Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs
experimentalhistory.substack.com
experimentalhistory.substack.com
> The writer George Jean Nathan claimed that before the 1920s, there existed only eight basic sandwich types: Swiss cheese, ham, sardine, liverwurst, egg, corned beef, roast beef, and tongue (yes). But by 1926, he “claimed that he had counted 946 different sandwich varieties stuffed with fillings such as watermelon and pimento, peanut butter, fried oyster, Bermuda onion and parsley, fruit salad, aspic of foie gras, spaghetti, red snapper roe, salmi of duck, bacon and fried egg, lettuce and tomato, spiced beef, chow-chow, pickled herring, asparagus tips, deep sea scallops, and so on ad infinitum.”
I ordered it off Amazon right away only to immediately realize, to my horror, that the hardcover version I had chosen would not arrive until Saturday, a full fortnite after my aspic of foie gras, salmi of duck, and the $5 esp32-wroom dev kits that were part of the same order.
What is this, the 1930s? Civilization is seriously going down the drain.
[1] https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2022/04/04/book-review-a-squar...
This is 2022 - you can get old cookbooks from archive.org and check if Nathan was right.
He wasn't.
For example, "The up-to-date sandwich book : 400 ways to make a sandwich", by Eva Greene Fuller. Published in Chicago in 1909. https://archive.org/details/uptodatesandwich00full/page/n7/m...
Or, a generation earlier in 1884, the book "Salads and Sauces" by Thomas Jefferson Murrey (New York) has a chapter on sandwiches. https://archive.org/details/saladsandsauces00murrgoog/page/n... including "Apple Sandwich", "Anchovy Sandwich", "Beef, Raw, Sandwich", "Brie Sandwich", "Caviare Sandwich", "Clam Sandwich", "Curry Sandwich", "Dandelion Sandwich", "Duck Sandwich", and so on for several more pages, ending with "Welsh Sandwich". Look under "Goose Liver" for the foie gras entry.
I hope I helped save your meal!
+ Someone goes on a journey.
+ A stranger comes to town.
Stories are attached to particular protagonists, but you can do things like overlap the stories of multiple protagonists or give a single protagonist multiple overlapping stories in order to develop narratives of arbitrary complexity.
One type, yes, and Kishōtenketsu as well. And now you know.
The aforementioned recipe from https://archive.org/details/saladsandsauces00murrgoog/page/n... says:
> Caviare is the roe of the sturgeon prepared under many formulas, the Russian being the best. Take a teaspoonful of caviare, put it in a soup-plate ; add to it a saltspoonful of chopped onion, a walnut of butter, and the juice of half a lemon ; work well together, spread on thin slices of rye-bread, press them together, cut the sandwich in two, and serve. Americans as a class do not like caviare.
According to Wikipedia, 1 salt spoon (ssp) = 0.25 teaspoon.
The other recipe book has caviare-lobster sandwich (species unspecified; I assume sturgeon), roe sandwich (salt herring), and two types of shad-roe sandwiches (shad). See https://archive.org/details/uptodatesandwich00full/page/12/m... .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caviar mentions:
> In Scandinavia, a type of sandwich spread is available, made from smoked cod roe and other ingredients, which is referred to as smörgåskaviar (meaning "sandwich caviar"). Outside Scandinavia, the product is referred to as creamed smoked roe or in French as Caviar de Lysekil.
Perhaps the Swedish term "kaviar" doesn't overlap fully with the English term "caviar"?
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kaviar#Swedish says:
1. caviar (roe of the sturgeon)
2. creamed smoked roe, Scandinavian sandwich caviar
1. Roe of the sturgeon or of certain other large fish, considered a delicacy.
2. (figuratively) Something whose flavour is too fine for the vulgar taste.It was a comment written by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Is this a comment box which I see before me, the submit button toward my hand?
Never been a fan of chips in my sandwich, but each to their own I suppose.
Ramona did not care for tongue if I recall correctly.
I grew up on a very small farm, but I'm sure many non farm folk were eating it back then too.
That's an awesome price!
Can't help but think people wrote to tell him he was wrong.
Many people are spending most of their lives doing stuff that they don't want to do, so of course they tend to look for shortcuts instead of trying to do things the right way. They have no intrinsic pride in the work they do; it's all about status, money and power. As people have become more free in their personal lives, on the career-side, we've never been so constrained.
He got bullied and saw others bullied too - we figure it’s why they prefer to intern pipeline and hire and retain - a lot easier to brainwash when young.
I mean it’s not a bad company, they do strong and good work - but acting like it’s the best place ever? Well, most of them have only worked there. We were like, offhand we’ve each had two better jobs than that one.[0] They used culture as a bait for lower pay too.
There’s something really disturbing about a company in 2022 wanting to act like a cult rather than accept the job market is turning more mercenary by the day. Oh well, their choice to fail.
[0] - Daniel Tosh “America #1” stand up bit for reference
Past a certain point, this sort of neurodivergence can be severely detrimental for no good reason, but I do understand why sometimes people accept a non-optimal situation for a while just to have some stability and simplify their lives.
One of my ex-colleagues was hired straight out of university by a company and he did not take a single holiday in 4 years because his boss would always try to make him feel guilty or would imply that there would likely be negative consequences for him as an employee.
After he eventually quit and changed companies, he had very low expectations and he couldn't believe how much better that second company was... It was a startup so it wasn't exactly low-stress by my standards; it goes to show how extreme the differences can be between companies that even a job which I considered challenging seemed like a walk in the park to him given what he had experienced before.
I worked at Best Buy so I recognized the signs immediately. The expression was “man he/she really bleeds blue” and if you hung out with the managers after work - because they all hung out together (and drove the same Scions lol) - you’d be in line for the next promotion. For some people that was a good path. Store Manager life and pay is legit.
It’s definitely a “high school hero” type thing where there’s not of lot of experience with leadership outside of sports like football. If it’s all they know, yeah, it’s their playbook. Fortunately here in Texas I know that playbook and I’m helping him go Mike Leach on them and they’re really surprised and not taking it well. Which is good for him.
I did abuse the heck out of the BB IT at the time using flash drives and paint.exe admin tricks.
I’m not sure what drugs the Shipping people are on though - we routinely shuffled 40+ unsold copies of The Benchwarmers into a bye bye crate and they’d show back up a month later but 50+. They were inventory gaming and probably doing some book cooking now when I look back on it.
Two stories stand out in my new hire training:
We had multiple "partners" (super senior, old-school MDs) tell us: "At Goldman, there is not publically available org chart." Fucking dead wrong. I raised my hand at each of those bullshit meetings and said, "I'm sorry, but this is incorrect. There is a website where you can view and search the org chart." (It was amazing -- no lie/joke.) Each PMD was so "surprised" to learn this. Not sure if real, or encouraging people to do face-to-face networking.
