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It's not cynicism. It's acknowledging the reality of work in a lot of these environments as the root cause of these problems.

You will be stuck with an old slow PC trying to fix some issue until midnight, and that just takes a heavy toll on people.

As things can't work well, there is a lot of responsibility deflection going on, it would be naive to think otherwise.

Also, a lot of these posts in HN assume that the only way to live is to work as an employee for someone else, under similar conditions.

It's important to realize that there are other professional options available, which many people won't even consider.

For your option list, I've seen a lot of 1. As for 2, there are lot more bad companies than good ones, and you can't tell from the interview process and can't also change each 2 months.

As for 3, half the workforce would switch jobs then. The problem is not the people, it's the system.

I would add 4, do contract work and stay while the balance of the good things / bad things about the job make it worth it, then do something else after a year or two when it doesn't.

This relates to 2, sometimes a company is the right company in the beginning, but it's no longer the case later on. For example, I bet you won't work there forever.

The bad news is that this will happen everywhere where you work for someone else, especially in large companies.

And this cannot be avoided while working as an employee, it's part of the system.

The good news is that there is one way to avoid this (the only way AFIK) is to start your own company, there you get to call all the shots for good or for bad.

It doesn't have to be a big company though, it can be just you and a laptop for starters.

Other than that, as an emotional coping mechanism and to preserve their mental sanity, people will simply become disengaged and cynical.

Take longer breaks and try to have a laugh with your colleagues to blow some pressure and make friends.

Also, because things work badly in those environments, there is a lot of blame deflection going on, which is one of the main causes of stress and burnout.

Again, part of the system, not much that you can do about it other than learning to deflect responsibilities to others.

Getting rid of the hot potato is a very important skill in these corporate settings.

Usually on a team, it's always the same people getting the short end of the stick. Try not to be one of them if you can, but often that's easier said than done.

Also, try to get promoted, you will get more responsibility and might even be able to fix some of these things, that's another positive attitude towards chaos that helps a lot of people cope with it.

> Most people don't want to deal with all those problems. Even if it pays better.

It depends, if raised on a family of shop owners with the values that you should have your own business, that would simply be seen as part of life.

Those problems are not that hard, its not that hard to run a small shop. I think anyone could do it.

It's inevitable and a direct consequence of the labor system that we live in. The internet makes it worse but its not the problem of the internet, its a problem of the system.

In our labor system, a small number of individuals are by definition going to be payed, as employees, a small amount of the value that they add in order to make their boss wealthier.

Over time, the employees get paid a constant amount of money that they need to spend for living expenses, but the employer wealth will compound and accumulate over generations.

It's a system that comes directly from medieval serventry, designed to concentrate the wealth in the hands of the noble.

Take for example a large surface supermarket, with 100 employees making minimal wage. If those same persons would each own their small family shops and serve the same amount of customers, you would have 100 families well off making way more than minimal wage.

Serve those same customers through a supermarket, and most of the wealth will be concentrated in the hands of the supermarket owner, while the employees make only scraps.

It still sounds pretty bad, like doubling the current population or close to that in 100 years. If not 100, make it 150 or 200 it's still not much on historical terms.

With modern medicine, modern agriculture and the tendency to reduce warfare around the world, there is no reason to believe the growth will stop, by the contrary.

I bet that still then you will only hear: "it's just a couple of miles near the coast, it's not the end of the world. It's not that bad."

That's a 108% increase in a century, which is a relatively short time in historical terms. Imagine the damage to the planet with double the current human population. This could be around the corner, historically speaking.

With the human population growing exponentially, its a certainty that we will breeze by the 1.5 degrees limit very soon.

People don't want to give up their cheeseburgers, all excuses are good, and the level of misinformation that goes around the topic of climate change is through the roof.

I'm glad Greta is contributing to informing the general public of the consequences of their choices but people don't want to hear it will take a lifetime to change the behavior of even a small amount of people.

I bet he is right that its harder for younger people. Having a family means having a routine built-in, you take your kids to school and go pick them up always at the same hour, play a bit, make dinner, bedtime, etc.

For younger people, maybe going to the gym almost every day? I bet that there are shared workspaces with people in the same situation in a lot of large cities at least.

It's probably both, obesity has been continuously rising but has alcohol consumption too? Alcoholics drinks also contribute to obesity as they pack quite a bit of calories, and are addictive in nature.

