michaelborromeo

I think “for many people” is more like “for a minority of people.”

For a few people losing weight is complex. For most people, it’s simple.

Eat less. Move more.

Saying otherwise is a cop out.

I think the world more or less understands that American politics oscillates between periods of conservative control and liberal control.

I don’t think the world has forgotten about America’s massive military or its massive economy.

To say Trump has “ended America’s standing” is extremely short sighted... Whether you like him or not, he has not changed in any material way the military or the economy or the political systems that form the foundation of America.

Imagine the world in only 10 years from now. 2030. Will the American economy still be intact and humming along? Will the military still be well funded? Will the political system still be the same?

Mythical man hour describes it this way too right?

But yeah I think the incentive structure helps determine outcomes like the one you describe.

Maybe a good way to handle having a team FULL of high functioning individuals is to break it up and have them each lead their own team eventually?

High functioning teams start with high functioning individuals.

After that it’s up to the group to not waste effort, not go in the wrong direction too long, avoid toxic behavior, and otherwise stay healthy.

But teams start with individual talent.

To get people to eat veggies, sure you can ban the production and sale of junk food.

I prefer to live in a world where both are available and the preferred solution is education about the effects of junk food.

If you ask Dr Fauci he’ll say let’s save as many lives as we can. Taken alone no one can argue with that.

His agenda is to save lives. Obvious.

So he will make as strong a case as he can to support the measures to save lives.

If you pay attention to him and only him it makes sense to lockdown until there is a cure or vaccine.

Now tell me, does that make sense for every single person? From age 10 to 100, rich, poor, healthy, sick, for several months or even a year+?

There are costs to Fauci’s agenda which he ignores because that’s not his job but also it doesn’t make sense for him to talk about the costs.

You think of an agenda as a bad thing but it’s not it’s just the thing someone wants to get done.

Facts by themselves aren’t political or have an agenda.

The decision to present certain facts, the other facts you compare those to, and the manner in which they are presented, however, invokes agendas and politics.

No matter how much people claim otherwise, doctors presenting facts have agendas. This includes Dr Fauci.

Being allowed to return to work or a business you run, being able to pay rent, feed your family, etc.

These are positive outcomes of lockdowns being lifted.

The danger in looking at this as a binary “opening kills people” is that you miss the trade offs and in doing so you miss the other nuanced policy options that sit in between complete lockdown and no lockdown.

The market reflects, rightly, that while the situation doesn’t look good for many certain fundamentals haven’t changed drastically YET.

For example, infrastructure is still intact, demand is theoretically still there just suppressed, capacity to produce is still theoretically there.

Unemployment is based on employers short to medium term outlook. I.e. Can I pay this person for a month and will the person be a net positive?

So the two measures differ and in weird situations like now we see how much they differ.

The pandemic is being used by both parties to push their agenda.

Your pessimism is another persons optimistic outcome.

You should be looking at one woman over those five years.

For companies, you are probably looking at multiple developers and if you do only have one opening then even if more than one is good there is going to be a best.

Underneath it’s “what’s good for facebook” but on the surface they have to paint it as “what is good for you.”

Or they could just say nothing.

Which is better?

I disagree that it’s almost impossible to win with what is essentially UI and UX challenges.

Part of it is subjective yes but a lot of the field can be measured and ranked in terms of quality and effectiveness.

I mean yeah they have an interest in selling more ear buds.

But after having used Bluetooth headphones for a while, going back to wired headphones was pure hell.

When you have an immovable object (can’t fire an employee due to law) up against an unstoppable force (economic pressure to cut jobs) you get actions that try to bend either of the above constraints.

In the end something had to break — either the company or the people or both.

No one forced these people to either work at the company or to commit suicide.

Yes their pensions were linked to their jobs but is quitting and losing your retirement better than death?

Or maybe they wanted to be martyrs and knew this would lead to a punishment for the executives.

Ok but then if one country doesn’t do this then another will.

It’s like nuclear weapons.

You cannot reverse or stop technology from progressing and you can’t stop governments from using that technology to build weapons.

How many wars did it take for humans to adopt a different “steady state”? And even now it’s not a real steady state.

Maybe we have more lessons (I.e mistakes) to learn from in space where billions die. Hopefully not. Hopefully we let the 20th century continue to instruct us.

You really want to go through life thinking you’re competent at something?

Honest feedback hurts but it’s how you grow.

And if people cared at all about interviewees they’d give some semblance of honest feedback rather than “no thanks.”

Both.

I haven’t done any actual tracking but others have.

There are studies linked at the bottom of this article: https://www.bulletproof.com/sleep/sleep-hacks/inclined-bed-t....

Sleep on an incline - use bed risers that raise the head of the bed 4-6 inches.

You’ll sleep better.