Second, they showed all these weird propaganda videos about how Goldman is closely tied with the US gov't, especially during World War 2. So weird, creepy, and out of date! Many senior partners leave Goldman and enter US politics. In American English, they call it "the revolving door" (between private industry and politics). Many democracies have this problem. But why celebrate it? Fuct! The whole thing felt so sleazy. Why is this important to non-US citizens? Many people looked bored and only read their mobile phones during these 90 minute(!) videos.
Nice post, and I upvoted, but it might say something about your personality that you seem to consider 'throwaway2037' a part of your identity and not a throw-away. It makes me wonder if some of what you consider to be a 'cult' might just be what others think of as 'community'.
> We had multiple "partners" (super senior, old-school MDs) tell us: "At Goldman, there is not publically available org chart." Fucking dead wrong. I raised my hand at each of those bullshit meetings and said, "I'm sorry, but this is incorrect. There is a website where you can view and search the org chart." (It was amazing -- no lie/joke.) Each PMD was so "surprised" to learn this. Not sure if real, or encouraging people to do face-to-face networking.
It's a big company - it seems entirely plausible to me that it could have been an honest mistake and he just didn't know that it existed. And the goal of having an organization where people are free to collaborate with others outside of their org, and employees at all levels are able to voice their opinions, seems like a valid aspiration to fight for... even if in reality it doesn't work that way.
> Second, they showed all these weird propaganda videos about how Goldman is closely tied with the US gov't, especially during World War 2. So weird, creepy, and out of date! Many senior partners leave Goldman and enter US politics. In American English, they call it "the revolving door" (between private industry and politics). Many democracies have this problem. But why celebrate it? Fuct! The whole thing felt so sleazy. Why is this important to non-US citizens? Many people looked bored and only read their mobile phones during these 90 minute(!) videos.
It's not uncommon to show "propaganda" videos to new hires when they join a company - to try to motivate them by showing them the impact that their work can have on the world. And yes they do often come across as a bit creepy. It's also not uncommon for companies that have been around for a while to be proud of their history - which probably explains the WW2 references. I also don't think there's anything inherently wrong about working closely with the government - the US government provides a lot of useful services for its citizens after all. Corruption of course is another matter entirely... but I can only assume the video was not promoting corruption.
Surely you must have seen worse things than this in your time at Goldman Sachs?
And as a new hire it's interesting to get to know something where the company comes from. Often it makes it easier to endure some of the company's idiosyncrasies if you know their origins.
You will eventually learn what Peter in “Office Space” refers to it as ‘zoning out’ - you look like you’re watching the video, but you’re only doing just enough to get through the quiz at the end.
> I mean it’s not a bad company
These two statements cannot exist together when discussing the same organization.
the guy with status,money and power is obviously more attractive than the guy who, although he loves his work, is more or less unsuccessful on those parameters. it's intraspecific selection at play. One of the only remaining factor influencing human evolution today. People understandably value what increases their SMV.
Konrad Lorenz has written an interesting part about it in his book "Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins" (4. Man's race against himself)
This is the kind of attitude which helps the individual at the expense of the group. When the group is too dumb to see through bullshit, the people who produce bullshit have a huge advantage within that group.
I've seen this dynamic at play first hand in groups and communities of various sizes. It's just incredible how sometimes individually smart people can form a group but somehow, as a group, they act really dumb and they fall for obvious BS over and over... And the people selling BS within the group keep screwing the group over and over again and group members just ignore all the evidence that they are being screwed. Meanwhile those who are working in the interest of the group are shunned because the group ignores the tangible evidence and believes the BS narratives which paints those people as harmful.
Damn these modern people, why would they look after things so irrelevant as “status, money and power” instead of taking pride in completing Jira tickets?
So I don't agree with your next conclusion, I don't think that's leading to "shortcuts instead of trying to do things the right way." To do things they don't want to do the right way? To do things that are meaningless and pointless, but do them the "right way"?
I agree with, I think, the OP, in that what you are suggesting is metaphorical "get better at eating frogs, why are you so lazy about it?"
But I agree with your basic explanation. My interpretation of why people might engage in office/politics is: to try and find some meaning in life. The politics seem meaningful because politics (of both varieties) are actually core to what humans as humans do.
The problem is not "How do we figure out how to force ourselves to do the meaningless boring stuff we don't want to do the right way?" The problem is: How do we find meaning in our lives that have been structured so we spend most of them doing meaningless things we don't want to do, and are not sure how to live otherwise. And, with regard to harmful or unhealthy forms of "politics" or "drama": In what ways do our attempts to find meaning backfire?
Alienation Is Not ‘Bullshit’: An Empirical Critique of Graeber’s Theory of BS Jobs https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09500170211015...
from the conclusion:
>This article highlights that alternative theories grounded in empirical research are required to understand the social suffering caused by the feelings of useless work that Graeber observes. Therefore, our third major contribution is to demonstrate the value of Marx’s writings on alienation. We take inspiration from Marx’s understanding of alienation to investigate whether the social relations of work can explain why millions of workers do not feel that their work is useful. In particular, we focus on the ways in which the development of workers’ human capacities may be fettered by social relations at work.
I feel like I get a lot more done precisely because I don't like to eat frogs. I sleep until I'm rested. I don't touch my computer until I've had tea on the balcony. I work on what feels right, when it feels right, for as long as it feels right. If the weather is nice, I'll hop on my bicycle and forget about work.
But when something sparks my interest, I have stores of energy to throw at it. My appetite for work is unrestrained by the frogs I've had for breakfast.
I embraced the fact that I am not a machine, and that my output is neither constant nor predictable. I'd rather respect the tides of my energy than fight against them.
That said, I don’t know if I’d actually want to live that dispassionately.
The whole point is that my work is almost single-handedly defined by passion. When that runs dry, I take a break and do other things. It's easier to do good work with a well-rested mind full of ideas.
But it came out of the many impulses I followed when I should have been eating frogs. Other impulses got me all sorts of connections, career boosts and other perks.
Some frogs you just have to eat, but I don't think that anyone's denying that. The original article is questioning competitive frog-eating. In my experience, refusing to eat those frogs is how you end up finding other ways.
This guy who makes computers put it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYfNvmF0Bqw
How have you achieved this?
I once had a setup like this, but eventually the work which permitted that freedom got boring, and I was so void of responsibility that I felt a pain of meaninglessness. Climbing out of this hole was via a feast of frogs.
Most people get indoctrinated into a 1:1 relationship with what they make and their lifestyle cost.