Liver disease is likely linked to the continuously rising obesity levels:

> "adult obesity rates now exceed 35% in nine states, 30% in 31 states and 25% in 48 states."

https://stateofchildhoodobesity.org/adult-obesity/

More people are now dying earlier from liver disease, instead of dying later of for example diabetes or heart disease. In more cases, the liver is failing first due to lifetime obesity problems.

It depends, if looking for advise on how to use excel from someone, I don't think that they need to be certified or whatever.

For asking someone to do some web design or a logo, I don't think it's necessary either, but there is a limit somewhere.

Think about this way, if you yourself or someone in your family would have heart disease, would you take advice from an acupuncturist?

I bet you wouldn't. What are the odds that Kris Kresser without any formal training or experience managed to better understand the science behind such a complex topic like heart disease than full-time scientists and cardiologists?

Self-learning is great for a lot of things, but heart disease is likely not one of them.

Sure, but you can also build relationships while owning a business, via conferences, shared workspaces, or what not.

My point is that Rogan does have some sort of moral responsibility for not letting his platform be used so easily to massively disinform the public on non-scientific beliefs.

Not sure what you mean, mind being more specific?

The amount of cholesterol in the blood is largely produced by our own body depending on the mix of fat and carbs that we eat, and a smaller but still significative part comes from dietary cholesterol.

Most people eat more than just an egg a day in terms of cholesterol. They eat dairy, meat, eggs, and fish multiple times a day typically one or more of those at every single meal.

So dietary cholesterol does add up over the day, combined with a bad mix of processed carbs and fats it's a recipe for disaster.

Yes, you can eat one egg day and get away with it, but most people eat way more cholesterol than that every single day.

He does have a popular blog, but take a look - https://chriskresser.com/about/

Chris Kresser, M.S., L.Ac. - "M.S. L.Ac." means Master of Science, Licensed Acupuncturist. This is his formal training, all I'm saying is that he shouldn't be presented as an expert to Joe Rogan's audience in the topic he was interviewed on.

I have a simpler explanation, what likely happens is that most people don't even try to do it (even though they could do so like the case here) because it's different than the social norm, which says that you should be an employee working for someone else.

I'm saying that there are other dignified ways to live that are different, you don't absolutely have to be an employee at all costs.

Independent work, running a small business, those are other alternatives to live that are equally valid.

Journalist or not, he still has a responsibility to his audience.

It's a shared responsibility, between him and the guests and the people that listen and take it at face value that should know better.

He can very well balance better the entertainment aspect with the accuracy of the information, especially on topics that have an actual impact on people's lives like health-related topics.

Not everyone with formal training is an expert, but its the minimum requirement. Literally no one without formal training can be an expert in such a complex topic as heart disease.

Why is Joe Rogan asking about heart disease to a licensed acupuncturist in a podcast with 60 million downloads a month? It's like asking for legal advice from a massage therapist.

If you had heart disease or someone in your family had it, would you ask an acupuncturist for advice?

For the sources:

"proved decades ago that heart disease could be reversed solely with diet and lifestyle change"

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/our-number-one-killer-can-b...

The video is a summary of the studies listed via the "Sources cited" button, that you find scrolling down after the video.

There is not a lot of sense of community in most companies these days, its often each person for itself.

Especially in IT, people stay for a couple of years and then leave or get laid off, there is no employment for life anymore.

You can run the business from a shared workspace, it's not an issue. And even hire a couple of people to help you out since the salaries there are relatively affordable, and build your own community then.

You don't have to go to an office working for someone else, that is optional. Nothing wrong with it, it's just not the only choice.

The recent meta-analysis got to the same conclusions as before (the link between meat and cancer), it's just that the interpretation of the authors was different.

They said that although a link exists, its not worth it for people to change their diet, which has triggered outrage on the scientific community.

One of the authors of the studies meta-analysed complained that he never saw such as misrepresentation of the data.

The author of the meta-analysis is someone with strong financial links to the meat industry, so thay study is suspect, to say the least.

When you open someone up after a heart attack, what do you find clogging their veins? It's cholesterol. What happens when you eat cholesterol? Your cholesterol serum goes up.

If Joe could have found a serious cardiologist that would claim that cholesterol has nothing to do with heart disease, he would have long invited him to the show.

