oats_son
14hr ago
Haha, I think only a vegan would recommend organic farming out of the blue like that. In the Midwest, not sure how many of those jobs there even are. I have a relative who worked in the farming industry, I helped out a couple days when I was a kid. Working with pig shit sucks. I thought management was something you worked your way up to.
oats_son
14hr ago
Genuinely, I don't know. No idea how I would figure it out, either. The idea has been suggested before, but I am at an impasse, because I'm the only one who programs there, so nobody else could judge. I did okay on my projects at school, though sometimes I lost all motivation to work on stuff if it looked too hard, and I had my share of real bad semesters.
oats_son
14hr ago
I don't find it bad difficult. I do struggle to comprehend what an actual programming job is like. I don't feel like my codebase is that complex, and when I do figure something out, it feels ultimately simple in hindsight. I use grep a lot to look up related functions, which works out most of the time, though sometimes I miss where something is being modified because it's too indirect to be found by grep.
You know, I think you might be right. I think I will dust it off and find something to put on it and fake it 'til I make it, just head to the library with my laptop. Maybe the industry isn't so bad after all. I guess no one here may know, anyway.
oats_son
15hr ago
Well, I have had some limited ability with it. Changing my Discord password to something I can't remember or access at work can help, as Discord is my biggest leech, but the problem is that I can waste time in a lot of different ways. Wikipedia, Google Maps, many things I would have to block that I think would probably not be great to block. I just need to find it within myself to focus, but some days, it's hard.
oats_son
18hr ago
If I had to be honest with you, I never really planned out retirement. I figured I'd probably work until I couldn't work anymore and then die somehow shortly afterwards, and let someone else take the money I had put into whatever funds instead of frittering it away on my own failing health. I always just wanted some way to live in a respectable way and live a relatively normal life, passion be damned, just do whatever you can tolerate.
oats_son
18hr ago
I don't actually hate it, I just find it difficult, mainly because I have gotten very good at amusing myself over the internet. I feel like I am slow to code and I do a lot of googling and a fair amount of thinking without coding when I am actually focusing on problems and not distracting myself from said problems. I don't know how much of that is normal (I suspect some, but not all, is), because I don't have any coworkers that code. I'm no hand with screwdrivers or drills, which makes me think I ought not look for another embedded systems job.
I don't know that there is much room in the industry for someone like me that has no passion for it, because hiring is getting tight and there is an oversupply of computer science graduates.
oats_son
18hr ago
I need some advice; I thought about making an alt and really getting my feelings out, but the more I thought about my problems, the less bad they seemed, somehow, once I accepted that something had to change, and it might turn out to be drastic.
I graduated with a bachelor's degree as a computer science major a couple years ago and got a job relatively in my field a few months after graduating: a programming job locally working with embedded systems. It does not pay a lot ($49k a year before taxes) and not much is expected of me, leaving my mind wandering frequently. I never actually figured out the assembly of the things, but programming them was easy enough. Some of the systems are in C, and some of the systems are in Python and PHP and also some C that I don't have to mess with much. Features are sometimes added, but for the strictly C systems, there's this big directory of code for many specific systems, some of them with very minor changes, and a lot of the time, the task is just to add a feature to a system that was already in another system, making the additions pretty simple. I don't feel like a real programmer. There is an HSA and a "parachute" healthcare plan, but no 401k. Very casual attitude. My boss is a bitch and he's difficult to talk to sometimes because of how petty he is, but he can't program worth a damn and he actually does have some good qualities to him. My commute is approximately 43 minutes, meaning I'm driving for an hour and twenty minutes every workday, and I am doing this because I live at home still with my mother. I work in a small town. I am in my late 20s. I have all my student loans paid off and I have $21k in the bank. I don't have any index funds or savings accounts or anything.
It's honestly not bad money, but there is not really room to grow. The plan was to work here for a bit and get some experience, then join the industry proper, but... well, I feel like I suck at programming, and the industry is shrinking, and I don't know if there will even be an industry, a proper pipeline, in a couple of years. I am really reluctant to start job searching for these reasons.
