dingbat

based on the tone of this article, the writer of this article would judge anyone, including Frank Herbert, who professes to liking the film version to be lacking in understanding or appreciating Dune and SF in general.

> His insights have also attracted interest — and, more importantly, money — from policy makers. In 2014 the U.S. Department of Agriculture forked over a $5.5-million grant to support Wansink’s Smarter Lunchrooms program, which has since been put into practice in more than 30,000 schools across the country.

there's something painfully appropriate about that quote appearing on the same page with a "trending" article titled: "Trump Proposal to Cut Indirect Research Payments Would Hit State Universities Hardest"

> I think a better question is if society can adapt quick enough to fill the void left by the absence of work.

i think that question has been answered to some degree by research (cant pinpoint off top of my head) which seems to indicate that generally humans fill that void by watching more TV and sleeping. i think its idealistic to think that people will suddenly become creative and culturally inclined.

stuck between fears is not good place to be. for reasons similar to yours i dropped out of the tech field completely years ago, touching upon the experiences you mention of your friends who did not find mgmt roles to be satisfying.

one thing you might consider is option of becoming a consultant and having your existing company be your first client. then you'd have more flexibility to explore other options with either other clients or side projects. don't know if that's possible in your organization, but you might be surprised, it could be a win-win for both you and them.

> But in my mid 40s, I don't think my body could handle a purely physical job.

not assuming your physical condition, have no idea if you work out or not, but still wondering if you think sedentary IT career has contributed to lack of physical fitness?

it seems like the exploding self-publishing market has coincided with a massive increase in fake marketing tactics, purchased reviews and copy-catting of any material that gets traction. as an indie publisher how do you compete in a market that is inundated with cheap frauds?

well as long as they are honest about enjoying the brutality i guess they are being consistent!

thats a great distinction. sounds like an institutionalized version of the individual tendency to excuse poor emotional regulation with "it's just who I am, a straight shooter" b.s.

authentic (foolish) straight shooters would have no problem yelling in the upwards direction too

yeah i thought the simulation hypothesis is mainly coming from a probabilistic argument

it may be an underestimation of AI to assume that AI will respect the concept of human ownership

> What happens when those at the top decide it's not worth keeping 8 billion people

those "people at the top" will (or should) be the first to go. these "wizards" will be unnecessary and redundant, offering little of value that could not be provided more efficiently by the true machine wizards.

security is important, but lets not forget the strides theyve made in making meaningful connections with their audience via collaborative relationships with powerful leaders such as Katie Couric

must be the same genius technology that leads Amazon to load up my Prime frontpage with fashion accessories when I've never had any history of searching or buying such, and recommending the same shows "Mozart in the Jungle", "Transparent", "Catastrophe" on Fire TV stick for months even though I've never shown any interest in any of such programming, even after manually "improving recommendations" by clicking "Not Interested".

its amazing that the vaunted Amazon technology is unable to figure out an algorithm that would satisfy a user's deep desire "please stop plastering Jeffrey Tambor's lipstick and mascara covered face on my startup screen, I've gotten tired of looking at it for the past year"

i think Paul Graham has talked about this, when he was doing the passionate starving artist thing in NYC, while he was stapling canvas in a studio, he heard over the radio about the huge amounts of money being made in mutual funds.. he liked the sound of that and figured "hey I could make lots of money too".

Cialdini is a salesman with credentials who's spent most of his time studying good salesmen and selling other salesmen on the idea of learning how to sell better.

At the end of his big bestseller Influence, he goes into a long-winded moralization about how he hopes his work helps people resist the terrible influence of immoral salesmanship... for example by being mindful of the "secret weapons" of Social Proof and Authority and Scarcity.

of course, he writes this in a book (a NATIONAL BESTSELLER as it says on the cover) that is literally covered in testimonials and promotional blurbs from "thought leaders" with credentials, mainstream publications like HBR and Fortune, praising Cialdini, PHD for revealing "little known secrets of Master Influencers" yada yada yada.

they should focus on being THE platform for key influencers, "thought leaders" and celebrities, mover-and-shaker types, kind of like Yahoo did with Katie Couric!

in order to extract value, isnt it first necessary to define that value (of broadcasting info and enabling real time conversations)? that would seem to be a big mystery.

> I have to wonder how many years (decades?) this has been occurring.

another way in which Trump is a political tsunami... to paraphrase Warren Buffett: when the tide goes out, you can see who's been swimming naked

its also abundantly transparent now that "fact checking" services have lost all credibility, ie. "DT claimed HRC server was acid-washed: FALSE", "DT claimed HRC laughed at an 11-year-old rape victim: FALSE".

re: the example you give about VP Biden announcing secret cyber attacks against Russia during an NBC News interview, it isnt necessarily a waste to "burn processing cycles" keeping up with such news, when you consider that observing propaganda in action can itself provide information about "what" exactly the "powers that be" want people to believe, leading to further examination of "why".

it is similar to reading financial news or watching CNBC with the mindset of reading between the lines, wondering who and why is interested in propagating such stories.

in other words, its only a black mark from people who dont matter anyway

that fight club example is amusingly cynical, but a true cynic might think it idealistic to believe that high-level decisions are made according to any formula. if they were, what calculations could explain the decision to allocate resources to Katie Couric?

thanks for the worthy attempt at explanation, but the b-class sci-fi feel of this remains so strong, i cannot help but associate this having to do with Sleestaks and Time Pylons

> You're also implying that Machivellianism works better for individuals and corporations.

my position is exactly the opposite of stating that Machivellianism "works better". in fact the comments i have been responding to, and disagreeing with, were making that case, not me.

