How do you organize those notes?
226 karma · joined June 10, 2014
It's an interesting idea. I imagine a sort of "Official" and "Unofficial" modes. You could flip a switch and see the articles and edits that didn't pass muster.
That way, the ideas and info wouldn't be lost/censored, but wouldn't get to claim they're "formally accepted."
e.g., You were tasked with working on a ball of mud and it was miserable, so the next system you get the chance to build has to be the most scalable, modular, and cutting-edge thing ever, just to be safe.
Fair play for responding to the money argument. That's fine. But redirecting that it's _only_ about money misses what I thought the actual point was. A fairer way to reframe my accusation is that the OP offered two claims, and you addressed one (money) and ignored the other, then claimed that the other (freedom) was a different goalpost. I think it was the main goalpost, to begin with.
>If you remove money from your rephrasing of the argument you get “I should not be required to use these in a set and setting sanctioned by The State” which is different: I don't mind if you really want to self medicate, nor does the state (as illustrated by the fact that there's no felony or crime for self medication), but in average it's a pretty poor idea: you're way more likely to harm yourself than achieve your goal. If Steve Jobs died because he wasn't smart enough to make the proper medical call for himself, so can you.
Agree with you. I think they are powerful and dangerous, but I am against a nanny state. We should outlaw things that have profound negative effects, such as children with developing brains taking these compounds.
>If you really want to do it “because freedom”, then go for it, but if you do it because there's money at stake like OP, then you're not actually doing it freely, you're doing it under economic constraint and blaming “too much state” is delusional.
Fair point. I don't think that was the case, but I can see why it might seem like that.
>The argument being made was, in short, “it's too fucking expensive, fuck the state” when the reality is that it's expensive because the state doesn't want to intervene, which is what I pointed out.
I think you're half-right. It's expensive because the state has facilitated a black market. It would still likely be expensive due to taxes and regulation, if it were legal. Universal healthcare probably lowers costs, but I hate the argument that "because I'm not paying directly, it's free." We have that now with insurance, and it's a lie.
>Also, “personal sovereignty” is an oxymoron unless you're a king or some autocrat. Sovereignty is a collective process, it's “we the people” not “Me myself and I”.
Personal sovereignty is a thing. It's about autonomy and the right to choose what you do with your body and your property. There are fuzzy areas, such as where those choices might impact others or the environment, but I believe in it as a fundamental right, not a positive one.
>The comment I responded to at the beginning was complaining about the cost of health professional, it wasn't at all about psychedelics in particular, and that's the argument I responded to.
The first one explained, "I remain resistant to this insertion of the state into what should be my right to use my own mind the way I see fit." Yes, they mentioned cost as a factor, but I read that as incidental to the "real" issue.
Apologies for playing the "offensive card." I put a lot of stock into my ability to identify root causes and figure out problems. If someone comes along and presupposes that I'm wrong about my framing of an issue without explaining why, that does feel like an affront. It feels like a theory of mind violation. It felt like you were claiming, "You say that you care about sovereignty, but you actually only care about access. If it was free you wouldn't be complaining." How could you know that? You're not in their head. You skipped a step, and just assumed. I'm hyper-sensitive to this type of thing. I suppose I was projecting this onto your reply to the OP.
Sort of like, "if you have nothing to hide, why value privacy?"
It overlooks the fact that, while these substances are useful in therapeutic contexts, that's not the _only_ value they have. And, even if they were not strictly useful in other contexts, that wouldn't preclude a right to use them "recreationally".
So, I totally agree with you.
I wish people could separate out complex issues like this into their 3-5 most significant constituent parts. For example: personal sovereignty/freedoms, public health implications, medicinal value, social harm/risk, cultural impact.
There are a lot of reasons to be either in favor or opposed to psychedelics, and then on top of that to support strict or permissive controls. To conflate those all into one issue is reductive and it stifles discussion and progress.
Sorry for the rant. Just wanted to get these thoughts out.
> My problem with the current push for this type of therapy is the requirment that it be done by professionals charging hundreds or thousands of dollars. […] I remain resistant to this insertion of the state into what should be my right to use my own mind the way I see fit.
I read this as, "I should not be required to use these in a set and setting sanctioned by The State, especially when that set and setting costs thousands of dollars that my needs don't require."
You were the one that moved the goalposts, claiming that the lack of universal healthcare is "the problem at stake here."
And then when the person helpfully rebutted that point—no, it's not costs, but the fact that universal healthcare isn't a panacea, citing their individual experience—you complain that _they_ are moving the goalposts.
At the end of the day, psychedelics sit at the intersection of personal responsibility, medicine, and social order. We can argue whether and how they should be allowed, whether they have medicinal value, and what the impact on society is, at large. But those discussions are orthogonal to the questions about the optimal configuration of medical care and health systems.
If you want to wave the banner of universal healthcare, feel free. You might even get some of us to agree with you. But don't come into a political discussion about personal sovereignty and tell people "you don't actually need sovereignty, you just need more state."
That's just insulting.
It'll be framed as a technology that will kill 20k people per year.
