Is X useful?

There are two main types of people in the world, and three finer types.

• The “X is useless” school
• The “X is useful” group
  • The “maybe X will help” crowd.
  • The “X was actually helpful” school of thought

Those in the “helpful” camp think those in the “not helpful” camp “simply couldn’t make use of you.”

Some of the “maybe X will help” crowd are annoying people who have invested in X but have yet to have a useful experience, and who go around asserting that “X will help” in order to gain more friends because they want to believe that their investment was not a mistake.

Some people in the “useful” camp keep quiet about their usefulness or, conversely, spread rumors about their “uselessness” for fear that the usefulness will decrease as more people enter the field. This often occurs when a finite resource is shared among those who know about it.

• Frequently assigned to X
  • philosophy
  • mathematics
  • Studying English at school

Pragmatism

This page is auto-translated from /nishio/Xは役に立つのか using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.