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Leaving the Physical World

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Re: Leaving the Physical World

#101

Post by justonceokay »

tasuki wrote: post #84
justonceokay wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to be privileged to live in the physical world. I quit programming to make candles for years, then apartment maintenance, now in the trades. I make 1/3 what I was making doing digital work, and I’d take a pay cut before returning. The reasons I had for leaving were manifold, but the big two were wanting to quit Adderall and having read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It’s a hard road to live…

> If you want to jump into the physical world, become a janitor. The work is surprisingly satisfying. You spend all day fixing tangible problems that increase everyone’s quality of life. Hah, first time I hear this piece of advice, but I totally buy it. But... why are you here on this orange website? Isn't a part of you longing for the ones and zeroes still?

I feel a kinship for programming because I did it for 15 years. I do not long for the 1s and 0s…

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#102

Post by cestith »

justonceokay wrote: post #82
cestith wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a very powerful question to be asked when one hears about someone wanting to quit Adderall. Are you on it because you need it for who you are, or are you on it because you need it to meet the expectations of your employer?

For me (OP) The “question” was more straightforward: I became an addict to various drugs and having a perscripton to uppers is a very bad idea for me.

That’s probably the best reason to want to quit.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#103

Post by a96 »

davnicwil wrote: post #66
jdw64 wrote: post #3

Reading this essay brought tears to my eyes. To me, the physical world is a realm permitted only to those with wealth. The author beautifully romanticizes the evaporation of tangible labor, but the physical labor I actually experienced meant unpaid, stolen wages. It meant working through the night, dozing off on the early morning subway until the very last stop, and enduring endless contempt, humiliation, and the tox…

> Especially with the advent of AI, it feels like the time I had left to learn and actually build something has run out. No, this is wrong. Get your head down. Learn fundamentals. Practice and develop real skills. Ignore anyone saying this is irrelevant now. Let them talk, keep learning and building stuff, while using the new tools. Give it a few years and you'll find the narrative has changed again, meanwhile you've…

I think this will be an advantage in near future. There's going to be a lot of burnout and general failure and, if the news are to be believed, even a loss of human ability around and real skills might come in useful.

There will also be a lot of companies failing, so the economical landscape and job market might not be too well off, though. Nobody knows nothing.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#104

Post by wao0uuno »

justonceokay wrote: post #29
jdw64 wrote: post #3

Reading this essay brought tears to my eyes. To me, the physical world is a realm permitted only to those with wealth. The author beautifully romanticizes the evaporation of tangible labor, but the physical labor I actually experienced meant unpaid, stolen wages. It meant working through the night, dozing off on the early morning subway until the very last stop, and enduring endless contempt, humiliation, and the tox…

You don’t have to be privileged to live in the physical world. I quit programming to make candles for years, then apartment maintenance, now in the trades. I make 1/3 what I was making doing digital work, and I’d take a pay cut before returning. The reasons I had for leaving were manifold, but the big two were wanting to quit Adderall and having read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It’s a hard road to live…

Why did you want to quit Adderall? I recently started taking ADHD medication and I couldn't be happier with results.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#107

Post by suburban_strike »

wao0uuno wrote: post #104
justonceokay wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to be privileged to live in the physical world. I quit programming to make candles for years, then apartment maintenance, now in the trades. I make 1/3 what I was making doing digital work, and I’d take a pay cut before returning. The reasons I had for leaving were manifold, but the big two were wanting to quit Adderall and having read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It’s a hard road to live…

Why did you want to quit Adderall? I recently started taking ADHD medication and I couldn't be happier with results.

It has diminishing returns. Taken continuously you'll only get 5-7 years out of it.

One thing I've noticed is that it fuels people with a sense of self-righteousness that will alienate you from everyone around you (you're basically on weak meth) but you won't notice how much you're pissing them off because you're personally happy. Everything you do is going to seem like the right thing to do. You'll save the world and not care how many women or children you kill to make it happen.

- One of my stepdaughter's friends was on it and got exiled from their friend group for vague "aggression."

- My wife was on it for a decade. She outright abused it, taking the whole bottle in a week. It was worse than living with a coked-up psychopath; she would stay awake for days stealing, trespassing, starting home renovations (and I am being specific in saying "starting"), starting arguments, smashing my things during those arguments, assaulting me while I was asleep later that night, then sleeping the rest of the month. To this day I fear going to sleep.

- My best friend of 20 years got on it, embraced predatory feminism as a dating strategy and tried to convince my wife that she was in an abusive relationship, establishing himself as a safe space. Unfortunately for him, she was sober by then. We are no longer friends. She and I are still married. He is still a virgin.

Like cocaine in the 80s, I have a feeling Adderall has fueled a lot of the insanity since 2000.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#108

Post by deepsun »

davidwritesbugs wrote: post #4

His "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" was the most unintentionally comical thing I read at the time. Like his lyrics and prose it was woefully pretentious & leaden. I also met him once. A more unpleasant, up his own ass, person I can barely recall.

And apparently he wrote the Declaration from a World Economic Forum 1996 in Davos, hanging out together with all those "Governments of the Industrial World" he was bashing out.

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#109

Post by deepsun »

flyinghamster wrote: post #30
dzonga wrote: post #8

> bytes which no one can chew, architecture no one can inhabit, and software which keeps no cold winter wind from anyone's bodies. this hits hard. hopefully we can start making physical stuff again & teaching kids how to do so.

I was ranting about the demise of American manufacturing as I was entering the workforce forty years ago , and it seems that nothing has improved in that sphere. Sure, dismantling General Electric produced a supernova of shareholder value, but the problem with supernovas is that once they're done, they're done.

> One of the more intriguing results of a recent Cato Institute–commissioned poll about trade and globalization was the respondents’ views on manufacturing. When asked whether the country would be better off if more Americans worked in the sector, 80 percent responded in the affirmative. Given widespread perceptions of American industrial decline—very much at odds with available evidence—that’s not entirely surprising.

But here’s the interesting part: among those same respondents, just 25 percent stated that they would personally be better off in a factory instead of their current work. It’s a result that holds across class, education, and racial lines. The most enthusiastic group, those aged 18–29, still registered just 36 percent interest in manufacturing employment.

Americans love the idea of people working in manufacturing, but most don’t think they would benefit from such work themselves.

source: https://www.cato.org/blog/americans-think-manufacturing-empl...

Re: Leaving the Physical World

#110

Post by deepsun »

gricardo99 wrote: post #67

An incredible, lucid, and beautiful depiction of the burgeoning, inchoate world of cyberspace at the time — voicing an anxiety that echoes even louder today: We humans would be liberated into an Elysian condition of permanent leisure. We’d have nothing to do but hang out in our indestructible miracle-fiber jumpsuits and talk philosophy. Only it didn’t happen quite like that. The machines did get many of our physical…

A good answer: "The Intolerable Hypocrisy of Cyberlibertarianism" [1]

And discussion [2].

[1] https://matduggan.com/the-intolerable-hypocrisy-of-cyberlibe...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48074952

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