It's basically the sort of rot writing that proliferates on linkedin
I disagree. I feel there is a genuine insight at the core of it.
Readit Newsthrowaway_2494 commented on Thin desires are eating life joanwestenberg.com/thin-d... · Posted by u/mitchbob
throwaway_2494 commented on The appropriate amount of effort is zero expandingawareness.org/bl... · Posted by u/gmays
I regard the experience of most animals as being something like living in a slasher movie their entire lives, and Lovecraft’s work as coming closest to describing life writ large, stripped of pleasant lies.
… but I still think it’s a notable feature of humanity that we can escape much of that for long periods, yet always seem to invent problems for ourselves, can find trouble and discontent even when they don’t seek us out. A rabbit may contend with predators, with hunger, but it doesn’t seem they’ll drive themselves crazy with worry and want when sated and resting in their den. They deal with what’s in front of them, in rabbit-ways, and that’s that. What will they do today? Rabbit stuff. If they’re left to do rabbit stuff without external resistance, will they be content? Yeah. Tomorrow, will they be upset because they’re still going rabbit stuff? No.
I still don’t buy the “slasher movie” framing of nature at all, and the only function 'pleasant lies' serves here is just low effort dismissal. :shrug:
Alas, I'm ceding ground by even arguing within your chosen framing. It's all very self defeating.
throwaway_2494 commented on The appropriate amount of effort is zero expandingawareness.org/bl... · Posted by u/gmays
Only a touch of judgment? I must have been too subtle, then.
I’m not convinced that most animals have humdrum days. It’s hard to judge the “natural” state of an animal when I’m a terrifying predator, but even when I’m pretty sure they aren’t aware of my presence, their lives seem pretty stressful. The prey animals seem to be constantly worried about attacks, and the predators are always hungry.
Come on you can't come up with a single five minute period when observing animals where they seem to be calm?
That does not fit the evidence.
And besides you can read thousands of articles on HN about anxiety in humans, a mostly useless anxiety focused on societal 'threats' which we suffer from just as much.
At least a deer is on the lookout for something real.
Also if you compare animals lives to human ones, with our propensity for war and torture and persecution, I think the animals _do_ objectively live calmer lives.
You don't see them systematically tearing each other to pieces over made up goods like money.
I think this trope that "nature is a constant struggle" is a projection of human values (or lack of) onto nature.
throwaway_2494 commented on The appropriate amount of effort is zero expandingawareness.org/bl... · Posted by u/gmays
I think this is a romantic notion of what we’d like nature to be like, not what it actually is. Nature is in a constant struggle for survival. When I see a rabbit freeze in abject terror, then flee at maximum speed because a well-fed 200+lb apex predator is passing by, it sure looks like work and effort.
>then flee at maximum speed because a well-fed 200+lb apex predator is passing by, it sure looks like work and effort.
I think the 'effort' being described in the article—despite using analogies of overgripping and physical strain—is mental effort.
When the rabbit has escaped, he returns quickly to a relaxed state. A typical human reaction would be to continue to worry about the predator, to form plans to rid the whole _world_ of all predators, to build a fortress with grass to eat on the inside...
This whole saying that "Nature is red in tooth and claw" is overstated. Most animals have normal, humdrum days like we do.
However, I think it was the Buddhist teacher, Ajan Cha who said: "We live in a world where we must eat to survive, and some of us are uncomfortable about being eaten."
But this does not mean that every animal lives a life of unremitting terror all the time.
I’m wary of your use of 'romantic' as a descriptor here. It's a rhetorical shortcut which makes it easy to pre-emptively dismiss a position as naïve without further examination.
throwaway_2494 commented on Programming peaked functional.computer/blog/... · Posted by u/Antibabelic
Java is usable now, but in 2013 it was the worst debugging experience one could have. I would rather work with PHP5 than with Java (unless I started a project from scratch). Also auto-refactoring was clearly worse, because well, Java. It was around that time that I tried Scala then Clojure, and even if debugging the JVM was still an experience (to avoid as much as possible), at least limited side effects reduced the issues.