This turns into competing for best schools districts, which turns into paying as much as you can for land, to surround yourself with others who can pay at least as much as you can.
In the US, healthcare costs also keep people on their toes. Between health insurance premiums and annual out of pocket maximums, you need somewhere around $24k per year plus ~$34k emergency funds for 2 years worth of out of pocket maximum healthcare expenses for a family of 4.
If I was single or without kids, I would not necessarily care enough about any of that.
Cause I am interested in this line of work. At least if it pays enough to live comfortably.
I am curious how many hours a day/week you work, and if you are open about this with your employer...
I make sure I'm aligning my personal technical interests with the kinds of projects I work on for the company, so work feels more like a fun puzzle to solve rather than slogging through tedium. Generally I don't work late into the evenings, but sometimes a problem is really just that fun to solve, and I enjoy spending time on it. Other times, projects may be less interesting, so I work fewer hours, letting myself rest. Burnout is real, and it sucks, and I avoid it at all costs.
My employer really just cares that I get my work done, not how many hours it takes to do it. If I'm getting "meets all" or "exceeds" in my yearly ratings, then I'm meeting or exceeding their standard, and we're both happy.
I mostly work when it feels right, yes, and do something else when it doesn't. But I am doing my PhD and (in Canada) it absolutely does not pay enough to live comfortably.
Mind you, I still have to work, but there's rarely anything that needs to be done right now, unless I goofed up while fiddling with nginx.
Before that I was a contractor for a year or two. After seeing contracting colleagues disappear for months-long vacations, I wanted in on that.
Before that I was a regular employee in Europe, where work culture is far more relaxed. I had more vacation days as an intern than my parents in the home country ever had. I also became really good at aggressively cutting meetings for me and my team, which gave us more time to experiment without affecting output.
In Germany, you also have the right to reduce your work hours. Coincidentally, that's the article I'm currently working on.
There's a minimum number of frogs that you have to eat. Mine is very low out of sheer luck. However there are different ways to bring most people's number down, starting with don't glorify eating frogs.
When Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett wrote Good Omens thirty years ago they already hit upon this idea when Crowley, a demon and one of the main characters, tries to explain to his fellow demons that nowadays it's all about optimizing micro-evils for the biggest net amount of evil. Sure, things like corrupting a church leader sounds more impressive, but if you cause the phone network to be down for an entire morning in London that ruins so many more people's day ever so slightly, leading to more sinful thoughts in total and pushing them to take it out on others, who then take that out on others, and so on.
(my money is on that joke being written by Pratchett, it fits his kind of satire so perfectly)
[shows self out]
Avoiding something because it disagrees with your worldview, or because it is 'too close to [insert literally anything here]' is not a great way to expand your understanding of the world. Being exposed to things you disagree with is step 1 in understanding how or why they exist, with few exceptions (CP, explicit hate speech, most calls to violence, those sorts of things).
Read the screwtape letters. Yes, they're intended to make you consider your immortal soul and embrace Christianity. But also yes, it's an amazing piece of literature.
I think you are overselling. It's worth a read, but the writing is often stilted and repetitive, the central conceit interesting but tired by the end. It's not a long book, but probably would have been better as a shorter form.
That kind of abrupt tonal slam, from comedy to horror, leaving the reader feeling something like they just had a bucket of cold water unexpectedly poured over them, is classic Sir Pterry too. I read the Discworld series start-to-finish earlier this year as a minor bucket-list project, and I wish he was still around. He had a commendable simmering rage against the powerful and callous that boiled over often, and that's something we could use more of today.
I also did not expect to write a comment today using the word "bucket" in two unrelated idioms, but here we are.
Well, it makes sense that demons wouldn't want to think about strict judicial procedure and rules of evidence.
This seems like one of the things you might say to diss humans, but which doesn't actually make sense when you think about it. I don't believe for one moment that an actual demon, who does the kind of evil things we normally think of demons as doing, would find human evils shocking, let alone unthinkable. The whole point of being a demon is being and doing evil. If the demon can't comprehend some human evil, he's a failure as a demon.
It can at most make sense as a joke. It makes too little sense taken seriously to actually be horror.
I think the horror comes from the thought that a being whose entire job is to come up with new and clever ways to bring about human misery and suffering is so thoroughly out-classed. The idea that humanity doesn't need an outside influence to inflict such evil is horrific. The joke is just there as window dressing to contrast the real horrors of our collective history.
"Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into the design, somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse. Over the years Crowley had found it increasingly difficult to find anything demonic to do which showed up against the natural background of generalized nastiness. There had been times, over the past millennium, when he’d felt like sending a message back Below saying, Look, we may as well give up right now, we might as well shut down Dis and Pandemonium and everywhere and move up here, there’s nothing we can do to them that they don’t do themselves and they do things we’ve never even thought of, often involving electrodes. They’ve got what we lack. They’ve got imagination. And electricity, of course.
One of them had written it, hadn’t he … “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”
Crowley had got a commendation for the Spanish Inquisition. He had been in Spain then, mainly hanging around cantinas in the nicer parts, and hadn’t even known about it until the commendation arrived. He’d gone to have a look, and had come back and got drunk for a week.
That Hieronymus Bosch. What a weirdo.
And just when you’d think they were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of. Often the same individual was involved. It was this free-will thing, of course. It was a bugger."
...I'll show myself out.
Pretty sure it was written by Gaiman. I’m not finding the interview where he said this, but (if memory serves) Gaiman wrote that part of the story and had shelved it when Pratchett contacted him:
— Do you have plans for that thing you sent me?
— Not really, why?
— Because I know what happens next. So either sell me the rights to it or write it with me.
And then continued the interview with something like “and because I’m not an idiot, I didn’t pass up the opportunity to write something with him”.
Gaiman’s initial draft may have included more by the time they had the conversation, but the moment I remember from the interview was specifically about that conversation amongst the demons. It stuck with me because I found the idea funny and it’s what made me want to take a look at Good Omens.
>The M25 plays a role in the comedy-fantasy novel Good Omens, as "evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man".[14] The demon character, Crowley, had manipulated the design of the M25 to resemble a Satanic sigil, and tried to ensure it would anger as many people as possible to drive them off the path of good.[122][123] The lengthy series of public inquiries for motorways throughout the 1970s, particularly the M25, influenced the opening of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where the Earth is destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass.[124]
Still, overall an insightful and much-needed statement on one problem with the times we live in. I especially loved this line:
> These students inevitably end up as consultants or bankers or managers at tech companies, industries that richly reward people who are willing to work very hard for no particular reason.
I enjoyed that work very much. I was basically memorizing the book. No way that schedule would work for something I disliked.
