> Actually doing something effective about a problem sometimes means not doing anything that sounds like solving that specific problem is your real goal. And that's kind of a tough place to go mentally and emotionally for most people.
Can you give an example? I feel like there is a really key insight here but I'm having trouble parsing it.
Sorry, I'm looking for something and just happened to trip across this and am seeing it for the first time.
I am an environmental studies major who wanted a career in urban planning and I spent years homeless and most stuff aimed at "helping the homeless" does little or nothing to solve the problem. A lot of it is just crisis management -- helping them eat one more day.
I have done a lot of analysis of the problem space and the single strongest factor in increasing rates of homelessness is rising rents (presumably relative to wages) and lack of adequate amounts of "affordable" (small space) housing appropriate to the actual needs of our current demographic and it's really, really, really hard to even try to talk about that in a nutshell because people have trouble readily understanding what I'm saying at all. Phrases like "affordable housing" seem to just trigger a lot of people and not convey at all what I am trying to describe.
So I increasingly just blog about housing solutions and feel like it's mostly pointless to try to talk about "helping the homeless." I want our housing issues solved and that means largely disengaging from discussions about homeless people.
I want to see fewer people on the street and that means we need to solve our housing crisis and most people don't see it that way at all.
I feel like I already said that above but maybe not or maybe that helps clarify something for you.
Yes! Chaos Theory was my introduction to Tobin as well. As a teenager, I had no interest in music before then, being exposed only to my mom's soft rock CD collections and whatever pop music used to play on the radio. I was surprised to discover later that his music was used for the Toonami intros on Cartoon Network so maybe I was primed to like him before then. [1] That took me down an entire rabbithole of "intelligent dance music" (Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, etc.) and today I mostly enjoy PC Music / Hyperpop which is similarly avant-garde with the way it uses samples or completely synthetic sounds (e.g. SOPHIE, Cashmere Cat, 100 Gecs, AG Cook).
Tobin did a really wonderful interview in 2008 that made me really appreciate electronic music more when I read it regarding how drum and bass is truly avant garde given its manipulative use of samples rather than simply looping beats or lifting long samples because they need a saxophone somewhere: [2]
> Rusty: It seems like now, your more recent music has been more synthetic, more digital and less samples? Is that correct? Or are you just tweaking the samples so much?
> Amon Tobin: It's really just about manipulation now. Like I said, back in the early nineties, it was interesting just to take samples as they were and see what you could do with them. And now, the technology has advanced so much more and there's a lot more room for maneuvers between synthesizers and synthetic processes applied to recorded material and sampled material. So there's much more of a hybrid going on now as far as I'm concerned and so my music is maybe now a little bit less easy to define in terms of is it sampled best or is it synthesized or is it just, you know, I guess, electronic, really.
> ...
> Rusty: I know. I was going back through some of my older CD's from that period, which I hadn't listened to in a while, and I was like "That was really good." I mean, it's super stylistic, so you tend to burn out if you hear a little too much of it.
> Amon Tobin: Well, the interesting thing about drum and bass is that it was, to me it felt like it was a genuinely forward-thinking type of music. People were really trying to do new things. They weren't trying to be nostalgic or relive some golden era of music in the seventies. It was all about 'Let's try and make something truly futuristic and do things with production that had never been possible before.' And that spirit still remains, as small as the genre is. It's influenced a lot of other types of music which are much more in the forefront now. So, you know, I think it's normal. These things go in cycles. Things become, you know, they become very much in the spotlight.
A very modernist take, pushing boundaries for its own sake. Contrast with pop music which is exactly the opposite, being rearrangements of standards.
Somehow I find his music is perfect for working with code. It feels like it really meshes with my mind in a way I've never found with other artists.
Also was sad to see he recently retired from live shows, but am glad I got to see him live several times several times in San Franciso. He shows were always mind-blowing and it's such a pleasure to see a master at work. Plus I respected how humble he was; his talent is far far beyond artists who are more financially successful, and he avoids the spotlight. I wish there was more available about how his mind works, because it must be very unique.
There's usually a team that is directly responsible for the part of the product that generates revenue, and management loves them. Every other team is basically just support and may be necessary but they don't get as much attention.
Not an expert, but if you read any of Keynes, he's basically critiquing classical economics and pointing out some of the ways it fails to explain economic cycles, hence the invention of macroeconomics.
Really? Classical liberal economics fails to explain business cycles? Then why is the Austrian School (dyed in the wool classical liberals) the only major economic faction that's developed the most comprehensive expose on how central banks cause malinvestment, booms and busts by fiddling with the money supply?
I don't think most Austrian econmists would self-identify as neoliberals. Politically they tend to be Libertarians (in the U.S.) or free market anarchists or minarchists (or I suppose laissez faire). Basically free-market instead of stat interventions. I belive most neoliberals quite readily accept state interventions, central banking etc.
The core tenent is that the free market is the best allocator of factors of production and entrepreneurial profit is the guiding factor. The state tends to interfere with this. It's best summarized in the socialist calculation debate.
However, there's also basically a split (mostly reconciled these days) betwen a more Hayekian wing which is more accepting of the mainstream (and could possibly self-identify as neoliberals) and the state in general and a wing that is more in the spirit of von Mises.
Disclaimer: just interested in the history of economics, not an economist.
