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2mo ago
It might have originated from Hank Hill https://youtube.com/watch?v=6hzwKtJF_bg
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2mo ago
But even for non tech sector jobs, you will be doing you work on a computer. If you have a conditioned aversion to using a computer, it could be possible to train yourself out of it. Or if it's the stress, are there any less stressful teams/companies/adjacent jobs you could move to? Is tech sales inherently stressful? For programming, it depends on the team and company.
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2mo ago
Yeah, I learned to code.
Why do to want to switch careers? What's the issue with your current one? It is important to understand yourself. I found working a simple service sector job far more tiring than programming, because it takes me a lot of energy to talk to normies all day. I didn't understand this about myself for a while, but it would have helped when choosing a career.
I don't trust any "career councilor" type person. The best way to learn about a career is to talk to someone who does it. In retrospect, I should have gone to meetups much earlier to get to know people and the industry. I would suggest doing that for careers you are interested in.
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3mo ago
"If only you knew how different things could be" . My favourite version has a different image with the same quote, but I can't find it. Hope, optimism, imagination are powerful forces and the meme triggers all of these for me.
And unrelated, but I find there's something profound about this meme.
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3mo ago
Not very "fun", but a clear example of out-group vs far-group (is that the right term?)
"If you get caught watching an American drama, you can get away with a bribe, but if you watch a Korean drama, you get shot," a North Korean defector told BBC Korean on Thursday.
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3mo ago
https://old.reddit.com/r/madlads/s/yV09R82gov
I came across this reddit post of a guy who cuts his books in half. I found it funny that this triggered people in the comments. Many people refuse to fold pages or write in their books. I don't see what the big deal is. To me a book is just a tool. I understand taking care to preserve semi-rare books, but these were books you can just walk into any bookstore and buy.
I used to know someone who would even try to avoid creasing the spine. But I've also heard about a guy who would rip pages of shlocky fiction as he read them to keep his place. Where are you on the spectrum?
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3mo ago
I don't think we should rate charities based on how low their overhead costs are. It's like saying we should cut Tim Cook's compensation to boost Apple's profits.
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3mo ago
I also find the dimming and scrolling to close the pop up very annoying. I would rather have a regular pop up I could reflexively close. Instead, I see the dimming, scroll further to close the damn thing, then scroll back up and find my place.
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3mo ago
I am always surprised that people are not more impressed with LLMs. I went out for dinner with a smart friend and he has not used gpt4 and didn't seem to care. We didn't understand part of the menu, so I took a picture and had chatgpt explain. Every time I do this it blows my mind a little. He seemed to take it for granted.
We now literally have intelligent computers that can see and talk, a la Jarvis or HAL 9000, and so many people are surprised I pay $20/month for access.
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3mo ago
It's "stock" gpt4 with custom instructions to act human. What OpenAI call custom GPTs. It's not been trained differently or fine tuned.
Here's a short conversation. But it still claims it's not conscious; maybe it's all the RLHF.
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3mo ago
I can make a "real person" custom GPT, but what kind of questions would you ask it exactly?
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3mo ago
I was going to suggest tracking calories and avoiding calorie dense foods, but it sounds like you already have an impression on where your calories come from. Habits by their nature are hard to break at the start, but it gets easier over time. I find you have to psyop yourself a little. Figure out which low calorie density snacks you enjoy. Tell yourself you can have as many carrot sticks as you want, instead of framing it around restrictions. Try being mindful and asking if you're snacking because you're hungry, or just because you've conditioned yourself to eat at a particular time or setting.
If all else fails, try croissants or potatoes.
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3mo ago
In those examples I don't like it, I think it's poorly used. Rationalist types tend to do it better, or DFW, or Trump, for emphasis or to elevate the word or phrase.
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3mo ago
That first point reminds me of the thesis of this article
For example, much of contemporary feminism actually reads like an attempt to hook the horse of the patriarchy up to the junker of gender egalitarianism. The patriarchy was bad, as the story goes, so we got rid of it and had the sexual revolution instead. Then the sexual revolution turned out to be a catastrophe of abuse, disgrace, and regret. By the time we realized it, however, “consent” was the only language of sexual ethics available to us at all, so these were problems that we largely had no name for.
[...]
Slowly, and probably unconsciously, we took the existing material of gender egalitarianism and cobbled together a jugaad patriarchy that pretends not to be one. The jugaad patriarchy is less efficient, less humane, and less conceptually coherent than the actual patriarchy it replaced. But if it affords us an atmosphere in which men are terrified of the consequences of sleeping with women they’re not married to, perhaps it’s better than nothing.
http://www.thetruthcounts.com/blogtraducciones/2018/11/14/jugaad-ethics/
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3mo ago
Yes sure, it's funny when Will Macaskill tells you not to do philosophy.
https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/philosophy-academia/
EA no longer suggests earning to give as a top career option. They are talent constrained so they'll tell you to work for an effective organisation. So now the meme is to become an AI safety researcher.
Ben says he thinks the right person in the right role is worth the equivalent of $3-10M/year
https://80000hours.org/2021/07/effective-altruism-growing/
EA and 80k hours are not there to help the average student with career advice. They exist to recruit top tier talent into the ecosystem. That's why the EA hubs are in London, Oxford and Cambridge.
All that said, I agree with the passion article. I don't think it's a good frame to think about things.
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3mo ago
Don't fall for the passion meme
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3mo ago
On war crimes, I feel like people forget that hostage taking is a war crime, and it is undeniable that Hamas has captured hostages. And then you have the complimentary war crimes of Hamas using human shields, and Israel killing "excessive" civilians because of the human shields.
I'm pretty sure Hamas does operate out of hospitals. Here is an article from a few years ago, but I'm just a guy, I can't speak for the veracity.
It wouldn't surprise me if thousands of Palestinians have been killed. Gaza claims 20,000 deaths just from this current war. Even if that's a 10x overestimate, it's still thousands.
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3mo ago
That's the question, right? Where do the interesting people hang out on the internet?
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3mo ago
I omitted my priorities for last year for brevity, but 2023 was a success. I think we are getting hung up on the term "new years resolution". For me, it is not some frivolous goal picked out of a hat that I don't really care about.
Your entire life is psychological framing and you shouldn't underrate it.
Your question reminds me of this essay on "refinement culture" that starts by describing the changes that have happened in sports as decisions become more data-driven.
https://medium.com/@lindynewsletter/refinement-culture-51d96726c642
Dan Luu touches on this in a couple of his essays
https://danluu.com/talent/ - on the misidentification of talent in baseball (and elsewhere) by talent scouts trusting their 'gut' over the numbers.
https://danluu.com/bad-decisions/ - on bad decision making in baseball
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