defnotahuman (u/defnotahuman)

defnotahuman commented on Ask HN: How to restore cognition after years of trauma? I feel slow and dumb · Posted by u/dezeiner

softwaredoug · 3 years ago

Anger. Get angry.

A lot of trauma is internalization. You blame yourself. It's made to be your fault. You're told you're a terrible person. Get mad about what happened to you. Anger is your tool for being pissed off and asserting your boundaries.

https://cptsdfoundation.org/2022/05/31/the-importance-of-ang...

defnotahuman · 3 years ago

This is insanely bad advice, IMO.

Anger is very hard to control, can easily backfire into self-loathing and cause you to strain existing relationships, which can also further fuel internal anger at oneself. If you get mad about what happened to you and start lashing out at others, you risk isolating yourself and deepening your depression.

defnotahuman commented on Ask HN: How to restore cognition after years of trauma? I feel slow and dumb · Posted by u/dezeiner

defnotahuman · 3 years ago

I've been struggling with this for years and I've made tremendous progress in 2022. Here's what worked for me:

- developing a regular aerobic exercise routine. Starting my day with a walk or run makes such a difference, I feel like a different person after I exercise

- reducing/cutting out substances. I love cannabis but I recognize that it exacerbates my ADHD symptoms, reduces my desire to connect socially and reduces my cognitive ability. Alcohol disturbs my sleep as well. If I don't keep tight limits on my consumption and take long breaks between use, my mental health declines significantly

- find a constructive activity that you love to do. I've fallen in love with painting. It gets me off the screens and relaxes me while giving me a sense of personal accomplishment and growth. It gives me space to appreciate myself and cultivate self-compassion and love. Don't try to make it a side hustle, just something that you enjoy and helps you unwind

- practicing a self-care/personal space cleaning routine. I still struggle with this and by no means keep a 100% clean house all the time. But I know that no matter how bad I'm feeling, I always feel a little better after cleaning. If I'm having a really bad day, I try to clean at least one room in my house (and once I do one, I usually feel motivated enough to do more)

- psychiatric drugs have not worked for me personally, but that certainly doesn't mean they won't work for you. The key to recovery is making them a part of a larger commitment to your overall health. You cannot simply take a drug and ignore the other aspects of your life. Americans have been conditioned to think that a pill solves everything, but this could not be further from the truth

defnotahuman commented on ChatGPT banned from New York City public schools’ devices and networks nbcnews.com/tech/tech-new... · Posted by u/boratanrikulu

kypro · 3 years ago

I've said it in another thread, but if you have to ban a tool to preserve the value of some course or examination then it's likely they have little to no value in the real world.

In most cases the courses are fine, but the examination probably isn't testing anything useful if it can be cheated with tools like ChatGPT. For example any maths test which only tests students on problems which are easily solvable by a calculator isn't testing any skill of real world use. But this doesn't mean maths itself isn't valuable, just that the test isn't.

In some cases like programmers and writers, ChatGPT might actually be eroding the value the current curriculum. For example, I'm not sure if there's much value in learning things like basic SQL queries anymore which was something I had to learn when studying computer science. ChatGPT is great at writing SQL queries if you're able to tell it exactly what you need.

defnotahuman · 3 years ago

> I'm not sure if there's much value in learning things like basic SQL queries anymore which was something I had to learn when studying computer science.

I really disagree, a major function of education is to teach concepts before introducing tools. I took a physics class in undergrad that required a graphing calculator, does that mean I wasted years learning all of the mathematical concepts that could be performed by a graphing calculator?

Having an understanding of what's going on is so important, especially when something is broken. If we encourage students to start with AI and not learn the fundamentals themselves, they won't wind up learning how to identify root cause when the tool causes an issue (and ChatGPT is by no means perfect).

defnotahuman commented on ChatGPT banned from New York City public schools’ devices and networks nbcnews.com/tech/tech-new... · Posted by u/boratanrikulu

dumbfounder · 3 years ago

ChatGPT is just a tool, like a calculator. Calculators are banned in certain circumstances and required in others. At first they were probably seen as cheating, but then the system realized they could be used to enhance what kids learn. Why take away a tool that could be used everywhere in life? That's not how progress should work. The system should evolve to embrace such tools, but the obvious problem is that it just won't happen quickly enough, and in the short term they will be used for illegitimate purposes, and so we just ban.

defnotahuman · 3 years ago

The problem is that calculators are correct 100% of the time, ChatGPT is not. What makes it more difficult is that it's often really hard to tell when ChatGPT is correct or not.

defnotahuman commented on Leaked Slack all-hands meeting reveals a ‘strong culture clash’ with Salesforce fortune.com/2023/01/05/le... · Posted by u/mfiguiere

defnotahuman · 3 years ago

I was part of a small startup (about 50 employees) that was acquired by a big publicly-traded tech firm about 5 years ago, and boy was that experience interesting.

