annyeonghada

>victimhood mentality

Does this kind of pseudo-self-help-tough-love help anyone? Whenever I read something like that I do not feel motivated but enraged. Sometimes people are really victims. Mainly of chance.

>work for almost 2 decades as an engineer just so you can afford the average one family home - what a joke!

If you're lucky. The salaries in my country are so abysmal that nobody in my generation can buy a house: the only one with houses inherited them or have rich parents.

All the problems you listed as US-specific problems exist in my corner of Europe too, except gun violence. And on top of that we have fewer jobs, lower salaries, higher taxes and high unemployment.

I love Europe: its history, its music, its art, its architecture, its legacy - yes! the good and the bad -, its food, its cultures. But from my point of view we are killing ourselves, choked in an endless decay, metastasizing bureaucracy, and never-ending hopelessness.

I'm sure the Nordic Country are happy though, and that's the problem: American tend to compare the worst of their country with the best of our continent.

I wish I lived in the same society as you where people condition themselves and other to find purpose. On the contrary it seems to me that most people live a completely unexamined life, and don't concern themselves with meaning, purpose, truth, morality or whatever. On the contrary, some people, a small minority, are bugged by these existential questions: nobody conditioned me, the ridiculed me for "thinking too much". Not everything is "social conditioning": some people through a mixture of genetics and experiences are just born this way.

I wish I weren't.

>People who say things like "you're putting your life on hold" have no discipline.

Imagine trying to extrapolate moral superiority from having had the luck of finding a high paid job.

>I set out on this path at 17. I'm 36 now.

Yes, I too had dreams at 17. I even had an entire notebook with journaling about those dreams. None of them came to life. NONE. I guess I wasn't worthy or disciplined enough like the morally superior: the rich.

Come on, at which level did you study them? I studied both at University level and was a classical clarinet player and anything STEM was much more difficult than anything music theory.

I am a classical clarinet player, a Physicist and a programmer. Music theory is ridicously easy in confront to everything STEM I've studied. It isn't even a paragon: the counterintuitiveness of Physics, the abstractions, the rigor of thinking needed was really stressfull to my mind while music theory was... underwhelming to say the least.

University is, for about everyone who isn't in it for branding, about educatoon and getting a job.

I don't need to live with others to know who I am: I can introspect in my room and maybe use the money saved in rent to pursue something that really makes me grow as a person, music for me. The only thing that I learbed living with others is that living alone is one of the greatest luxuries.

Learning styles are a pedagogical myth and there is no evidence that they exist or that catering learning to and individual learning style improves said learning.

Maybe that's true for the overpriced American University built on branding, but I've learned actual skills in University and the credentialing and networking has been meh...

Every time this conversation comes up it seems so surreal: paying for branding? Signaling status? Not for learning? Not my experience.

>duty life demands of you

I have no duty towards life. I didn't choose to be born, did I? In fact, I vegetate waiting to have enough strength to suppress my fear of death and kill myself.

Yes, I've tried therapy in the last 15 years. Yes, I've tried exercise, meditation, journaling, workaholism, idleness, religion, philosophy, science and so on and on. I just want to be done. Every evening I pray to deities I don't believe in: "Have mercy on my suffering, do not make me wake up".

So, no: there is no duty towards anything, just the futility of existence in itself.

1. On the matter of dread.

The dread is in the fact that this advancement could (and will) be amassed in the hands of a small minority of rich individuals. We, the plebes, will become from irritating but useful necessities to economic liabilities. Conspiracy theory time: this is the main reason, I think, that so many rich people invested money in AI: they saw that it could be a disruption of their wealth and they seized the technology in advance.

2. For those who say it is "just a language model".

We went from "it is just an autocomplete" to "it can write junior SWE code, undergraduate essays and, if prompted, imitate the style of writing of any author it has been fed" and this without being connected to the web. Given the speed of advancement how much time will pass before the economic possibilities of ascension for the lower classes will be forever shut off?

3. On the optimism for the future.

Every time a new "life changing" technology has been invented it has always been used for evil and every prediction of utopia has been shattered, again and again and again... This technology has a very higher reach than those before: it can write propaganda, it will be able to impersonate someone else and lead you to admit "wrong think", in the more optimistic future it will be used to hook you into the digital world so you don't reflect on your life: an infinite number of void possibilities, an infinity of nothingness. We already see some of these effect today with a more tame algorithm.

I do not believe in God, but if I did I would say: "May God have mercy on our souls". Sorry if I'm being melodramatic, I'm actually seeing (and I've seen) many door closing. The bar if ever higher for survival.

I studied Physics and I hate every single "popular" Physics books. Thankfully I come across Physics through Math otherwise I would have never studied it. The real think is so much more interesting than the "popular" one.

>It's not like [...] and I'm too timid to try these things

No, the commenter said s/he was not too timid to try, it was the lack of desire to try new things that was the obstacle.

I love the abstractness of Mathematics so I dispute the thesis. And I'm (wrongly) a Physicist.

Abstraction do not "hamper understanding" but the rigor necessary to define the abstract objects of Mathematics is ruthless on your misunderstanding, that's why people do not like it: they cannot hand-wave it.

I've always hated the "example-first" classes: they create the illusion of understanding and then you have dozen of seemingly disconnected facts (examples) that are just variations of one simple abstract structure that has not been defined because... I don't know.

So, the reason why some people cannot understand abstract math is... a Conspiracy by Western Elites? Let me wear my tinfoil hat.

I wish it were for me. I love handwriting and I've spent lots of effort to make it look neat and I really like how it looks, but I convince myself that I understand and comprehend everything while I write but if I try to solve a problem or explain to myself what was going on it's a blank. I've found repetition, spaced or not, much more useful both for understanding and retaining information, nowadays I handwrite only if a passage is written in a confusing way or if I need to add more information to the textbook.

