LordFast

The level of emotionally and politically motivated anti-intellectualism over the past decade or so has grown so much and so exponentially to the point that all-out idiocracy now rules the day. It's become a fashionable sport to compete on how aggressively one can deploy stupidity to drown out the voices of reason and truth, so that we all inevitably sink a little deeper into the worst instincts of human nature.

Thing is, I /know/ for a fact that most people are not this stupid. But I also understand that these days it's every man, woman and child for themselves, so I can sympathize with the innate need to blend in.

Past dictators and totalitarian regimes from the history books, who wanted people to have zero ability to think for themselves could honestly look at this situation we're in right now, and feel so much pride that they might even blush a little bit; meanwhile Carl Sagan is turning over in his fucking graves.

Agreed. It always comes down to a base equation of who is willing to do what kind of work for what kind of reward under what kind of circumstances.

After a decade of software being a desirable job and everyone trying to get into it, we can bet good money that it's now a buyer's market rather than a seller's market.

Defining a filter in order to filter people out is fine, but we should be honest about the fact that it has very little to do with learning, and more to do with the willingness to deal with crap and jump through hoops. More amenable employees are easier to manage, nothing wrong with that.

All exams can be crammed, and having crammed into plenty of gated opportunities in life before, I believe you're mistaken if you believe that it produces more knowledgeable workers as a result.

At the end of the day, it's a market like any other. If there is someone who is more willing to do X for Y reward than you are, then they will get that something instead of you. And if you find that there is a shortage of people willing to play ball, you can always work towards bringing in more people who are willing to play ball.

Agree with your last sentence. If you want something, you have to go get it. If employees aren't motivated enough to organize and close the power gap, then employers will continue to be motivated enough to push for and work towards their own goals.

Everything in life, including life itself, is temporary. Except for two facts:

- Nobody has more than 24 hours in a day.

- Nobody escapes death.

"Good founders".

I think it's prudent to at least take a minute, step back and examine the potential cognitive bias going on in one's head when the belief system is built on something like "there's plenty of food on the table for good people."

Yeah, not a fan of sitting in traffic (commuting is actually entirely fine if not for the traffic), but I LOVE my car- it allows me to go anywhere I want whenever I want, and it allows me to make forward progress by leaving the past behind and going somewhere else (physically and metaphorically true).

I see all the talk of higher density living without car ownership as primarily driven by corporate interests to keep labor more concentrated and more easily controlled (secondarily driven by cohorts of people who haven't experienced anything better than that and therefore wanting to keep status quo), at the expense of quality of life for the average person. The monied interests wouldn't care one way or another in lowering this standard of living, but I'm surprised to see how many ordinary citizens get swept up by the rhetoric.

I see, that makes sense. Kind of a "eat your vegetables" type of situation.

I really hope we can learn and get to a better place from here, but I'm not holding my breath. The way I see it, there's a good chance that the world will only continue to become increasingly more authoritarian and dictatorial. Because in a world filled with more and more widespread filter bubbles and entrenched divides, authoritarianism and dictatorships logically become the optimal solution to get society to cooperate and function.

It saddens me to think about it.

You are right. I will do better.

Is there any way to realistically and gradually reduce the prevalence and thickness of these filter bubbles, so that people can be encouraged to practice critical thinking in a sustainable way? Will this have to necessarily be a governmental effort, or can there be business value in such practices? Will there ever be sufficient incentives for any government to work on this?

Sorry for all the questions, I'm just thinking out loud.

Huh, never thought about the math like that. It makes a lot of sense, thanks for sharing.

P.S. Before the age of social media, was there not the same level of risk of induced ignorance through traditional media campaigns and propaganda? If not, why not?

What a big boss man, strutting around stopping the great evil empire from screwing America.

Actually that is exactly how it's playing out these days.

The "circular firing squad" has now been taken to the international stage.

Selling paranoia is good business these days.

Overly optimistic about the past gone by, overly pessimistic about the present and future. This does seem to reflect a big part of the American psyche as it stands today.

It was likely neither that good nor this bad. Moving away from such a mindset is the best way to get out of the vicious cycle.

Yep, there are always trade-offs. The current remote work paradigm is benefitting folks who are more senior, more capable of getting more done with more focused time at the expense of younger, single folks who have a lot more to gain from having close-knit relationships in person with other coworkers.

The other side of the coin is as you mentioned: people who mainly rely on relationships and politics to get ahead without contributing concrete value are starting to feel the squeeze under this paradigm.

As is the case with everything though, I expect that the pendulum will swing back at some point. Nothing lasts forever.

If many people find agreements with a person's notions of conformity, by the evidence of the popularity of their writings, does that make these people conformists, and therefore engenders conformist attitudes towards the author's point of view on non-conformity?

Genuinely pondering.

I have witnessed that the opposite also holds true: less enjoyable coworkers are now less irritating simply because of the added distance and buffer room, making them easier to tolerate* than when having to deal with in person on a daily basis. *quality of work notwithstanding

As is the case with any job, be good enough, be amenable enough, and work hard enough. Nobody wants to pay an idiot who's hard to deal with and holds entitled beliefs.

Not sure about this situation here with the DD, but I'm sure you can cut yourself some slack. Being good enough means exactly that: good enough. And then a dash of luck on top of that helps tremendously.

Interesting. I haven't thought too much about C2H in particular, but it seems like it might just kick the can down the road instead of solving the root problem; The root problem is human nature.

Elementary school politics. This would be a hilarious sitcom if it weren't for all the thousands of people getting hurt by this dysfunctional joke of a government.

There's no need to go to war with a country if you can plant the seeds of a toxic mindset, and then watch them tear themselves apart instead.

There's no need to go to war with someone if you can plant the seeds of a toxic mindset, and then watch them tear themselves apart instead.

There's no need to go to war with someone if you can plant the seeds of a toxic mindset, and then watch them tear themselves apart instead.

Looks like it's removed as of 10.15.5

Scrolling back to top like an animal? No thanks, I just refresh the page instead as a civilized person would do.

I've written this type of notes to myself in years past. Almost painfully similar. Looking back on them now, it was basically: "I'm not happy and I want to change things." Everything else was more or less tangential and not really relevant.

Not taking anything away from the author, just sharing a personal anecdote.

One thing that seems clear is that the hyper-connected world makes the minority look like the majority, and vice versa.

In all aspects of society.

Facts are facts, but I do think the underlying dynamics are more complicated than what you laid out. The way people are being exposed to sexuality growing up is also changing, and that plays a big part in behavioral patterns.

One thing I suspect is that there isn't much of a trend of people becoming more educated about sex, sexuality, and sexual psychology in today's hyper-aware world. If anything, it might be the opposite.

Good on you. Keep letting people know.

Uhh, isn't this dead obvious?