Before moving to the new office, we were told that we were getting our own dedicated section of the building to ourselves so we could continue to collaborate freely and develop our product since our work was fairly niche and we had a very different tech stack from the rest of the org.

We show up on day 1 and there's no dedicated space for us. We're moved a few times over the first few months, but it was clear that zero effort went into planning our arrival. About 6 months after the move-in, our customer support team is moved to be with the rest of the parent company customer support org (something they told us would never happen). A few months after that, they tried to take away our hybrid work perk (for years, we could work from home Tues, Wed, Fri and they promised to honor this after the acquisition), relenting only after being told the change would cause attrition. For two straight years, it was nothing but lies and broken promises.

Alongside all of this, I saw an unfathomable amount of wasted effort, millions upon millions upon millions in engineering pay being lit on fire. They had a whole team dedicated to building a shitty front end component library that we all had to use to reskin our apps in order to achieve design consistency. We could've used a mature tool like MaterialUI but nooooooo, this hot mess of a component lib was our great gift to the open source community. My favorite part: we constantly ran into cases where the provided components didn't meet all of our UI behavior needs, but the development backlog for the UI team was 2 years so we had to fork the components and make our own changes, which other teams were doing as well. It was the worst of all worlds.

It boggles my mind that companies can grow to be so big, so dysfunctional internally and yet still turn a profit or appease investors. It was the first time I felt like companies were getting too big.

defnotahuman commented on A16Z is the “worst and largest” scammer of all, says CEO of Swan Bitcoin (2022) bitnation.co/a16z-is-the-... · Posted by u/ossusermivami

defnotahuman · 3 years ago

It's just so obvious at this point. I remember Justin Kan's interview[0] about Web3 and gaming, specifically the idea that we'd have NFTs as transferable game assets and instantly thinking "how does this guy not know how dead-in-the-water this idea is?" You'd need collaboration from studios on a level that would test antitrust law in order to make such an idea even remotely realistic. Of course he knows better, but hype machine go brrrrr.

0: https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/08/twitch-founder-justin-kan-...

defnotahuman commented on Dell’s new UltraSharp monitor is a 6K powerhouse for pros arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/zdw

proee · 3 years ago

Can you share the model of the 42" monitor you're using?

defnotahuman · 3 years ago

It's probably the U4320Q, which I use and love as well.

defnotahuman commented on Dell’s new UltraSharp monitor is a 6K powerhouse for pros arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/zdw

xnx · 3 years ago

Can this really be worth $3,800 with 32" 4K TV's going for ~$200?

defnotahuman · 3 years ago

Yes, because TV prices are heavily subsidized by ad systems installed directly on the OS and not reflective of the true cost of manufacturing. Good monitors still do not have this problem.

defnotahuman commented on We Live in the Age of the Bullshitter currentaffairs.org/2022/1... · Posted by u/robtherobber

Atheros · 3 years ago

I think that you are severely overestimating the number of people who believe the political bullshit. A much simpler explanation is that the vast majority are simply lying about believing it. How would American right-wing voters behave if they actually believed that the election was stolen? They would boycott voting and they would do it loudly. But they don't actually believe it.

There is a word for this type of lie: vranyo.

Lying about believing that Trump will build a wall and make Mexico pay for it distracts you from addressing their actual motivations which they know are cruel and unjust.

defnotahuman · 3 years ago

> I think that you are severely overestimating the number of people who believe the political bullshit.

I come from a very, very red part of America, and I can assure you that many of them do believe it, or at least did in early 2021. A couple years later, we've seen the investigations turn up none of the evidence that was described, but people still believe it. Close relatives of mine were raving about the 2000 mules documentary earlier in the year, which was completely debunked.

I think a lot of those same people are getting tired of being told that the next big shoe to drop is just around the corner, but if we're being honest, it's not all that different from how the left treated the Mueller investigation. Everyone was so convinced that they were going to rattle Trump's presidency and Mueller totally punted on Trump in his final report.

It feels like we're living in a non-stop JJ Abrams movie where we're constantly being triggered to follow one anxiety-inducing story after another.