vgr

I do... when specific posts cross my radar. Good stuff. No longer keep up deterministically with anything via RSS/email though.

Tried this out a while back. Very cool to watch linux booting up in a browser. Weird how abstractions loop from low to high to low again.

I imagine sysad types would find this a pretty neat way to explore disk image files without having to boot up a VM.

Don't quite recall, but I think it was from a book about cathedral builders or something. But I'll admit my knowledge of medieval guilds is largely superficial and drawn from books where it was a side issue rather than the main topic. Your description sounds like you know what you're talking about. Got any good references (books, not articles) worth reading to get a clearer idea of how guild economies worked?

Interesting, thanks for clarifying. I assumed too quickly that journey in journeyman meant what it means to us today.

I wrote the original piece. You can contact me via my blog http://ribbonfarm.com

If you had your own iPhone app and knew how to market it properly, you wouldn't be at the mercy of Groupon's well-known strong-arm tactics in dealing with small businesses for instance. Or some other alternative tech-savvy way to market your business so you aren't killed by a few bad Yelp reviews or discounts from the social commerce/coupon startups that you don't know can hurt you till you try them. Many of the more prosperous small businesses are already starting to vie for control over their customer acquisition channels.

In political science, a fairly well-known basic idea is that the two ways to dissent are exit and voice. Exit means you leave and go somewhere else, and was common in early political eras when most civilizations were small and surrounded by plenty of nomadic/lawless regions to retreat to. As populations increased, voice (i.e. protest, class warfare etc.) became increasingly common. The classic reference on this is "Exit, Voice and Loyalty" by Albert O. Hirschman. It's been on my reading list for a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty

For developers, it is swinging back towards exit, since the Internet can be considered a kind of virtual equivalent of the nomad regions to retreat to.

"Center-periphery" dynamics is the common term in geopolitics for dissent dynamics driven by movement inside/outside a core. Class warfare is the better known kind of dissent involving unionization etc. and involves fighting up and down a class structure.

Guilds, historically, were a medieval kind of institution that had characteristics of both exit and voice. The classic guild professions (weaving, masonry and in more recent times, things like typesetting in pre-lithography days) used their portable skills to leave kingdoms/cities and move elsewhere if they didn't like their current situation. This option was not really available to laborers tied to the land, and was essentially an urban phenomenon. This is the origin of the term "journeyman" for instance... apprentices who would follow master craftsmen around until they became masters in their own right.

It isn't an old guard thing. It is a personality and strengths thing. I am not particularly old guard (I am 37), and while I am about average in the technologies I do know, I suck at learning new platforms/technologies. It's like pulling teeth.

Those who are good at it just don't get how hard it can be for those are not quick learners in this sense. This is part of not knowing their own value -- claiming that learning new languages is "easy." It is. For them.

That's the gist of it, with one correction. The 10,000 hours bit is fine, the missing detail is how you count to 10,000 when there are no convenient external reference points. The true extrinsic variables are things like a named discipline or degrees as indicators of experience.

True. That's why I took care to separate out the clinical cases as carefully as I could. The reverse is also true: people who can be helped by cognitive reframings may not find medication useful. In fact, it can make things worse. A significant proportion of patients on depression and bipolar meds get worse, not better.

I have no problem admitting that I have been on medication a couple of times, for brief periods. It was a long time ago, and so ineffective/counterproductive for me that it was the kick in the pants I needed to decide to take control of my life at a more cognitive level. It convinced me that meds are vastly overprescribed for what might be called "existential" illnesses. That experience did inform my post.

But there is an aspect of this stuff that is perhaps even bigger than the mild/severe distinction and the pop-psych/clinical psych distinction.

This is the fact that professional or amateur, anybody who thinks they actually understand more than 10% of this sort of thing is a liar. I wouldn't trust any professional who refused to admit that we just don't understand 90% of what's going on, at either a cognitive or biochemical level. There is as much bs spouted by the supposed "professionals" about serotonin as there is by amateurs like me opining about how to climb out of slumps.

Not that I think my stuff is bs, but my kind of writing belongs in a category with more than its fair share of bs :)

Venkat

Thanks.

FWIW I am not a developer. I am a pointy-haired boss. My long-forgotten background is in aerospace engineering.

The short answer is: you get used to it, but it is not ideal or a particularly healthy work lifestyle. It has many of the same problems as solitary confinement within a prison.

Since the pattern is increasing all around, more social support structures are emerging around work-from-home lifestyles, but frankly, the current state is very primitive.

Though I do that kind of cliffhanger stuff on occasion, that isn't the reason here. My "theory of Toby" merely requires a good deal of groundwork to be laid. And you're right on both counts... he's not in the hierarchy, and Zen/transcending have a role in the explanation.

It just won't be the kind of feel-good Zen/transcending you are probably thinking of (which you should expect, since Toby displays too much misery to be a traditional Enlightened One).

If you are really curious about how I am developing this thread, read Nietzsche's 'Thus Spake Zarathustra'

Venkat

ah, I stand corrected. this is a hazy memory from a Reader's Digest condensed book I read 20 years ago titled "I captured Adolf Eichmann" ... can't seem to find a ref to it anywhere online now.