If programming peaked, it certainly wasn't in 2010.
> it was the worst debugging experience one could have.
Hard disagree. I'm not going to argue that Java debugging was the best, however:
1. You could remote debug your code as it ran on the server.
2. You could debug code which wouldn't even compile, as long as your execution path stayed within the clean code.
3. You could then fix a section of the broken code and continue, and the debugger would backtrack and execute the code you just patched in during your debugging session.†
This is what I remember as someone who spent decades (since Java 1.0) working as a contract consultant, mainly on server side Java.
Of course this will not convince anyone who is determined to remain skeptical, but I think those are compelling capabilities.
† Now I code in Rust a lot, and I really enjoy it, but the long compile times and the inability to run broken code are two things which I really miss from those Java days. And often the modern 2025 debugger for it is unable to inspect some for the variables for some reason, a bug which I never encountered with Java.
Prediction: Non-determinism will become acceptable in areas we used to expect accuracy.
For example we will accept 'probabilistic bookkeeping' because it's cheaper than requiring ledgers to balance to the penny.
But this leeway won't be equally applied. Powerful institutions like banks will use “probabilistic models” to decide they probably don’t owe you that refund, but if they decide you owe them money, they will still hold you to every cent.
Nondeterminism for the powerful, determinism for everyone else. Yay!
throwaway_2494 commented on What's happening inside the NIH and NSF science.org/content/blog-... · Posted by u/rrock
I guess you have to decide what it is exactly you think your side stands for:
1. Norms, honour, decency etc. In that case, the democratic norm that's honourable and decent would be to gladly comply with both the spirit and word of whichever government is in power regardless of the individual's personal beliefs, up to and including calmly accepting redundancy. This is what the platonic ideal of a civil servant is meant to do. The Republicans believe, with good reason, that the US civil service hasn't been doing this (same issues exist in other countries).
2. Bold resistance, elections be damned. Do whatever it takes, violate every norm, exploit every procedure, regulation and rule to fuck the right as hard as possible. That they won a legitimate victory is of no importance in this worldview because they are Crazy and Wrong and Bad, and therefore it is right and true to subvert them as much as you can.
These two positions aren't compatible but you're talking as if they are. You can't both cheer on stuff like the attempts to subvert Schedule F and claim to be the side of generosity, honour and democratic norms. Either you're subversive rebels and must accept the outcome if Trump successfully crushes you beneath his bootheel, or you're genteel servants of the people in which case you have to help him achieve his goals within the bounds set by law and the courts.
Now we fully agree that world 1 is preferable, and in that world Trump/Musk would need to spend much more time waiting on Congress to pass laws before they can shut down orgs like USAID, and the intelligence community wouldn't have produced 50+ people willing to lie in order to manipulate a domestic election. But nobody believes we live in world 1. Even now you're trying to have it both ways, and arguing that you should be allowed to claim to represent world 1 whilst simultaneously calling a legitimately elected government a "regime".
> elections be damned.
Isn't the current administration more culpable on this point? (viz. the last time Trump lost an election)
And in terms of norms I mean that there isn't a strict law or constitutional clause written to proscribe each and every thing that the president can and cannot do. The system relies on the people acting in good faith, which is definitely not happening in this case. Instead they are cynically trying to exploit every loophole they can to smash a system they don't even understand.
> whilst simultaneously calling a legitimately elected government a "regime".
It _is_ a regime. Who elected Musk or his Doge minions?
Most dictatorships consolidated power legally. That it was legal doesn't mean I want to live in one.
ANd speaking of having it bot ways, you can easily infer what side I'm on, but I get the sense that you are trying to hide behind 'just so arguments'. Could it be that you support the new regime and are trying to avoid saying it out loud?