You're a bit mistaken. Austrians are basically anti-statists who believe in limited government and non-intervention in the market - even to the point of opposing legal tender laws.
Keynes has to be THE most confusing and self-contradictory personality in orthodox economics. He had no original insights and the only reason political elites took a liking to him was because he gave them a logical, complicated copout for money printer to go brrrrrrr. He frequently changed his theories and ideas for political expediency and the idea that modern 'economists' take his teaching as gospel truth is just sad.
Murray Rothbard wrote an entire profile on the man [0] and I'd suggest anybody taking a stab at heterodox economics to read it.
I'd rather have some Keynes than get pissed on with some 'trickle down' economics.
I would say, I'd bet nobody having an argument about economics here has actually read much Keynes, or anything about classical/neo-liberalism. It all just turns into "I recognize some word related to the right, so I'll virtue signal and keep hyping it." Or more, "I see a free market economy argument happening, I must jump in and comment because markets are from God and I must support".
When dealing with Marxist or Keynsians (or modern monetary theorists for that matter) it is a safe bet that the people implementing the policies haven't read and don't intend to follow the theory.
So I am simultaneously shy of saying "Kaynes was wrong" and confident that anyone claiming "Kaynes was right and we must do suchandsuch!" is saying the wrong thing. Ditto the other theories.
The hyperfocus which is a symptom of ADHD helps give the tenacity needed to make progress when faced with frustrating challenges.
In engineering, tenacity is absolutely required to make any progress at all, but there are also seemingly infinite threads to pull on.
If you’re in hyperfocus mode and you’re working on something, you don’t run out of interesting side tracks or ways to keep digging down through the foundations under what you’re working on.
A lot of companies directly go against their users to enrich the owners, see Reddit right now. Just the rational move by companies that have established monopolies/oligopolies. Also companies that exploit negative externalities.
- There is a search cost of finding someone to trade with. Market makers streamline the process by always having a deal available. They might not offer you the best price you could get if you waited, but if you want to buy/sell a commodity right now you now have the option to do so, and probably removing the search costs from society as a whole is economically efficient.
- Special case of the above: They allow people who have want to trade huge amounts of a commodity a way to efficiently do so (no need to talk with multiple people; can do the trade all in one place).
- By making trading more efficient, society can get a better idea of the "true" price of things. Extremely important because prices guide investment. For example, if you're a farmer, and you're thinking about what crops to plant or a research lab thinking about where to focus your research. Having an efficient market with accurate prices ensures the economy grows at max speed.
If public shaming like that was attempted in the US, I imagine in some circles it would become a goal to repost on social media a photo of yourself on the system jaywalking. Probably holding a sign with some meme.
No, I agree. It's a slow movie, the acting and writing are kind of bad, and it failed to drive home the themes explored in the book its based on, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. The book asked what it meant to be human, and pointed out some of the ironies of humans claiming empathy is what makes humans human, while simultaneously being completely callous towards other humans (by abandoning the masses on a dying Earth) and androids (who are conscious but enslaved and doomed to a short lifespan), and intentionally manipulating their feelings with essentially drugs. It was an entertaining read, which I picked up after watching the movie and feeling similarly confused. The movie kind of missed all that.
The redeeming factor of the film for me was its visual style, which was innovative for its time, and defined the cyberpunk aesthetic that we are familiar with today. The dark dystopian ecumenopolis, neon lights, giant ads, flying cars, etc.
Also worth pointing out that there were several different versions of the film, and some of them have a worse ending than others.
I believe the movie focuses on what was about a page and a half in the book, and expands that into an entire movie. They're related, but you're right that they're not telling the same story.
Even so, Philip K Dick was apparently very enthusiastic about what Ridley Scott did with his story.
> I came to the conclusion that this indeed is not science fiction; it is not fantasy; it is exactly what Harrison said: futurism. The impact of Blade Runner is simply going to be overwhelming, both on the public and on creative people - and, I believe, on science fiction as a field. Since I have been writing and selling science fiction works for thirty years, this is a matter of some importance to me. In all candor I must say that our field has gradually and steadily been deteriorating for the last few years. Nothing that we have done, individually or collectively, matches B.R. This is not escapism; it is super realism, so gritty and detailed and authentic and goddam convincing that, well, after the segment I found my normal present-day “reality” pallid by comparison. What I am saying is that all of you collectively may have created a unique new form of graphic, artistic expression, never before seen. And, I think, B.R. is going to revolutionize our conceptions of what science fiction is and, more, can be. // Let me sum it up this way. Science fiction has slowly and ineluctably settled into a monotonous death: it has become inbred, derivative, stale. Suddenly you people have come in, some of the greatest talents currently in existence, and now we have a new life, a new start. As for my own role in the B.R. project, I can only say that I did not know that a work of mine or a set of ideas of mine could be escalated into such stunning dimensions. My life and creative work are justified and completed by Blade Runner
I haven't read the book, but I met a lot of people who tell me that after they read the book, they now hate the movie because the book was so much better.
Now after I read your comment, I realize they're just being snobbish.
Yeah, I love the book, but it's not "so much better". They're both great, but they're very different, despite some similarities. The movie tells a completely different story within the same events. Perhaps a less coherent story, but still a worthwhile one. But the movie is absolutely more about style.
Can you give an example? I feel like there is a really key insight here but I'm having trouble parsing it.