This is not true. HN very much behaves like the rest. The hive mind here just keeps repeating the mantra while still downvoting dissenting opinions. Look at the other dead comment. Was that really bad enough to kill it? And from my experience, if you really challenge the powerful crowd you get vengeance killed all over the thread.
Also accounts here are not like on reddit. You gain power with accepted comments. That's the most echo'y power dynamic imaginable. If you don't play the old boy's game, you can't participate and shape the conversation.
So, HN, are you gonna give me voting rights or will you kill me, too?
However, I noticed the tone changed everywhere somewhat. I think I witness the pandemic's toll on people's capacity for empathy by the impulsive rudeness creeping into every niche subreddit I frequent.
Reddit became a shit show with Trump vs Clinton, but now people attack their own for every little sign of life.
We really need a better social network. Twitter, Reddit, HN, Facebook, ... They add little, but break a lot.
FWIW, I've also been noticing this in IRL/person situations:
> I think I witness the pandemic's toll on people's capacity for empathy
There's so many widely varying ways that effects of the pandemic can hit someone pretty bad (financially, mentally, of course physically, etc), and I think that part of the problem is that it's hard to see how real those problems are if you happened to not have suffered those particular hardships.
Personally I found this with isolation through lockdown. People who live with family, a partner or even just housemates seem to not quite understand what happens when the isolation creeps up on you (it creeps). Between the waves, when I could see people again, I could easily tell ones that did know, you could see it in their eyes if they talked about the lockdown period.
Same here as well. Just a different echo. Like, try to challenge the boys club here and get the elders' disaproval...
The problem is the voting. It's not inherently linked to the content's value to the discourse or even welfare of the collective. Wrong reward metric meets a brain evolved for social regulation in small groups of humans dependant on each other's survival. Like with all problems of modern humanity, we struggle with a novel abundance we created...
As someone with ADHD, I think I got an amplified impression on the issue at hand. These people are selling the fantasy of success/self-efficacy to those vulnerable people lacking executive functioning and prone to daydream their life.
I can't count how many "techniques" I came up with myself over the years. Enthusiastic, convinced and most importantly, of course, not successful. Motivated, getting-things-done people don't have some secret methodology, they have enough dopamine to take a risk in energy expenditure. You know which totally secret behavior will increase productivity? Taking a pill of amphetamine every morning.
Not saying y'all got ADHD, but there is a spectrum and it's not bullshit. If you constantly feel the need to explode tasks and compulsively need to get to the "root" of the problem, thoroughly prepare each new project, but got a hard time actually starting (or finishing) anything... Another guide is not your solution.
You need to learn to endure the unfair pain of extra boredom and the feeling (self)stimulatory deprivation; help your brain to dopamine with diet, with timing sugar and frequently exercise. Or get ADHD diagnostic, if things were like this since childhood and you always struggled. <3
I'm going to see a psychiatrist for the first time next week because I think I had ADHD. This has helped me think about exactly how I want to state my problem. That I lack executive function, that I can't focus on the things I need to focus on, that I have spent decades trying to create accountability systems that ultimately fail.
> help your brain to dopamine with diet, with timing sugar
Could you expand?
I have been on a strict diet the past few weeks and exercising every day, I do think it's helped but I am still stuck.
Another thing... You want a sincere diagnosis, based on what you got. Don't stress about finding the right words :)
There are a ton of other things, which overlap with ADHD symptoms. Bipolar PD, depression, hidden sleep problems (like apnea), anxiety, nutritional deficiencies, ... . Many of these things also come comorbid, unfortunately. Either way it's not an easy diagnosis and takes time to untangle.
Hey mate, just wanted to follow up, not sure if you will see this but I saw a psych a few days ago and asked for the lowest dose of Vyvanse and got 10mg script. Took it for the first time today and .. it feels like a weight has been lifted. It's hard to describe. I am able to be self directed and do things, like my brain has been shackling me all my life.
It's like I could have a hobby now that wasn't an addiction, that I can enjoy an activity that isn't a compulsion.
Anyhow, thanks for your help.
I still have a long way to go to learn time management and be better self directed, but this time I feel like I have a chance.
I do want a sincere diagnosis but I am worried I won't be able to make progress if the doc is only with me for 15 minutes, as it has been in the past. Maybe that's just the medical culture in America.
The ADHD symptoms speak strongly to me, especially about focus and motivation. Anyhow I read all your replies, will give it a shot. Much appreciated.
No, actually meant sugar XD. But yeah, for the dopamine still. Otherwise your brain is looking for other sources. Stimulatory thoughts ("big ideas", exploding connections), or the usual procrastination with novelty mining. Sugar increases your "will power" by dopamine release.
Dopamine manages how long you can do a task before you evaluate its success; the risk of energy expenditure. Think of how long a path finding algorithm goes into one direction before aborting; with the evolutionary twist of a survival restraints on overall energy expenditure, which means there is a feedback loop modifying the risk capacity on success or failure.
Normal people start with more and overfill with completed tasks (if rewarding), so they got more for the next plan. That is, you got a bit of dopamine for putting on your pants in the morning. In ADHD you _constantly fight the lack of (non-abstract) motivation for such simple things, because you got a chronic deficit. Daily life already costs you a lot of "will power".
Thank you for explaining. The range of knowledge communicated in an understanding manner on HN never ceases to amaze me. Definitely feel I learn something every day!
I mean actual sugar. Glucose signals your brain to refill the energy expenditure risk capacity. With ADHD your brain isn't normal. It's more active, it burns more and has less capacity for risk in energy expenditure (putting off reward). You need a steady stream of fuel. (Not a giant load, slowly sip on some orange juice or even lemonade when you work your brain). Look up Russell Barkley lectures on youtube. He's generally regarded an expert in the field.
Yo. And check out /r/adhd! You won't learn how to cope there, since everybody just shares their "successful" techniques that they got going for a week ;)
But it's super helpful to see how other people are like you, that it's actually not your fucking fault (pretty much saved my life...), that you're not lazy, and so on. ADHD also comes with a burden on your social life, from coming late, being impulsive and too easily aborting friendships (the radicalism on alleged principles, which I mentioned at the learning part) and so on, so it's good to untangle all that in the stories of others. Also that sub doesn't try to sell you ADHD as a blessing, which is good. You may "benefit" from divergent thinking and creativity at times, which come with the loose and jumpy focus, but ultimately it's a heavy burden, which has a toll on your life and health.
Daily exercise lifts your dopamine "base level".
However, if you really got ADHD you wanna try Ritalin, or Vyvanse. These stimulants work differently in ADHD brains than normal ones. To give you an idea: Some people take a small dose Ritalin right before bed, to calm their thoughts. I was skeptical about meds, but then I read in ADHD these stimulants actually "normalize" the brain as a long term "side effect". How often do you read that about psycho-pharmaca? They come at cost tho, of course, first medication I got with "sudden death" as a side effect... I also have trouble holding my weight (going too low), which started to scare me a little.
Why do you think Saudi Arabia is slowly allowing women to participate? They need them in the workforce for an economically sustainable future. They know they are heading for crisis rapidly and investing hard to get out of there. However, they are ridiculously dependent on oil. Oil money is basically the whole country's sugar daddy (not for the slaves and foreign workers...). People don't really work there, they all just live off the oil money. Literally every aspect of their lives need to change.
I really doubt the rest of the world needs to be too concerned about them. They are pretty uniquely fucked and not that many people anyway.
> Why do you think Saudi Arabia is slowly allowing women to participate? They need them in the workforce for an economically sustainable future.
Do they? Has doubling the work-force helped Western economies? I think that Elizabeth Warren & others have questioned that idea - i.e. that the wages were reduced to compensate for the increased labour supply - although even if not beneficial for individual families it could still be beneficial for the economy as a whole (and especially for the capitalist class).
And coloring, well, a part of it would be composition and the rest should IMO temporary marketing coloring on top of the base composition (i.e. paint the bottle with something biodegradable).
Color should not be part of the standard as it would make the "support matrix" unsustainable and companies should not be allowed to "pass the buck" back to us consumers.
That's an immature picture you are drawing there. You pretty much always trust some authority with what's a fact and what's not and twitter isn't taking that away from you. Have you verified every evidence yourself, for the things you take as premises?! I doubt it.
So let's not get all trolly problem here, alright.
(1) What's something specific you get moderated for? What's the thing you wish to express but can't in today's social media landscape? Can those things be falsified and the condition for accepting evidence?
(2) I say, there _are social networks for _every niche and kink; the only reason you would feel limited in expression and participation would be you trying to expose people to your ideas not likeminded. You have no right to be heard in every community, all the time, no right win people over everywhere, with everything. People can chose against you and your words. That's their right. A community implicitly or explicitly choosing a moderator or moderation guideline, isn't that a very democratic dynamic, too?
(3) We all know the internet changed the assumptions on independent thinking, and ignorant opinions can triumph over facts easily, if they are simpler, more convenient, more stimulating, more viral. Do you really want to be heard or do you want to win?
(4) Do you speak up, when a comment here gets downvoted to void, because the boys took offense? Have you ever fought for visibility of an argument or opinion totally against your world view, in the name of unconditional free speech?
Was Jobs really that smart? Not sure that's the niche he filled successfully. More like Kinski, talented in some domain... but smart?! Jobs died pretty much by Dunning-Kruger effect, no?
People can be very intelligent on one area, and not as much in others.
There are many scientists who have very high standards for proof and evidence in their professional life, but accept other theories as truth without a shred of evidence in their personal lives.
Sure, but I think it's also easy to conflate success and talent with intelligence. I think many successful scientist are not particularly smart, but rather dilligent and educated; most innovation is not a leap, but a steady incremental progress which may accumulate in a "innovative" product at some point.
I don't know much about Jobs, that's why I asked. From what I got, he was rather a charismatic leader with a good intuition, but I wouldn't call those attributes intelligence per se. Is there any evidence for a particular intelligence of his?
If you know a thing or two about evolution, it should be obvious how these shortcuts will play out.
And still, you hear about similar metrics being used all the time... All over the place.
I suspect, in most cases, it's actually bad metrics stacked and really the manager trying to putting a metric on their own "contribution". (Parasitic isn't even the word, but rather viral or prionic...)
In the end, truly and reproducibly recognizing individual contribution is probably beyond human comprehension for any non-trivial tasks. Maybe your product actually benefits a lot from that one guy, who is just very good at promoting a good spirit, being fun to work with, rather than being the most proliferative coder. And how do you measure how hard a problem is? Does is matter who perceives it as hard in your team?
I think, it's one of those things, where trying to be clever will most likely make things much worse because the manual labor and personal involvement of the past actually was already best fitted for the task, by utilizing the human brain where it excels. Humans doing human things with humans, without being willfully ignorant about the complexity at hand.
It's always fun trying to explain to non-tech management the two truths of managing software development:
1. There is no objective measure of productivity that can be applied to software development.
2. Accurate estimation of development times is impossible (not difficult, actually theoretically impossible). All estimates of development times are wrong, some by more than an order of magnitude.
The second one is especially hard to grok for non-techies. I have to explain that if you insist on accurate estimates, you will get grossly padded estimates [0]. And the work will expand to fit the time available (sometimes resulting in the task exceeding even the massively padded estimates because the work expanded with the estimate). I've had many entertaining conversations attempting to explain this.
[0] Because every developer knows that an estimate will magically become a deadline.
> 2. Accurate estimation of development times is impossible (not difficult, actually theoretically impossible). All estimates of development times are wrong, some by more than an order of magnitude.
Personally now-a-days I care more about velocity. If the team can deliver the smallest value added to the system within a week, we are good. The more constant velocity the team has, the more Management trusts you to produce value and get their things done without the need to have massive estimation parties that almost always end up being wrong.
The sad thing is, once the velocity gets bogged up or waving (Org change, contantly changing directions,..) the estimation parties are here to stay and it's quite hard to get back to where the team was.
> 2. Accurate estimation of development times is impossible (not difficult, actually theoretically impossible). All estimates of development times are wrong, some by more than an order of magnitude.
Some are useful. The goal isn’t to be right in that there’s no award for perfect estimates, that would be stupid. But having an estimate, especially with relevance to multiple features is helpful.
At one time a team I worked on used “story point cards” and each person would estimate blindly and the discuss. It was interesting hearing people’s reasons behind their magnitudes.
Over time the story estimates got pretty good. But the number was completely useless objectively and made no sense when comparing teams or different projects.
> The second one is especially hard to grok for non-techies. I have to explain that if you insist on accurate estimates, you will get grossly padded estimates [0]. And the work will expand to fit the time available (sometimes resulting in the task exceeding even the massively padded estimates because the work expanded with the estimate). I've had many entertaining conversations attempting to explain this.
Sounds like Hofstadter's law.
"Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law."
Now think about money as a metric for human prosperity. Which creatures really roam the markets and where is mankind's place there? Is any dynamic stability of intrinsic value to us? (Not trying to be edgy, or deep, I just think those are the questions indeed usually not answered by free market enthusiasts.)
Also accounts here are not like on reddit. You gain power with accepted comments. That's the most echo'y power dynamic imaginable. If you don't play the old boy's game, you can't participate and shape the conversation.
So, HN, are you gonna give me voting rights or will you kill me, too?