Given all these facts, I am a little lost on where to direct my life from now on. I'm going to list every option I have thought of so far:
- Move out to be a lot closer to my job. Actually not the worst idea, now that I think about it. It's okay money for a single man, but I would be giving up the career. To be honest, careers seem like they're opposed to human life. Endless competition and bureaucracy, all for more money in an increasingly high cost of living area where you don't actually have a substantially improved living standard.
- Start job searching for an actual industry job. Again, really unappealing to me. The thought of presenting such a false image of myself as someone competent is quite repulsive, and I don't know that I have enough actual accomplishments on my resume to get any chances. I almost feel worse off than when I graduated, but I actually can't say I regret my decisionmaking.
- Do something else entirely. This thought scares me, but I've thought of
- Enlisting as a military linguist. The commitment is terrifying to me, and I find it hard to believe they would take me, since they have a new system to catch all your medical history and I have a suicide attempt from nearly a decade ago on my record.
- Trades. Every computer scientist friend I have has brought this up as an alternative (specifically plumbing and welding), and I am more than a little skeptical. People in the trades seem like they develop substance addictions at a pretty high rate, and it's hard work, and you get shit pay in your first years, and hazing from seniors and I think there's a bunch of accreditation you have to get, and your body potentially gets ruined, and to make the big bucks you have to own your own business which is a risk a lot of people won't want to take.
- Go back to school and get a master's degree in something. If I did this, it would be geology, I think, since you can do that anywhere and it's fun to learn about and I already got all the math I need from computer science and I actually minored in geology. I don't like the idea of going back to school, though, because it was difficult enough the first time. I got pretty sick of college since it took me a long time to get through, with a break when covid hit, and I assumed that my life would get better and the existential crises would stop once I started earning money and being useful. That didn't happen, so I guess that kind of thing is just going to stay with me no matter what I do. That knowledge would actually help bear through college again, I think.
I think I have given up on starting a family, which makes these decisions easier. I know this forum is pretty pro-natal, and I had flip-flopped on the issue for a while, but I tend to forget what abject misery feels like until I feel it again. If it's genetic, I don't want my kids to feel it. I guess I'd be open to adoption, in that case, but that's expensive.
I know the answer for what computer science majors should do now hasn't got a consensus, but any advice I can get would be very appreciated.
oats_son
21hr ago
Sorry to hear that about your cousin. I find that it's hard to say much on suicide deaths. They inherently create a lot of guilt in everyone around them, and I frequently hear people say "what a selfish thing to do" or blame them in some other way. Personally, life is just really difficult, and I can't say I don't understand someone who was already having a hard time of it for a long time deciding to check out. It is too bad that he couldn't figure out a better way.
As for snatches: the kettlebell book you linked me mentioned that they tear up hands pretty bad. Is there some reason you're throwing yourself at the goal this hard? The typical test is 100 snatches in 5 minutes, isn't it? Surely there are other ways to target those muscle groups. I think you should take it easy on the snatches.
I haven't actually learned the snatch yet, but I did manage to finally figure out the clean, though I am not using it in the intended way. I clean it once and then do 5 overhead press reps. I follow the previous routine I was doing: 3 sets of overhead press (5 reps) and 3 sets of pull ups (as much as I can manage, 5 intended but I can never do more than 3 good ones) on day A, 3 sets of push ups (10 reps, 20 reps last set) and 3 sets of high pulls (10 reps, 20 reps last set) on day B. My high pull is probably not what Pavel pictured, either; swinging so close to my face scares me, so I just pick it up and pull it high with no horizontal momentum. I am sort of butchering the workouts listed in the book, but it's closer to what I actually want to do for now, so I guess I'm going to keep it. I like the kettlebell a lot.