>understanding, structuring, throughput, tool assisted recall, efficiency

All this is aided by memorization not hindered. In my experience studying Physics not memorizing has slowed down my thinking while having the main concept in my brain has made certain problem go from "impossibile" to "trivial".

>with a root in misogyny

Nice thing for women to appropriate themselves of the suffering of gay men.

All the "speech is harmful" is exactly the thought policing we are talking about: when you hear something that you don't like you candecide to ignore it instead of trying to make everyone in the world stop thinking "bad thoughts". It's your job having the emotional maturity to not screech at any percieved misgiving not mine to not think or say things that may or may not be hurtful.

Your comment diluted the "discourse" more that the "reactionary nonsense" given that the first thing you do is using snark to signal that yiu are in the "cool tribe".

In latin the word virus does not have an attested plural[1] but if we model it from the other neuter nouns of the second declension it would be "vira".

[1]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/virus#Declension_4

The plural of surplus is surpluses[2]. It would be *surplures/surplura in latin, so it is an English/French original. It doesn't make sense from an historical linguistic perspective to have a stem in dental "d" when in latin was in liquid "r": plus, pluris[3].

[2]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/surplus#Noun [3]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/plus#Declension

Cactus is a masculine name from the second declension: its latin plural is "cactī"[4]. Again, it would be unexplainable how that stem in dental would appear in a second declension name (stem in "o").

[4]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cactus#Latin

Octopus is right, given that it's a third declension name with a dental stem.[5]

[5]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/octopus#Latin

>In europe the sentiment is to improve the life and livelihood of the average person on average, and not that of a few CEOs, and labour laws reflect that.

Please, I live in an area with high taxes and I've yet to see the return on the investment. Healthcare? If you have a minor condition and you can wait or if you have a dangerous condition and you cannot wait then it's great. For all the other illness that are life-damaging but not life-ending? I hope you are rich enough to pay for a private practice. That's what my family has been doing for years on top of the above-mentioned taxes.

As for CEOs compensation: even low earning people in the USA are above average earning in Europe (I repeat, on top of high taxes) while in Europe the best way to make money is through inheritance. Yes, in the USA your parents socio-economic status is very important in giving you a head start but you at least you can participate in the race, while here there's not even a race to speak of; even if I do everything right: STEM degree, programming, speaking multiple languages and so on and on and on... you will probably end up in the same economical status of your parents. And let's not speak about the unemployment of Southern Europe: a different can of worm that has eaten the future of an entire generation, especially men: it is a bomb ready to explode.

Yeah, I remember my Physics degree: "With a Physics degree you will have lots of employment opportunities... but not in Physics!"

>Unfortunately in modern society

Not that in ancient societies was any better, your place in society was practically decided at conception: your father was a fishermen, well you know exactly what you will be doing in your life, that you like it or not. Almost all the disorders typical of this new millennium seem to originate from an infinite liberty without a guid, a paralysis analysis of some kind if you like. "What will I do with my life?" was not a question that pestered my ancestor (I come from a country where, untill my father's generation, all jobs were de facto hereditary). "What is the purpose of my existence?" was a question with answers in the local religions. I hope that, in building the future, we will use something like the fichtean dialectics (wrongly attributed to Hegel):

thesis --> antithesis --> synthesis,

and that wi will be able to take back all things positive present in our traditions and assimilate in a modern vision of the world: it is evident that, taken in isolation, both visions of the world had negative aspects that greatly surpass their benefits.

It may seem like 14 years old is "too soon" for being preoccupied about one's livelihood but, based on my experience, it is certainly healthier than waking up as a 27 y/o man and finding that the perception of your personality has been built on a lie, well intentioned as it may be.

The common view we have of teenagers, as devoid of any agency, vastly underestimates them, not only that, it excludes them for the "res publica": the participation to the public life, exclusion that emerges then as lack of maturity. All the acting out and "teenage angst", it is my opinion, is actually a call for responsibility and participation, and it is by this participation, and the subsequent confrontation with the messy reality of life that make you realize your limitation and allows you to grow out of your childish dream if they are, indeed, childing. This dampening of expectations is not a negative thing: it's what has allowed civilization to go on: almost nobody wanted to be a farmer. Keeping the door open for the odd wind of luck while living a pragmatic, if not as colorful as one's fantasies, life is the more realistic and healthy way of organize one future while the "think about this later" is a recipe for regret and depression caused by the mismatch between what it is and what I wished it were.

Can something not be gendered, for once?

I don't know why this antididactical bullshit is tolerated in STEM or even praised. Every single research in the field show us that feedback is one if not the most important part of learning, that's why self teaching is so difficult, but problem sets without solutions, no guidance on how to approach problem solving and, my favourite, fear of memorization and firm knowledge are the rule in that world. They were just annoying, frustrating, full of themselves and generally poor teachers.

I'm learning it in the academic world: not Science is rewarded but grandiosity.

Talking about me: I'm very much abstract and academic and do not really care about practical applications. I went into Physics and realized how much I hated the lab and the more experimental oriented subjects: I love the Math sequences, love Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Mechanics, loved Special and General Relativity but hated Laser and Optics, hated Electrical Circuits, hated Nuclear Physics (prof was an experimentalist who talked endlessly about detectors).[1]

Nowadays the tendency remains: I love study Philosophy, Theology (even if I'm not religious), History, Math, Theoretical Physics and I love speculative or fantastical literature like Sci-fi, Fantasy, Occult, Conspiracy Theories... not because I believe them but because let me explore my own thinking.

Sometimes I wish I were more building oriented: it would help me in the working world. Projects, results, metrics, outcomes are all so tiresome.

[1]Thinking about it I should have done Math instead of Physics.