On the other hand, I have actually found one minute on, one minute off, 30 times with an automated repeating timer to work on tasks that seem downright unbearable. The minute off you just do nothing. Do not do this daily! This is like a once-a-year thing.
Why's that? (I'm intrigued by this idea.)
I found I could make myself do things I had a lot of resistance to with this technique. It wouldn't necessarily be great, but it would get done. One could call this activity... eating frogs. I'll defer to the article on the issues with that in general.
The problem with this technique is that it's so strong (god it sounds like I'm selling the thing) that you don't even exactly notice the will power you're using up. But you're still using it! My experience with doing this kind of thing too many days in a row is that every individual day feels okay, but they build up until some type of subconscious rebellion goes off.
Maybe if you were more chill about it, didn't use it super frequently or only on things you absolutely despise it would actually be fine.
Method 1. Incrementing time boxes (the first step is similar to yours actually). Set a timer for 1 minute and do it for one minute. Then 2 minutes, then 3, and so on. (At some point you'll be working on it and forget about the timer, and that's ok.) (Credit to Mark Forster[1] and/or Khatzumoto[2] for that idea.
[1] I believe it's in his "Get Everything Done" book as mentioned here http://markforster.squarespace.com/forum/post/2713432
[2] http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/timeboxing-trilogy...
Method 2. Start with a blank piece of paper (or text file). Write down the goal. In outline form, indent and write the first thing needed to do that. If needed, indent again and write down the first thing to do that, and so on, until you have something to start on. Note that I'm not talking about outlining and planning the project, just the first step (of the first step, ...). A great benefit is it helps you focus on deciding where to start, breaks it down to something small enough to start on, and it keeps track of where you are in the process, what you're trying to do. I guess it helps with working memory (which helps with executive function). Proceed to work on the project indenting and un-indenting as needed (i.e. adding sub-item 2 after sub-item 1 is complete)
I'll mention a related idea (it's essentially the same thing) because I had forgotten something I posted on reddit and someone just replied to me 7 years later saying it helped them "tremendously". To rephrase it, (I assumed) when you think about working on something, and then feel anxious, and then do something else (procrastinate) it provides relief and reinforces procrastination (same with how phobias work). So I mention doing a really small part of it instead like work for X minutes or X item(s), but when the thought of stopping comes to mind, then stop. That way you don't associate starting with forcing yourself. But then keep starting again with small pieces.
Your idea about doing nothing for 1 minute reminds me of a time when I had to break myself from switching to working on something else, and I would just set a timer (3 minutes though, and you could stop waiting if you wanted to work on the thing you actually wanted to work on before that) and literally lay down with nothing to do and then go back to what I was doing. Basically I was either doing the project, or doing nothing, but not switching to something else unproductive.
The hazard is yak-shaving, over-investing in the pre-pre-pre-planning, or becoming interested in epistemology. The trick is to try to have each layer be a tenth of the investment of the layer it supports or less. Can't stack too high that way.
What brings me pleasure is playing strategic computer games. I was addicted to playing dota. I was playing 12-16 hours a day, which left no place for socializing, career, family, even basic self-maintenance suffered. Anything meaningful, art, self-improvement was cut. It's a disgraceful, shameful life.
The meaning of life is not the blind pursuit of pleasure. We are humans precisely because we follow higher purposes.
When I stopped playing dota, civ took it's place, then reddit, then tiktok, etc.
I've resorted to hard blocking a long list of apps and websites. I've seen other people on hackernews having the exact same problem and stumbling upon the exact same stack of solutions.
My point is, it's not the one game, it's the entire internet.
>said addiction being a coping mechanism to fill some kind of hole in someone's life
I've been to several therapists, which have proven useless. I don't think there is a hole in my life, besides the fact that I'm wasting my entire life on stupid shit because I procrastinate.
Your mistake is not one of playing games, but of thinking there's nothing to be learned from doing so. Sid Meier's Civilization is not some slot machination to drain you of everything. It is the design of one of our era's greatest minds, in the pursuit of understanding the systems underlying our Earthly existence, and the democratization of that research to the fingertips of all.
For someone who enjoys balancing the needs of a kingdom, you've yet to learn to balance the needs of your own body.
Tiktok, reddit, binging netflix, in contrast are probably directly harmful.
This is a ridiculous analogy. The vast majority of video games have so little application to the real world as to be effectively useless. This is relevant in the particular case of Dota 2, which, while an incredibly interesting game, has virtually no relevance to the real world.
"Virtually" because if I say "no relevance" then pedants will quickly point out that you can learn some basic economics by looking at the skin marketplace, or something. Yeah, sure, and you can learn more about human anatomy by having sex. The ratios of learning for those things compared to doing dedicated learning (textbooks, classes, internet research, practice) are at least in the ratio of 100 to 1, if not more, for all but the tiny minority of games explicitly designed to have a significantly amount of learning potential (e.g. Kerbal Space Program).
Using your own analogy, if you told said king that using this crystal took you 100 to 1000 times longer to learn about things than the magical libraries that we also have available to us, which also only cost your own personal time, and then advocated for their use, he'd definitely think that you were crazy - and you would be.
> It is the design of one of our era's greatest minds, in the pursuit of understanding the systems underlying our Earthly existence, and the democratization of that research to the fingertips of all.
Sid Meyer is not "one of our era's greatest minds" even in the particularly narrow field of video game development.
> For someone who enjoys balancing the needs of a kingdom, you've yet to learn to balance the needs of your own body.
There is no "balancing the needs of a kingdom" going on. The Civilization games are optimized for entertainment first, and if educational value is optimized for at all, it's definitely not in the top 5. If you take someone who has put thousands of hours of Civilization into any position of authority (and no other relevant training), they'll a pathetic, miserable mess, and not able to keep up with someone who's read a just few dozen hours' worth of well-chosen history, economics, and military strategy books.
If you could learn to rule merely by playing Civ, then American anime enthusiasts would be able to learn Japanese merely by watching anime, which virtually never happens, and it's pretty well known that it's not a feasible learning strategy.
The statements you make only reveal your utter ignorance to the subject at hand, as even the most cursory of web searches will squarely establish these facts.
> particularly narrow field of video game development
Video games are almost bigger than TV, movies, and radio combined. I hate to ad hominem but you're talking out of your ass.
> Sid Meier's Civilization is considered one of the most influential computer games in history
An extremely subjective list with hundreds of viable candidates for it. What does "one of" even mean here?
> a critical and commercial success
Which, alongside "one of the most influential computer games in history", are all literally completely irrelevant to the topic at hand, which is "does it have educational value".
> a pedagogical boon to humanity
Citation needed. I've never heard anyone call Civ anything like this, let alone anyone who is a professional educator.
