hos234

Freeman Dyson's essay "Why is Maxwells Theory so hard to understand" is worth checking out. Words are usually not the best medium to talk about abstract stuff.

It has to be done as a group. Both at family/work/friends circle.

It started with my team at work getting together one day (almost a year and half back - some Trump BS was unfolding) and saying, if it gets too bad lets decide as a group to block ports/sites/apps etc on the company network. Slowly the list of things to block started growing.

It was really surprising how easily one could get consensus, that something specific was too distracting, effecting people and group productivity. Nobody wants to be the guy who says HN is addictive. But once someone says it at a meeting everyone starts nodding. News sites were the first to go. Then video. Then social media and most instant messaging/irc. We have moved to Signal to avoid some of the dark patterns in other IM/chat apps. And everyone is using the google/apple well being apps.

Almost everything is done on email or face to face these days. And almost 70 people now in what we call the noise cancellation club.

Right now things get unblocked during lunch time for 30 mins and after 5pm. There are common areas where things are unblocked, but they are intentionally pretty public spaces.

People of course can use their phones, but the fact that there is this environment available where it has become socially acceptable to be phone free, has definitely made a difference.

I was responding to your framing things as a choice between a 5 year time frame Vs a 20 time frame. How can anyone asses without proof a 5 year time frame is possible? So I said don't fall for people who claim they can do things fast without asking for proof. Otherwise anyone can claim anything is possible by tomorrow.

If it's a solved problem show me the fixed roads and clean water and I will buy what you are selling. Do it in one town.

There is no need to debate and discuss anything more if you have proof for the simplest case.

Tim Cook agrees - "The hardest decisions we make are all the things not to work on. There is lots of things we'd like to work on but we can't do everything great. Most companies do larger and larger portfolios because its so easy to add. It gets hard to stay focused. Yet we know, we can only do our best work if we stay focused"

> change the purpose of life

We are not sophisticated enough to get roads fixed and keep the water supply clean. Long way to go. Don't fall for people who tell you it can happen faster, until they have fixed the roads and cleaned the water in one town.

To get the juices flowing don't focus on "all the roadblocks" just focus on putting in Time - 20mins to 1 hour a day - same timeslot everyday (early mornings work for me). Doesn't matter on which issue. Its about building momentum up slowly. The longer you sustain it, the more likely you will get sucked back in. I usually need atleast a month of that, to get back into older projects.

And try to work on that documentation. Good docs brings in those collaborators. Even if they have no experience, any help is better than none and those interactions will be an extra source of motivation.

You can also ask for directions, where to buy stuff in the neighborhood, is that take out place good etc. For some mysterious reason, it makes most people feel good, being of use to others.

I should have phrased that better. Didn't mean only doers matter. People who bring attention to things matter. But there is a line above which discussion does not matter. And I think news/social media and internet forums push things way over that line to the point where people are recognizing all the jibber jabber going on isn't translating to outcomes.

In the context of the linked article, HN for example could easily shut down 2 days a week and Planet Earth will continue to spin. And maybe the mods(and the addicted readers) will get a break from what appears to be a thankless energy draining job.

Discussion in todays world is highly over rated.

There are people who build hospitals and there are people who stand around talking about who should build hospitals.

The former group in any population in any country is very small. The latter group is very large and thanks to the current architecture of the internet have gotten so over amplified that they think they actually matter.

Their resumes don't have any actual achievement beyond drawing attention to things. They don't matter. People who are driven to build hospitals will keep building hospitals irrespective of all the "discussions" going on.

Well described and true. It's the way of the world. If they don't do it, what abilities they do have, won't get funded. Right now to get funds, employees, partners what other route exists, given the competition for all three? Until better routes are discovered, everyone is in the mass broadcasting and overstating of abilities game.

True. It is pure luck that Rupert Murdoch or Larry Ellison etc didn't end up owning search.

That said Google shifted priorities from Search to Empire Defense many many years ago. And that has had many unintended "evil" consequences on Society well documented by Tristan Harris, Tim Wu, Jaron Lanier et al.

Could they have avoided that path of empire defense, as they grew in size and survived, I don't think so. Few companies or empires have. The golden age of Greeks or Persians or Indians would have lasted much longer if they knew how to defend their empires.

Now that they have successfully survived and own the market and have cash in the bank, what they do with their empire is going to be interesting. Reviving a golden age takes vision not just empire defense.

My point is simple - things take time.

I am not a fan of Sunday afternoon paper readers. They are not the people who contribute to Science.

If people want to study a subject deeply and contribute to progress, it's going to take decades of work. Those type of people go look for answers. They don't wait for someone else to inspire them or to prove things to them.

If that's too complex for people to get, it doesn't matter really. Shrinking the gap in knowledge between those who do the work and those who don't does not matter. It's like worrying about what people understood about Light or Electricity before Maxwell and Faraday. Even after them, it took about 40 years to start seeing applications.

Science takes its own sweet time to make progress and most people have no sense of how long things take. The world took 1800 years between Archimedes and Newton to realize the value of Calculus? They both basically were doing the same thing. Thousands of people had as good an education as Newton did, access to "papers", books, and the same problems, whether in Europe, China or Persia or India but it still took 1800 years.

Man as a scientist with secure funding for life, who works with sociologists and psychologists, I frankly don't give a shit what gen pop thinks. The results will come when they come. Learning and progress takes time, due to which a large part of the population is always going to misunderstand the process.

Don't worry you'll be fine. It's the 40 year olds who don't like programming/learning who struggle, and produce the stereotypes.

Things are cheaper and easier to do in India. Try hiring 200 devs in Craigland and then come back and give us your observations.

Delays and cockups are just a cost of doing business. If it gets too bad trust me people get fired and contractors change or companies go out of business. Customers don't know how good they have it, because of how competitive the environment is.

Why do they use the word Release? Release of entropy suddenly drops into the picture when talking abt ice to water. Why not just say info/entropy/uncertainty of the system is increasing or decreasing?

This subject is new to me but I like the 20 questions analogy.

Thinking of probability distribution of N words as a measure of info in someone's mind is interesting.

Disciplined minds that have certain concepts on their finger tips clearly have spent time and effort producing that distribution.