I thought you were FiveHourMarathon while reading this, which made it surprising when I read his comment below just now.
oats_son
5d ago
This state of affairs reminds me of Kyle Rittenhouse a bit. One guy shooting three other guys? He has to be in the wrong, right? He's so violent. Well, actually, he's only violent because everyone around him is forcing him to be, and they're actually the unreasonable ones. But a lot of people disagree, some of them partly because they don't see the unreasonable ones as so unreasonable.
oats_son
5d ago
It's probably not something I should make a habit of, but I feel compelled to give some support to Israel here. Israel didn't steal any land any more than anyone else won or lost land before and after World War II, but the difference is the reaction to them has been way crazier because they planted themselves in the middle of a sea of extremists based around a nucleus of religious sites (geez, how many holy sites are Muslims entitled to? The Jews just have a few right there, right?). Much blood has been spilled because there was no postwar liberal consensus in the Middle East as there was in Europe. The postwar liberal consensus had to be created by Israel basically all by itself, with limited success, as the situation in Gaza shows. Israel was making some serious progress on a two-state thing, but that whole deal was killed by rampant terrorist attacks, and due to these sustained attacks, the Palestinians have never been farther from their own state. That's never what they wanted, anyway; they want everything, river to the sea.
Israelis are considered more valued by both sides. You can see this based on the prisoner exchanges between Hamas and Israel. Always, Israel releases hundreds or thousands of militants in exchange for a handful of their own soldiers or civilian hostages. Hamas is glad to accept these deals that bear the implication that one Israeli is worth thousands of Gazans, so I can't blame anyone for believing it's true. But disproportionate casualties have always been acceptable in war, which is what this is. Those civilian to militant casualty ratios are not even out of the ordinary for war. Massive assaults on civilians have also always been a decent cause for war, especially ones committed by the literal government of a territory.
If Israel is an ethnostate (it probably is), it's not a very good one. Do you think that Nazi Germany would accept having a populace composed of 20% Jews?
Normally, I find the idea of actual genocide to be pretty terrible. Ethnic groups and DNA and culture are fascinating to me, and to see something like that die entirely is a huge bummer. Gaza tests this value of mine. Never has a people been more problematic than them and never has a people been more determined to reject their lot in life. Basically their entire purpose nowadays is to take back every square inch of Israel, no matter how impossible that is, no matter how many people on their own side and on the enemy side are killed. Before the 20th century, they absolutely would never have been tolerated. They would have been, at the very least, brutally slapped around until a huge percentage of the population was dead and the rest was too weak and scared to retaliate. If this is not done, this conflict will likely never end. Even forcibly moving every Gazan out of the area probably would not fix the problem, because they are extremely intent on getting their territory back, and distance does not stop the likes of the Houthis and the Iranians either.
I am a little fascinated by the right wingers who do not like Israel. For them, it's generally a much more obvious case of antisemitism than it is for left wingers. My father introduced me to the fact that antisemitism is really, really old in Europe. For Christians, it makes a lot of sense; they were a very radically different group that lived in close proximity to them, considered sinners, forced into a universally disliked profession as bankers, and there is some basis for the idea that they killed Christ and called down a blood curse upon themselves. This, plus random grievances accumulated throughout the centuries just from tallying up every negative incident they could find. For the non-religious, I do not know why they would dislike Jews in particular. My best guess is conspiracy reasons related to Hollywood or perhaps certain Holocaust deniers. If anyone here is agnostic or atheist or otherwise not a Christian, and really doesn't like Jews, please let me know your reasons. I'm interested, scientifically. My father really liked Jews before his, uh, awakening, and he hated Muslims. Now he basically loves Gazans and hates Jews, while still mostly hating Muslims in Europe.
oats_son
5d ago
Regarding culture war aspects of this: I predict more Israel Bad posts everywhere. I have already seen some on reddit saying they'd rather that Iran have nukes than Israel because Israel has been the main aggressor in the region since its existence and Iran having nukes would help reign them in. I doubt we'll get huge rallies of people shouting "Free Iran!", though.
oats_son
6d ago
I found out recently that Google Translate, when translating from English to Japanese, will translate "gooner" to "Arsenal fan", no matter the context. I know what you're really doing by being an Arsenal fan.
oats_son
7d ago
Others will have better things to say than me, but I think women like it when you're actually interested in them and eager to bed them. NoFap helps on that front. Any other benefits they claim, I would be pretty suspicious of.
oats_son
7d ago
That's what we started with, remember? No magic. So we are in agreement here.
No, that's actually not what we started with. Did you read this thread in its entirety? I'm not convinced we really disagree with each other, I was assuming you came in here in defense of Tenaz's writings.
