tc7

Perhaps we become who we are through what we pursue. So if we never wade beyond the tide of 'low' goals pushed upon us by that glowing box, we end up the simplistic people you mention above (good teeth etc.).

But do we have an innate identity that's being supplanted by consumerism, or are these just the easiest, most available goals, and so we create our identity from these shallow things?

So perhaps it's less that this shallow self-knowledge is externally imposed over our innate deep self-knowledge, and more that we're simply shallow people because we've set shallow goals.

Maybe we realize our potential and develop that 'real' identity by looking up, aiming higher...

I accept that others can evaluate us on some of these traits better than we can ourselves. Given that, how hard is it to update our mental models to better match reality? Besides doing a poll of my friends (which seems shaky), how can I self-evaluate to know more objectively where I stand on these? Is that even possible (by, e.g., studying biases, rationality, 'taking every thought captive', etc)?

It seems remarkably hard to try to address this in the workplace, where we feel so much pressure to be and seem competent anyway. I don't know if I trust my coworkers enough to honestly evaluate or be evaluated by them :D.

For instance, can a poor person get rich in America? If so, is this easier/harder than other places? Once rich, can they start a space program if they wish? Is this easier/harder than other countries?

If the point is that when poor, you don't have the "opportunity" to start a space program, I agree :). I also think it's an odd way to define opportunity, and I'm not sure it indicates anything negative about America.

Anyway, I expect that this is tangential to your actual point, so I don't mean to to drag us too far down a pedantic side street :).

Okay, I still don't think I'm getting it. Going out on a limb, I'd say that poor people in the United States have incredibly more opportunity by almost any measure than the bulk of people on earth.

Happy to consider where I may be wrong -- what am I missing?

Seems like the initial list of complaints he's responding to are chosen to be the most superficial (and easily argued against) ones.

And things like this:

   "these self-assured statements are being made by Americans who spend an AVERAGE of 5 hours per day watching television,"

In articles like this, I'd prefer to see the author present the strongest possible case for the other side of the debate, and then argue against _that_. It doesn't make me want to examine his counterpoints very deeply if he's manipulating the argument by positioning the other side as foolish or easily disproven.

Is calling someone a moron the best (most information-optimized) way to tell someone they're wrong?

I'm in favor of truth being more valued in this culture, but I don't think being too polite is the root of the problem.

Yep, agreed! But since there's probably some overlap in that candidate skillset Venn diagram, maybe they're getting the people that can do both, and the data-structure skillset's the one that's possible to consistently interview for.

I do agree that the "make things people want" is a very useful/desirable skillset for a vast array of non-Google-scale companies, and I'd personally prefer to work for a company that values this.

But I'm willing to posit that at a certain software engineering scale, the problems and valued traits are very different, and may align more with "knows data structures" than "can make something people want".

I'm not saying Google should value one to the exclusion of the other. But perhaps if you have Google's talent pool, the base level is "ingrained data structure knowledge" (correlating to engineering skills they need), and they'll also get the "ingrained data structure knowledge AND ability to make something people want" applicants.

I'm not arguing that other companies should do this. Just exploring whether it makes more sense for Google than perhaps we would think.

- He may be qualified to work at Google, but that's not apparent just because he created Homebrew, right?

- Google can afford to be picky enough to miss out on popular open-source project authors who _can't_ code on the whiteboard in favor of those who _can_ -- can we argue that they should reverse this, or just that in certain cases potentially-qualified people fall through the cracks?

I've been keeping a plaintext worklog at the day job to help with time-tracking. Logging time in our system as I go is slow and painful, so I just write it down daily and enter it all at end of week (month :|).

I have a file for each month (e.g. `2017-12-timelog`), it stays open all day, and I just prepend entries like:

  Dec 1 Fri
  9 - 10: emails/updates
  - 11:30: BB-X10 make the list update async
  - 3:30: hacker news
  - 5: BB-X10 unit tests

So is it (just) comparison? "Everyone else's life is amazing / I'm the only one who's faking it."

What about unhealthy levels of screen usage in general? Do kids who play video games instead of going outside/socializing face-to-face feel the same way (to some extent)?

Maybe media (news/commentary) intake through these services contributes? We all have our echo chambers of ever-spiraling outrage at the Evil of the Other Side -- does this add to feeling powerless, or that the future is hopeless? Certainly aren't being exposed to reasoned debate...

Broader, do our modern technologies now allow more complete, socially acceptable escape from 'real life'? And the further we get from non-virtual interactions with _anything_ the more ill we become?

I'd love to read a post-mortem, or some technical explanation of what goes wrong on projects like these. Does the code just not work? Is everyone purposely just billing time and milking the contract, or does it start with competent analysts and developers trying to deliver working software? And if so, how does it get from there to here? Is this a typical gov contract thing that I've just not seen by working private sector?

If anyone has any resources on this sort of thing, I'd love to see them.

Is that an option? Seems to sidestep these rules, but these rules seem silly.

In other words, maybe the 'limited' part is artificial and can be changed. And maybe strengthening our willpower would benefit us beyond just denying ourselves arbitrary comforts. Such as, willpower to pursue adding to or honing skills, maybe even ones that don't reap immediate material benefit.

So, cutting out lattes may make you better able to improve as an entrepreneur, or programmer, or whatever.

Seems like the people that play games would have already bought and enjoyed the most appealing of these sometime in the past couple years. If they see this bundle and take the opportunity to pick up the ones they didn't care as much about on discount, that's a win for the developers. And for people like me who would never buy or play them otherwise, I get it cheap and the developers get at least some money from me (and an email address to market to :)).

Doubt there's many hardcore gamers who've passed on the full price games in favor of waiting years for these to be bundled and discounted. So these bundles seem like an amazing way to eke out a couple hundred thousand extra dollars from an audience that you wouldn't otherwise have reached.

3D, cross-platform... free...

I wonder if this kind of thing is brought up not because they want to crack down harder, but because somewhere in the back of their minds they don't want to have to go through the whole jail/immense fine conviction that the law demands, but would rather just prevent the criminals from criminaling any longer. Less fuss.

Similar, perhaps, to building a higher wall instead of arresting and prosecuting the guy that jumps over every morning and steals your cabbages?

There may be technical challenges I'm unaware of, but it seems like this would be very unlikely to affect reg'lar people.

If there aren't practical challenges, are objections just about the spirit of the thing (gov monitoring over people's internet use)? Or are there objections to illegal file-sharers being blocked?

High-school has always seemed to me a very artificial and unhealthy sort of social environment, where the social hierarchies and rules are defined by other high-schoolers, who don't have a lot of maturity or experience. Is this wrong? Is high-school in general a good social preparation for 'the real world', or is it a matter of finding the right group of people to hang out with?

I do acknowledge, as the other commenter suggested, that my view may be warped by being from the USA, where the battle is still about whether it exists at all.

"Don't use science to get around politics" sounds like a joke. I mean, really?

"...their ultimate authority is a report from a group of scientists, and they’re saying ‘this is where we stand, forget about our moral concerns, forget about our ethical positions, ... forget about whether we are Christians or Buddists, no, none of that matters.’ The only thing that matters is that they’re holding a report from peer-reviewed science that in itself justifies their position. And it’s not just protesters who are hiding behind the authority of science. World leaders are doing it, too."

What?!

[sorry for the long quote, i'm working myself up :)]

Maybe it's a joke, and it's just too early for me to get it.