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thomasThePaineEngine

Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill

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joined 2022 September 11 16:24:53 UTC
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User ID: 1131


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
thomasThePaineEngine


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 11 16:24:53 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 1131


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
							
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks for the thorough explanation.


I've recently become interested in measuring things, so finding related domains that I'm ignorant about is pretty helpful to keep following the thread.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 4, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks! I'll look into getting a paper copy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 4, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How do you find the writing and style? From the bit about your husband it sounds engaging.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Holiday gift ideas 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A pocket flashlight like the Fenix e03r. It's truly a pocket flashlight that you can wear on your keychain, but with the advances in LED and battery tech, it's bright enough to be useful.


Weighted blankets. I'm about to try one out, but have heard good things from friends and they aren't expensive.


Non-ultrasonic humidifiers for winter.


A pull-up bar for WFH. Just having it around enticed me to do occasional pullups, and now I can max out at 10.


A subscription to The Texas Security Review--four nicely printed issues a year all about high-level military strategy.


Bookmark lights. These used to be a shitty gimmick. Now, with improved LEDs and batteries (must be a theme), they're actually bright and small enough to be comfortable to use on everything from cheap softcovers to heavy hardcovers.


Ditto on handwarmers. Supremely useful.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for December 7, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm not long enough into my career that I feel the need to "lock in" to a specific field. Also, economically, web dev is just about 10x more prevalent than Data Science.




How does the income distribution look like in Data Science?


In webdev, at least a few years ago, it was multi-modal with a huge deviation. You had webdevs making $30k/year and webdevs making $200k/year. That, and the lack of interesting challenges, were what eventually chased me out of that subgenre.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


However, social networks with free-for-all blocking are often very brutal brutal.




And we've seen this play out since the dawn of the Internet. The vast majority of online spaces were rich in cliques, flamewars, relentless trolling, and corrupt moderation that never shied from using the banhammer for personal gain. It's why such a high number of online communities follow a predictable path of eventually becoming echo chambers and later imploding. Perhaps it would even be fair to say that the vast majority of people who take on the mission of establishing and running a community have little or no knowledge of basic coordination mechanisms, some dating as far back as ancient Greece.


Themotte and some rat-adjacent spaces are the only ones I know that have avoided imploding while maintaining the ability to generate novel, interesting discussion. I can see no other reason than the fact that these places have not only enshrined rules that encourage civilized argument, what Karl Popper labeled "the rational unity of mankind", but also ensured that moderation is done in the spirit of those rules.


As evidenced by the broader culture war, the majority of people are fine with tribal warfare, whether it's online or offline.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Technical question: why are you using log(monthly income)?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 9, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I gave it a go yesterday. Super fun, much easier than the classic interface. Would recommend it to most themottians.


I want to sink a few hours into it, but I think I'll have to wait for some holidays or something when I can let myself submerge in the game for a few hours.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 9, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Solstice?


Not the San Diego one, but I'm going to a local rationalist solstice.


Last time, when I attended the ACX meetup, I met a ton of cool people and had some refreshing non-CW discussions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Stop that! It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But you do mimic those around you subconsciously all the time, both short term and long term.




I think this reduces the phenomenon that was described in the article. Perhaps I'm reading too deep into but, here's my take: you statement misses the "illness" part, which I take to mean something undesired, and the "remote" part.


Mimicking others wearing jeans around me doesn't harm me in any physical or sociological way. Plus, the impulse to wear jeans is immediate--real people around me wearing them seem happy and comfortable.


Fidget spinners were a fad. People were using them around me and I probably saw people using them on TV or youtube (the "remote" part). But they had no negative influence on my state. They also died out after a few weeks.


Youtube-Tourettes has propagated fully remotely via youtube. It also has negative consequences for the individuals, such as putting them in conflict with others around them, and the mechanism for the consequences seems to be that these individuals make it a part of their identity. None of jeans, pokemon, harry potter, or fidget spinners ever became a core part of someone's identity. Even hardcore fans of these fads have been mostly able to contain their fascination so that it doesn't interfere with their lives (work, school, community, family, etc.)