Tenaz writes:
I don't believe prayer is guaranteed to achieve results--for that to happen I'd need a perfect understanding of who God is, rather than a pretty good one. I just think it raises the odds, basically proportional to how good my understanding of God is (and reality, too).
Furthermore, he writes regarding the probability of your lost dog coming back:
Human reasoning isn't perfect but I do think it's capable of overcoming this sort of error with enough study. The dog will probably come back eventually, so if you want to use [dog comes back] as your test of prayer then it probably needs to be focused on timing. How long does the dog normally take to come back? How long did it take to come back when you prayed for it? A few of my desired outcomes were this sort of test (though a bit less trivial).
And in this separate comment he linked:
Recently my (quite remote) ward was broadcasting stake conference. There were 3 2-hour sessions to be broadcast, including 2 which would contain highly-anticipated talks (sermons) from a church higher-up. Unfortunately, the broadcast wasn't working. So the wonderful members of my ward sat through 5 hours of screechy whines, the words of the talks only very rarely intelligible at all, and even then only for a second or two at a time. At this point there's only an hour left, everyone looks quite grumpy as they sit and bask in the sound of unholy microphone screeching, and I feel impressed to suggest that we pray for the sound quality to improve... ...So, the congregation thankfully went along with the suggestion, and the static immediately cleared up completely.
This is the magic I'm arguing against that I presumed you were arguing for. You think this is not correct, right? Does it make you an asshole who thinks people are stupid to disbelieve this and straight up tell him there was no correlation?
oats_son
7d ago
You make some great points, but not any that I don't already agree with. I fully admit that greater wellbeing and protection against addiction are great things and can reasonably be attributed to belief in God, prayer and everything else that goes with it.
Critically, @Tenaz's posts are going outside the scope of this and claiming that prayer can positively affect factors outside of your control, as long as you're praying for things that God wants. If he kept inside the scope you and FCfromSSC typically stay within when you talk about prayers being more about relationship with God, I would never have posted what I did.
I wish more people mentioned the tower of Siloam as you have. The Christians I have talked to have not noted its significance, and they don't usually have very well reasoned responses to my problems of evil, which goes against what @AnonymousActuary says when he writes
though it seems like you are just hoping bringing up the problem of evil will somehow magically turn someone atheist again like they've never thought about it in their life?
Many of them have not thought about it.
oats_son
7d ago
Are you sure? If somebody prays and becomes a better person, father, wife, child, boss - it is only a selfish benefit or does it have a wider effect?
Of course that's a good thing, and if prayer gets you there, that's great. But it is no magic bullet. I don't really like your magic serum analogy for the same reason. While there are a lot of addicts who find salvation to be the way out, I have to imagine there are many pounds of dead bodies who tried it and found it lacking. And, furthermore, Tenaz's post goes outside of the scope you're setting. He tested more than just addictions, and presumably, material outcomes that didn't depend on himself.
What if the serum only worked for gay people? You should just go gay, right? That's impossible for a lot of people. What if it required you to believe in astrology?
You are assuming winning studies is the only goal anybody could reasonably pursue. For some people, it could be true. But it's certainly not true for all people. There's a lot to life beyond winning studies.
Tell that to the Creation Research Society, bashing their heads against an Old Earth over and over again, presumably for preaching the faith to skeptics who have heard the evolution lie. If they throw themselves at that complicated problem of radiometric dating and rock layers over and over again, they really ought to be throwing themselves at the much easier problem of verifying prayer. It would be super cheap and testable anywhere, compared to copious use of labs for dating of various samples. If it was verifiable, anyway.
Obviously some winning studies would be exceptionally helpful to the faith. Most Christians are tired of losing the battle against science by now.
If people claim there's a thing that works for them, you certainly can disbelieve them and think they are just stupid. But at some point you'd have to ask yourself - what exactly you're getting from believing so many people are stupid? Is that working well for you?
I can't say I get anything out of knowing that prayer has no material effect on outcomes outside of yourself. But sometimes, the truth hurts.