> The statements you make only reveal your utter ignorance to the subject at hand, as even the most cursory of web searches will squarely establish these facts
Incredible arrogance, the old trope "look it up for yourself", and blatantly false. You know what my very first result is for searching "most inflential video games of all time" on Google is? A list of ten games[1] that doesn't have Civ at all. My next result[2] puts it at position 73. Then another list of five games[3] without it.
The very fact that you consider these subjective opinions, which are literally the opposite of facts to be "facts" proves that you have no idea what you're talking about, nor the most basic understanding of logic. (the fact that you don't know what search engine bubbling is doesn't help either)
> Video games are almost bigger than TV, movies, and radio combined.
Which is, again, completely irrelevant, because (1) you're ranking those by some consumer metric, not educational value, and (2) every one of those are entertainment fields. Which is more important: video games, or the study of physics or history itself? (this is a rhetorical question, and again, regardless of the truth of these claims, they simply do not matter to the discussion)
If you seriously think that video games are at all comparable in educational value to actual education, then you better provide some extremely convincing evidence, because it's pretty clearly false at first glance.
To sum up: aside from the small part of your comment that is objectively false, this entire thing is purely subjective opinion with absolutely no substantiation whatsoever, in addition to being utterly irrelevant to the rest of the thread. Please make points that are actually related to the subject at hand.
[1] https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/greatest-video-games/
[2] https://www.animationcareerreview.com/articles/top-100-most-...
[3] https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/most-influential-video-...
These are all still examples of things hyper-optimized to have addictive feedback loops.
> My point is, it's not the one game, it's the entire internet.
Fair point, but the author is most strongly disagreeing with the "human nature" claim of laziness, and everything you've described so far strikes me as an external influence coopting human instinct. Kind of like how cheesecake and other hyperprocessed foods coopt our instinct to really like eating fat and sugar, which from an evolutionary standpoint was a very good instinct actually for the sake of survival until extremely recently. Should morbidly obese people lose weight for the sake of their own health? Yes. Should we shame them for being obese when healthy food is hard to come by and extremely bad food is cheap and easy to find? No.
I understand how that might feel like arguing semantics when the end-result is still that you feel like it's hard to get control over your life and addictions, but the difference between blaming oneself and seeing that this is an external influence that one shouldn't hate oneself for is a very significant one.
All of which are also hyper-optimized to be addictive.
Perhaps part of the problem is that you live in a world surrounded by things that are hyper-optimized to feed your addiction rather than bring you joy?
Honestly, on what grounds would you deny that Civ games are addictive given this common knowledge?
> Honestly, on what grounds would you deny that Civ games are addictive given this common knowledge?
This also clearly indicates that you didn't read my comment before replying. I was exclusively referring to the claim that Civ games were optimized to be addictive - not that they "were addictive".
You know what other things are addictive, despite having no intentional design put towards that end? Scrolling Hacker News, the New page on Reddit (yes, I know that Reddit has a surfacing algorithm, and it's irrelevant to the New page), many other video games that don't have free-to-play models or any other optimization, reading comics, and many other things.
The fact that something is addictive for some set of the population does not imply that it was designed that way.
Thing is, good games are by definition interesting. If they are more interesting than anything else you can do at that moment, that's sufficient.
No, it's not relative. "This game has been optimized for the explicit purpose of "engagement"/addiction"" is a statement that can be factually known to be true or false.
> but come one, it's free-to-play. Of course it's trying to keep people hooked.
That's an appeal to emotion without a logical argument behind it. The logical argument is that the survival of free-to-play games depends on the microtransaction revenue being higher than the cost to run the game. You know what directly contributes to the cost of running the game? People using the servers. Unlike social media platforms that monetize through time spent = ad impressions, free-to-play games do not want to maximize the amount of time spent playing the game, they want to maximize the amount of cosmetics that people buy, which is very different, and is not obviously connected with playtime in any research I'm aware of.
> I also know multiple people who had to cope with Dota addictions ruining their relationships and lives
...which happened to me! But, as someone who is struggling with an HN addicition: something can be addicting without being purposefully designed to be that way - addictive traits do not imply that something was designed to be addictive.
I chuckled. I have yet to see one.
Obviously the sense is informed by what you perceive.
You higher could be pretty low for someone else. Like yourself in a couple of years.
It's the biggest lie of them all that some behaviors are higher than other. That's how they sell you church, work week and other frogs.
Why? Because most of us converge on the same basic idea that with cooperation, we can have generally more fun. So we invent ways to get others involved in our shit. Some of it manipulative, because ends justify the means. Well, except when you like to play on hard and limit the set of your means, because it's more fun that way.
Disagree.
>You higher could be pretty low for someone else. Like yourself in a couple of years.
Possible, but I can console my future self with the fact that at least I'm not a filthy nihilist.
If legal, I would think it's probably worth getting a doctor (ie keep going to different doctors until you find a sympathetic one) to prescribe it. Even non stimulant medications like atomoxetin can be helpful.
The main thing I think is missing from the OP (which I liked very much) is discussion of the concept of meaning. (and perhaps social connection).
I think what most "frog-eaters" are missing is meaning, not pleasure. People will gladly do hard things that seem meaningful.
I think addiction is primarily about a lack of meaning (and social connection) as well -- rather than being about a surfeit of "pleasure" or lack of "discipline". It's an attempt to deal with a lack of meaning. (It is noteable to me that you point out that your 12-16 hours a day of playing, while (you claim) was "pleasurable", was not in fact "anything meaningful").
I think OP is really talking about a lack of meaning, control, and social connection in our lives. It's this same lack that is part of what leads to addiction. And in fact the solution is not "just try harder to do the things that seem meaningless and without joy, you need more discipline" -- that's the message I get from OP, and I think in fact it applies to addiction too. "Trying harder to be more disciplined" is not a great strategy for escaping addiction.
> But it takes a lot of work to be satisfied with their relationship and their pond, because they don’t get enough love to fill their hearts or enough fish to fill their bellies. So they end up reading articles about how to love things they don’t love that much and how to feel full without eating enough.
This seems so relevant to addiction to me.
That is indeed a much more defensible thesis. But to do anything meaningful, you need to eat a bunch of frogs - to build a rocket, you need to call and compare suppliers, manage accounting, etc. If you avoided all of that annoying stuff, you would find yourself, years later, with very pretty blueprints and no rocket.
But mainly, I think the basic thesis is about how we diagnose our dissatisfaction. The very common way is what you seem to be suggesting: You need to get better at doing hard things, it's your fault for being lazy. How do you expect to be able to do anything worthwhile if you are so bad at doing hard things? That is the common perspective.
