E.O. Wilson's published work was read by Will Wright, creator of SimCity / The Sims / SimAnt, and the material is what inspired him to create SimAnt :)
Will has also stated that the pheromone system designed for SimAnt was repurposed to be used in The Sims! Very interesting stuff if you ask me :)
There are certain areas where the popular opinion is irrelevant. Warren Buffet said this in a more folksy way,
“It’s very important to live your life by an internal yardstick,” he told us, noting that one way to gauge whether or not you do so is to ask the following question: “Would you rather be considered the best lover in the world and know privately that you’re the worst — or would you prefer to know privately that you’re the best lover in the world, but be considered the worst?”
> “Would you rather be considered the best lover in the world and know privately that you’re the worst — or would you prefer to know privately that you’re the best lover in the world, but be considered the worst?”
Both of those options sound terrible. It's a curse either way. I'd rather be known as publicly as "better than average" and privately know that I'm doing pretty well/my best.
If forced to pick between the two though, being publicly known as 'the best lover in the world' would seem most likely to present more opportunities to improve my skill/confidence. It's still a lot of pressure nobody needs.
The options aren't meant to be realistic. They're only meant to tease out which side you personally have a preference for, by making you think about how these two extreme options make you feel. One probably feels worse than the other.
I mean, considered by whom? I'd like my partner's assessment of my ability as a lover to be more positive than my self-assessment. The reverse just sounds sociopathic.
I've been in rental cars that I wouldn't buy based on driving them for 5 minutes. IMHO, a test drive is to confirm the car basically works. Some of the value is just from sitting in the car, but is there any thing terrible going on with steering, visibility, pedal feel, shifting, etc.
For my car shopping, I've usually been locked into a model before I visit the dealer/private party, but if I test drive a car and it drives like some of those rentals, I'd be back to looking at other things. I also just recently test drove a lower trim / different engine/transmission configuration vehicle than I wanted, because that configuration was available to test drive and the desired one wasn't... and I was pleasantly surprised by the drivability, so I broadened my search (helps that the configuration I wanted is more expensive and less produced; it's easier to compromise towards something that I might be able to buy for less)
Yep, I've never gotten anything out of the test drive either - my mind was already made up based on price/features when I went to the dealership. I'm more-or-less just looking for something that gets me where I need to go safely, I don't care about "handling." My last car purchase (a Nissan Sentra) I didn't even bother with the test drive, I felt it would just be a waste of time.
The other thing is that some "car people" that I know will rent a car before purchasing it because the test drive is far too superficial for them.
I already answered in the comment you are replying to -
"my mind was already made up based on price/features"
and
"I'm more-or-less just looking for something that gets me where I need to go safely."
I know that "car guys" can't fathom this but I've driven a LOT of car models (as I've rented a LOT) and they are (mostly) the same to me; I consider cars almost a commodity. I wouldn't even know how to compare vehicle "handling."
>You’ve driven a lot of car models yet you wouldn’t know how to compare handling?
Correct. I've also been driving for a quarter of a century.
>That claim seems disingenuous, in order to serve up a point.
>You most certainly would be able to differentiate and compare
No I wouldn't. I swear to you I'm not lying. A car is a car to me. There are different sizes and some are a bit more comfortable than others but they are mostly the same to me. I don't even know what "handling" even means, I've never had a car behave unexpectedly when turning the wheel.
In sure I would notice a difference if I was racing or something, but I'm not, I'm just going to the god damn grocery store.
>We buy so many things "sight unseen" because of the quality and reliability.
Name 1 or 2 other things you buy "sight unseen" that are remotely close to the cost of a new vehicle.
>I will buy a reliable car sight unseen like I bought my big screen t.v.
If you have zero preference for the multitude of ways even similar cars can vary, you aren't an average car buyer. Most people care about these things, be it sight lines, headroom, where the chargers are, driving dynamics...
>Name 1 or 2 other things you buy "sight unseen" that are remotely close to the cost of a new vehicle
That question cannot be answered, we all know that nothing is comparable to that price in an average household's shopping list.