The whole point of the article was that they had plenty of agency. They did the tics more when it was convenient for them and less when it wasn't.




I don't think this is evidence for agency, because correlation doesn't imply causation. Humans are not rational creatures, especially adolescents, so I can quite easily entertain the idea that they tricked themselves into believing they had Tourettes to the point of losing agency over this. People who speak in tongues sincerely believe they have become vessels of God. I suspect they had previous beliefs that made it possible to wake up one day, have a funny feeling in their brain that caused them to babble a little bit, and completely miss the moment to make a decision because their faith allowed them to see only a single path forward: to claim they've become a vessel of God. Similarly, Youtube-Tourette's sufferers probably already had a bunch of agency-robbing views that made them certain they were afflicted with Tourette's.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for December 7, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But boy, is it dull. How do front end devs do it?




Not exactly your target audience, but for me it's realizing that webdev allows me to deliver something to someone. Whether it's a blog post or a cool little service, even a simple flask site gives me a lot of options of putting it in front of anyone with a browser.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Stop that! It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don't see what calling these things infohazards or sociogenic illnesses adds.




I guess there's an element of choice in mimicry, but no choice when it comes to illness? It's not specified in the source whether the affected people decided to imitate a popular youtuber or just found themselves replaying the youtuber's behavior.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Stop that! It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I wrote a comment for the general CW thread, but noticed this dedicated thread here, so I'll just post it here:


This little bit of news made it through my feeds recently:




We report the first outbreak of a new type of mass sociogenic illness that in contrast to all previously reported episodes is spread solely via social media.




A mass sociogenic illness is later defined as "a constellation of symptoms suggestive of organic illness, but without an identifiable cause, that occurs between two or more people who share beliefs related to those symptoms"


The symptoms of this illness present like those of Tourette syndrome:




(...) patients presented with nearly identical movements and vocalizations that not only resemble Jan Zimmermann’s symptoms, but are in part exactly the same, such as shouting the German words Pommes (English: potatoes), Bombe (English: bomb), Heil Hitler, Du bist häßlich (English: you are ugly) and Fliegende Haie (English: flying sharks) as well as bizarre and complex behaviours such as throwing pens at school and dishes at home, and crushing eggs in the kitchen.




However, when diagnosed by an experienced professional, it turns out that these symptoms are only a shallow mimicry of Tourette syndrome:




(...) Third, patients often reported to be unable to perform unpleasant tasks because of their symptoms resulting in release from obligations at school and home, while symptoms temporarily completely disappear while conducting favourite activities. Fourth, in some patients, a rapid and complete remission occurred after exclusion of the diagnosis of Tourette syndrome.




So, in other words, what we're seeing is a memetic infection, aka infohazard.


What other memetic infections are floating around us? It would be too easy to point to grand political or religious ideas. But what about something smaller? Could things like "black pill", "gender dysphoria", "trad-life", "degrowth" be examples of sociogenic illness?


Think about it: faux-Tourette syndrome is an aesthetic that plays out as a social behavior. The things I listed above are often played out as aesthetic-based social behaviors--anecdotally, I know of few people with similar "lifestyle" beliefs that adhere to them as a result of deep self-reflection and research.


Looking toward the future, what other sociogenic illnesses can we expect given that social media is worming its way deeper and deeper into society?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I believe that when you, @curious_straight_ca, and now me talk about developer operators/devops/sre, we're all talking about different things. From talking with people, this part of the industry seems to be undergoing a complete headfuck of an identity crisis.


Many companies simply changed labels from "sysadmin" or "operations" to "devops" or "sre" and called it a day, with the people doing what they always did: maintaining hardware, producing an endless stream of small automation (bash scripts, yay), and managing LDAP/other access (your next post seems to describe this group). Some companies created a true group of automation developers--tool and systems makers. Yet others have formed groups inspired by manufacturing that are using statistical modeling methods to design and maintain systems.


