2,247 karma · joined September 2, 2019
Not to mention the benefit of say reading about your country's history, as opposed to the history of some ficitonal world in a video game - with history books, you're learning about the things which actually happened and have had a direct, large impact on your life and the world around you.
Novels, while being ficitonal, allow you to explore inner worlds of other people and complex interactions between them (and there's nothing more complex in the universe and at the same important to us than humans and interactions between them), something that games are severely lacking (cue in people telling me about Nier Automata and one or two other story-based games which are approaching the level of a bad novel).
Most video games are spatially-oriented and are basically more sophisticated version of children playing tag, football or similar simple games focused around interactions in 3d space. And the ones that are not that, i.e. that try to be about humans and not simple spatial and temporal relationships, basically suck for the most part. It's clear that the medium is not meant for them.
[1] The flipside is that it can teach you bad habits as well. If the result of the game does not matter in any way, you have no incentive to try hard at it, and can just coast, turn the game off when you're frustrated etc. This is not how real-life is (coasting and difficulty avoidance don't work as well), so games can teach damaging habits. It's better in team multiplayer games, because in-game peer pressure can make you get out of your comfort zone.
It's way less aplicable because people move so much. Nowadays, not many people live around (say within 1 km distance) their extended family, whereas in pre-modern times it was the absolute norm. What's more, grandparents often lived in the same house and children were raised by multiple adults and not just their parents. The burden on parents was way lower.
Yeah, that's what I imagine. A better, more beautiful, more pristine version of what I have at home. I'd gladly see that. But places like deserts or tropics or arctic are nothing like home, and a bit like traveling to another planet - more interesting to see, although there may be not that much to see there after a first couple of days.
> Florida is extremely boring, the only thing it has going for it is the warm water.
Doesn't Florida still have some pristine swamps? It would be cool to see them. Also, I've just never been to a place with oppresive heat, aligators, plenty of mosquitos (in the swamps) and all the rest of it - it'd cool to experience it once, even if to swear it off for the rest of my life.
I didn't change anything. I think it's clear that I passed on opportunity to go to Seattle because I didn't think it was worth it (why else would I pass on it)?
> I suspect you also realized that if you find yourself "bored" in NYC, the problem is not the city.
Where did I write that I was bored in NYC? I think it's great, but I also think it exhausts the experience of "large, dense American city built mostly in XX century" to the point where seeing another one doesn't add that much. Aren't Americans travelling to places like New Orleans or Nashville precisely because they're not like most ordinary American cities?
What about Rye?
The point is, "that rigorous interview process" are just arbitrary hoops to jump through to see if you're obedient. That's their main purpose. Not to mention that, in Europe, anything above $200k is extremely rare. Many people would gladly go through borderline humiliating interviewing process for $500k, but won't do it for just $150k.
[1] In the Soviets, the cities were built on different premises, so they look very different - although the countries were so poor that, even though urban planning was excellent (ubiquitous parks, public spaces, houses built far away from busy roads etc.), the buildings themselves are drab due to resource constraints.
This. Being a European, after seeing NYC, SF and Las Vegas, I passed on an opportunity to go for a week-long business trip to Seattle. Even though I had the time, I imagine Seattle being just mostly more of the same (an uniform, boring city consisting of XX century architecture built on a grid) and absolutely not worth the trip.
Americans speaking about large cultural differences between regions always surprise me - I often suspect they don't understand what "cultural differences" mean and instead talk about political differences.
I think it has taught us the opposite? Pre WWI, the world was already very integrated and globalized, to the point that many pundits said that a large war is impossible, because it would hurt businesses everywhere too much. And yet it happened.
That also applies to crypto - at any given point in time, plenty of people are investing in crazy speculative schemes. A minority of them win big, while a majority loses some or most of their money. The crypto crowd who bough 10 years ago just happened to select the right lottery ticket, while other people who at that time invested in equally far-fetched ideas (AR startups, synthetic meat, whatever crazy fad that died in the early stages before even reaching mainstream media) lost their money.
EDIT: just checked and the cheapest electric car in the EU, the Dacia Spring, has a 1 star (out of 5) in the NCAP test. Can't imagine what TITO would get.