The Power and Beauty of Incrementalism
26 comments
·June 27, 2025puttycat
lovestory
This is the second time someone has recommended this book on HN so for sure it can't be a bad read. I will be starting it tonight
michaelsbradley
The book may be a good read or bad one, I am unfamiliar with it. However, terrible recommendations are made on HN all the time, as well good ones, so I’d caution against “recommended a few times on HN” (on its own!) as an indicator of much anything.
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EDIT: changed wording from “multiple times” to “a few times” to be more clear.
nine_k
It may be an indicator of popularity / mindshare of certain ideas. It says little about the ideas' substance, but may still be very important in practice, if you deal with people.
ChrisMarshallNY
I've always found that an "evolutionary" approach to design is important[0].
[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/evolutionary-design-specificati...
atemerev
I am in awe how people can talk about buying 1.8 million homes like it's nothing big.
mgfist
In a time when people are becoming less social and more isolated, I think creating communities like this is super cool.
null
jacknews
woah this seems like tribalism run riot.
How about just living, and learning to deal with, the rest of society.
javier123454321
This is a bad take for a few reasons. You are implying that moving close to friends is not 'Living and learning to deal with the rest of society'. That is a false premise.
Second, living in community of close friends is a massive improvement in quality of life for everyone involved. This is as much biological as it is spiritual. You can either do that by becoming close to strangers that live nearby or living nearby people that are already close to you. Given that the average adult from the US moves over 11 times[1] in their life, the solution is self evident.
Lastly, using tribalism here is misguided. That implies a in and out group. Why use that word instead of 'communalism' which implies helping each other.
1. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-many-times-the-aver...
bogwog
Yeah, it seems easier (and healthier?) to make friends with your current neighbors than to try to build a concentration camp of friends.
rockostrich
This comparison feels like it's in very poor taste. The article doesn't promote any kind of ostracizing and certainly isn't promoting that anyone in the community is forced to be there. Making friends, especially with people who already probably have their own social lives, tends to be a lot harder than maintaining friends. It's completely valid for people who are already in each other's social circles to plan to live close to each other.
My partner and I moved into a house on a pretty secluded street of a very suburban township. There are 5 houses on the block. We're friendly with everyone but we're all in very different periods of our lives. Two of the houses have younger kids, one has older kids, and one is empty nesters. They're all super nice and we're friendly, but none of them are coming over to lift heavy weights in the garage while Creed is blasting.
all2
> They're all super nice and we're friendly, but none of them are coming over to lift heavy weights in the garage while Creed is blasting.
Tell me when and where, I'll bring the pre-workout.
IAmBroom
In this age, is living next to "10 besties" really needed?
I have one neighbor that I'm really close to - yay! I can borrow their wheelbarrow, or they can borrow my sprinkler attachment, without asking, and return it promptly (to remain friends!). We watch each other's dogs on vacation. All of this is much easier than if I had to use a farther-away friend.
But my other neighbors are just ... small-f friends. Friendly. I would even consider asking them to borrow a cup of sugar.
But as nice as it would be to have ALL my besties nearby, we do just fine with phone calls, texts, social media, and seeing each other at events.
I do agree with the advantage of incremental change. I suck at completing big tasks. But if I view each step as a small task, I can get there.
mgfist
> But as nice as it would be to have ALL my besties nearby, we do just fine with phone calls, texts, social media, and seeing each other at events.
I don't recall the article, but I remember reading an anecdotal piece where someone talked about how they met up with either their close friend or sibling like 10x more once they moved from 20 minutes away to a few houses down the street. It was like once every day or 2 vs once every two weeks.
neighman
How many of them would you trust to watch your 8mo old while you go out with your spouse for a few hours? Or would be willing to take your kids to school? Or help you repair the rotted subfloor in your bathroom?
I don't understand why most comments here are perversely interpreting the goals of the article. Obviously you have different life and relationship philosophies, no need to knock people doing it the way they want.
neighman
How can this be interpreted as "tribalism"?
This is simply a response to a lack of resources (time, energy, etc) to develop deep relationships during the stage of life when one can afford permanent housing. Modernity has made this harder than ever before.
If this doesn't apply to you, consider yourself truly privileged.
jacknews
How can it not be, where you want to build an enclave of 'like' people (alike in friend connections, education, outlook, not only race, which is what you seem to assume).
It's a stage of life where you should be branching out and meeting 'other' people, not just surrounding yourself with college buddies, and further cloistering yourself in that bubble.
mgfist
> How can it not be, where you want to build an enclave of 'like' people (alike in friend connections, education, outlook, not only race, which is what you seem to assume).
There's a strong implicit assumption here that stranger neighbors are not 'like' people. For the most part, this is not correct. If you buy a $2m home, your neighbor likely also has a $2m home, is also well educated, also has a high-paying job (probably in a similar field to you) and more likely to be the same race as you.
Same if you buy a $100,000 home.
neighman2
You're doing way too much assuming on who with, when, and why folks are doing this.
neighman
[flagged]
LightBug1
Not sure why you're down-voted. This idea, while good hearted, seems nuts.
Venture out into the world, and stay in touch with good friends. Simple?
That's also the beauty of evolution–there's no goal in that search algorithm, just open-ended incremental exploration which eventually grows beautiful things.
See Kenneth Stanley's book Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25670869-why-greatness-c...