Why is this piece of celebrity gossip on hacker news?
Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
141–150 of 194 posts
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any ideas on why?
Don't forget the balkans have been destroyed multiple times by nationalistic wars, most recently in the Former Yugoslavia, so nationalistic sentiments may be more prominent.
It tends to be more about ethnicity than nationalism per se, but yes. Your membership in the Albanian/Serb/Roma/Croat/etc. community is central to your personal identity in the Balkans, far outweighing where you happen to live or where you happen to spend your Sunday mornings/Friday afternoons.
They're all interrelated though, so it gets complicated rather quickly. But yes: Serbs are proud to be Serbs.
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even in a modern context, I do not think this list makes Einstein sexist (or a jerk). If my girlfriend did not work, I would ask her to take care of all the chores and meals (which would probably be, at most, 20 hours a week of work). Accordingly, I do not see items A[1-3] on the list as unreasonable, given his wife was not employed at this period in their life. I also happen to be very particular about my desk area,…
I find your comment to be belittling. The amount of chores one does is inversely proportional to the amount of money brought home? "If my girlfriend did not work" is a shorthand for something else. I think it's shorthand for "sit around being lazy all day", which is an emotional decision and not the overt economical one. If your girlfriend is going to school full-time, then that's not work. Would you expect her to pu…
He never mentions money when talking about their pre-seperation life. The post you're replying to is clearly a discussion of time, not money, and you've somehow twisted it into "The amount of chores one does is inversely proportional to the amount of money brought home?". Stop trolling.
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#144Poor guy, sounds like he married his mom.
She must have been a real harpy.
All perfectly reasonable requests.
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since I seem to be the target of this comment I'll respond. Einstein was human. The purpose of using the phrases "womanizer" and "demanding jerk" was emotional -- we think of our heroes in pure terms. To associate them with negative judgmental phrases (such that we might easily use with anybody else in the world we meet) causes us distress. And from what I understand, Einstein chased women all his life, even during h…
The problem isn't a judgment per se, it is judging based on evidence ripped completely out of time and place. Context is missing here and without that context you really can't say at all whether this was either a jerk making demands or someone exhibiting the patience of a saint. Even with a biography as a guide you still can't make a call like that. The private affairs between two people are best left alone unless yo…
>The problem isn't a judgment per se, it is judging based on evidence ripped completely out of time and place. Context is missing here and without that context you really can't say at all whether this was either a jerk making demands or someone exhibiting the patience of a saint.
You make it sound like some mysterious quantum dynamics problem.
There is _already_ plenty of context for making a judgement call in this case. It's not like they lived in another galaxy, in a society with extremely different cultural norms.
We know the norms of the era they lived, we have other people as examples from that time, and we even know (or have known) people that were alive back then. It's not like we're missing some mysterious information that changes all this into something else.
We're not talking about Andromeda. This is planet earth, a western society, a highly educated man, less than a century ago.
Heck, those of us who know History, we can make judgement calls even for millennia before.
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Without knowing what went on before this it is very hard to judge the list. On the other hand, the list is perfect to figure out what had happened before: their home was a mess, meals were spotty, there were frequent discussions that prevented him from work and she belittled him in front of their children. That's not to say that the situation was her fault.
It isn't perfect. It's a list of complaints, and it could be entirely false. The home could have been spotless, but Einstein, besotted with dreams of how much better life would be with his cousin (and future second wife), complained anyway. I had a relationship once where (and this is my perhaps incorrect, post hoc attempt at understanding what happened) my girlfriend didn't want to be the one who broke up, so she ma…
Did she write a list? I ask because the fact that he did tells me something. Also the fact that she did accept the arrangement at first.
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
By this same token, we can never really understand anybody, since we never can fully understand what it's like to be them. Getting a little deep for me early on a Tuesday morning, jacques. If your name really is jacques (which I can't be sure of) :)
You can try to make it ridiculous but I actually was not aiming at anything 'deep' or philosophical, merely indicating that there is a problem with the method used to gain the required level of understanding. I think you can actually understand others, but you're going to have to interact (like we do right here) with those people that you wish to understand. Trying to understand people that have been dead for quite a…
interacting with people in person doesn't remove the context problem
the context in which you interact with someone changes how you know that person
the same person (everyone, you included) will seem like a different person based on whether they are interacting with a collegue, a supervisor, an underling, an employee at McDonalds, a waiter at a fancy restaurant, an old friend, a stranger, a child, a parent etc. etc.
alot of the people you view favorably, you probably do so because the context of your relationship is mutual respect, those people probably have relationships that aren't in those context, and the people in them probably have quite different views of those people.
if "knowing" a person is actually possible, it might be easier to do so from the prospective of 100 years of distance and a biography than from the extreme closeup of personal interaction
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#148People are naturally manipulative, especially in relationships, and people naturally play mind-games without necessarily knowing they are.
A quarrel ending in a door-slam can have damaging effects on the psyche, as a common example that most of you have experienced. It can make it difficult to concentrate.
This just seems to me to be a typical negotiation tool during a relationship gone wrong, trying to prevent further emotional distress. Nothing to see here.
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#149I had heard a while ago that Einstein was a womanizer. Looks like he was a demanding jerk as well. Just goes to show that there is usually a huge difference between what we think of historical figures and how they actually were. It's interesting how much we want our heroes to be pure and spotless -- unlike any other humans we encounter.
As a sole breadwinner,married to a woman who belittles me in front of our children, who, despite having full-time domestic help, grudgingly provides me with meals, who swings between extreme emotional neediness and rejection for weeks at a time and who occasionally physically attacks me in rages (she was diagnosed with a psychological disorder, but treatment is blocked by her family), I wish I could produce a list li…
she was diagnosed with a psychological disorder, but treatment is blocked by her family
Sounds familiar. I wonder if her family would rethink their position when they had to suffer her.
Just a little fact: unless you divorce soon, you'll develop some mental symptons yourself, if you hadn't already. And don't be fooled: you're not making any favor to your children staying.
If I can be of any help, my email is in my profile.
Re: Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem isn't a judgment per se, it is judging based on evidence ripped completely out of time and place. Context is missing here and without that context you really can't say at all whether this was either a jerk making demands or someone exhibiting the patience of a saint. Even with a biography as a guide you still can't make a call like that. The private affairs between two people are best left alone unless yo…
I think we are talking past each other. If I knew Einstein, if he were alive today, then certainly what you say is true. Additionally, if I were trying to impeach him or his works, such as the attacks that Thomas Jefferson gets when we talk about slavery, then you would also have a point. But I'm not trying to slander the man, I'm trying to understand him. When I was a kid I used to be interested in General Patton of…
[deleted]