There's an awesome book by Kamal Ravikant that relates to the idea of self-compassion: https://www.amazon.com/Love-Yourself-Like-Your-Depends-ebook...

I think there's economic theory that relates to this idea: discounted future utility.

e.g. $10 is most useful right now, slightly less useful a day from now, and much less useful a year from now. This is for real reasons -- inflation -- and psychological reasons -- I'm more excited about getting that $10 now than in a year.

There are equations for this stuff but it's been a long time since college.

You can replace $10 with other "goods" like time, sleep, relaxation, etc.

I'm not a big fan of drinking milk -- it causes digestive issues for me and a lot of other people and doesn't taste great by itself. It would be hard not to question the judgement of anyone who drinks that stuff.

MBTI is a very misunderstood system. People tend to take it too far and in directions it shouldn't go. It's not surprising when it's labeled as meaningless.

Here's one example: I'm an ISTP which is only one letter away from ISFP. That's pretty similar right?

No, they're actually pretty different.

The letters ISTP are just a shorthand for a system developed by Carl Jung. ISTP actually means that I have a stack of behaviors that I tend towards and that I've developed as I've aged.

The stack goes as follows: Introverted Thinking which I have (supposedly) developed since I was young. http://personalitygrowth.com/introverted-thinking/

Extraverted Sensing which, again supposedly, I started developing since I was in my teens and through my 20s. http://personalitygrowth.com/extraverted-sensing-se/

Introverted Intuition which I've been developing more recently (30s). http://personalitygrowth.com/introverted-intuition/

And finally Extraverted Feeling which is still moderately awkward for me (like trying to write with my off hand). It's getting less awkward as I get older. http://personalitygrowth.com/extraverted-feeling-fe/

An ISFP, on the other hand, has the following stack: Introverted Feeling, Extraverted Sensing, Introverted Intuition, and Extraverted Thinking.

And other types have their own function stack that they've developed as they've aged. Some faster, some slower. This is one potential reason why people test differently as they age. I first took the test I was in my 20s when I was at a different point in my maturation process. Nowadays I'm much more focused on long term goals as opposed to short term satisfaction. Maybe I'm just developing my Introverted Intuition which is typically associated more with long term thinking. Maybe it's just part of the maturation process everyone goes through.

I will say, though, some people I've observed have gone through the process in reverse -- being interested in long term goals when they're young and then realizing they should also pay attention to short term gratification a little as they age. Maybe they're a type that leads with Introverted Intuition. Who knows.

The sites you list (and a lot of discussion on MBTI) take the judgments way too far. That's when a lot of people conclude MBTI is junk -- when they see these conclusions based on type.

MBTI is basically this: You have a set of observed traits, and from that set we can tell you other traits you likely have based on observing many others that share the same traits.

Or in other words... -Observe trait A -Observe trait B -Observe trait C -Extrapolate trait D -Extrapolate trait E

What those sites are doing is... -Observe trait A -Extrapolate traits C, M, Q, X, Z

Based on my experience interviewing a handful of developer candidates graduating from Howard, not being prepared is the best way I can describe the impression they left.

It felt like they only had a smattering of CS courses, none of which pushed them very hard.

In other words, they should fix their curriculum.

Part of finding great problems to solve is cultivating a sense of taste for a process/product/service/thing, so you can say, "[x] is a hack and could be done a lot better."

To develop that sense of taste you have to go deep (usually) into the thing.

Using the Henry Ford example, he went deep into engineering and gasoline powered engines.

Maybe people did want faster horses, maybe the limitations of horse-based transportation was a huge problem of the day... Either way Ford was able to say:

1) Horses are a hack and transportation could be done better 2) Cars are the answer but current manufacturing practices are a hack and could be done better 3) Employer-employee relationships are a hack -- turnover is way too high and must be done better. Profit sharing and high wages for factory workers are the way.

The problem is we when live less and less in the way our bodies were designed.

For example, we were built to receive all sorts of positive side effects from exercise. If you don't exercise at all you lose those benefits. It's doable -- many people don't exercise -- but it's a loss to be sure.

Another example, using your three meals... We were not built to be eating as much as most of us do as consistently as we do. Take one look around you and see how many people are headed in the direction of obesity.

When you combine the eating and the exercise you get a deadly combination.

And there are other examples of "going against the grain," which when taken individually are not hugely detrimental but when you add them up they are harmful.

Thank you for this.

I can't wrap my head around why Amazon would make names for some very useful services so inscrutable.

It's like the developers were put in charge of naming everything.

If Twitter didn't exist, what would the world use instead?

I agree with your assessment of the problem -- it's the environment. But, as long as millions/billions of dollars are on the line then there will always be those who put all their time/energy into their job.

Maybe it's biology that allows men to lead less balanced lives; mabye it's culture. But the effect is what we have today -- when living an unbalanced life is rewarded handsomely, men dominate.

I'd like to hear counter examples.