The OP's suggestion (tweaked a bit by me to have meaning) is that this is all wrong: If your life is mostly composed of things that are unpleasant, lacking meaning, control, and social connection, of COURSE they will be hard to get done and burn you out, and it's not your fault. The solution, if you can find a way to do it, is to increase the meaning, control, and social connection in your life -- tasks will not feel as unpleasant if in a framework of meaning, control, and social connection.
The problem is not your lack of discipline, it's that you are not getting enough meaning, control, and social connection in your life. (Granted, it's not necessarily simple what to do about this, especially when it's how our society is set up).
But I'm curious, if you feel like sharing (or if not these are just rhetorical for other readers, no problem), as to your personal anecdotal experience with the problem with computer games. (which I'd call an "addiction" from my experience, but you may or may not). How did you get out of it? Or are you out of it or still struggling? In what ways has it been about discipline and trying harder? In what ways has it been connected to meaning, control, and social connection in other parts of your life? Has the theory that your problem is with discipline and procrastination and just not trying enough been useful to solving the problem? If not, are you willing to consider a different theory/framework? What things in your life give you meaning, control, and social connection, do you feel your life is full of those? (I do not, personally, I'm having problems with the lack of those and am not sure what to do about it).
I do think there's a certain audience that needs to hear that, specifically the do-nothing crowd or someone (like your former self perhaps) whose life is dominated by bad habits. I think the article is addressing the other side of the pendulum. There are plenty of people who are not addicted to some sort of obvious time waste, but they are addicted to self-flagellation.
It seems that now you're eating different frogs, and you're feeling happier and more fulfilled. You might even be eating less of them now, and that might be part of what's rewarding.
Frustration is a kind of pain and pain is a signal that we should avoid a stimulus. It is frustrating to 'eat frogs'. You can force yourself to go through frustration, or you can use tools help manage those feelings. Or you can try to address the source of those feelings. Or you can choose to not engage in activities that bring up those feelings. We have words for some of these things like 'procrastination'
The point is that those feelings are real and they are not your fault. It is not a failure to feel frustrated. It is a signal. Forcing yourself to go through frustration repeatedly may strengthen that signal, laying down cognitive and emotional scar tissue.
Noticing a stimulus does not mean being fixated on it. It does not mean that you give that stimulus more power. It can feel that way at first, like noticing a tiger in the room; but the tiger has always been there.
---
On another level, the article hints at the real purpose of mental/cognitive/emotional therapy. "Therapy doesn't fix anything, you have to fix yourself" is a common way to say this, but I would say "Therapy is a way to see your situation more clearly, help you develop tools to deal with your personal situation, and help you decide what to change about your personal situation". Therapy can make you feel worse in the short term, and sometimes life does just suck; but it can also help quite a lot.
---
A tool that helped me -
Emotion Wheel - https://feelingswheel.com/
Life is this amazing playground. We can choose our own values and work towards achieving those values, often to great success if we work hard. But, at the end of the day, what's most important is that we enjoy the moments along the way, and that's hard when you have a loud inner critic shouting at you.
Don't be angry at your shame, it already feels bad enough.
Don't be angry at your fear, it already feels bad enough.
Don't be angry at your anger, it already feels bad enough.
All of your "bad" emotions can feed other "bad" emotions.
The "bad" emotions are a way for your mind to tell you to avoid or change something. They aren't bad in the same way that hunger isn't bad. Hunger feels bad, but it's a signal that tells you to change something or do something.
---
This is not a comprehensive comment. There are very important things I didn't say here.
> First, humans are not “naturally” lazy, because humans are not “naturally” anything. ... We’re different today not because our genes changed, but because our culture changed.
But those faults are in fact undeniably persistent to us as a species. It is not without reason that many of our religions, since antiquity, have framed this issue, man's struggle against his impulses, against his baser self, as the struggle against evil.
If you're of the opinion that religion is bad for the same reasons that those motivational coaches are bad, then I think you still have to admit that this fight against our selves is far from novel.
I would say the change is more societal than cultural. Humans in a modern, wealthy country can survive and procreate without doing a whole lot. People can coast in their jobs, or live cheaply and work very little and still not worry about whether they'll starve in the winter (for the most part).
There's no longer a biological necessity to get stuff done. If people of the past could have done very little and still survive, they probably would have. To my sensibilities, some of them did. The nobility seem like they did a lot of their version of "watching Netflix and eating potato chips".
Eating more frogs now can mean that you have to eat fewer frogs in the future, or in total, ALSO that your children and family will have to eat fewer frogs.
I still believe that working hard is a virtue and the people who do will usually end up becoming the people who (and who’s children also) are privileged.
I agree though that the culture around it is a bit much, and it’s not for everyone. Those type of people should not be forced to participate in that kind of culture if they don’t want to.
Key word there is "can". We need to be very careful when deciding about temporal shifts in frog eating (more now, fewer later). If it's not a very tight loop, you are likely eating someone else's frogs so they don't have to. Be sure you're actually reducing the number of frogs coming your way.
so what?
> "Stop confusing productivity with laziness. While no one likes admitting it, sheer laziness is the No. 1 contributor to lost productivity."
I was taught growing up that if it's something you must do anyhow, then true laziness is finding the simplest and most effective way to do a given task quickly and correctly the first time so that you don't have to waste time and effort doing it again or fixing your screw-up. Sounds pretty "productive" to me…
> “I divide my officers into four classes as follows: The clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities.
> Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.”
Or
> I do not know whether your Lordships are familiar with the saying of a German General that there are four types of officer but I think that it is relevant to what we are discussing. He said that there are four types of officer: the clever and lazy, the clever and industrious, the stupid and lazy, and the stupid and industrious.
> The clever and lazy you make Chief of Staff, because he will not try to do everybody else’s work, and will always have time to think. The clever and industrious you make his deputy. The stupid and lazy you put into a line battalion, and kick him into doing a job of work. The stupid and industrious you must get rid of at once, because he is a national danger.
I explained this isn’t about exerting less effort, but that for the same effort we get a heck of a lot more done. I guess that’s when I first realized that management consulting can be a good thing.
Of course, 30 years later, I know management consultants are often frauds that have no idea what they are talking about or doing. They make business benefits by slowing wage growth and by essentially forcing smaller groups of people to do more work by laying off their coworkers. Not the efficiency I had in mind.
https://www.economist.com/business/2022/04/09/how-mba-wieldi...
The protestant work ethic is a powerful tool, but people need to know that it is a religious value now woven into society. Not to avoid doing productive things, because I think it can provide the most amazing successes and a wonderful life, but to be aware that it is horribly abused in America by business management. “Idle hands are the devil’s hands.” And it drives all sorts of compulsion.
