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You are how you act

boz.com

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Re: You are how you act

#191

Post by dang »

nsagent wrote: post #186
dang wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please not play this internet game here? "This is [sarcastic reference] coming from [personal reference] who [cherry-picked outrage bit]" is a trope that doesn't lead anywhere interesting. It ratchets up indignation, fries curiosity, and removes any semblance of ontopicness. Also, I assume that's a skewed pseudo-quotation since no one would actually say that. Please don't play that internet game here either. h…

Agree that the snarky reply doesn't help, but the quotation isn't really skewed (though it is a paraphrase). It comes from an internal memo that leaked in 2018 that states: Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good. Thi…

Ok good point!

Re: You are how you act

#192

Post by natmaka »

lukeasrodgers wrote: post #47

I don't know much about Franklin, but this strikes me as a gross oversimplification of Rousseau, to the point where I wonder whether the author has actually read much Rousseau, rather than just other lightweight "thinky pieces" on Rousseau. For example The Social Contract is significantly concerned with how people can and will act in accordance with the general will. Also the idea that these philosophies are "almost…

Character is destiny. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become. -- Heraclitus

Re: You are how you act

#193

Post by gchamonlive »

hectdev wrote: post #157
gchamonlive wrote: post #20

We all talk a lot about the mind over the body and emotions, so you can act stoicly regardless of your internal experience and how your body feels, and it's all fine, but it's important to make a point that your mood is more dependent on your body health than you think at first. How depressed you are can for instance be linked to the last time you went to the loo and how great your turds look ( https://www.frontiersi…

To loop it together, I would say that taking care of the body is the mind over the body. Making conscious decisions to put yourself in the right place. Mind over body, body is inherently over body, mind takes care of body, body takes care of mind.

On the one hand, the body has needs and it communicates over sensations and instinct to the mind. On the other hand, without the mind the body would just be a vegetable.

One and the other, together in harmony. Nothing is above anything. Separation is learned, it's a useful concept, but it's not necessarily natural.

Re: You are how you act

#194

Post by bre1010 »

dang wrote: post #180
bre1010 wrote: post #13

[flagged]

Can we please not play this internet game here? "This is [sarcastic reference] coming from [personal reference] who [cherry-picked outrage bit]" is a trope that doesn't lead anywhere interesting. It ratchets up indignation, fries curiosity, and removes any semblance of ontopicness. Also, I assume that's a skewed pseudo-quotation since no one would actually say that. Please don't play that internet game here either. h…

Thank you for this feedback. Definitely a failure on my part to follow my personal guideline of if I don't have anything thoughtful to post then it's better not to post at all, not to mention the actual posting guidelines that I violated.

Andrew Bosworth somehow short-circuits me though as he is responsible for so much bad in the world (I have multiple grandparents who have been totally captured by the Facebook infinite-scroll newsfeed -- his idea and for which he shows no shame). Like this sociopath can just get away with it all: multi-millionaire AND wannabe thought-leader? And I'm supposed to just scroll by and let his pontifications about moral philosophy get promoted on this site. That being said, I thought about posting something more significant in my OP but gave up because who am I convincing anyway. That should've been the trigger not to post at all.

Thanks for the call-out and for the compliment on my ant-post from back in the day.

Re: You are how you act

#195

Post by more_corn »

some_furry wrote: post #64
shandor wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> concordance of action and "intention" .... must be united in ethically good action Yeah, I had to disagree with how TFA brought "fake it till you make it" into this very discussion. Yes, one can have "faking" that ultimately ends up creating the thing it promised....but I fear that for each such benign or constructive "fake" there are so many cases of Theranos et al that I could ever remove what you called intentio…

The most charitable thing I can offer here is: Alice is a horrible sociopathic monster that fakes being good because of the social utility it provides. Bob is authentically, genuinely a "good" person (however you define it). If the two are indistinguishable from an outsider's perspective, and arrived at a similar level of social status and "success" (intentionally vaguely defined), the path they got there may not mat…

But that’s not how it plays out. What we see time and again is people who profess beliefs in positive philosophies and actions that don’t match. Look at any religion you like. Now look at how members of that religion actually behave. They’re people who profess a positive philosophy without the actions to match.

I’ll take someone who consistently does good but without a coherent positive philosophy over someone who talks a good game and behaves badly all day every day.

Re: You are how you act

#196

Post by more_corn »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #162
NaomiLehman wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years at Meta... That must be tough.

Working at Facebook in 2005 was definitely defensible. I suppose every frog gets boiled, eventually.

No it wasn’t. I remember because I faced that choice (in 2007 but close enough). It was never a product that seemed to create more good than harm.

Keep in mind that continuing to work somewhere is also a choice.

Re: You are how you act

#197

Post by fouc »

BurningFrog wrote: post #118
alangou wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are changed by the intention behind your decisions. Someone who continually chooses to do things out of greed turns into a greedier person. Someone who continually chooses compassion becomes a more compassionate person. Even if the external outcome is the same, the direction towards which the person evolves is vastly different. And when lifted out of a narrow thought experiment, in real life, who you are does det…

Maybe this is how it works, but how can we know this? It could also be that doing good things for selfish reasons creates habits of doing good things, and after a while that is who you are and what you do.

Another way to think of it is:

If you tend to engage in suspicious behavior, you'll probably start regarding others with suspicion. Essentially, your actions will engender your world view.

Re: You are how you act

#198

Post by KaiserPro »

chipsrafferty wrote: post #189
herval wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My best memory of boz is him arguing with an intern on workspace and calling them "privileged", during COVID, when the kid asked whether the company would provide some sort of cash bonus since the free meals weren't available. "Teenager trying to sound clever" captures every other interaction perfectly.

That sounds pretty fair to me. Having a Meta salary means you can afford to buy food. Having free food on top of a $300,000 income is pretty privileged and complaining about it being taken away even more so.

> complaining about it being taken away even more so.

I mean thats fair game, if people take away free stuff I like, I'd get pissed off as well. Asking politely about changes is also fair game.

Moaning about it is not though.

Complaining about the quality of perfectly good food, thats a dick move.

I'm always fascinated at the thought process and frankly upbringing of someone who would publicly complain about food in such a whiny and rambling way. The lack of awareness to skip through the top posts, and note that the batshit ones are always the ones that get snarky comments.

for example[paraphrasing to protect the dipshit]: "The was chewy. I find that all the red meat here is chewy. Is this due to the quality of the meat, or the skill of the cooking"

a bunch of people agree

Then someone pipes up and asks: "would you like the chefs to chew if for you first?"

Re: You are how you act

#199

Post by seec »

more_corn wrote: post #195
some_furry wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most charitable thing I can offer here is: Alice is a horrible sociopathic monster that fakes being good because of the social utility it provides. Bob is authentically, genuinely a "good" person (however you define it). If the two are indistinguishable from an outsider's perspective, and arrived at a similar level of social status and "success" (intentionally vaguely defined), the path they got there may not mat…

But that’s not how it plays out. What we see time and again is people who profess beliefs in positive philosophies and actions that don’t match. Look at any religion you like. Now look at how members of that religion actually behave. They’re people who profess a positive philosophy without the actions to match. I’ll take someone who consistently does good but without a coherent positive philosophy over someone who ta…

Exactly. I have been (forced) in catholic circles in my youth because of my mother and it's absolutely frightening how bad those people can act/talk, often openly. Similarly, I have some far-left friends who constantly advocate for things close to communism but they are (by far) the stingiest and least sharing people I know.

I think there is some sort brain gymnastic that protects them against the incoherence.

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