Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a well known problem with some journalists, they simply can't finish their
You mean they can't finish their wo
It is incredibly infuriating and yet ye
Loneliness can be depressing, but it may have helped humans survive
11–20 of 46 posts
Re: Loneliness can be depressing, but it may have helped humans survive
#12Evolutionary Psychology is like Leibnitizian Optimisim [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds ] where God is replaced by evolution. It does nothing to aid in our understanding except to reassure us that everything that is is as it should be. It's essentially an ideology of apathy. Leibnitz's Argument goes like so: >1. God [Evolution] has the idea of infinitely many universes. >2. Only one of thes…
There is a profound difference between magical thinking and science. Once you build scientific frameworks (such as EP is part of), you can move much faster in interesting and useful directions that may seem unrelated and yet all connect together. For example I've used a lot of psychology (based on EP, not Freud) in constructing communities that build open source software. And we are using this thing called the "Inter…
> I've used a lot of psychology (based on EP, not Freud) in constructing communities that build open source software.
Very interesting. If it is not a secret, can you share a list of guidelines or tips?
Re: Loneliness can be depressing, but it may have helped humans survive
#13"3 points by wallflower 1 hour ago " Nothing against the article, but how is this #11 on the frontpage? Did HN make ranking easier recently?
Ranking is relative, so on less busy days (such as today's holiday in the US and Canada) stories with fewer points can be ranked higher than usual. You can always email questions like this to hn@ycombinator.com to avoid cluttering the discussion threads.
What's the holiday in US and Canada today? It is (was) a holiday in many places of India too, due to a Hindu festival called Vinayaka Chaturthi.
Re: Loneliness can be depressing, but it may have helped humans survive
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ranking is relative, so on less busy days (such as today's holiday in the US and Canada) stories with fewer points can be ranked higher than usual. You can always email questions like this to hn@ycombinator.com to avoid cluttering the discussion threads.
What's the holiday in US and Canada today? It is (was) a holiday in many places of India too, due to a Hindu festival called Vinayaka Chaturthi.
It's Labor Day over here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Day
Re: Loneliness can be depressing, but it may have helped humans survive
#15Evolutionary Psychology is like Leibnitizian Optimisim [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds ] where God is replaced by evolution. It does nothing to aid in our understanding except to reassure us that everything that is is as it should be. It's essentially an ideology of apathy. Leibnitz's Argument goes like so: >1. God [Evolution] has the idea of infinitely many universes. >2. Only one of thes…
There is a profound difference between magical thinking and science. Once you build scientific frameworks (such as EP is part of), you can move much faster in interesting and useful directions that may seem unrelated and yet all connect together. For example I've used a lot of psychology (based on EP, not Freud) in constructing communities that build open source software. And we are using this thing called the "Inter…
narrator is implying that in fact no EP is part of magical thinking, not science. A view that any quick googling will back up as being not terribly controversial actually.
Re: Loneliness can be depressing, but it may have helped humans survive
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a profound difference between magical thinking and science. Once you build scientific frameworks (such as EP is part of), you can move much faster in interesting and useful directions that may seem unrelated and yet all connect together. For example I've used a lot of psychology (based on EP, not Freud) in constructing communities that build open source software. And we are using this thing called the "Inter…
> I've used a lot of psychology (based on EP, not Freud) in constructing communities that build open source software. Very interesting. If it is not a secret, can you share a list of guidelines or tips?
Sure, I've written a book "Social Architecture" on this, and many articles. You can read the book freely at https://www.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/social-architecture/de.... It's also in print and Kindle from Amazon.
The psychology of collaboration is (in my model, which is of course wrong, just accurate enough to be more useful than ignorance) based on emotions that we've evolved to work together. Most of what I tested and documented over the last decade came from study of failure (most projects fail and you can learn a lot by looking into why), and experience of how to make communities that could survive the kinds of conflict we see. Actually getting a full model for the emotions took a lot longer, finished that a year or so ago.
You can see the results in e.g. the C4 process, our RFC for working together in the ZeroMQ community: http://rfc.zeromq.org/spec:42/C4/
My articles are on http://hintjens.com, starting in 2010 or so.
Re: Loneliness can be depressing, but it may have helped humans survive
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a profound difference between magical thinking and science. Once you build scientific frameworks (such as EP is part of), you can move much faster in interesting and useful directions that may seem unrelated and yet all connect together. For example I've used a lot of psychology (based on EP, not Freud) in constructing communities that build open source software. And we are using this thing called the "Inter…
narrator is implying that in fact no EP is part of magical thinking, not science. A view that any quick googling will back up as being not terribly controversial actually.