What I think this points to is that the industry is struggling with the problem of reliability, specifically, reliable product delivery (availability, durability, latency, etc). Up until fairly recently, no one from the industry spent time to devise a production process(1) to produce reliable software, so it's pretty much a wild west composed of at least two dozen or more different groups trying to figure it out (or make money and disappear), all of them using the same two labels.


I'm urging caution because it seems there's a strong disconnect between map (job titles) and territory (job responsibilities) to the point where two people with the same title probably can't even communicate because they do vastly different things.


(1): I'm not counting tools like formal verification or Erlang ("nine nines")--I'm thinking of the whole process including people, skillsets, organization, etc.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
PG remarked on continuous release as early as 2003:




We knew Lisp was a really good language for writing software quickly, and server-based applications magnify the effect of rapid development, because you can release software the minute it's done. (...) But with Lisp our development cycle was so fast that we could sometimes duplicate a new feature within a day or two of a competitor announcing it in a press release. By the time journalists covering the press release got round to calling us, we would have the new feature too.




Development speed brings a quality of its own.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 27, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks. It seems my main focus should be on building relationships very broadly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 27, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks, my morale is boosted knowing I'm not the only one trying to make headway in a situation like this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 27, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How to acclimate myself to working at a mid-sized corporation after working at small shops forever?


I recently joined as a software engineer a company whose employees number in the low thousands. I'm finding it hard to get used to it. Everything's pretty impersonal. Things move slowly--what would normally take me a week takes three instead--which extends feedback loops to a great extent. It's uncomfortable: I feel like I'm failing to deliver, even though my manager and onboarding buddy say I'm doing great.


(It's not completely a huge-boring corporation; my sense of contrast is likely tickled by it being a big change for me.)


A friend of mine recommended I think hard about what my manager's scoring function is and to optimize for that. (I would like stay with this gig for 2-4 years). He also recommended I read The Prince.


Has anyone else made this kind of move? Or, if someone here has spent considerable time at corporations, do you have any advice/reading material (preferably less theoretical and more practical)?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What I would like to see in this type of analysis is how much each measure could improve either fairness or security. Otherwise, it's a grab bag of ideas, some of which may do nothing, while a few could potentially even be harmful.


That said, I'll argue against a specific one because I often see it presented as an unalloyed good while, in reality it's a trade off between two sets of negative consequences:




• seats in legislative bodies should be allocated on the basis of proportional representation as is done in some countries (e.g. a party whose candidates receive 5% of the votes gets 5% of the seats)




This actually works in the opposite way than how it's intended to work, ie. it gives an disproportional amount of power to some parties. Consider an election between three parties: A, B, and C. Both A and B obtain 48% of votes. C obtains 4%. Now, in order to form a government, either A or B needs to find a way to persuade C to join them, which means that party C holds, in this moment an incredible amount of power. Actually, it will continue to hold, despite accounting for only 4% of voters, an incredible amount of power because it can, at any moment, decide to break up with either A or B, leading to the break up of the government.


There's also another problem, in that assembling coalitions out of smaller parties necessarily entails going against what each party's voters voted for.


Re-using the A, B, and C example, imagine that party A is pro-X while B is anti-X, while those who voted for party C don't care about X. If party C were to assemble a government with one of the other parties, it will add its weight to the pro- or anti-X side, thereby betraying its voters' "don't care about X" stance.


(Note that I'm basically summarizing Karl Popper's thinking on this problem).


Personally, I think the two-party system works better in the US because of its dynamic, diverse culture. I would be curious if it would introduce some dynamism into other countries.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 27, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I lurked themotte for a long time. One day, not too long ago, I decided I want to get more serious about participating. I can think of a few pull factors that motivated me:


    

  • 

    I have something valuable to share, either because of my unique perspective/experience or because I've picked up something that not many do.
    

    • 

  • 

    I'm curious to be proven wrong. It's happened at least twice that I got feedback that shook me on a deep level because I realized that I overestimated my understanding of a topic.
    