I'm not going to say anyone's stupid for believing it. Many very smart people believe much more plainly false things. I'm probably going to say something if I know it's plainly false, especially on a forum dedicated to searching for the truth. Or as close as you can get to anything called truth.
oats_son
7d ago
Obviously prayer does do something, if you're counting spiritual feeling or literal mouth movements as "something". If you read this far down in the thread, hopefully you remember the original claim causing me to post at all, but since you asked what I meant by "does anything":
But what really brought me back was simple, undeniable, tangible evidence. I decided to try to pray for something (freedom from an addiction I had) and the result was spectacular, far beyond anything I'd have expected. I then set about more formally testing prayer and related things and found consistent, similar results.
It's just plain false that there is undeniable tangible evidence to anyone except the prayermaker themselves. If it wasn't, all kinds of religious organizations would be falling all over themselves commissioning study after study.
I used to pray, and not as a magic ATM, but there's only so much placebo can do for you once you know it's placebo.
oats_son
8d ago
I do appreciate your sincerity, and your honorable attempts to explain the gospel remind me of the valiant and zealous missionaries of the past, as shown in movies like Black Robe (1991). Growing up, I thought Mormons were really weird, and you are another in a long string of non-weird Mormons who challenge that stereotype. I thought the same about Catholics, as well, until @SubstantialFrivolity made a post giving quite the steelman of the branch. Like him, you are perfectly willing to wade into the difficult stuff.
With that out of the way. My wife read what I wrote here and told me (in nicer words) that I was being excessively callous and autistic. Sorry about that. What I wrote was not even correct, really--God doesn't ever want his children to commit suicide. But he'll also never make a choice on our behalf. His ability to step in without harming our agency is ultimately pretty limited.
No problem. To be honest, you did articulate something that it is not polite to think, yet I think many people think it privately to themselves - that some unpleasant lives would be better off if they were not alive. It is humanitarian to strive for the best for everyone, and that they continue living for as long as possible, but in many cases, the thought springs up anyway. If we actually take that thought seriously, we get some scary hypotheticals, like "at what point is it acceptable for lifelong chronic depressives to just give up and step into traffic", or "maybe you should kill your kids so they don't get a chance to lose the faith as adults". And if it was okay for her, as an abuse victim who was awfully messed up herself, to take her own life, then that has bad implications for other people who struggle with chronic depression or bad childhoods. I shouldn't have gotten mad at you, though, especially since you realized your mistake later anyway.
I hope she will be okay too, but an entire childhood of fundamentalism telling me that people who commit suicide go to hell and unbelievers go to hell cannot be washed away by the same fundamentalists backstepping with "God is perfectly just, so you can trust Him to make the right decision". You didn't say that, but there are so very many interpretations of the Bible that many people who genuinely were looking to God to give them the interpretation came to it. All of them genuinely feel their way is the right one and can cite scripture and cite their own internal spiritual uplifting upon praying. For Mormonism, the problem is even more acute, as @TracingWoodgrains found out through testing Moroni's Promise on an open minded Christian.
For these reasons, and more, I am afraid my faith is permanently disrupted. I don't think it's a good thing, so I appreciate your defense anyway.
oats_son
8d ago
I'm not asking anyone to become atheist. But the idea that prayer does anything is chafing enough to me to cause me to comment. As I said elsewhere, I think religion is healthy, though I struggle to accept the good with the bad.
oats_son
8d ago
I know Trace messes around with AIs a lot just to see what the machine can say, especially after some training on progressive wrongthink. I'd guess for most people, it's just a tool to idly wonder about the world. I wondered idly if there were tsunamis before life existed on Earth, and that question hadn't been directly answered, but Google Gemini took some evidence about possible tsunami deposits from a certain time period to deduce that they did exist. There are lots of weird questions I have that I can freely ask an AI about, if it isn't too edgy.