Actually, I did spend a year (and parts of 2 summers) in Austin. I used to go for late night walks near my apartment, which was just off 183, well north, in strip-mall land.

If you walk slowly enough, you won't sweat. Or maybe that's just Austin.

I think that nails it. There is an urge to demonstrate your success in everything you do, and some activities just aren't good mediums for showcasing how awesome you are.

I am pretty darn surprised that THIS post has gotten vastly more discussion than just about any of my ribbonfarm posts that's gotten on HN.

A few quick adds, since I seem to have mildly offended some of you.

0. The tangent on "having a life" here is fascinating. Nothing to add, but I am now seriously curious about the ethnography of that phrase.

1. Is this anti-American? I don't really think so. There is research (see Robert Levine, "The Geography of Time") that shows that cultures have characteristic tempos, down to typical walking speeds. Yes, the vastness of America has something to do with it, but I think 80% of the dynamics are social, not physical, and also relatively recent (cellphones etc. have helped Americans express this preference a lot more clearly). Back before Thoreau's time, I think this wasn't so characteristic of America. There are no better celebrations of idleness than the works of that uber-American writer, Mark Twain. The disease is fairly new.

2. "If you are thinking about blogging about your judgments of how others are not taking a walk, then YOU are not taking a walk." Very fair and Godelian critique, but I am talking about idle foot-and-mind wandering here, not meditation. I'll leave that kind of walking to the Zen monks. My model isn't a Zen monk, it is Tom Sawyer walking along kicking a can or something. The xkcd Bored with the Internet strip http://xkcd.com/77/ is sort of my point as well, except that I still take walks anyway, despite the irony.

3. If I came across as judgmental or telling people how to actually take walks... sorry. Meant to be mostly tongue-in-cheek :) Poor writing execution, not intent.

I am sorry that part offended you, but I usually can, with pretty good accuracy.

There are studies (see Robert Levine, "Geography of Time") that use normal walking pace as a very characteristic indicator of geographic origin.

The FBI caught Adolf Eichmann in Argentina partly because they noticed his dissonant walking pace :)

Venkat

That's one of the drivers, certainly, but there's many more forces. Check out Dan Pink's "Free Agent Nation" for more. It's a few years old by now, but still the best view of the overall trend.

I think Morgan's figures may have excluded slaves. They weren't paid a paycheck either, so they fall in neither category.

I use 'what's your goal' as a conversation starter as well, but if it gets bogged down there, I start to tune out.

I think you and I may differ in what we consider 'useful.' I don't classify procedural starting points as 'useful' except in a ritualistic sense. So in that sense I think I stand by my rather extreme-sounding view :)

I believe it is not a big picture/details distinction but an information-free vs. informational distinction. There can be insight questions that are very large scale. Pascal's "probability that God/heaven/hell exist" is a very insightful but big-picture question.

aargh, sorry... looks like I DID use my google account last time and selected the vgr handle. Sorry.

The 'different comm styles' ... I did not cite the reference, but there is a documentary about how Arab-Israeli conversations tend to break down badly even when both sides go in with win-win positive intentions. It showed some deep cultural diffs (specifically, Arabs don't like to be interrupted, while Israelis thrive on it...it's deeper, but that's the highlight point). Seems like anyone who could figure out how to resolve that diff could organize better peace talks.

BTW, if it isn't clear, I am the author of the post.

I've lost my password for HN and can't see a way to recover, so I haven't been responding to HN comments on my posts. Anyhoo, caved and logged in using my Google id now...I am the same as lost-password vgr on some older threads. If someone can tell me how to recover my password, I'd appreciate it. Kinda like my vgr handle.

well, hopefully there'll be a good crop of young startups coming out of this round. YC is always an interesting spectator sport.

Everybody too busy with their YC applications to discuss this? ;)

Venkat

Yes, the series is inspired by Nietzsche's concepts to a large extent. Did not belabor the connection in the series since it would lose half the readers.

There are subtle differences between what I am describing and the ubermensch concept though. My categories, I'd say, are closer to being varieties of "men without backs"/last men (see Fukuyama's "End of History"... and no I am not a neocon :))

Venkat

I am an engineer, but I am inclined to agree with you. As an undergrad, I was the dramatics/theater secretary of my hostel (==dorm), and did enough directing/script writing to get a real sense of the medium (even though I quickly found out I had little talent on stage or backstage).

Theater/acting related metaphors and ideas are pretty central to the way I am developing the series... the next piece is shaping up to be even more theater-informed.

Overcoming Bias is a good reco -- I used to read it regularly, but (pot-kettle complaint here...:)) I couldn't keep up with the length of some of the stuff, especially by Yudkowsky. Hansen is thankfully briefer.

Venkat

On both this piece and the earlier one, I was kinda surprised that startup/hacker types would be so interested. I guess my mental image of the audience here is younger, fresh-out-of-college entrepreneurial types. Perhaps I am wrong, and there is a good proportion of people with mature org. experience as well?

I am also surprised by the number of people who seem to think small/startup companies are immune to these dynamics :)

(p.s. I did spend 1 year as the first employee of a startup... I found the same dynamics to apply, mutatis mutandis). Anyway, thanks for reading and keep the great conversation on!

Venkat