Many people dislike EP intensely (and have attacked its developers, such as Steven Pinker) because they are passionate (I'd say fanatical) believers that culture is what defines us, not biology. So yes, you can find a lot of hate for EP. That doesn't mean much.
If you have studied EP or even human nature at all, then you realize quite rapidly that the blank slate proponents (who claim we're born with nothing in our minds, waiting for culture to define us) are delusional in some profound way.
It is clear, and Pinker makes this argument well in his book The Blank Slate, that we're the product of biology (EP) tuned and shaped by our environment.
To claim that this, decades of careful documented research and reproducible results, is magical thinking and not science is... hallucinatory.
Re: Loneliness can be depressing, but it may have helped humans survive
#18As if our brains magically emerged from a billion years of evolution with complex mechanisms that did not help us survive... :) I tried (like a good nerd) to reverse engineer all our emotions in my book "The Psychopath Code." Loneliness fell into my group of "Tribal Emotions" (thus evolved to help us form extended families), and here is how I defined it: " Loneliness - the emotion of being disconnected. You feel phys…
Indeed, a very interesting read! Can you list references or is this all original research?
About the rule breakers and psychopaths - I think most people actually switch to reward/punishment reasoning for rule following when empathy and social feedback is lacking. For example, if you know that no one will get hurt (eg running a red light with no cars around) the reasoning switches primarily to risk/reward (are there cameras or cops?) and habits (mental shortcuts and pathways that have been reinforced).
Most of our decisions are made out of habits trained on common situations, and only when the underlying assumptions are violated do we start re-evaluating the stories and heuristics we tell ourselves for our actions.
Re: Loneliness can be depressing, but it may have helped humans survive
#19As if our brains magically emerged from a billion years of evolution with complex mechanisms that did not help us survive... :) I tried (like a good nerd) to reverse engineer all our emotions in my book "The Psychopath Code." Loneliness fell into my group of "Tribal Emotions" (thus evolved to help us form extended families), and here is how I defined it: " Loneliness - the emotion of being disconnected. You feel phys…
Indeed, a very interesting read! Can you list references or is this all original research? About the rule breakers and psychopaths - I think most people actually switch to reward/punishment reasoning for rule following when empathy and social feedback is lacking. For example, if you know that no one will get hurt (eg running a red light with no cars around ) the reasoning switches primarily to risk/reward (are there…
I'm sorry to say it's mostly original research, though I did do a lot of research into the studies people have done on the various emotions and particularly their physical manifestations. I did not keep references because I was lazy and generally don't do that (this is not academic work and I absolutely want to keep it readable for non-academics).
Regarding rules, I suspect we apply different sets of rules in different situations. Running a red light breaks "would the cops catch me?" yet does not break "would my friends be angry with me?"
I've not looked into habits much. They are obviously powerful shortcuts that save on cognitive workload.
Re: Loneliness can be depressing, but it may have helped humans survive
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've used a lot of psychology (based on EP, not Freud) in constructing communities that build open source software. Very interesting. If it is not a secret, can you share a list of guidelines or tips?
Sure, I've written a book "Social Architecture" on this, and many articles. You can read the book freely at https://www.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/social-architecture/de... . It's also in print and Kindle from Amazon. The psychology of collaboration is (in my model, which is of course wrong, just accurate enough to be more useful than ignorance) based on emotions that we've evolved to work together. Most of what I tes…
Thanks writing and sharing those. Very good insights there. Also sorry, didn't recognize your name at first as Pieter Hintjens (I wouldn't have asked as already had the link to the book in my bookmarks). I periodically refer to "The Toolbox" when discussing development practices at work.
In professions which are considered more rational and intellectual like programming, there is a danger of discounting the effect of emotions. Emotions are always there under the surface guiding and controlling things.
The more rational the person thinks they are the more they will rationalize their decisions. So when someone proposes using say Protobufs as a serialization mechanism, instead of Thrift, for example, might be doing it because the person who likes Thrift in the group offended them somehow. But that will never come up in the official reason, there will be some benchmark or list of point why Protobufs might be better.
Or maybe they had a fight with their family and they come to work and start shutting down a project and shuffling developers around to feel empowered, and there will always be a seemingly rational reason for it.
Thanks againg for writing that book and sharing your experience. There is just not enough of that, especially focused on open source projects. Some projects naturally converge and discover some of those principles from the toolbox, but having them written down from someone with experience is priceless.