Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by jrochkind1 » Thu, Sep 08, 2022, 3:40 PM UTC

hbosch wrote: post #192

dade_ wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father runs a business, one day many years ago in his shop he needed help moving a bunch of material. I explained it would be a lot faster to do it a different way, and he commented that would be the lazy way to do it. It wasn’t the first time I’d run into this thinking, though it has stuck with me ever since. I explained this isn’t about exerting less effort, but that for the same effort we get a heck of a lot mo…

The matrix for effort vs. impact is something I find myself drawing in meetings a lot. Effort Low High ┌───────────┬───────────┐ I │ │ │ m Low │ Ok │ Bad │ p │ │ │ a ├───────────┼───────────┤ c │ │ │ t High │ Perfect │ Ok │ │ │ │ └───────────┴───────────┘

The best simple way to prioritize a backlog. Engineering team is responsible for assigning "effort" dimension; product/stakeholder team is responsible for assigning "impact" dimension. Then we see what's in high impact/low effort, and that's what we're gonna work on.

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

#212

Post by throw10920 » Thu, Sep 08, 2022, 3:40 PM UTC

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #103

istinetz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

If you told a king from 500 years past that in the future there is a magical "other" world inside a crystal crafted by the finest of mages where conquest, diplomacy, and economics can be practiced to perfection without risking no lives nor resources but that of time, and that this endeavor is both stupid and a complete waste of time, he'd think you're not only mad, but foolish to squander such an opportunity to learn…

> conquest, diplomacy, and economics can be practiced to perfection

This is a ridiculous analogy. The vast majority of video games have so little application to the real world as to be effectively useless. This is relevant in the particular case of Dota 2, which, while an incredibly interesting game, has virtually no relevance to the real world.

"Virtually" because if I say "no relevance" then pedants will quickly point out that you can learn some basic economics by looking at the skin marketplace, or something. Yeah, sure, and you can learn more about human anatomy by having sex. The ratios of learning for those things compared to doing dedicated learning (textbooks, classes, internet research, practice) are at least in the ratio of 100 to 1, if not more, for all but the tiny minority of games explicitly designed to have a significantly amount of learning potential (e.g. Kerbal Space Program).

Using your own analogy, if you told said king that using this crystal took you 100 to 1000 times longer to learn about things than the magical libraries that we also have available to us, which also only cost your own personal time, and then advocated for their use, he'd definitely think that you were crazy - and you would be.

> It is the design of one of our era's greatest minds, in the pursuit of understanding the systems underlying our Earthly existence, and the democratization of that research to the fingertips of all.

Sid Meyer is not "one of our era's greatest minds" even in the particularly narrow field of video game development.

> For someone who enjoys balancing the needs of a kingdom, you've yet to learn to balance the needs of your own body.

There is no "balancing the needs of a kingdom" going on. The Civilization games are optimized for entertainment first, and if educational value is optimized for at all, it's definitely not in the top 5. If you take someone who has put thousands of hours of Civilization into any position of authority (and no other relevant training), they'll a pathetic, miserable mess, and not able to keep up with someone who's read a just few dozen hours' worth of well-chosen history, economics, and military strategy books.

If you could learn to rule merely by playing Civ, then American anime enthusiasts would be able to learn Japanese merely by watching anime, which virtually never happens, and it's pretty well known that it's not a feasible learning strategy.

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

#213

Post by throw10920 » Thu, Sep 08, 2022, 3:43 PM UTC

banannaise wrote: post #185

istinetz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> When I stopped playing dota, civ took it's place, then reddit, then tiktok, etc. All of which are also hyper-optimized to be addictive. Perhaps part of the problem is that you live in a world surrounded by things that are hyper-optimized to feed your addiction rather than bring you joy?

On what grounds do you base your assertion that Civ is hyper-optimized to be addictive?

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

#214

Post by failrate » Thu, Sep 08, 2022, 3:48 PM UTC

beefield wrote: post #153

Loughla wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Well, I consider myself being relatively open to all kinds of new ideas. But at some point you need to realize that certain genre is not going to give you any new insights and it's better to move on. For example, I have read total of three books published by CATO Institute, and and by standard Bayesian rules, it is going to take a lot of convincing to give them one more chance.

