Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

experimentalhistory.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 361 posts

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#131

Post by b112 »

6stringmerc wrote: post #62
jongjong wrote: post #56

This seems to be a major epidemic nowadays. I suspect that mechanistic, meaningless, purely mimetic pursuit of success has some pretty negative consequences on society. I suspect it might explain why so many people are interested in engaging in politics (or company politics) and zero-sum value extraction schemes instead of just adding value... They're not interested in the process at all, only in the outcome; financi…

A friend recently got what he thought was a great gig with an engineering firm - turned out it was more of a cult - rah rah sessions, after work bowling, softball - and they weren’t shy about shunning anybody who didn’t want all in right away. He got bullied and saw others bullied too - we figure it’s why they prefer to intern pipeline and hire and retain - a lot easier to brainwash when young. I mean it’s not a bad…

Oracle?

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#132

Post by beefield »

bsenftner wrote: post #94
db48x wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet he had read The Screwtape Letters though.

Any claimed author who's not read The Screwtape Letters has no business writing modern literature.

I need to check, are you sarcastic? I have so far avoided Lewis due to an impression (way too old impression to remember where I got it, may be unfounded or not) of the texts being close to christian/religious zealotry?

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#133

Post by temple_os »

Dig1t wrote: post #125

Counterpoint: sometimes eating frogs is an opportunity, and if you don’t eat them, someone else will and they will be better off because of it. Eating more frogs now can mean that you have to eat fewer frogs in the future, or in total, ALSO that your children and family will have to eat fewer frogs. I still believe that working hard is a virtue and the people who do will usually end up becoming the people who (and wh…

Obviously you have the right mindset but the point is that the majority of surface-level work addicts don't even have the intention of getting less work in the future as a result. Work for more work for more work -- no end in sight!

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#134

Post by hashmal »

dcminter wrote: post #30
petercooper wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't eating bread be more painful in France? (Sorry.)

I've never eaten bread as delicious as the "boring" baguettes available from virtually every bakery in France. Maybe it's the yeast they use or something? So I'm genuinely curious as to where you're coming from with that. Edit: Oh. Pat yourself on the back for a pun well played. Whooshed straight over my head! Take my angry upvote ;)

Baguettes "tradition" can only contain 3 ingredients (flour, water, yeast) so their quality matter, yes, but the preparation is what makes it all: how it's mixed, how long it rests, at what temperature, how the flour/water ratio changes through the process, etc. that dictate what the end result will be. It can take 10 years for a baker to master the process.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#135

Post by protonbob »

beefield wrote: post #132
bsenftner wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any claimed author who's not read The Screwtape Letters has no business writing modern literature.

I need to check, are you sarcastic? I have so far avoided Lewis due to an impression (way too old impression to remember where I got it, may be unfounded or not) of the texts being close to christian/religious zealotry?

I mean he was a Christian and he did believe strongly in it and tried to share his beliefs with others. I'm not sure if I would call that zealotry though.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#136

Post by egypturnash »

mlok wrote: post #4

As a Frenchman, it took me a while to realize it was supposed to mean "a painful thing to do"

It comes from a line often attributed to the 19th-century humorist Mark Twain: Eat a live frog first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you that day. ”Eat a frog” is intended as a metaphor for “do that shitty task you don’t want to do”.

It appears to have actually been coined by a late 18th century French humorist: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/03/eat-frog/

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#137

Post by UncleMeat »

Dig1t wrote: post #125

Counterpoint: sometimes eating frogs is an opportunity, and if you don’t eat them, someone else will and they will be better off because of it. Eating more frogs now can mean that you have to eat fewer frogs in the future, or in total, ALSO that your children and family will have to eat fewer frogs. I still believe that working hard is a virtue and the people who do will usually end up becoming the people who (and wh…

This is certainly true. The article speaks about how sometimes you must eat frogs. The point is that we often do not ask ourselves whether eating so many frogs is actually necessary and instead take it for granted that we must do this thing that we hate and seek advice for how to do that.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#138

Post by phkahler »

Dig1t wrote: post #125

Counterpoint: sometimes eating frogs is an opportunity, and if you don’t eat them, someone else will and they will be better off because of it. Eating more frogs now can mean that you have to eat fewer frogs in the future, or in total, ALSO that your children and family will have to eat fewer frogs. I still believe that working hard is a virtue and the people who do will usually end up becoming the people who (and wh…

>> Eating more frogs now can mean that you have to eat fewer frogs in the future

Key word there is "can". We need to be very careful when deciding about temporal shifts in frog eating (more now, fewer later). If it's not a very tight loop, you are likely eating someone else's frogs so they don't have to. Be sure you're actually reducing the number of frogs coming your way.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#139

Post by Loughla »

beefield wrote: post #132
bsenftner wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any claimed author who's not read The Screwtape Letters has no business writing modern literature.

I need to check, are you sarcastic? I have so far avoided Lewis due to an impression (way too old impression to remember where I got it, may be unfounded or not) of the texts being close to christian/religious zealotry?

I'm not trying to guess why you would say that (and by that, I mean the fact that you would avoid writing because it's trying to preach to you), and I do want to say that Lewis is, overall, very close to proselytizing in his writings (generally it's pretty explicitly stated that's what he wants to do). But.

Avoiding something because it disagrees with your worldview, or because it is 'too close to [insert literally anything here]' is not a great way to expand your understanding of the world. Being exposed to things you disagree with is step 1 in understanding how or why they exist, with few exceptions (CP, explicit hate speech, most calls to violence, those sorts of things).

Read the screwtape letters. Yes, they're intended to make you consider your immortal soul and embrace Christianity. But also yes, it's an amazing piece of literature.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#140

Post by [deleted] »

istinetz wrote: post #76
vanderZwan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that you're talking about a game hyper-optimized to be addictive, and while I can't speak for your specific case, in general having an addiction usually involves said addiction being a coping mechanism to fill some kind of hole in someone's life, or avoiding the pain of some unresolved trauma. Which is not at all the same thing as being proof of humans inherently being lazy and needing self-help gurus to fix t…

>Except that you're talking about a game hyper-optimized to be addictive When I stopped playing dota, civ took it's place, then reddit, then tiktok, etc. I've resorted to hard blocking a long list of apps and websites. I've seen other people on hackernews having the exact same problem and stumbling upon the exact same stack of solutions. My point is, it's not the one game, it's the entire internet. >said addiction be…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN