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How Baby Boomers screwed their kids

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Re: How Baby Boomers screwed their kids

#31

Post by benched »

onebaddude wrote: post #20
weland wrote: post #7

I tried to read this all the way to the end but I wasn't quite able to do it in a single round. There are a lot of interesting points in the article, but you'd have more chance to drown in the Sahara desert than to find a single proof of any of the aforementioned points. Best thing you get is a combination of weasel words and anecdotal evidence. Let's see a few of these brilliant examples: > it’s easy to see how the…

> Perhaps Simon Sinek is right, but after reading the article, you are no closer to understanding why he thinks he's right than you were before. What do you know, the top comment is a pseudo-intellectual tear down of an article, asking for evidence and proof, admitting that the original article wasn't even read to completion, but offering plenty of criticism. > Perhaps Simon Sinek is right, but after reading the arti…

Have an upvote. HN comments have long been a ghetto of a different kind. They're as constructive as YouTube comments, only instead of "ur a fagot", it's all "Not peer-reviewed, replicated, statistically rigorous science!"

Re: How Baby Boomers screwed their kids

#32

Post by weland »

onebaddude wrote: post #20
weland wrote: post #7

I tried to read this all the way to the end but I wasn't quite able to do it in a single round. There are a lot of interesting points in the article, but you'd have more chance to drown in the Sahara desert than to find a single proof of any of the aforementioned points. Best thing you get is a combination of weasel words and anecdotal evidence. Let's see a few of these brilliant examples: > it’s easy to see how the…

> Perhaps Simon Sinek is right, but after reading the article, you are no closer to understanding why he thinks he's right than you were before. What do you know, the top comment is a pseudo-intellectual tear down of an article, asking for evidence and proof, admitting that the original article wasn't even read to completion, but offering plenty of criticism. > Perhaps Simon Sinek is right, but after reading the arti…

What you say:

> What do you know, the top comment is a pseudo-intellectual tear down of an article, asking for evidence and proof, admitting that the original article wasn't even read to completion, but offering plenty of criticism.

What I said:

> I tried to read this all the way to the end but I wasn't quite able to do it in a single round.

So actually, yes, I did read it to completion. Some of the paragraphs I read, well, several times. I just gave in to the urge of angrily closing the browser tab once or twice, before I forced myself to go through the whole thing.

> Guess what? This is a book excerpt. Maybe if you want some answers and notes you can buy and read the book?

I don't see how this changes my criticism of the material. Do you mean to say that the book contains, say, a list of all the New Jersey accountants who noticed something weird about the patterns in which people pay taxes?

> Of course, that would require you to read and synthesize something for longer than 5 minutes, fighting the urge to show how smart you are by instantly going to an internet message board to ask for line-by-line bibliographical references.

This is fairly presumptuous of my ability to read, coming from someone who hasn't carefully read even the first line of my reply :-).

Re: How Baby Boomers screwed their kids

#33

Post by rmc »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #5
cmrivers wrote: post #2

If I ever read another long, rambling screed about the failings of millennials, it will be too soon.

Man, I know! Look at this stuff. How many tendentious assumptions can we bake into one sentence? "The economic systems in which they have grown up, ones that prioritize numbers over people, are blindly accepted, as if that’s the way it has always been." Right. For instance, when OWS, coherent or otherwise, camped out in half a dozen cities demanding radical change, that was the Millennial Generation's generational cr…

Sssssh. Stop using facts. "Everyone knows" that things were great in the past.

Re: How Baby Boomers screwed their kids

#34

Post by john939 »

And here you are writing this, you dopamine fueled junkie.

This is kind of sad because I use facebook more than anyone and I'm not depressed. Also humans evolve for a reason, if our primeval selves saw us today they would say the same thing.

ADHD isn't real, not everyone in the world can have identical brains, the CT scans and brain scans you use as evidence to prove people have ADHD is nothing more than propaganda fueled by the pharmaceutical industry, to push more pill sales.

What you suffer from is the lack of ability to understand youth, I know, I feel the same way about teens now. Except you took this to a whole new level of hatred and misunderstanding, as to almost call to put them all in camps, take away their phones and get off on them all being distracted while you show them how to live your 'ideal' lifestyle, and preach about what's wrong with them.

Times change, you're getting old and now you're filled with contempt and anger at the fact that humans will adapt to their environments.

This isn't because cell phones and technology. I fail to see any corellation with technology and school shootings.

Maybe we should ban guns, yeah, ban guns, and apples too, I think the shooter had an apple for breakfast.

Re: How Baby Boomers screwed their kids

#35

Post by Balgair »

allochthon wrote: post #19

Gen X'er here. Not so sure about many of the points of the article, but this one was interesting: The problem is that in twenty to thirty years, when our youngest generation grows up and takes charge of government and business, its members will have grown up using Facebook, prescription drugs or online support groups as their primary coping mechanisms rather than relying on real support groups: biological bonds of fr…

Lets take the Okcupid anecdote out for a ride. I'd say, from personal experience of myself, friends, and Okcupid's old blog posts, that these algo's do a piss poor job [1]. Not because the algo is bad, but because the person at the top is a capitalist. Their job is to maximize profits, not to get people together. Additionally, people are not honest in their profiles. So you get a case of 'shit in, shit out' for the algos. Also, men in particular, are blind to anything but the face[2]. Still, more and more people are meeting online and staying together. In fact, the divorce rates seem to be lower for online meetings[3], 6% vs. 8% for traditional meetings.

