naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
3d ago
I suppose in my fantasy future, I would be doing appellate law and someday argue Supreme Court cases, but everything I read up shows that law is a high-stress, singular life.
Not always, but by far the best path to that point is to graduate from Harvard, Stanford, or Yale, maybe Chicago, to clerk for a Circuit justice (and then, if possible, a SCOTUS justice), and go to work at a large law firm. The first step is to take the LSAT. If you can score 175+ (less if you are an underrepresented minority) then at least that step is not impossible. But if appellate law is the only thing that really interests you, then you should probably just not go to law school--unless, perhaps, you are extremely well connected. Even if you go to Harvard, the odds of ever actually arguing interesting questions in front of the Supreme Court are quite low. Even arguing in front of state supreme courts is pretty unusual.
If you're sufficiently interested in law to accept a career well short of your fantasy future, then you might as well take the LSAT and see how it goes. STEM majors actually tend to do very well as it is for the most part an obfuscated psychometric, despite the recent removal of the logic games portion. If you do poorly, then you can turn your attention elsewhere. If you do well, then you can decide whether to take the next steps of figuring out plausible schools to apply to. But bear in mind that law careers have a "bimodal distribution" between highly compensated "BigLaw" attorneys and the rank-and-file of family and criminal and liability lawyers who are (often at best) comfortably middle class. You could easily end up spending 3 years and $100,000+ to take a pay cut and spend the rest of your life refereeing messy divorces.
I am a lawyer, but I only practice on rare occasion. I left behind full time law practice to become an academic philosopher. I find it much more fulfilling than law practice, and I get to argue about whatever issues I want with people who are actually a lot smarter than the median SCOTUS Justice. The pay is terrible and it's unlikely I will ever make a meaningful difference on actual public policy, but that would probably be true even if I were a powerful appellate attorney.
While Fable 5 was available, I was able to use it to update the AAQC listed-by-user post. It took less time and exhibited more capabilities, in particular integrating its own calls for AI assistance in sorting some of the less organized posts. I was also able to make the update in a couple of hours where the original took a couple of days, but the new attempt also was able to draw from the lessons of the original attempt so the increased speed might not be down to the model. (It did absolutely chew through my usage limits in a way I'd never seen before, though.)
My "max" subscription trial expires soon and I can't imagine ever paying for an AI subscription out of my own pocket. But I can see how anyone who codes for a living has probably had their job description permanently changed to "the wet part of an AI centaur." Artists and musicians are basically there, too. Of course there are remaining questions (like how much this all actually costs) but all the MBAs I know are currently doing their best to extract as much value as possible from the trend while contributing as little as possible of genuine worth in return so, who knows.
naraburns
nihil supernum
9d ago
It's kind of the opposite of life insurance, really. The point of an annuity is that you can't outlive it, so you purchase annuities as a hedge against living longer than you anticipate, where life insurance is a hedge (you erect for others) against dying sooner than you anticipate. I think many annuities also have death benefits associated but I assume that is to mitigate unjust windfalls to the brokers.
naraburns
nihil supernum
11d ago
What incenses me most about race-conscious rightoids
This is a bad start--it really communicates disdain in a way that wages culture war rather than discussing it. And while "race-conscious rightoids" is at least arguably a somewhat specific group (?)--
how incapable they are of sovereign thought
--seems too sweeping to apply to an appropriately specific group. The violation is not exactly egregious and there is some substance to your comment but I feel like I should at least say, "more light, less heat, please."
naraburns
nihil supernum
20d ago
It is far from the shortest AAQC ever! In fact I think we've had at least one one-liner accrue sufficient nominations as to make the cut, though I don't remember off the top of my head when that was.
The nature of the space is such that length is often rewarded (and sometimes confused for effort/quality) but shorter posts do sometimes get nominated, and pretty routinely make the roundup.
naraburns
nihil supernum
27d ago
naraburns
nihil supernum
27d ago
Two things. First, it's probably not a good approach to just reproduce an entire blog that isn't your own--a submission statement seems like the better way.