None of this is new, but if I could go back in time, I would find Chuck Palahniuk, and explain to him that the problem in our society isn’t the banks, but the big consulting firms. Oh that would be a much more satisfying ending to Fight Club.
Bojack Horseman: “Are you gonna sail around the cape like a real man, or are you gonna cut through the Panama Canal like a Democrat?”
Effort
Low High
┌───────────┬───────────┐
I │ │ │
m Low │ Ok │ Bad │
p │ │ │
a ├───────────┼───────────┤
c │ │ │
t High │ Perfect │ Ok │
│ │ │
└───────────┴───────────┘Use stack ranking. Avoids "everything is a priority" and related mistakes.
Effort and impact both have a long tail distribution, something like power law. It's probably power law because it's easy to be off by an order of magnitude. "Impact" is easier to get wrong because it's going to the high end. Don't think most impactful and second most impactful have a similar impact because they're close in rank. It's easy for #1 to be 10-100x #2.
Your version of "laziness" is quite admirable, honestly.
I'll share a personal story: I was burned by a "stuck in your head" "love". It was unrequited and I suffered a lot.
I have since then read about infatuation, and am averse towards it.
I'd much rather have a stable partner I can have fun with but also communicate, rather than the intense stomach-churning variant.
The most important criterion I've found is that both partners in a relationship see the other as greater or equal to themselves.
Satisfy that, and you get a long-lasting relationship, and you can stop chasing for the impossible ideal.
1) Humans are naturally lazy
2) Human instinct drives us to do things that are bad for us
Stating we are "naturally something" implies that there is an fixed equilibrium point that our behavior naturally converges to.
The second claim about basic instincts is talking about the dynamic processes going on in your body that you are not consciously aware of. It's not saying anything about how those processes work. They can be perfectly valid, important processes that only act in response to contextual information (that is, it is entirely possible for them to not have a "natural, default" behavior).
I understand that reading natural as a "fixed equilibrim" might mean that to you, but for me, and also others it doesn't mean that. So would be good to better explain that in the article.
I have to admit that my interpretation is biased by reading some post-phenomenological philosophy as part of my design master - I remember one paper that claimed that there is no "natural" endpoint because humans are always reacting to a dynamic context, one that is then changing in response to human interaction, meaning we're more like a chaotic pendulum swinging back and forth over ever-changing equilibrium points.
And yeah, I do agree that the article is a bit ambiguous here and could be clearer.
There's a huge gap between any "natural" instincts (needing to eat, needing to sleep, breathe, keep warm, social connections) and the sort of tasks you need to do in your modern life, like writing a boring report. The idea of laziness - and that there's virtue in doing such things - is a cultural trueism, not a "natural" state of humans.
> Why are we so hard on ourselves? I think it’s because we have a bad theory about how our minds work, one so dastardly that it could have only been devised by the devil himself. It goes like this:
>> We humans are, deep down, lazy and gluttonous creatures. If left to our own devices, we will do nothing but eat Pringles and watch Netflix. The only way we can escape our indolent nature is to exert our higher faculties over our base instincts.
It is a great article. Insightful and funny.
Cal Newport is the only contemporary personality I know of that advocates for getting more done, but his method still conforms to the zeitgeist, in that his "get more done" is more precisely "get more important stuff done by doing less overall."
Perhaps this is the natural evolution that occurs when a country has reached sufficient wealth where contributing gains to per capita GDP just ain't inspiring to a comfortable generation? It's interesting to try to contextualize the current popularity of anti-productivity literature vs what has come before it.
- Aristotle
If you're never at-leisure, you're missing something important. Leisure is the very basis of culture [1].
[1] https://www.worldcat.org/title/leisure-the-basis-of-culture/...
> I’m a psychologist – and I believe we’ve been told devastating lies about mental health / by Sanah Ahsan
> To return to the plant analogy – we must look at our conditions. The water might be a universal basic income, the sun safe, affordable housing and easy access to nature and creativity. Food could be loving relationships, community or social support services. The most effective therapy would be transforming the oppressive aspects of society causing our pain. We all need to take whatever support is available to help us survive another day. Life is hard. But if we could transform the soil, access sunlight, nurture our interconnected roots and have room for our leaves to unfurl, wouldn’t life be a little more livable?
— https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/06/psycho...
Compare to from OP:
> I think lots of people are stuck in that first relationship, stuck next to their tiny little pond, skeptical that anything greater exists. But it takes a lot of work to be satisfied with their relationship and their pond, because they don’t get enough love to fill their hearts or enough fish to fill their bellies. So they end up reading articles about how to love things they don’t love that much and how to feel full without eating enough.
> …When they get home at the end of the day and they’re so tired that all they can do is sit motionless and watch TV, they blame themselves, as if it’s their fault that they feel exhausted after racing to meet a deadline so they can avoid being publicly shamed. And that breaks my heart.
https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/482/nisbett%20s...
Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes by Richard E. Nisbett and Timothy D. Wilson
Both researchers have had amazing careers since then. Timothy Wilson's book Strangers to Ourselves is one I recommend to everyone. It is a continuation of the work in the paper you link to. Nisbett's books are excellent too; my favorite (a must-read!) is Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South. Any student of psychology should know these works.
No thanks.
That's precisely the bad piece of advice. Nobody knows what they really want, most of the time, because people change, you change, and the environment changes. It's better to have a system that makes you do something to progress in your skills or your ongoing projects every single day, than coming up with a goal since you have no idea how to get there or that is even worth pursuing.
If you are not seeing any progress, the problem is not with the idea that you need to progress every day, rather a bad technique you are applying.
I sure as hell hope I'm reading you wrong, because yikes that is a frightening ideology.
"I no longer think there’s something wrong with me; there's something wrong with Reviewer 2. I intend to have so much fun that Reviewer 2 will simply have to join in."
I love the last bit: "..so much fun that Reviewer 2 will simply have to join in."
I believe that allegedly wrong theory applies perfectly to me, since I have watched myself descend into the junk food - junk flix routine. It started with a mild depression which was a perfect excuse at the time, and then continued down into the pits of procrastination where the lazy part of me was feeling fabulous. Thankfully, the devilish side went completely crazy with guilt and frustration, never mind their Satan worshiping sidekick - the wife - and eventually delivered me back into productivity heaven/hell.
Which is the big point about all these depressed kids with no direction.
Sometimes I think the sweet shop owner is helpful to some people, but not to me! I need that disgusting medicine. To each their own.
Through trial and error I've settled on 30min work and 20min(!) of rest.
I have to force myself to stop working when my timer is up, otherwise my productivity that day goes down.