But a few years ago a shoe purchase was in store only but a month ago I bought a new pair online. Because I knew that I could try it and return it easily.
> I will buy a reliable car sight unseen like I bought my big screen t.v.
A few years back I was convinced I wanted a certain model Hyundai (Elantra), researched the hell out of it, figured I didn't even need to test drive as I had owned the previous model. Got to the dealership, sat in the drivers seat and found there was no headroom. I'm not that tall, but the new model was so "aerodynamic" (swept back windshield) that it felt claustrophobic. I bought another model (Sonata).
You are using “React-like” to mean something people don’t usually attribute to React, hence why there’s so much confusion in the comments. React did not invent component-driven code organization. I would say React is better known for reactive, declarative UI code (the reason for its name) and JSX.
It’s not even JSX-like templates in Go because one of the biggest advantages of JSX is that for any logic you just use JavaScript instead of having to learn a template language. It’s extending HTML in JS rather than extending HTML to allow for scripting. I agree with the parent comment that this is more like the Go version of ASP.NET templates.
Also, if you are not fighting a war and your workplace is so toxic that you have to take military grade advice on stress reduction then you should look for a new job.
I went to basic training and looking back on it, it's almost funny how easy it was compared to other training and situations I was in, but RELATIVE to my life up to that point it was way harder than anything I had experienced as a high schooler. and relatively speaking it was harder than any other training that came later that was actually more challenging. I'm not sure if that makes sense but i'm agreeing with you.
It’s kinda weird how that works out. You’d think that every time you experienced something that was harder than anything you’d done before it would be a big deal, but apparently, basic training works on a meta-level. Instead of learning how to get through that particular hard experience, you learn that you can always get through a harder experience than you’ve ever dealt with before.
You can be a civilian and tasked with rerouting | patching the navigation and steer by wire systems of an oversized fishing trawler refitted to perform seismic survey while the majority of the crew fight a fire underneath the kerosene filled cable spools (with kilometers of microphone cables) during a monsoon storm.
That's fun, luckily most people in such situations tend to be pragmatic task solving types and few are loose cannon BP observers bouncing about screaming "I'm a teapot!" and "The pirates will get us if we don't drown!"
You don't have to be in the military to get caught up in surprise popgun atomic testing twixt India and Pakistan - you just have to be the bunny that took on a radiometric survey contract at third hand.
In hindsight these, and other adventures, are all part of the job and not worth quitting over.
As long as you're not the type that gets in a flap about every shipboard fire and runs about like a headless chicken, of course.
"while the majority of the crew fight a fire underneath the kerosene filled cable spools (with kilometers of microphone cables) during a monsoon storm."
That reads like a scene from a distater movie. I am talking regular people with day jobs!
Also, your use of India / Pakistan while you could have used any other nuclear power smells of prejudice.
That was my day job, designing building, field testing seismic mapping systems. Lots of coding, lots of firmware, some hardware.
> Also, your use of India / Pakistan while you could have used any other nuclear power smells of prejudice.
Or simply that I'm not old enough to have been over the Monte Bello's test site when it was live, whereas we were contracted to fly radiometric surveys over the Pokhran-II test site on the day of the first explosion, and crew were detained until after the completion of the Chagai-I response.
If it helps, I've flown over many a former test site, many a tailings pond for a uranium mine in many parts of the world. It's a dull fact that the Pokran-II site is the only such place that went 'live' on a work day (in my experience at least).
My job as a software dev is usually pretty cushy office job.
Then sometimes I get involved in seagoing expeditions or trials as part of it, and it changes a lot. Still very much a day job. I am not (that much of) a trained mariner. Definitely become witness to (and involved in) high-pressure situations, like "we have to winch this big yellow thing onto the deck, but it's too close to the aft and we can't reach it with the grappling hooks, it's dangerously close to getting sucked into the propellers, please please figure out how to fix the networking so we can send the CHANGE_HEADING command to get it to drift to a safe grappling distance".
It definitely does wonders for honing your Calm Problem Solving mode.