It does feel like the balance of power in these interviews is way out of whack, but that's what you get when there's way more applicants than open roles. If you're a developer with a good reputation, sometimes you can skip most of the red tape [1]. That bar is extremely high, though.
While their process might be arbitrary, it tries to ensure that entrants can comfortably think about and select appropriate data structures and algorithms for problems, on demand.
In most cases, prepping for this feels like rote memorization, but through that process you start to build an intuition that helps you be more efficient at pattern matching and isolating the constraints/bottlenecks. And you've proven that you can learn and apply the algos. It's not the most fun of interview styles, but it does work for them.
I tried it, and it feels clunky, to be honest. There's a good idea at the core, but it's a bit buggy and cumbersome for me to use. Sorry to be so negative, but hopefully the honesty is helpful. I do think it's admirable that you launched and that you've submitted it here. I've never made it that far. :)
What have you done in the way of user testing?
Seeing some of these rules, it makes me think that email is more of a notification and receipt system than a messaging system – shuffling some of these things away is useful, because you _might_ want to go back to it later, but others it's more just emails meant to get your attention for a thing, and that thing is often buried in the email (or worse, behind a click).
Additionally, some of these could be a bad idea to skip the inbox with, such as the security notifications. 9/10 those are self-triggered, but in the one case where it's not, you _want_ to see it.
Anyway, cool thing. Didn't realize the rules were portable. I do think that the effort that has to go into vetting the "preselected" rules is roughly the same as just going through and coming up with them from scratch.
How are the payments handled? What happens if I change the sizing of my instances?
Sometimes, it feels like there's so much going on that it's hard to know if it was the sleep, the diet, the events, or something else. That's where the data might be nice.
It still makes me tear up to think about. He was so young and so cheerful. So full of life. Having faced loss like the article describes, I can't say that the nature of the loss makes much of a difference. Death affects everyone close to it, pretty universally. Questions about whether it was preventable or not, fair or unfair, etc., only serve to color our painful rumination.
Every so often, I'll remember him, and I'll repeat one of his catch-phrases to a friend who was on his team. Inconsequential as this might be, I like to keep the good memories of him alive.
Taking that a step further, the three keys to life balance seem to be, in this order: sleep, exercise, diet. Get enough sleep, get some kind of physical activity every day, and eat as well as you can, and you should feel pretty good, most days.
As far as side projects go, have you stopped to ask yourself _why_ you want to do them? Is it just an interesting diversion, or does it actually carry some kind of deeper meaning for you? It can be hard to be honest with ourselves, but I think if you can question your motivations, you may find that you're distracted by things that seem interesting on their face, but they aren't really connected to who you are or who you want to be.
Another thought, regarding perfectionism -- it seems to be a learned behavior. For me, it's a combination of two things. On the one side is a fragile self-image built up throughout childhood (I'm "smart" for my age) and feeling a deep need to preserve that image at all costs (if I make a mistake or fail, that's evidence that I and every adult who complimented me on the way was wrong). On the other side is the evil of comparison; venturing into an industry inundated with stories of explosive growth driven by infallible geniuses, I _have_ to measure up. If I throw myself at an idea and the idea or the execution fails, that's concrete evidence that I'm not of the same stock as the titans of my industry. Scary.
There are a few things you can do to combat this:
- Don't compare yourself with anyone else. It can't help you. You're only increasing the downside (failure means you're not good enough, while exceeding your idols would leave you feeling more empty than before).
- Realize that failure is like a forest fire – painful and hard to look at, but the best foundation for rich new growth. If you go out of your way to prevent it, you just make the inevitable disaster so much worse. Embrace it.
- Let go of your story about who you are and how your life "should" be. Speaking from personal experience, it's so easy to get attached to how things "should" go, that you lose sight of what's in front of you. If you can open yourself up to being wrong about who you are and what's important to you...well, you may actually find a much more interesting version of yourself along the way.
- Look for your "why." For a big portion of my career, I chased money. I chose projects I thought could make money, and I changed jobs chasing higher and higher compensation. I hustled and grinded, and in the end, I have little to show for it. It took me 10 years to realize that I would hate myself if I spent my whole life working on stuff I didn't really care about, just to make enough money to escape that hamster wheel and move to a better one. Why not just step off? Figure out what you actually care about, find a "why" that you can attach yourself to, and focus on that. Money is orthogonal to happiness. Sure, being broke can make you miserable. But, being rich won't make you happy. Spending your time focused on things that actually matter to you will. Find out what those things are, and cut out as much of the other bullshit you can.
- Cherish the process. Another thing that took me way too long to figure out was that outcomes never made me happy. There is no fulfillment in achieving outcomes; they are all rungs on a ladder. The true joy and fulfillment comes from loving the process. Be present and cherish the moment. Enjoy the work you are doing. Enjoy the recreation. Enjoy the conversations with people you care about. These things are not means to some important end, they are the important thing. And, if you find yourself doing work you can’t connect to, or buying stuff you don’t like, or engaging with people you don’t appreciate, stop. How lucky are we to have an unprecedented level of autonomy and control over our lives? Why should we spend it doing things we can’t enjoy?