Ok, stats and anecdotes aside, this is straight creepy to me. I agree with you, it seems that the programmer is becoming the only real job left. If some dating algo can do a better job than yourself ever could, the only logical choice is to use that algo. But, dammit, its so freaking sterile to me! Yeah, I am old fashioned here, but having a computer say that I am a better match and will have, statistically, a better life with $person is terrible. I have no control of my life then! This person that I might have children with was not chosen by me. Rather, I chose to reject the algo or roll the dice again.

A recent video produced by "A studio on Fuxing Road" contrasts the Brittish, US, and Chinese election systems[4]. The piece is very pro communist. It glorifies the system of paperwork that insures good governance of China and says this is cheaper and better than the way the US does it. To me, it's bullshit. Even if the 'algo' they used worked and was not corrupt, hell, even if it worked better than democracy, it's still Bullshit. I have a right to say to whom I give my consent to govern me. Everyone has that right. Even if the 'algo' get better than I can ever be, I have to give consent explicitly. I have to know and be informed. I can't stand just rolling over to have the 'algos' determine my fate for me. I can see where it is better for society and for the planet that the algos get the control and we just ride along. But I really don't want that.

Sorry, that derailed there. But I hope you see where I was going. I, too, fear that the programmer, in their data driven wisdom, will step too far.

[1]Unfortunately, offline now: http://contently.com/strategist/2013/08/19/whatever-happened... [2]http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-i-learned-from-worst-on... [3]http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/31/1222447110 [4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M734o_17H_A

Re: How Baby Boomers screwed their kids

#36

Post by weland »

benched wrote: post #31
onebaddude wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps Simon Sinek is right, but after reading the article, you are no closer to understanding why he thinks he's right than you were before. What do you know, the top comment is a pseudo-intellectual tear down of an article, asking for evidence and proof, admitting that the original article wasn't even read to completion, but offering plenty of criticism. > Perhaps Simon Sinek is right, but after reading the arti…

Have an upvote. HN comments have long been a ghetto of a different kind. They're as constructive as YouTube comments, only instead of "ur a fagot", it's all "Not peer-reviewed, replicated, statistically rigorous science!"

I don't have a problem with opinions that are not based on peer-reviewed, replicated, statistically-rigorous science (not that there's any other kind of it). What I do have a problem with are opinions expressed as if they were scientific opinions, but are in fact thinly-veiled prejudices.

If someone claimed Jews are formed as thieves by their culture because he knows a guy from San Diego whose Jewish clients are always behind on their payment, he'd rightfully be labeled not only as racist, but also as stupid, and with good reason. I see no reason to treat someone who claims, as a proof that people born in a certain period of time are more egotistic than others, the fact that an accountant told him so, any differently. That's not only as insulting as racist pseudo-science, it's as idiotic as racist pseudoscience.

There is probably sufficient truth to find among those as well, perhaps, but in my opinion, it's intellectually lazy.

Re: How Baby Boomers screwed their kids

#37

Post by wonderzombie »

Regarding distraction, may I posit that the author has the causality reversed? What if many people are seeking dopamine, et al, because they're already unhappy? There was a piece on procrastination which suggested that some procrastination is an attempt to treat one's unhappy mood, and it seems to me there are plenty of reasons why Gen Yers might be unhappy.

The economic outlook for many Gen Yers is quite bleak. Despite having attended college, many people end up working retail or otherwise low-wage jobs. After hearing that you're supposed to "follow your dreams" and that all you really need to do is "believe in yourself and you can accomplish anything," it's not unreasonable to imagine why this generation feels left behind or alienated. I know people who blame themselves even though, in one case, their job (environmental ecology) was vaporized by the housing bust.

So they're[0] "entitled" because they want what the consumer-driven economy tells them they deserve, what they've been told to demand from life, and what their parents had. But they ought to be happy with less than the previous generation had because, well, them's the breaks.

I'm sure I'm not the first, I predict Gen Y will become something akin to a lost generation. Sometimes you need to take a shit job to survive, but if you're interested in upward mobility, nobody wants to see shit jobs on your resume, esp not among the professional class.

It's ironic because retail jobs, for instance, are often hard work! However there's little prospect for long-term gain. What's the point in thinking long-term when you're working a job deliberately engineered to make workers replaceable? There's nothing inherently wrong with such a job, but maybe it's not so mysterious wonder why kids seem more mercenary or prefer to live in the moment.

If I had to guess, I'd say this offers some explanation both for popularity of tech and finance. If you can afford a degree & can hack it in those industries, you'll probably do well. If you can't, your prospects (depending on where you live) are considerably more variable.

---

[0]: I say "they" because I'm somewhere between X and Y. I remember a time before the Internet, ubiquitous digital media, and cellphones, but not before home computers.

Re: How Baby Boomers screwed their kids

#39

Post by supersystem »

michaelochurch wrote: post #18
supersystem wrote: post #14

Generation X dropped the ball, which is too painful to admit, so now they blame Generation Y instead.

No one dropped any fucking ball. The failings of society are deliberate. Housing bubble? Consumer credit replacing Fordist/Keynesian wage increases? Tuition catastrophe? Those "incompetents" who make health insurance innavigable? The increasing social and economic distance between rich and poor? All intentional. It's the Haves becoming Have-it-Alls at the expense of the Have-Littles and the Have-Nots.

I'm not claiming it wasn't intentional. I'm saying that generation X either played along or didn't do anything about it.
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