Second, while I don't think that every post about religion necessarily qualifies as "culture war," I do think that maybe this particular blog reaches that level, if only barely. So if you'd like to share this article as a link with a submission statement in the CW thread, that would be fine. But thanks for posting!
naraburns
nihil supernum
29d ago
I've never been diagnosed, but yes, I'm plausibly "autistic" under current use of the concept.
When I was young, only the most severe cases of "autism" were ever diagnosed, and IIRC it was considered by most to be a form of "childhood schizophrenia." I was in my 40s, give or take, when the "spectrum" really sank into the zeitgeist and people first started commenting about me being "on" it. Some of my children (who are all now adults) do have psychiatrically diagnosed autism, based on criteria that would clearly apply to me, so it seems fair to say that I'm genuinely autistic, insofar as any such diagnosis admits of authentication. Specifically, my social interaction norms are deep into "spectrum" territory, while my repetitive behavior and sensory processing tendencies are less severe but still noticeably autistic.
But I am "high functioning," especially verbally, and as an adult it seems pointless to get a personal "diagnosis" for a variety of reasons. Would I get an embossed certificate for my wall? I think that clocking me as autistic sometimes helps other people but I've lived an above-average life by most metrics; if it ain't broke, don't fix it! I do look back at many interactions of my youth and, viewed through the lens of disability, a lot of my suffering was arguably the result of other people genuinely abusing me. But they couldn't have known that any more than I did, and blaming myself (despite never really knowing what I had done wrong) probably developed my sense of agency.
In the interest of completeness, it's worth nothing that there are other paths up the mountain. For example, one common bit of advice is that if there is a state you know you want to practice law in (and you actually want to practice law, not just be an academic or something) then you should try to get into the best law school in that state. If you can parlay that into a position as e.g. the state's Attorney General then you actually have a better chance of winding up in front of the Supreme Court than if you go BigLaw, and you will have direct impact on public policy even when you're not arguing it in front of the nine aristocrats who actually rule the country.
But yes, the legal profession is incredibly
infectedobsessed with prestige, which it routinely and wholeheartedly substitutes for genuine merit. In any number of venues there is just no amount of demonstrated intelligence or accomplishment that will make up for choosing a lower-ranked law school, and no amount of idiocy that won't be excused if you've got the right pedigree. Exhibit A is of course the educational demographics of the Supreme Court itself. But I have seen a backwater state legislature reject a state supreme court nominee for the crime of not having gotten a 4.0 GPA at their top in-state law school, while cheerfully approving nominees who went to Yale, which doesn't assign grades. It's a real problem.Are you married? Do you have children?
It might off-topic but fulfillment is elusive prey. "Success" in the workaday world entails climbing to the top of a heap and then defending your position there. But by definition most of us cannot be at the top of any heap of humanity. Modernity treats business and government as the only heaps worth climbing. We obsess over promotion and pay raises and political victories. A single layoff or a single health issue can knock us back a whole decade.
The simplest way to parlay that "financial appreciation" into fulfillment is to take on the long term project of community-building. The paradigmatic approach is to start making tiny humans, whose parent you will always be, no matter what the role specifically entails. Not everyone will have the opportunity to be President, or Governor, or Justice, or CEO--indeed, the vast majority of us never will be. But everyone can be a good parent. The title of "Mom" or "Dad" is available to all, if not biologically than through adoption, and the only promotions available are to "Grandma" or "Grandpa." This is why certain political thinkers are so anti-family--because if you are focused on success within your actual sphere of influence, you are much more difficult to recruit as a single-minded soldier advancing the policy visions of others. Family (along with church and other, similarly genuine communities) competes directly with business and politics for your time and attention and loyalty, but offers you fulfillment on your own terms, rather than the terms of whoever happens to be at the top of the heap.
Sorry to hear that. It's never fun to be waiting on bureaucracy. Good luck!
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