Pretty tired of “everything from the 20th century is boomer”.

I've always found it interesting that when people encounter challenges and roadblocks when playing a game like Dungeons and Dragons, they are energized and sometimes even relieved the game is not too easy. But when encountering setbacks in work the default is to get frustrated.

I'm pretty sure it's not the type of challenge that differs. In DnD a lot of the challenges are logistical in nature or some kind of interpersonal conflict.

My take is that the main difference is perceived risk / perceived high stakes. In a game you are in a circle of safety, so you don't get as stressed about roadblocks - whereas if you perceive negative consequences for failing to reach a goal in real life, then any obstacle looks like a survival threat and the anxiety about failing distracts from fully engaging with the challenge. As an example outside of work: if you're playing DnD and the DM says: "the bartender gives you a rude look" you are intrigued and curious. If a waiter in real life gives you a rude look, most of our brain's will at least temporarily go into ego threat mode and fall into a default of freezing, leaving or arguing back. We will be distracted, bothered, and generally the opposite of open-minded and curious. My point is not whether these are ideal responses but to note how differently our brains respond in a situation where there is actually minimal risk, but our brain perceives high risk because of outdated programming. Another example in the other direction: people can easily start taking games too seriously and become ego-attached to the goal, and the same brain response occurs. These extreme examples strongly suggest that it is the perceived threat rather than actual threat that drive our responses, and perception can often be very out of whack with reality and inhibit effective problem solving.

For most people in most work challenges, the actual survival threat from obstacles is small. Our brains massively overexaggerate it because we evolved in a context where most problems (especially social ones) actually were life-threatening. I would even say that in cases where survival (or your income) is threatened by an obstacle, downregulating the fear/threat response will usually improve your chances of finding a solution. Negative emotions narrow attention, draw us inward and prevent both mental flexibility and engagement with the world, which make solving difficult problems much harder.

To summarize: given how much more inherently motivating it is to work on challenges that are similar in nature to the ones we procrastinate on in life, it seems worthwhile to try to downregulate our evolved fear/threat response when encountering obstacles.

Never have I ever seen so many platitudes in one post. Makes me think of the Flemish “Bond Zonder Naam”[1], who monetise these kinds of uninspiring sayings where I live. In Dutch also called “tegelwijsheden”, because your grandma would have these sappy and dull ‘wisdoms’ painted on a tile in their kitchen. Apparently some people also see money in it[2].

[1] https://www.bzn.be/ [2] https://www.tegeltjes.com/tegeltjes-wijsheid

The mistake you make (and a lot of people also do) is to assume the purpose of the system is to somehow cater to your (the consumer) needs. The purpose of the system is to fulfill the needs of the elite (those who benefit from the system). Average people having a car is a thing because then people will be more productive. But make no mistake, if the rich don't get what they want FIRST then your whole economy goes into recession and what not.

It is not at all clear to me why the harmonics makes it any more worth searching for aliens than any other solar system. a) Why would aliens expend the enormous energy required to engineer this? b) Isn't it vastly more likely to occur naturally as some sort of resonance effect?