My assumption with anyone who wants to succeed at something but is repeatedly failing is that whatever changes they need to make to succeed are not easy or obvious for them - otherwise they would have made the changes already.
I agree with your theory and personally I feel that social media is a major contributor. When I was a teenager, the only place people were getting information about world politics and the economy was from the news, which I rarely watched or read, so I didn't worry about that stuff. The world has always had problems, but now we have social media feeding the news of all the world's ills to us in an easily digestible format 24/7, not even mentioning all of the other issues which come along with social media. Platforms like Twitter and Reddit have some pockets where great discussions are taking place, but I feel like 90%+ of it is just way too toxic and a waste of time to read or engage with.
I guess I didn't ask the right question here. My issue is with the statement "the vast majority of accidents are due to bad policy". I would disagree with this statement. Some people occasionally make bad decisions when they drive or get distracted and cause accidents. How do you create a policy to keep people from occasionally getting distracted or making a risky choice. You can't. Most people who are driving in a risky manner know how to drive safely, know that their behavior is not appropriate and they do it anyway because they don't care or think they can get away with it. Almost every person I have met who is a bad driver says something like "it's a risk I'm willing to take" or "I know the risks" without any thought about the fact that their behavior is putting others at risk as well. The only thing that usually changes these people's behavior is getting in an accident, at which point you just hope they didn't injure someone else too badly. Even then, I know of people who have been in accidents who still drive horribly. I'm convinced the problems are more cultural than anything else.
This is the only response I have seen to my question that could maybe change things - specifically having automatic sensors in every vehicle that automatically alert police when you do something dangerous. I think this would be unrealistic to implement, but assuming you could, it would probably help (assuming sensor data could be used as proof of bad driving).
As for reporting bad driving, you really need proof of a person's bad driving if you're going to penalize them for it. Having more traffic cameras helps a bit, but people just learn where the cameras are and drive carefully when they know they are being filmed.
I think it may be tough to imagine what being alone and isolated for a year does to a person if you are someone who is stuck inside with the same people all day. I would imagine the situation for those with family is very difficult and exhausting... but not suicidal ideation level of difficult, which has been my experience with this extreme social isolation. This is in spite of devoting a lot of time and energy to self care: exercising daily, eating healthy, not drinking alcohol, and many other things. Maybe my assumption here is wrong and there are plenty of people out there living with their families who are in as precarious a situation as I currently find myself. Either way, everyone is suffering right now, but my experience has been that long term social isolation is a unique form of torture that can really push a person to the edge.
So the article states that Carl Hart makes a claim that 70% of drug users don't meet the criteria for being a drug addict. I'm wondering how you could even get a reliable number for this for a drug like heroin, given the stigma attached to this drug and the fact that users themselves may be in denial that they are dependent on the drug. Someone can be meeting all their obligations in life and still be struggling with a drug addiction. If asked, I would imagine a lot of high functioning addicts would say they can stop whenever they want to, they just don't want to. Anyway, I may just have to give his book a read, it sounds interesting.
One thing I am curious about with this research is how they would get reliable numbers for high functioning opiate addicts. Addiction is really a spectrum from "no dependence on the drug and no negative life consequences" to "high dependence on the drug and many negative life consequences". I'm sure that many people fall in the middle where they continue to responsibly live their lives while still being dependent on a drug that they may wish to quit, but can't because the withdrawal is too much. I also would not be surprised if many of these people did not seek out help and tried to hide their problem from others due to the major stigma associated with being addicted to opiates, not to mention those who are dependent on opiates but in denial about their dependence.
Or.. there is no such thing as a gayness gene. Genetics are generally not a strong predictor for human behavior. Gestational environment, what sort of environment you grew up in, whether or not you've suffered any head injuries or have another developmental disorder, internal hormonal environment, the culture you live in... these are all much better predictors.
I think there are a number of intelligent, successful people who don't want to believe that they are successful due to luck of birth, more than anything else. Especially because they usually worked really hard and made a bunch of good decisions to get where they are - they just fail to realize others may be working even harder for much worse outcomes. I say this as someone who makes decent money and worked hard to get where I am - but I also accept that I more lucky than anything else.
