to the point:
Yes, many elements of modern tech driven society are the way they are optimized for rage, buts that is only because rage drives engagement and engagement makes a select few people very rich.
As long as we allow individuals to become insanely rich and or powerful, this. will. never. change.
It's not that hard, simple rules, ban billionaires. Set a hard cap on personal wealth and anything you earn over that goes 100% to taxes.
wakka wakka wakka wakka
Fun read, great lesson.