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Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

nytimes.com

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Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#121

Post by FroshKiller »

wpietri wrote: post #8

This is really a perfect title. As somebody who grew up in Michigan not far from Battle Creek, I've always been interested the history of wacky self-improvement regimes. (You may remember "The Road to Wellville" as one look at that. [1]) E.g., the inventor of Graham flour believed in all sorts of self-harshness: "Graham created a theology and diet aimed at keeping individuals, families, and society pure and healthy -…

Maybe not "perfect." I don't think Gwyneth Paltrow is a fascist sympathizer. At the very least, she hasn't been as spectacularly complicit in providing a safe harbor for white supremacists as Dorsey.

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#122

Post by elliekelly »

sbov wrote: post #60
CharlesColeman wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its so common for engineers to have excessive confidence in their opinions about subjects far beyond their areas of competence that there's a term for it: engineer's disease (or engineer's syndrome).

This is true for the general population though. The only reason why the term exists is because other engineers expect it not to apply to engineers. Really the concept says more about us and our expectations of educated engineers rather than the engineers with bad opinions. You could even go so far as to say those wielding the term also fall under the term: outside of your expertise, you're assuming engineers shouldn'…

You might find this study interesting[1]. The paper sensationalizes it a bit IMO by classifying people as "bullshitters" when it seems to me more like "overconfidence" in their knowledge. Quality of the study/headline aside, I do wonder if there's a selection bias for knowledge overconfidence in engineering as parent comment suggests. I would imagine people who make good engineers are the type who aren't intimidated by "knowledge gaps" and they assume (rightly or wrongly) that they'll be able to figure out a solution even where they have little or no expertise.

[1] [PDF] http://ftp.iza.org/dp12282.pdf

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#123

Post by d136o »

tomcam wrote: post #82
nimbius wrote: post #69

As someone with a firmly blue-collar perspective on the world, these weird sacred cows of the city that people elevate to the status of guru are as mysterious for me as they are asinine. I read up on Gwyneth Paltrow after reading the article, and checked her website where I found idiotic products that made my heart stop with some of their claims. When my heart finally started again I cursed god for letting me live to…

Hang on. I am the last thing from a Jack Dorsey fan. However, I see nowhere in his somewhat grotesque tweets where he tells me what I should do. As near as I can tell, he is simply telling us what he is doing.

That's part of how this all works, if you wield influence it's not necessarily by way of telling people exactly what they should do, rather you convey your vision and others work to make it happen.

And I think that this can yield very effective teams, but it can also result in cult like herd behavior. Two sides of one coin?

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#124

Post by RandallBrown »

komali2 wrote: post #43

> “It’s such a strange service — who wants to be in the cold? You need to hear about it from someone you trust,” said Michael Garrett, the head of Reboot, a spa that offers cryotherapy around the Bay Area. (Cryotherapy is when you make yourself get cold.) Love the author's snark. >He said the cold therapy gives him a high, as blood rushes to his head and chest, and he believes practitioners are addicted. “I’m addicte…

I think cryotherapy generally provides temperatures well below those found in nature. Whether or not that actually does something beneficial is another question, but it's different than a cold shower.

I would like to try it sometime just to see how it feels.

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#125

Post by rconti »

jonny_eh wrote: post #2

Shows that engineers in Silicon Valley aren't any more skeptical than Hollywood. We may consider ourselves smarter, but we're just as susceptible to bullshit as anyone.

Presuming that an equal percentage of engineers in Silicon Valley follow this bullshit to the percentage of Hollywood that follows Gwenyth's bullshit.

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#126

Post by smacktoward »

d136o wrote: post #123
tomcam wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hang on. I am the last thing from a Jack Dorsey fan. However, I see nowhere in his somewhat grotesque tweets where he tells me what I should do. As near as I can tell, he is simply telling us what he is doing.

That's part of how this all works, if you wield influence it's not necessarily by way of telling people exactly what they should do, rather you convey your vision and others work to make it happen. And I think that this can yield very effective teams, but it can also result in cult like herd behavior. Two sides of one coin?

   The Master doesn't talk, he acts.
   When his work is done,
   the people say, "Amazing:
   we did it, all by ourselves!"
-- Tao Te Ching, Chapter 17, Stephen Mitchell translation (http://taoteching.org.uk/index.php?c=17&a=Stephen+Mitchell)

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#127

Post by rhinoceraptor »

joelrunyon wrote: post #65
jerf wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing some fasting lately, and what has deeply shocked me is precisely that I'm not "staggering about hungry for days". It's surprisingly easy once you get over the initial hump. (Note: I'm not saying it's necessarily easy in an absolute sense; I'm saying it's surprising how easy it is. Based on my upbringing I would have guessed after hour 4 I'd be in constant serious hunger, and it's not like that.) I've…

For a lot of people - what they think is "hunger" is really just "boredom." That - or a carb addiction. Once you start reading about autophagy, fasting doesn't really seem that crazy after all.

It's almost as if pre-modernity humans didn't have infinite supplies of hyper-palatable food available 24/7...

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#128

Post by Larrikin »

duxup wrote: post #23
0xfeba wrote: post #6

Well, scratch Twitter off the list of places I'd work. What bizarre behaviour.

Humans are weird. Steve Jobs had some weirdness / bad choices. I still wouldn't mind working for them. It's not like you have to do those things or are endorsing them by working there. Weird folks come up with some good ideas sometimes. I think of myself as very boring and normal, I'm not coming up with great ideas...

So long as he isn't forcing his employees to follow that lifestyle, it seems totally fine to me as well.

Now WeWork is a place I would never think about working. All catered lunches are vegetarian only and they won't let you expense any meals unless you can prove they were vegetarian. No thank you.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90202356/wework-is-a-vegetarian-...

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#129

Post by osehgol »

nimbius wrote: post #69

As someone with a firmly blue-collar perspective on the world, these weird sacred cows of the city that people elevate to the status of guru are as mysterious for me as they are asinine. I read up on Gwyneth Paltrow after reading the article, and checked her website where I found idiotic products that made my heart stop with some of their claims. When my heart finally started again I cursed god for letting me live to…

well said

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#130

Post by sparkpy724 »

stcredzero wrote: post #109

As Twitter’s head, he spends his days navigating issues around free speech for white supremacists, online abuse and the spread of terrorist propaganda The phrasing seems designed to imply that Free Speech is only for bad people and terrorist propaganda. The reason why Free Speech is a fundamental human right, is that it keeps powerful people and authorities from squashing dissent. We can't just have "Free Speech, so…

[flagged]
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