I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. Agree to disagree :)
Edit: actually I went back and read your comment again and I misread the second part of your comment to indicate that I didn't understand something. I get what you mean, but I think tail risk can get ignored a bit more when you're quantifying risk, because it is very difficult to quantify.
I work in capital markets. I both design and build systems that automatically quote prices to the market and automatically make trading decisions. The financial consequences of getting either of these things wrong can be quite high, but many of my colleagues (i.e. traders) don't seem to understand the scope of things that could possibly go wrong when you're building software. I have noticed that experienced traders are usually very comfortable with taking some amount of risk (it's their job), but I have also noticed that with some people, that comfort with risk taking can spill over in to other areas where they simply don't have enough background or knowledge to properly assess the risks. So while I think comfort with risk taking is good, it's important to also question your own depth of understanding of the domain you're assessing risk in before dismissing other's concerns.
I interpreted the bullet point about "tail-end consequences" as tail risk, i.e. a worst case scenario event with low likelihood of occurring. In the author's story, he mentions they only considered the likely consequences of skiing out of bounds: getting caught and getting in trouble with their coaches. They never considered the worst case scenario of dying in an avalanche.
I think you need to balance the risks of addiction and negative health consequences against the cost of having gangs/cartels profiting off of the fact that the substance is controlled. With marijuana, it is neither very addictive nor are the health consequences of using marijuana very severe, at least in the short term. Legalization is a bit of a no brainer for marijuana.
Opioids are at the other end of the spectrum - they are highly addictive and aside from the possibility of accidental overdose, even just using them at the correct dosage carries a lot of negative health consequences. It is not clear that you get a net win for society by legalizing opioids.
Exercise doesn't really work for everyone. I found when I used to have trouble sleeping, heavy lifting made my sleep 10x worse (and still messes with my sleep now when I try it every now and then). Light to moderate exercise tended to improve my sleep, but the improvement was fairly minor. CBT-I and getting some bright light in the morning, on the other hand, were complete game changers for me. I've gone from sleeping maybe 5 - 6.5 hours of poor sleep a night (waking up multiple times, early waking), to normally 7 - 8 hours of good quality sleep and the improvement has been consistent for the past few years now.
I had trouble sleeping most of the time from about age 13 to 29. I more or less went through the same process as the author and discovered CBT for sleep is incredibly useful - this is what worked for me more than anything else. Since then I maybe have a poor night of sleep once a month at most. Ultimately, just calming down and letting sleep happen is what is going to fix sleep problems for those who are anxious about sleep (which it sounds like you may be) and this is a hard thing to learn when you're in that sleep anxiety mindset. Highly recommend CBT for sleep.
Not OP, but the general logic behind "calories in = calories out" is obviously fine. However, just knowing this doesn't really tell you anything about the best way to go about decreasing "calories in" or increasing "calories out" in a way that will result in meaningful fat loss and improved health. For example, it is plausible that someone could reduce "calories in" by eating less and their body could make up the difference by reducing "calories out" via lower BMR instead of having "calories out" remain constant with the difference being made up by burning fat stores. Maybe some fat loss will occur initially at the expense of being more tired and hungry but this change eventually becomes unsustainable/unhealthy if they aren't eating the right foods.
On the flipside, you can increase calories out by exercising but you could end up starving and/or exhausted as your body tries to compensate for the increased activity, depending on what is going on in your body hormonally. Or you just have no energy to spare for exercise as it is right now, and have a very hard time getting in to an exercise routine. All this is to say that "calories in = calories out" is all fine, but these variables are not independent. Having some knowledge of how and when the human body burns fat and when it stores fat goes a long way in coming up with a strategy to lose weight. This is where these trends of low carb diets and (intermittent) fasting have originated from.
By your logic, why do we bother with a guard on a tablesaw? The only people who chop their fingers off are inexperienced or bad at sawing things, they shouldn't be using it in the first place. Experienced carpenters never have a lapse in attention or judgement and will never cut their fingers.
