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You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal (2020)

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Re: You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal (2020)

#321

Post by WendyTheWillow »

lwhi wrote: post #300
WendyTheWillow wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jimmy didn't do any of those things. The claim was that Jimmy can't produce value, but he did. And even so, the work the people making the pencils for Jimmy would not exist without Jimmy. Jimmy, in yet another way, provides value. Jimmy figured out to put the wood with the graphite, not them. Who actually does it is irrelevant; or are you suggesting that if Jimmy kept his operation entirely mechanical, that'd be bett…

You don't need to resort to extremely basic non-real world examples to show how capitalism works out when we live in a world full of capitalism. Just because something seems like it _should_ be possible, doesn't mean that other worse consequences won't manifest.

This is an exceptionally real example. People invent things all the time and build companies around their ideas.

It's not "should", it's "is". This is happening, all over the place, right now.

Re: You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal (2020)

#322

Post by bradjohnson »

darkerside wrote: post #319
bradjohnson wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsolicited internet judgement and condescending advice is worse than nothing and significantly worse than compassion. Too many people on the internet are way too over confident in their assessment of others' situations, and I dare say that with your 'tough love' position on this, you may be one of them.

Ha! I'm not telling anyone (else) on here to "get a job". I'm saying there may be someone in your life that needs to hear something painful. Maybe just once, at the right time.

Sure, but it requires a relationship and deep knowledge about their situation. I think we're talking about different things. Talk to your friends however works for the situation and your relationship with them.

However, If some rando tells me to do something either obvious or pointless in a condescending way (which is pretty much what the article is talking about, and very common even in this comment section talking about it) it is 100% of the time way more harmful than helpful.

Re: You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal (2020)

#323

Post by bradjohnson »

darkerside wrote: post #317
bradjohnson wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: Literally nobody needs 'darkerside' from hackernews to tell them to "get a fucking job".

I can read between the lines... Get a job Brad! :-D

I'm overburdened with employment already, unfortunately, but duly noted.

Re: You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal (2020)

#324

Post by darkerside »

bradjohnson wrote: post #322
darkerside wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha! I'm not telling anyone (else) on here to "get a job". I'm saying there may be someone in your life that needs to hear something painful. Maybe just once, at the right time.

Sure, but it requires a relationship and deep knowledge about their situation. I think we're talking about different things. Talk to your friends however works for the situation and your relationship with them. However, If some rando tells me to do something either obvious or pointless in a condescending way (which is pretty much what the article is talking about, and very common even in this comment section talking…

> The problem is that sometimes humility and compassion are not what's needed. Sometimes a person needs a kick in the pants. A close friend willing to tell you to stop impulse buying furniture, or get a fucking job, or get off your ass and work out.

> The tricky part is knowing when which tactic is called for.

That was my original comment. I'm not sure when it got twisted into that straw man, but it seems like we agree.

Re: You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal (2020)

#325

Post by bradjohnson »

darkerside wrote: post #324
bradjohnson wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it requires a relationship and deep knowledge about their situation. I think we're talking about different things. Talk to your friends however works for the situation and your relationship with them. However, If some rando tells me to do something either obvious or pointless in a condescending way (which is pretty much what the article is talking about, and very common even in this comment section talking…

> The problem is that sometimes humility and compassion are not what's needed. Sometimes a person needs a kick in the pants. A close friend willing to tell you to stop impulse buying furniture, or get a fucking job, or get off your ass and work out. > The tricky part is knowing when which tactic is called for. That was my original comment. I'm not sure when it got twisted into that straw man, but it seems like we agr…

>an anonymous stranger on the internet, or a politician proselytizing for their punative economic policies is _not_ that type of friend

You replied to the above with

>It may not be a much better approach than pandering and patronizing their feelings, but it's probably at least a little bit better.

It's not better. That's all. If you missed that and were never talking about unsolicited advice from strangers, then I'm sure we agree.

Re: You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal (2020)

#326

Post by darkerside »

bradjohnson wrote: post #325
darkerside wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that sometimes humility and compassion are not what's needed. Sometimes a person needs a kick in the pants. A close friend willing to tell you to stop impulse buying furniture, or get a fucking job, or get off your ass and work out. > The tricky part is knowing when which tactic is called for. That was my original comment. I'm not sure when it got twisted into that straw man, but it seems like we agr…

>an anonymous stranger on the internet, or a politician proselytizing for their punative economic policies is _not_ that type of friend You replied to the above with >It may not be a much better approach than pandering and patronizing their feelings, but it's probably at least a little bit better. It's not better. That's all. If you missed that and were never talking about unsolicited advice from strangers, then I'm…

Fair. I think I got confused by the split thread. Although, I stand by my response there. They're both crappy ways to respond, but I have a particular repulsion for patronizing, cloying false empathy that contributes to the ubiquitous feeling of victimhood that is natural to human beings but seems to be supercharged in the modern era.

