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Bored of It

paulrobertlloyd.com

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Re: Bored of It

#321

Post by Patrax »

latexr wrote: post #17

> The best minds of my generation I’m tired of that line. I remember first seeing it on “the best minds of our generation being employed to sell you ads”. Making a computer go brrr doesn’t qualify anyone for a “best mind”. I’d hope a “best mind” would be, above all, empathetic. Concerned about the well being of their fellow humans. Philosophical about the state of the world. Patient. Curious. Wise and not just smart.…

Agree - but don't think there is a "best mind(s)". We're creatures of repetition and thus specialization, and so our minds can get really good at very specific things, but ultimately we're all dumb apes trying to survive as best we can.

Re: Bored of It

#322

Post by nathan_compton »

sgarland wrote: post #154
nathan_compton wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That which is normal is not necessarily also good or not problematic. Racism is normal, but its a problem. War is normal, but its absurdly wasteful and problematic. Cancer is normal etc.

> Racism is normal No, it is not. You ever observe small children in a multicultural group? They’re not racist, because they have no concept of it, nor why you’d want to do that. They see each other as peers. Racism is taught.

Small children typically ignore race, but there does seem to be (at the very least) a cultural tendency towards racism as people move into adulthood. There is a good book about it called "Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?" https://www.amazon.com/Black-Kids-Sitting-Together-Cafeteria...

People's characters need to be formed, I would at least argue, to overcome a normal tendency to be uncomfortable with difference.

Re: Bored of It

#323

Post by MariuszGalus »

This is exactly how I feel and I can't want to start sharing this with people.

You can leave the country and not tell anyone the field you are in and inevitably the topic will come up.

Insufferable.

Re: Bored of It

#324

Post by layer8 »

y-curious wrote: post #215
wzdd wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big fan of Douglas Adams, but there is a reason he was (best known as) a comedy writer and not, for example, a sociologist. Trotting this out adds nothing to the conversation and just comes across as vaguely ageist.

Call it ageist, but this aligns with the conversation about "it" at my job. The cutoff is around 42, but there is a significant split by age group of engineers on the value of "it".

There is some truth to it, but it also isn’t exactly accurate. #2 isn’t true for me in its generality. Some new things were exciting and revolutionary, but by no means all. Regarding #3, some new things still excite me today, and many more could excite me, but nobody is making them. Even #1 isn’t accurate. What’s true is that “excitability” goes down over time the more one is aware of the flaws and trade-offs.

Re: Bored of It

#325

Post by darepublic »

lapcat wrote: post #168

Whether you agree or disagree with the sentiment expressed by the submission, the quality and utility of it is very low, so it's unfortunate that the submission has reached #1 on HN. I suspect the brevity of the submission has made it easy comment fodder.

I thought it was good. It evoked a lot of mental images and feelings for me and was thought provoking. I enjoy these types of experiences, and its increasingly rare as I don't engage with literature much anymore. Therefore for me it had utility.

Re: Bored of It

#326

Post by mproud »

lm28469 wrote: post #119
luc4sdreyer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Animals eat their disabled children. Humans should also do it then, since it's normal or natural. Around 100k people die from age-related disease every day. I'd be careful to dismiss that as not a problem.

And them not dying would be an even bigger problem on pretty much every single metric I can think of

Yes, people grow old, but I don’t think there’s a rational fear people will ever live forever. However, there are diseases and conditions that are age-related that if solved would improve people’s quality of life, especially the last decade or two of their lives.

Re: Bored of It

#327

Post by spencerflem »

zellyn wrote: post #278
lurk2 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The spherical-cow "ideal" 100% efficient perfect marketing campaign/tactic literally hypnotizes you into dropping all your money on an arbitrary good or service. It is isomorphic to somebody mugging you. I like the quote and despise advertising of any kind for mostly the same reason, but you could apply this logic to any kind of business and it starts to fall apart. > The spherical-cow "ideal" 100% efficient perfec…

This is a good point. You could equally well argue that the spherical cow “ideal” 100% marketing shows you exactly the right product right as you need it. And then shuts the hell up!

Except when a company buys an ad it's to sell Their product , not just A product.

Re: Bored of It

#328

Post by gengwyn »

biophysboy wrote: post #167
skrebbel wrote: post #31

Remember, being terminally online is a choice. There's nothing to be bored of you don't choose to be constantly confronted by it. The current thing is only the current thing if you choose to surround yourself by people who deeply care about the current thing.

Yes, but people (like this writer) want a better community. A person can abstain from the internet entirely, but they still have to live in a terminally online world.

This is how I've felt about politics as of late. It's Logan Paul-KSI tier nonsense, but made worse by the fact that I can ignore Logan Paul and influencers. I can't ignore it when my government is run by an influencer.

Re: Bored of It

#329

Post by mapt »

eMPee584 wrote: post #264
lurk2 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The spherical-cow "ideal" 100% efficient perfect marketing campaign/tactic literally hypnotizes you into dropping all your money on an arbitrary good or service. It is isomorphic to somebody mugging you. I like the quote and despise advertising of any kind for mostly the same reason, but you could apply this logic to any kind of business and it starts to fall apart. > The spherical-cow "ideal" 100% efficient perfec…

> but you could apply this logic to any kind of business and it starts to fall apart. Exactly, it all starts to fall apart when common sense is applied - it's just that we've become horribly dependent, many even addicted to the dehumanizing grind of our beloved competition economy.. The immanent rise of autonomous machines is the sudden emergency exit from capitalism we (or rather: some of us) have been rooting for..…

> The immanent rise of autonomous machines is the sudden emergency exit from capitalism we (or rather: some of us) have been rooting for.. IF we can convince the people of this planet that a non-commercial post-scarcity open-access open-source commons economy is a more hopeful trajectory into the long future.. Let's not give up on this one yet.

Or, it's an invitation to plug us into the Entertainment-Marketting-Hyperstimulus-Feed that is eminently personalized and replace all our human culture with persuasive slop, until we cease to be of use, bankrupt husks with no friends and no avocations other than those that provide a reliable revenue return. Quite possibly with individualized radical ideologies because whatever hits your dopamine button, the Algorithm pumps more into you (See Neal Stephenson's "Dodge").

Re: Bored of It

#330

Post by cdecl »

spencerflem wrote: post #243
cdecl wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually convinced that "marketing", as such, can be completely orthogonal to profit altogether. Any sort of communication of a novel thing would fall under this banner, but I learn about new FOSS projects on here every day because the maintainers and developers are willing to 'advertise' them to me.

Marketing is so rarely for a "novel" thing. The biggest spender is CocaCola, how much do we still need to know about them?

Rarely by dollar amount or by volume? Because I assume, by volume, it must be mostly novel things.
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