221–230 of 297 posts
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It's a long story, and probably not one for this venue, but suffice it to say that the skills one develops, rebuilding a shattered life, tend to give significant advantages. > That which does not kill you, makes you stronger. - Freddy Nietzsche > Or leaves you weak and exhausted. - Bill Prekker's Corollary
All very vague
Tangential to this but why does there seem to be a correlation between rock climbing gyms and tech oriented people?
I don’t know, but I’ve made a specific effort not to rock climb because I felt it may cause long term hand related injuries which could impact my ability to work. Not even sure how well founded that fear is, but I would otherwise love to do rock climbing.
Tangential to this but why does there seem to be a correlation between rock climbing gyms and tech oriented people?
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Yep. The illusion of Freedom is sold as a product, however, and people make a lot of money with it.
What do you mean by that?
> The first step is to realize that the subway stops here. Up to this point in life, most of you have been rolling on train tracks. Elementary school, middle school, high school, college—it was always clear what the next stop was. In the process you've been trained to believe something that’s not true: that all of life is train tracks. And there are some jobs where you can make it stay like train tracks if you want,…
The Full Time Employment crowd is the people who continue the tracks. Chilling by the watercooler, being paid for 8 hours a day with health insurance etc. while working 2 hours a day and/or bitching about your job. Or just enjoying life after work. These people would be as much at home in Soviet Russia as they would in today’s USA. They want more security. The EU has become the new USSR for this. Lots of protections.…
> The first step is to realize that the subway stops here. Up to this point in life, most of you have been rolling on train tracks. Elementary school, middle school, high school, college—it was always clear what the next stop was. In the process you've been trained to believe something that’s not true: that all of life is train tracks. And there are some jobs where you can make it stay like train tracks if you want,…
> I don't blame the kids, they don't know any better. They've spent their whole life focusing on the next goal. No, they spent their whole lives being sheltered. Let's call it what it is. These people were on tracks because they were put on tracks from a young age and told that the track leads somewhere, and any questioning of the tracks was often met with a harsh rebuke. They didn't play outside with the neighborhoo…
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> I don't blame the kids, they don't know any better. They've spent their whole life focusing on the next goal. No, they spent their whole lives being sheltered. Let's call it what it is. These people were on tracks because they were put on tracks from a young age and told that the track leads somewhere, and any questioning of the tracks was often met with a harsh rebuke. They didn't play outside with the neighborhoo…
> These people were on tracks because they were put on tracks from a young age and told that the track leads somewhere, and any questioning of the tracks was often met with a harsh rebuke. They didn't play outside with the neighborhood kids, they were at soccer practice. They didn't get a summer job at a shitty fast food joint, they were doing summer school or learning piano. Everything they've done from start to fin…
Sans the watch, we know that grafting onto community while accomplishing the statistically most meaningful tasks (per all psychological studies) opens all the doors to a content life full of more paths than can be explored before this short life is over.
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grad school is definitely a prestige move. not a 'get rich move', but def a prestige move. prestige is not just money. for med or law school, there are very clear hierarchies about who's better than who and next steps in your career. you get money AND intellectual status. but for other sciences and humanities, it's a flex about pursuing abstract "truth" or "knowledge" of "beauty" or whatever and not caring about fina…
> for other sciences and humanities, it's a flex about pursue abstract "truth" or "knowledge" of "beauty" or whatever. it is very monastic in that people make a show of forgoing traditional measures of status in service of their "calling". These comments are oddly cynical. The people I know who went to grad school did it because they enjoyed the academic world. That's all. There was no flexing or bragging. Those who…
But we are also social creatures that value status. That’s also why many people try to construe their academic careers while also enhancing their open prestige, whether that’s defined by the institution they attend, the advisor they have, the grants/thesis they pursue or any number of dimensions. To pretend someone isn’t motivated by status denies a very human quality.
Will Storr writes about this status seeking across three domains: dominance, success, and virtue. I bet if you look, most people who choose grad school value status in one of those domains. Maybe their identity is in being the smartest person in the room (dominance), or supremely competent in their field (success), or following a thesis because of what it contributes to humanity (virtue). Whatever the reason, prestige is still part of the equation.
> The first step is to realize that the subway stops here. Up to this point in life, most of you have been rolling on train tracks. Elementary school, middle school, high school, college—it was always clear what the next stop was. In the process you've been trained to believe something that’s not true: that all of life is train tracks. And there are some jobs where you can make it stay like train tracks if you want,…
> "You have never even interned in your field??".
The article is for people who don't have a field. In some circles, this is not a concept people speak about, but I think it represents many or most people who graduate university (in the US at least). The specialized fields like doctor, lawyer, engineer etc you hear about represent a minority of students and jobs. Many or most graduates end up in some variant of the fidelity customer service job.
The world is filled with office buildings, and generic office jobs. You need a college degree to get them, and no special skills.
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The mental human model that people are only what they consciously think about themselves is just wrong. Of course prestige matters, even if you were to pass a (functioning) lie detector test where you claim otherwise. You are so much more than your conscious thoughts. Your brain uses all information, and that includes the "meta" you know about things. And... > The people I know who went to grad school did it because…
For some people external validation is not very important and they genuinely love and enjoy the pursuit of knowledge and have little interest in what others think of them. Sure everyone requires some degree of external validation and there is a hierarchy in every group but all is not vanity.
Now those surveys are undergrads, but considering that grad school has become more common path, I don’t see any reason why grad students would be of a wholly different mental makeup.