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The Top Idea in Your Mind

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Top Idea in Your Mind

#131

Post by portman »

johnfn wrote: post #107
OoTheNigerian wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days, the ground state of most people is aimless browsing, Facebook and Twitter. Unfortunately,I am becoming most people and that has to stop now.

I challenge you to follow up on it. Block them. Let me give you some anecdotal background story... I realized this was happening to me a few months ago - that I was wasting more and more time just surfing Facebook or Twitter and so forth. So I started adding websites to my /etc/hosts file. (That is, my computer now blocks me from accessing these websites, unless I edit a file, and then restart). It started with Reddi…

"edit a file, and then restart"

Our of curiosity, what operating system do you use? On Windows, hosts entries take effect immediately. No need to restart.

Re: The Top Idea in Your Mind

#133

Post by anthonyb »

TotlolRon wrote: post #124
anthonyb wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It delivers revenge . Whether it delivers justice or not depends on the specific situation, but if you have to resort to vigilantism, probably not.

revenge is justice is productive. I didn't invent it. The concept of "turning the other cheek" is about 2,000 years old. The concept of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is over twice that old. They represent two different schools of thought that have been debated enough. PG introduced " turning the other cheek " as a means to resolve " the pain of having ... controversy constantly reintroduced as the top i…

Yes, yes - but it's not productive, is it? Particularly the biblical example that you gave.

Suppose that I'm an evil supergenius - someone cuts me off in traffic or tells me that unitards are going out of fashion, so I use my orbiting death ray to blast the entire world into ashes. Perhaps it's assuaged my sense of injury, but at what cost?

This is what happens when you use 2,000 year old fiction to support your moral choices.

Re: The Top Idea in Your Mind

#135

Post by thebigshane »

johnfn wrote: post #107
OoTheNigerian wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days, the ground state of most people is aimless browsing, Facebook and Twitter. Unfortunately,I am becoming most people and that has to stop now.

I challenge you to follow up on it. Block them. Let me give you some anecdotal background story... I realized this was happening to me a few months ago - that I was wasting more and more time just surfing Facebook or Twitter and so forth. So I started adding websites to my /etc/hosts file. (That is, my computer now blocks me from accessing these websites, unless I edit a file, and then restart). It started with Reddi…

Don't block sites completely... Control the times you view sites! https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4476/ (No Affiliation but I love this thing)

Summary: LeechBlock is a simple productivity tool designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day. All you need to do is specify which sites to block and when to block them.

Re: The Top Idea in Your Mind

#138

Post by robryan »

raintrees wrote: post #129
OoTheNigerian wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days, the ground state of most people is aimless browsing, Facebook and Twitter. Unfortunately,I am becoming most people and that has to stop now.

Or becoming enticed in extremely interesting articles on HN when there is billing to be done, or problems to work through... Edit: This seemed really snarky when I reread it - I do want to state emphatically that I would REALLY miss HN. But I must confess that I have to give myself a mental shove to get back to work sometimes... And back to the point of the article, I have to keep my eyes on the path _through_ the ob…

Or when your reading somewhat interesting articles on subjects that are well outside your current areas. As in I find myself occasionally reading things on Haskell or Scala or some other language despite not even knowing the basics of the language.

Re: The Top Idea in Your Mind

#139

Post by TotlolRon »

anthonyb wrote: post #133
TotlolRon wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

revenge is justice is productive. I didn't invent it. The concept of "turning the other cheek" is about 2,000 years old. The concept of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is over twice that old. They represent two different schools of thought that have been debated enough. PG introduced " turning the other cheek " as a means to resolve " the pain of having ... controversy constantly reintroduced as the top i…

Yes, yes - but it's not productive , is it? Particularly the biblical example that you gave. Suppose that I'm an evil supergenius - someone cuts me off in traffic or tells me that unitards are going out of fashion, so I use my orbiting death ray to blast the entire world into ashes. Perhaps it's assuaged my sense of injury, but at what cost? This is what happens when you use 2,000 year old fiction to support your mor…

Now imagine you are me and this is the sugar-coated version of your story: http://www.totlol.com/t/story
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