I wonder why someone would want to hide that...?
throwaway_2494 commented on What's happening inside the NIH and NSF science.org/content/blog-... · Posted by u/rrock
> I've said it in another post. Why are there so many people ready to line up to defend the powerful against the weak
Don't you see? They would give the exact same speech about the other side and absolutely believe it, and in fact so would many other people. You say one side is clearly right and the other clearly wrong - that's what the people at DOGE think, just the other way around from you.
That doesn't mean right and wrong don't exist. It does mean that interpreting real world events is often hard and people can come to opposing conclusions, either because they interpret shared facts differently, or because they're aware of things the other side isn't, or because they believe things that aren't actually true.
Right now the Republicans perceive themselves as the weak and oppressed (or did until five minutes ago), and they perceive the Democrats as the powerful oppressors. Putting aside the question of whether it's true or not, they believe that the Dems control every part of the Federal civil service and are willing to systematically lie and conspire in order to completely destroy the Republicans, up to and including imprisoning them on false claims, smearing them with coordinated fake news, and even directly putting their lives in danger by turning a blind eye to assassination attempts. They think the Dems are the side of the rich and powerful and they have solid reasons to believe that, e.g. they systematically out-fundraise the Republicans by a massive margin and right now Musk is busy uncovering the ways billions of dollars in federal funds are diverted into a 100% Democratic NGO ecosystem.
You might think all the above is obviously untrue, equivocation or whatever, but they think it's true. So be careful with rhetoric about resistance. That isn't how democracy is meant to work; such talk can be and is being turned around on you.
>Don't you see? They would give the exact same speech about the other side and absolutely believe it, and in fact so would many other people.
Of course I see, and like in a chess match I looked past it cos I thought it was too obvious.
But I say again your argument amounts to false equivalence.
They can believe crazy and false things as fervently as they like, it doesn't make those beliefs an equivalent mirror image to what liberals believe.
This whole thread started with a complaint from you about Schedule F being 'unfair.'
Apparently anything except the liberals handcuffing themselves and letting themselves be frogmarched out of their jobs is unacceptable.
Meanwhile the new 'unitary executive' is allowed to jump up and down like Donkey Kong on anything he feels like no matter what the rules norms, laws or the constitution says.
Did I capture the essence of it?
I am totally serious about the need for resistance. The new people in charge just walked up to an unguarded lemonade stand which runs on the honour system, drank all the lemonade, pissed in the jar stole the money and smashed everything.
And why can they do that? Because they don't go in for honour and decency, but they expect us to. Democracy provides the tools and the freedom for people to subvert democracy.
I don't expect the new regime to grant such generous 'equivalent' terms should it manage to consolidate it's position.
I don't mean violent resistance, but we do have to resist.
People are becoming much more adverse to bring panhandled or solicited in a way they cannot ignore, in the same way spam calls are more annoying than spam texts. It's not "initiative" or "extra mile" shit, it's taking advantage of someone's politeness to waste their time.
It also looks hopelessly boomerish, up there with expecting the firmness of a handshake to land a job. I've seen this happen dozens of times and the resumes always end up in the trash within minutes. I've never seen anyone hired this way.
Seriously—if you’re going to go overboard, so can I.
WTF is it with everything having to be mediated by a machine these days? People can’t get around without GPS, remember phone numbers, or now even do their work or homework without 'AI.'
How do you explain how people managed to do all of these things before without assistance? And how do you square that with telling 'boomers'—who were able to do these things—that they’re stupid and that you’re somehow better?
Seriously, it’s like we used to have weightlifting competitions where humans physically lifted weights overhead, and then you guys decided, "Nah, that’s too old and boomerish. From now on, all weightlifting competitions will use forklifts. Anyone who wants to lift the weights themselves is boomerish and stupid."
And where's your solidarity? If you lose your job, you may find yourself wishing you could meet people in person, when all your 'ignoreable,' electronically submitted job applications somehow get thrown away.