Re: You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal (2020)

#327

Post by jack2312 »

kapp_in_life wrote: post #297
roflyear wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ tests are not exactly designed for poor people, eh?

Are they not? Most I've seen tend to be sorts of abstract pattern matching things. As opposed to basing IQ on ability to play piano or other traits less prevalent in poor communities. Obviously nothing is perfect but it seems disingenuous to claim they're not designed for poor people to be able to complete them.

I don't believe that IQ tests are designed with a bias for or against the poor, so I'm not going to argue either side of that.

I would like to point out however that poverty (or even a hypothetical worry about financial matters) has been shown to reduce fluid intelligence (which IQ tests measure) significantly. This is because people facing poverty have less mental bandwidth. The effect is strong enough to bring a person with "superior" IQ down to "average", or an "average" IQ down to "borderline deficient".

If you're interested in the subject, I'd highly recommend the book _Scarcity_ by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir. If you'd like a shorter and more concise version, there's also an article titled "The Science of Scarcity" [0] in Harvard Magazine about the book that summarizes it quite well.

I'm not an expert on the subject though, so if anyone has reference to any evidence that poverty has no effect on IQ testing, I'd (sincerely) be interested to see it, to get a different perspective.

[0]: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2015/04/the-science-of-scarc...

Re: You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal (2020)

#328

Post by jack2312 »

thiago_fm wrote: post #70

That's one big paradox. Coming from poverty, I work with plenty of talented people, but nowhere as talented as the people I've studied in shitty schools. Now most of those people from my poverty times continue to be poor, because of many problems poverty brought to them. I can clearly see that, and that I was the lucky one to find a way up many times. Yet, my new social circle believe that I'm talented because of my…

To anyone interested in how poverty (and scarcity in general) affects our mental state, and thus our ability to function well and improve our lives, I'd highly recommend the book _Scarcity_ by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir. I've found it quite illuminating and interesting. It's written from an academic perspective, so it has plenty of research behind it, and the narrative flow is not bad.

If you want something more concise and to the point, the article "The Science of Scarcity" [0] in Harvard Magazine provides a pretty good summary of the book.

The themes from the book complement those in the article fairly well.

[0]: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2015/04/the-science-of-scarc...

Re: You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal (2020)

#329

Post by jack2312 »

DanHulton wrote: post #184
cogman10 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people are indeed much better. Anyone who played sports as a kid understands this. Anyone with a little bit of nutritional knowledge knows that having a nutritious diet is a major part of athletic competitiveness. Poverty limits or eliminates the ability of a parent to provide nutritious meals. There's certainly going to be a level of natural talent that exists, but everyone who comes from poverty are playing…

And the time of the year you're born, too! Holy shiiit this fucked me up as a kid. I always thought I was just "bad at sports," but I was born in August, so I was playing against a lot of kids who had up to like 11 months of development on me. That's _huge_ when you're a little kid. A lot of those kids were "indeed much better." Because they were nearly a full year older!

Yeah, there are studies that have been done on this. It's called the 'relative age effect'. It can have an effect into adulthood as well, when a one-year age difference may be less significant. This is because in their earlier years, the children who are a half-year older and more developed will generally see more success, thus getting more opportunities to play, thus getting more practice and coaching, thus leading to more success, etc...

(For more info, see this article [0]. Interestingly from that article, and I didn't know this before today, younger athletes in their cohort who make it to the later stages of their sport are more likely to be "super elite" athletes, probably because they were able to overcome the challenges of playing with bigger athletes in their childhood years.)

[0]: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-athletes-birthdays-...

Re: You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal (2020)

#330

Post by benwad »

WendyTheWillow wrote: post #276
yawpitch wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a shallow dismissal is less valuable than an excellent critical comment An excellent critical comment is wasted on a shallow argument… your thinking assumes that reaching beyond the metaphorical ceiling doesn’t require standing atop those still struggling to reach the metaphorical floor… it absolutely and necessarily does. Worse, you seem to think that reaching for means that vastly outstrip your need is somehow no…

If Jimmy turns a piece of wood and some graphite into a pencil, he has created value. That didn't require exploiting the lumberjack or the miner. Jimmy did not steal value from either. He created value by inventing a new way for their raw materials to be useful to other people. Jimmy didn't need to "stand atop" anyone to do this. What's "pathetic" are the ad hominems and insults the people in this thread have to reso…

It's true that Jimmy created value, but so did the people who chopped the trees and mined the graphite (or however you get graphite). But it's unlikely that Jimmy got the wood from the person who chopped the tree - they got it from someone who paid the lumberjack a wage and took the created value for themselves. If Jimmy starts employing people to make these pencils, he is now taking the value of their labour for himself, purely because he had the money to buy these raw materials in the first place.

That's ignoring the environmental impact of getting these raw materials. Value creation doesn't happen in a vacuum, and most people involved in the creation of that value don't get a share in the profits from creating said value.

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