(in any case, the opposite of "works better" does not mean "works worse")

those comments assumed the following (il)logical connections: a) critical thinking = non-Machiavellian behavior, b) critical thinkers are supposedly the most effective in "getting things done", c) yet, critical thinkers are supposedly the most likely to be punished and rendered ineffective, d) Machiavellianism is rewarded (aka "works better") in big companies, e) because critical thinkers focus on priorities that are relatively unimportant in large companies, such as "shipping product"

not only are some of these points individually suspect, but taken together they are inconsistent and make no sense at all.

critical thinking and Machiavellianism are orthogonal. if you read the comments i am responding to, you'd see that those comments are the ones which are making the assumption that critical thinkers are non-Machiavellian, which is just as inane as the idea that critical thinking should be Machiavellian in nature. perhaps the problem is that for most people it is more emotionally satisfying to believe themselves as non-Machiavellian critical thinkers, thus confusing the two as related somehow.

consider two fundamental properties of critical thinking: asking the right questions, and objectivity. in a large organization that was defined (not by me) as having politics and power-playing as the main priority, then the person who thinks they are "getting things done" as long as those "things" do not involve icky political managerial dynamics ("selling my soul"), never thinking to question their own personal biases of "just because i like to put my head down and work on shipping product, is that the right thing to get done?", would seem to in fact not be engaging in critical thinking at all.

again, my reply is responding to (not supporting) the nonsensical proposition that critical thinkers (as ill-defined by other commentors) are more effective than Machiavellian actors, even as they are supposedly marginalized (aka rendered ineffective) within large organizations.

i can understand why that line of thinking is confusing, because it is.

please read the comments i am responding to. the comment i am responding to is positing that in large companies, the main product is political game-playing (i do not necessarily believe that this is true), stating that delivering and shipping what people typically think of as "product" is #4 and #5 at best (again, i think that is a distorted generalization).

at the same time, the comment i am replying to posits that "critical thinkers" are the effective people in an organization who are really the ones who get things done. at the same time stating that these people who get things done are sidelined, punished and rendered ineffective by the organization. at the same time stating that these same people are the ones who are focused on low-priority items in that organization.

i agree with you, taken together, those statements are rather inane.. not only that but also wildly inconsistent, an ironic example of sloppy critical thinking.

i do not know where you get the impression that critical thinkers "should" play the game better. i am stating the obvious (which apparently isnt), that you would expect truly effective critical thinkers to be very good at focusing on the main priority within an organization, which based on the definitions defined by the previous commentor, is not "shipping product", but rather playing the game better. i disagree with that conclusion, but it is a consistent conclusion that follows assumptions that i also think are flawed.

in fact, assuming the negative assumptions about large organizations are valid, truly effective critical thinkers in such an organization would be able to see thru typical "mission statements" about delivering great product and service yada yada ... and instead focus on the accumulation of individual power and influence, if that is the main purpose of any human group. "the true organization man is the one who is most skeptical [aka critically thinking] about the organization"... or something like that.

anyway, critical thinking and emotionalism (bitterness and resentment about the unfairness of it all) would seem to be mutually opposed.

person i was responding to was defining "critical thinkers" as the ones who get sidelined and punished for challenging the status quo and focusing on priorities that are secondary (in fact not even secondary, #4, #5) to the purported main product of large companies, which is political gamesmanship.

so, alleged "critical thinkers" in this context are just the frustrated losers who think they are the one who get things done (which everyone thinks of themselves), but who actually focus on the wrong things to get done, while also rendering themselves ineffective even in that effort.

in a large company, if the main products are management politics, as you say, a capable critical thinker ought to be able to dominate that game, instead of focusing on relatively unimportant priorities like "shipping".

if someone tends to get marginalized, by definition that means they are ineffective at "getting things done".

i think Watts considered himself more of a "spiritual entertainer", he would have laughed at the idea of being a "spiritual leader", being a rather cheeky rascal in the best meaning of the term. his audiobook lectures are great, id recommend buying them as a way to support his legacy.

cool, good to know that raining down a bunch of probes in this manner would most likely be a pretty light show. still i wonder about the plutonium aspect of this?

it might be prudent to first consult with the legal experts and diplomats of the Galactic Council, to clear this type of activity with them first, minimize interpretation of this probing as a hostile interstellar act.