As for talking to it in sincerity, I think that's the realm of children and actual weirdos who form cults or kill themselves based on a machine. Wasn't there an article about a man who developed a God complex from talking to one? Otherwise, maybe if you're super bored? I would never myself, of course...
oats_son
8d ago
To be clear, I am the one that made that point that ackshually AI is good. The original artist made no such claim, just a complaint that graphic design requirements for musicians make no sense and nowadays has the added benefit of occasionally getting you into AI shitstorms.
oats_son
9d ago
One of my favorite bands just took a bunch of AI accusations, I guess, and he wrote a somewhat-pissed Substack post. That lead singer doesn't often step into culture war stuff, but this was close enough, I think:
Unfortunately, as soon as we released the other day, people started accusing us of using an AI image. Now, I want to be clear, this is not an AI generated image, and I have the layered design files to prove it, but I get that it has certain features which can easily make someone think it is, particularly the similar-ish smiling faces. And everyone is talking about AI nowadays, and so they’re all primed to think it is AI. Seriously: Fair enough, I’m not blaming anyone. But I’ve seen the design templates, it really isn’t.
and goes on to say that fighting AI art in this way is fruitless:
And so, there is no “solution” to the problem of AI imagery other than the one the Luddites came up with over two centuries ago: smash the machines. Until we can actually smash the machines (literally or semi-literally), the AI will just get better and better until no-one can tell. This day is fast coming. So, I think we should either start figuring out how to smash the machines or accept our fate. There is no middle way. And so, with all due respect for those honorable people who just hate AI and want real art to prevail, calling out artists because you think you can “tell” is just another one of those doomed middle ways.
I regret that the culture war is poking random people in a new way in the last couple of years, and I can't help but cynically laugh at it. Not to mention how short-sighted it is. In that post, the lead singer details how much of a pain it is to do graphic design for music, and videos, and other art, and he hates it. Imagine if you could get a machine to do it? Also, it actually lifts up people who do not have money and allows them to make art like the people who have money do. Look at this VEO 3 shitpost. Genuinely funny, and the production value would be insane if it was real, for a joke that probably wouldn't be worth it. But now, someone with some Gemini credits can make it. This increases the amount of people making things.
I'm not sure I have any real thesis for this post, but I haven't been very good at directing discussion for my own posts, so, reply to this anecdote in any way you see fit. I thought it was interesting, and a little sad.
oats_son
9d ago
I am not really the person to make the point, anyway. I saw @Hoffmeister25 make the point much better than I can, and if @FCfromSSC had any satisfying response to it, he sure didn't seem to post it there.
But it's an old question: the problem of evil, the problem of random things inherent in nature hurting you for no reason. Why are there so many things that are absolutely awful, caused by immutable nature, and are only explainable to us modern humans? To ancient humans, it seemed functionally equivalent to being smitten by God to get tuberculosis and die slowly. They likely thought that prayer had something to do with getting bubonic plague and dying, similar to Tenaz's idea that prayer causes better outcomes. The Aztecs thought that sacrificing people was statistically likely to keep the world from ending. Perhaps they sacrificed something and felt some sign from God twitch within themselves. But they couldn't have been further from the truth. Do you think we modern humans are more pious than ancient humans? Not a chance.
I have seen from some young earth creationists the idea that it's because humans are fallen ever since the Tree of Knowledge was eaten from by Adam and Eve. But that only works in a young earth model of the world. If there is no young earth, there was no Adam and Eve, and we are just animals, and the world was always fucked up, right from the start, before any human was involved at all.
In this case, I'd say a lot of that probability mass should be taken from the theory that being alive was actually good for her--that what you were praying for is actually what you would have wanted with full knowledge of all the details.
Ha. Haha.
I have sometimes thought that someone being dead means that you will never worry about them again, because their story has ended; they are right where you left them, and you will always know where they are, what their status is.
Offense taken, all the same. What an absolutely awful way to view life. I suppose everyone who is dead is better off dead, otherwise they wouldn't be dead, right? Not to mention the conclusion that perhaps the suicidal ought to take their own lives since their earthly ones suck so bad.
Regardless, I wish you the best in your theories, though I will continue to doubt them.
From where I sit, I can't really detect any reasoning at all in decisions like this? How could the law possibly fail under heightened scrutiny, given the fact that it's banning a treatment for certain off-label uses for both sexes? Leftist political argumentation baffles me, and looking at all the different ways to analyze things in a conservative way (textualist, originalist, etc), I fail to find any similar differentiation on the left side of the law. This isn't the first time I've felt this way about left wing judges. They seem to be far more activist. In defense of the low IQ remark, I recall Justice Jackson having some really dumb dissents, though I do not recall any right now.
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