But the best he could come up with is Kris Kresser, which kind of says it all.

It's his formal training, he is a licensed acupuncturist. The man has absolutely no business talking about heart disease, especially with an experienced cardiologist.

The problem of putting someone with acupuncture training debating a cardiologist is that, in the eyes of that huge audience, he presents those opinions as perfectly equivalent, alternative to each other and equally valid.

When in fact, one person has basically no idea of what he is talking about, but in the eyes of the public, and because they are put side by side, they are seen as equivalent when they are not.

Why not put him against a non-vegan cardiologist then? Someone at least with equivalent training.

From a scientific point of view, the only diet that as ever shown to stop the progression of heart disease is a whole-food plant-based diet.

Khan replied to the questions, not sure why you are saying he avoided anything. It's obvious that Joe took Kresser side during the debate.

What kind of tough questions did he ask Kresser compared to Khan?

That is highly unlikely, such a mundane job as a sysadmin compared to having your own online business.

If he liked it that much, then probably he wouldn't have started a whole side project that must have consumed evenings and weekends for years.

If he would have found professional fulfillment in his job, he would not likely have started a side project in the first place.

As he mentions in his own reply, he stays because he feels that his job defines him as a person, and he would lose his social identity if he left.

This is a surprisingly lucid reply, he can do whatever he wants and I wish him the best, but it's clear to me that he has other much better options available.

He does have some shared responsibility for the accuracy of what gets said on his show and the guests that he invites.

When he invites a guest he gives them a platform, many people hear what some of those quacks have to say and take it at face value.

He should take more care in not spreading so much misinformation and ignorance to a gigantic audience, there is too much of that in the world already.

There is not much financial risk involved in his case, and it looks like he already has the skills needed. He already makes over 10 times his salary. In one year of employment, he spared the equivalent salary of 10 years.

I think people exaggerate the dive into the abyss thing and risking it all. If you have some savings, you can try to launch a business and if it doesn't work you can always go back to work for someone else.

At a given point, someone is going to give you another job as a sysadmin again. He can even work remotely and easily make more than $400 a month.

If you are not hiring other people and purchasing equipment, starting a Saas business as a sole founder has minimal financial risk involved compared to almost all other types of businesses, it's really not that risky.

I think what holds a lot of people back is the fact that they come from an employee background probably at the family level, and they see the world through the eyes of an employee.

They don't even remotely consider the several options that they actually have available.

You don't have to work for someone else and be an employee your whole life, it's not the only way. There are other choices available to you.

You can also be your own boss too and have other people working for you, or at least help you out occasionally on a part-time basis.

You can easily rent an office in a shared space if you don't want to work from home and go there a couple of times a week.

Also, you don't have to focus only on your current project if it's not your thing.

You can start something else that you would like to create while living off the income generated by your current project.

But I get it, the social expectation is that you have an office job, its what almost everyone does.

But think about this: someone at your company at a given moment had to quit their job to create the company you work on, right? Otherwise, your current day job would simply not exist.

There are a couple of huge differences. You don't have financially anything to gain by that, and you are not influencing the opinions of a huge number of people in the process.

There is already so much scientific ignorance in the general public, there is so much misrepresentation of science already.

A ton of people actually believe thinks like the Earth is flat, Joe many times gives a voice to that type of quacks for clicks.

His podcast many times acts as a vehicle for spreading ignorance, other than that yes its entertaining and people should know better. But often they don't and that's the problem.

That was just an example among many. Anything from alien landings to Atlantis to god knows what is fair game to Rogan.

He will gladly give his huge platform to the most complete wacko as long as it makes a good story and gets him his clicks, spreading a ton of misinformation and reinforcing common ignorant beliefs in the process.

Be careful, because his podcast is a bit of an echo chamber.

The other day he set up a debate on nutrition where he covered the topic of heart disease, and he put a cardiologist (Dr. Khan) with 20 years of experience debating with an acupuncturist (Kris Kresser) on the causes of heart disease.

And he kept interrupting the doctor and taking the acupuncturist side on the most absurd claims.

He is also into things like moon landing conspiracies and all that good stuff that generate a lot of internet traffic, but I think in a bit of a hypocritical way as I'm pretty sure he doesn't really believe in any of that stuff and just talks about it for the clicks.