I imagine A&E probably can feel like a warzone at times. No doubt there are also other high stakes jobs (being a firefighter?) whom we all rely on so we can enjoy the privilege of not leading such stressful lives.
Just like with space exploration - it's good for the secondary benefits of observing humans at the limits to filter back to everyday life. In this case stress management
You can have a similar impact in your brain and body that fighting a war. Not only in a job.
As you said, one main difference is that you can quit your job but not the war. There is a detail: you can experience these feelings even if your job is not toxic.
"There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander."
There are plenty of ways to quit. E.g. deserting, self-wounding. You also got different forms of mutiny and "fragging" officers (not really quiting, but refusing to do the job).
As the M*A*S*H quote notes, war doesn't only involve combatants, but noncombatants, civilians, neutral parties, children, and future generations.
For the last, consider unexploded WWII ordnance routinely uncovered in Germany and the UK (an example of the latter only this week); mines in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, among many other theatres; Agent Orange and other chemicals utilised in various locations (including a sunken trove of mustard gas munitions aboard a US Liberty ship, the John Harvey, lost at Bari, Italy, during WWII); depleted uranium in Iraq and Afghanistan, amongst others; and the political disruptions of national borders drawn either ignorant of or to deliberately exploit local rivalries across the Middle East (Sykes-Picot), Africa, and the Indian subcontinent.
Even barring that, and allowing that there are long-term employment conditions (shipping, remote development, expeditions) which might be difficult to quit on a moment's notice, military service at the least has legal proscriptions on arbitrary quitting not found in civilian service.
Unfortunately you made it sounds like you deject what the page said, anyone taking the advices there is working in a toxic environment and should leave.
So he's playing both sides, like a true philosopher. The simple fact is, work for survival sake is often mind-numbing and soul destroying. Finding work you have a passion for that creates a positive impact in the world is something everyone should strive for, even the wealthy trust fund kids that don't need to lift a finger.
>> The simple fact is, work for survival sake is often mind-numbing and soul destroying.
This would be the government work. It isnt there to satisfy, it's there to keep a roof over your head. IF it was fun they would not PAY you would they?
>> In place of the old pleasures demanding intelligence and personal initiative, we have vast organizations that provide us with ready-made distractions - distractions which demand from pleasure-seekers no personal participation and no intellectual effort of any sort. To the interminable democracies of the world a million cinemas bring the same stale balderdash. There have always been fourth-rate writers and dramatists; but their works, in the past, quickly died without getting beyond the boundaries of the city or the country in which they appeared. To-day, the inventions of the scenario-writer go out from Los Angeles across the whole world.
The point he's making is to find that passion elsewhere, make music, play sports ... DO rather than CONSUME. And that everyone should do this in all things. These are the "pleasures" and they should be enriching you via your participation not your passivity.
>> Finding work you have a passion for that creates a positive impact in the world is something everyone should strive for
No one wants to work at the DMV, no one dreamed that in their child hood. But we need people to do it... he's speaking out against them going home and sucking down film, tv, tiktok rather than DOING things that enrich their minds and bodies.
>> So he's playing both sides, like a true philosopher.
> No one wants to work at the DMV, no one dreamed that in their child hood. But we need people to do it... he's speaking out against them going home and sucking down film, tv, tiktok rather than DOING things that enrich their minds and bodies.
That same DMV work + household chores + family would not give time and energy enough for someone to participate actively in whatever kind of activity by the end of the day. I agree mostly that doing things is better than just consuming, but unfortunately the bigger part of the population just aren't able to do it.
>>> That same DMV work + household chores + family would not give time and energy enough for someone to participate actively in whatever kind of activity by the end of the day.
Does no one read any more?
This is the very nonsense his essay rages against.
You leave work and:
Buy yogurt on the way home, make sure your kid does piano practice and watch soccer on TV.
-- OR --
You buy milk on the way home, make yogurt with your kid, play soccer in the back yard and then amuse yourself by playing music in the evening.
Same time investment, less money spent better engagement and an enriched life.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6WYsM1nIbKs&t=55s&pp=2AE3kAIB
reply