Then read 3 CS Lewis books starting with Screwtape and see if this is true for that as well. Quite slim books, top.

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

#215

Post by nonethewiser » Thu, Sep 08, 2022, 3:49 PM UTC

nicbou wrote: post #196

jrochkind1 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your occupation where you get paid to work only on what feels right, only when it feels right, for only as long as it feels right, with leeway to hop on your bicycle and forget about work whenever you want? Cause I am interested in this line of work. At least if it pays enough to live comfortably.

allaboutberlin.com. I'm self-employed, and I have no direct customers. So long as my bills are paid, everything else is extra. I can invest time into more, better content, but I can also mess around with things that don't make money. More often than not, they turn out to do just that. "If you build it, they will come." Mind you, I still have to work, but there's rarely anything that needs to be done right now , unles…

How do you make money from that website? Seems like you have a donate button. But other than that?

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

#216

Post by kbuchanan » Thu, Sep 08, 2022, 3:50 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #146

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…

I agree with your basic diagnosis, "Many people are spending most of their lives doing stuff that they don't want to do". But I want to add: most of their lives doing things they find meaningless and pointless . (See Graeber on "Bullshit Jobs" for just an instance, not exhaustive). So I don't agree with your next conclusion, I don't think that's leading to "shortcuts instead of trying to do things the right way." To…

I hated college. I never finished for the frogs. But I'm a lifelong reader. I don't regret failing to get a degree, but I regret that I wasn't in the right mindset and that I could have used the time to create meaning.

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

#217

Post by nonethewiser » Thu, Sep 08, 2022, 3:51 PM UTC

jamiegreen wrote: post #209

nicbou wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

allaboutberlin.com. I'm self-employed, and I have no direct customers. So long as my bills are paid, everything else is extra. I can invest time into more, better content, but I can also mess around with things that don't make money. More often than not, they turn out to do just that. "If you build it, they will come." Mind you, I still have to work, but there's rarely anything that needs to be done right now , unles…

What's the business model for allaboutberlin.com, if you don't mind me asking?

It's essentially the same question as the original question - how can you afford to only work when you want?

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

#218

Post by more_corn » Thu, Sep 08, 2022, 3:52 PM UTC

I hate the author’s snarky arrogant voice. Like nails on a chalkboard.

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

#219

Post by vanderZwan » Thu, Sep 08, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

throw10920 wrote: post #208

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…

Can you please link to evidence that Dota 2 has been "hyper-optimized to be addictive"? Because I've never seen any indication that that's what Value is doing to it, and that is highly inconsistent with my personal experience playing the game and interacting with its community.

I suppose it's all relative. Sure, it's not slot machine or [any recent lootbox game] levels of vile tricks, but come one, it's free-to-play. Of course it's trying to keep people hooked. I also know multiple people who had to cope with Dota addictions ruining their relationships and lives (although I do happen to know quite a few game devs, being a programmer living in Malmö, so that's a skewed demographic of gamer-oriented people). At the very least there is a vulnerable segment of society that should avoid these types of games.

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

#220

Post by tikkun » Thu, Sep 08, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

I made a summary of this article, because I found it a bit hard to read. I used GPT-3!

Here's the summary:

The author is saying that people who write about productivity are, in a way, the devil, because they convince people to do things they hate. The author is also saying that these people are not literally the devil, but are just as bad.

The article argues that humans are not "naturally" lazy, and that the feeling of being a "lazy piece of trash" is actually a result of the unconscious mind doing its job. The unconscious mind is only able to communicate with the conscious mind when there is a problem that needs attention, which can make it seem like the unconscious is lazy. However, the unconscious mind is actually responsible for solving a lot of problems without the conscious mind even realizing it.

The author is talking about how people who are successful often have to eat a lot of frogs (do a lot of things they don't want to do), but that doing too many things you don't want to do can lead to burnout. The author suggests that people should stop and think about what they really want to do, and not just do things because they think they should or because other people are doing them. The author also talks about how some people never get to experience true love because they're stuck in bad relationships, and how this can be just as bad as eating too many frogs.