    • 



On the technical side, some answers to your questions:


    

  • 

    I've grown to like writing, so each post or comment that I write is a little fun exercise.
    

    • 

  • 

    Some posts of mine were first drafts while others took a week or two to draft and redraft until I was satisfied with the level of clarity.
    

      

    • 

      This was a major hangup of mine in the beginning. I was nervous about how people would perceive my writing. It turned out that most are curious and I feel like every time I post is a chance to get sucked into a scintillating discussion. This realization really helped alleviate part of my perfectionism and bring my perception more in line with reality--in other words, I worry less and post more.
      

      • 

    • 

      The times when I post the first draft, I've usually turned the idea around in my head for a while or talked it through with friends. The times I need more drafts are usually because the idea is vague and I don't know how to structure before transmitting it in words.
      

      • 

    

    • 

  • 

    The quality of comments my writing gets here is astounding. I do not feel like I'm yelling into the void.
    

    • 





(This comment took somewhere between thirty and forty minutes to make as a point of comparison. I have no idea if that is a lot or a little. It feels like it is so much more than it should be).




There's a lot to unpack here probably, if you're willing to bear the discomfort.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Some thoughts on the trajectory of Elon Musk
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Good luck!


I'd love to hear how you like things there after you've had a few weeks to settle in.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Some thoughts on the trajectory of Elon Musk
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Not based on fact, but I see it as extremely likely given that:


    

  • 

    SpaceX and Tesla both have a reputation of having people put in crazy weeks.
    

    • 

  • 

    Musk recently warned Twitter employees to brace for 80h weeks soon.
    

    • 

  • 

    The industry, as a whole, has extremely high variation in working hours. Some engineers get by working 20 or less hours per week, others work 80h+. In my own experience, I've seen a similar divide just between teams in the same company.
    

    • 



I'm happy to learn otherwise though. Working at a Musk company would allow me to make my work-time more productive rather than treating it as a paycheck machine that allows me to productively use my non-work time.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Some thoughts on the trajectory of Elon Musk
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I mean look how happy these people are. An MTGA (Make Tech Great Again) movement is uprising!




My subjective perception of this is that there is a huge silent majority who just wants to code things. A large part of that group just wants to go to work, do stuff, and get money. A small part wants to hack away on cool shit, have fun, and talk shop with like-minded people. I think this way because the amount of eye-rolling and sighing when anything DEI-related comes up is becoming more and more visible (& audible). It's why so many people stayed at Twitter.


My own bet for the industry is that, in the short term, it will divide itself into companies where this silent majority can do what it wants and companies that continue to engage in ritualistic bureaucratic diversity. There are quite a few good engineers in the latter camp, but over the longer term, I think more engineers will gravitate toward the first group.


The big unknown quantity in this view is what are the younger, newer engineers, the ones just graduating, doing/thinking/planning. They're the ones most susceptible to listening to the loudest voices and may come in with a skewed perception and self-filter into the second (DEI) camp thinking that's the norm.


Also, if not for the 80h weeks, I would be applying to Twitter yesterday.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If there is agreement among Christians about anything, it is that the initiated Christian (however one understands initiation) no longer need worry about original or ancestral sin, but only their own.




Well I'll be damned. Maybe my memory of Christian theology is not as strong as I thought. Admittedly, it's been quite some time since my teenager years when I did most of my exploration. I'll have to revisit this branch of knowledge at some point so that I don't make an ass out of myself again.


Thank you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
At least a few local flavors of Catholicism that I've come to contact with (thinking Eastern Europe, specifically).


I've just become aware that in the Polish branch of the Catholic church, the part of the confession when you ask God for forgiveness differs from a few English versions I've sampled just now. It includes a piece that goes a little something like "(...) my fault, my fault, my great, great fault (...)". I think this describes the general spirit of describing man as forever tainted.


Edit: I just realized that something I thought as core to my knowledge about Christianity may very well not be true (https://www.themotte.org/post/193/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/35768?context=8#context) and may, instead, be a distortion of memory.