I've worked on a team before where we every dev said "we need to upgrade X, we're Y versions behind" and management always responded with "no budget, this is not a priority". This continued until our hand was forced by a company wide initiative to modernize some aspects of our architecture and all of a sudden our team was frowned upon for being so far behind. Then we had to spend many months on an "upgrade project". I'm sure this same story has played out many times over in many other companies. In my own experience, often lack of tech currency/accumulation of tech debt is a management/organization problem. They won't get rewarded for upgrading things until their boss makes it a priority and there is some highly visible "upgrade project", so why bother doing so now.
> the actual work of being a developer/programmer in a professional setting is a really shitty job and sad life for the majority of people on those jobs.
Oh man, I cannot relate to this at all. I feel very lucky to be a software developer - there are far more boring jobs out there, that pay far less, with less flexible hours.
> They get annoyed when they're asked to think about the bigger picture and just want to focus on the code, the architecture, and whatever is new and shiny.
Maybe I'm the exception here, but this does not really describe most devs I've worked with. I've seen really smart devs just not care to argue anymore in workplaces where no one listens to them, but this is not the same thing as wanting to be a "bricklayer". Most devs usually have a lot of work on their plate and not enough time or energy to argue with some product owner or manager who is determined to get their way and who does have the time and authority to force their ideas through. On multiple occasions I've seen great teams destroyed when some determined micromanager gets promoted and decides they are going to "fix everything" without actually listening to their people with the most hands on experience. This and many other forms of organizational BS can lead to developer apathy from what I've seen, but I really don't think the dev who just wants to be a bricklayer is the norm.
Companies stick to a narrative of a tech shortage, lobby government and universities to help import/train more talent, supply of talent increases, wages drop.
I disagree that this is what is happening, given my own experience. But I'm not sure what the solution to the problem is. The smartest people I've worked with are motivated to learn more every day. You can offer the best training, but if someone doesn't care about inproving their skills or expanding their knowledge, you can't do much. Also, working effectively in a team environment also requires some soft skills that some people just don't have nor do they care to develop them. Again, can't force people to care.
Yeah, so this is kind of my point, actually. I like my hobbies, so they don't really require much effort and self discipline to engage in daily. If I don't have time to study one day, I don't beat myself up over it. It is just sort of my default thing to do when I have free time.
As another example, I also read fiction. I don't set goals like "I want to read X number of chapters this week" or "I want to read for X hours this week", nor do I track how much time I spend on it. It is purely for enjoyment, it doesn't matter.
Usually most people set goals that require some level of effort and/or self discipline over a longer period of time. I suppose you don't have to do this, but this is usually the standard reason for setting goals - so you can accomplish something you otherwise wouldn't if you didn't give it some special attention. Most people do things they enjoy by default - you only need to make some time for it, you don't really need to set a goal to do it.
Not really, though. I build software for a living. If I told my boss "we should make X better" they would probably want to know in what way will X be better, how much better do I want it to be, what will we gain from these improvements and approximately how long will it take me to make the improvements. That is, there should be a clear goal in mind that fits in to the bigger picture with a rough estimate of cost associated to determine if this task is worth undertaking.
For my hobby, I don't do any of this analysis. I attend a class every week and outside of class, I practice daily. I don't ask myself if it is time and money well spent, I don't have an end goal in mind (aside from the vague goal of "learning another language") or any idea how this fits in to some bigger picture. I just do it because I enjoy it. If I did all the same sort of analysis that I do at work in the context of my broader life goals, my bet is that I probably would come to the conclusion that learning this language is a waste of my time. But, what is the point of living if you spend 100% of your time achieving goals and none of your time enjoying your life. Thus, I spend time on hobbies outside of work.
All this blog post highlights is that you should have a strong and clear learning goal, because if you’re learning Mandarin because it might seem useful on vacation to China, you might be spending your time inefficiently.
I'm not sure if you're saying you agree with this, but I certainly do not. What if you just wanted to learn a language because you find learning a new language enjoyable? I've spent the past year learning another language with absolutely no end goal in mind of what I would do with it - I just find it to be a fun challenge. It's just a hobby.
Visual Studio is absolutely amazing and I won't code without it. On top of that, you can always install VsVim if you want some vim functionality while retaining everything that is great about VS (this is what I use).