On one hand it's just a somewhat smarter way to eat frogs, on the other it doesn't feel so.
I suppose half of the problem is not knowing what amount of frog is too much for you.
It's counter-intuitive to say the least.
Perhaps there's something about sitting down for extended periods of time that causes this effect.
Out there I'm sure is my antipode, someone who is taking a different path to the same objective. I'll let them do that way and I'll do this way and let whatever works work.
But for me it's hard work and if I don't finish it, power up my kids so that if this is what they want to do they'll have a head start.
"As with all matters of the heart, you know when things are right". Which implies you damn well know when things are not right too. (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&ab_channel=Stanf...)
Not sure if Steve Jobs is a devil according to this guy.
For what it's worth, my family is not wealthy or educated and I was able to go to a high-quality-but-not-prestigious magnet school in significant part because of my SAT score :)
It’s been quite a few years, but without the SAT, the only test that would distinguish me from a socio-economically disadvantaged background was a military assessment test.
So when the SAT came under fire after a high-profile cheating scandal in Hollywood, I heard a lot about replacing the test with an essay.
The article about Y-Combinator is about IQ and things that are not IQ. It also has this interesting quote about messaging —- message coaching can obscure the bad candidates among the good ones. I feel replacing the frog of SAT preparation with the possibility of an essay-as-a-service feels punitive to kids from difficult backgrounds.
Reminds me of being a snippy teenager at “inspirational coaching” sessions or listening to some invited speaker…
Speaker: Think outside the box!
Me: What box?
Contrary to the article, I am a human piece of trash.
The problem with those questions of what will make you successful that you hate doing, is that you can't say with certainty that the behavior will make you successful since there are multiple variables at play (most of the time).
-Detective Freamon (The Wire)
>Life is what happens in between all the frog eating. As we all wait for “the big break” and dine on these frogs and prepare ourselves for bigger frogs we end up mischaracterizing the in-between. It’s unfortunate I squander this in-between time by preparing myself for the next frog rather than living in the present froglessness.
If that's the kind of crap that's bursting out of you, don't do it.
>> using your “higher faculties” doesn't always leave you better off. As I wrote recently, smart people aren’t happier
glad we've come full circle, all the way through self help gurus back to self-referencing barbarians masquerading as intellectual saviors.
no, the notion of work is not the devil. idle hands are. if you need evidence, check out all the people who apparently don't have to work and spend all their time on tiktok.
The author argues that the popular productivity advice to "eat frogs" (i.e. do the things you don't want to do first) is based on a false premise, that humans are naturally lazy and gluttonous.
This false premise leads to a lot of unnecessary suffering, as people try to force themselves to do things they don't actually enjoy.
Here's the summary:
The author is saying that people who write about productivity are, in a way, the devil, because they convince people to do things they hate. The author is also saying that these people are not literally the devil, but are just as bad.
The article argues that humans are not "naturally" lazy, and that the feeling of being a "lazy piece of trash" is actually a result of the unconscious mind doing its job. The unconscious mind is only able to communicate with the conscious mind when there is a problem that needs attention, which can make it seem like the unconscious is lazy. However, the unconscious mind is actually responsible for solving a lot of problems without the conscious mind even realizing it.
The author is talking about how people who are successful often have to eat a lot of frogs (do a lot of things they don't want to do), but that doing too many things you don't want to do can lead to burnout. The author suggests that people should stop and think about what they really want to do, and not just do things because they think they should or because other people are doing them. The author also talks about how some people never get to experience true love because they're stuck in bad relationships, and how this can be just as bad as eating too many frogs.
I have only seen GPT-3 used when it takes a prompt and then generates more related text, I didn't realize you could run that process in reverse.
Here's an article about x: <text of sample article>
A quick summary of the article, focusing on the main relevant points and keeping critical detail: <sample summary>
as an example, then duplicating that with the real article and text.
That's the "few shot learning" from the original paper. It could also be that it's good enough at summarizing specifically that you don't need an example, just the right framing prompt around the article text. Either way, that kind of prompt engineering is how you get "text completion" to perform basically any text processing task, generate code or play tic tac toe, so on
You can give it anything - or nothing - and ask for any kind of output.
The relevance and accuracy of what it gives you can vary lots. You can give it examples of the types of things you want back etc. You don't necessarily have to give it examples either, just ask it a question. It normally performs better on semi-complex tasks when you give it examples though.
This is a fully general technique. Any repeatable problem can be rephrased as a prompt + related technique via the following structure:
Problem: <Example of Problem>
Solution: <Example of Solution>
<...maybe include one or two more examples>
Problem: <Real Problem>
Solution: <Ask GPT-3 for the solution>I suddenly feel like I need a browser extension to add such a summary to every article I read. Especially for less newsy, more long-form "conceptual" pieces where the author often doesn't make their actual real point until halfway through.
If you find the article hard to read, consider listening to it. It will take longer but it will be easier. The author's reading of the article has a little extra humor too.
And yeah, just the legs.
Also they once were a very "poor" (please read as cheap) meal, while nowadays they tend to be "gourmet".
BTW. I had also expected the article to be about actual frogs: about how endangered some species are, or how the flesh may contain pollutants or diseases.
"If your job requires you to eat a toad, do it first. If it requires you to eat two, eat the bigger one first."
The book itself is probably a wink to that Mark Twain quote.
That said, I was very surprised by the quality of the article, and the writing. I was expecting yet another bucket of self-help motivating bullshit and it's the opposite of that! And also quite funny.
Frog leg porridge is really easy to find in Singapore, for example.
Not so much in restaurants but I was invited to a friends house and that was part of the meal. Tasted kinda like chewy chicken wings, not bad.
Snails, on the other hand, are not too difficult to find in supermarkets.
I cross the line at eating spiders. Nope
(Sorry.)
Edit: Oh. Pat yourself on the back for a pun well played. Whooshed straight over my head! Take my angry upvote ;)
Edit: It's too early, thanks to the more awake commenters to point out the pun ;)
I hate this joke. There's a bakery I used to drive past called the "House of Pain".
Two peasants find a frog and take a bet. One says he can eat the frog raw and the other bets $5 that he cannot. So the first peasant starts to eat the frog; halfway through he starts to feel nauseous. The second one starts to regret the $5 that he's about to lose. So he offers to reverse the bet - $5 back for eating the remaining half of the frog. The first one agrees and the second one eats the remaining half of the frog.
They walk for a bit and one asks the other "Hey, why exactly did we eat that frog?".
It also means "doing things against your will", although it has the additional sense of doing them because you're gullible (not sure if this sense is also present in the English expression).
It appears to have actually been coined by a late 18th century French humorist: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/03/eat-frog/