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Barlow's Principles of Adult Behaviour

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Re: Barlow's Principles of Adult Behaviour

#41

Post by throwanem »

delichon wrote: post #33

I met JPB briefly once, after he spoke at a San Francisco tech conference in the mid '90s. He was a particularly charismatic man. We were so hyped up about the internet in those days. He predicted that we were witnesses of the extinction of the authoritarian state at the hands of the people armed with this new tool. But were also locked in the closet with a dying dinosaur, and that's not a safe place to be. Thirty ye…

I'm sure he was charismatic. So reputedly is Scott Siskind. Both have authored a lot of entertaining predictions. Each is or was so far as I know many things himself, but neither has ever even remotely approached the knowledge to practice even as a novice technologist. Windbags the both of them, in other words.

I respect some of his work, but none that lay in the vein you describe. To speak of a nonexistent territory's sovereignty, when it is solely "inhabited" by machines and people with physical names and addresses, is absurd and risible. Indeed Barlow's entire ignorant, ideologically propagandistic identitarian grift - an early precursor and lineal ancestor of Cliven Bundy and "sovereign citizens"/"freemen on the land"/"Qanon" alike - is in my view directly culpable for much of same and much else destructive about the accidents of the technology's development to date.

And what he produced that does have merit, so far as I can tell, as here lacks all originality.

Re: Barlow's Principles of Adult Behaviour

#42

Post by Aurornis »

lucianbr wrote: post #15

I wonder about the "never lie" bit. Any kind of negotiation comes to mind, where it might be best to not show your hand completely. You might be negotiating for your family, for your business, for your country even. Is it ok to accept a worse result in the name of honesty as a principle? Sure the world might be a better place if everyone told the truth always. But this is advice for this world, not a hypothetical one…

> Any kind of negotiation comes to mind, where it might be best to not show your hand completely.

There’s a big difference between lying and not revealing information that works against you.

In (American) courtroom terms it’s the difference between perjury or invoking the 5th amendment.

Some people feel obligated to provide an answer when asked a question, rather than tactfully declining to answer or changing the subject. It stems from a desire to be polite or please the other party. Ironically this desire to please or be polite leads those people to tell lies because they feel like they won’t get caught.

Skilled negotiators can be very good at identifying when someone is lying. Far more than the average person would guess. I did hundreds or thousands of interviews and after a while many lies stuck out like a sore thumb. I have no doubt that some people slipped lies past me, but most often when I had an inkling someone was lying I could confirm they were lying with some further questions or basic research online.

Once that trust is lost, everything is in question.

Re: Barlow's Principles of Adult Behaviour

#43

Post by michaelbarton »

Swizec wrote: post #35
wutwutwat wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that pursuing happiness? Your saying if you’re not happy than change your goals to something with happiness as a by product. Or, pursue happiness.

There’s a nuance here that matters. Pursuing happiness means you use happiness as a leading indicator (I think). You do things that you predict will make you happy. This is commonly preyed upon by advertising, sales, managers, bosses, etc. I’m suggesting you use happiness as a trailing indicator instead. Pursue other goals and happiness comes on its own. If you perceive yourself to be unhappy over a long period, that…

FWIW there’s evidence around this:

> Researchers have now found that people who pursue happiness often feel like they do not have enough time in the day, and this paradoxically makes them feel unhappy.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180312104036.h...

Re: Barlow's Principles of Adult Behaviour

#44

Post by [deleted] »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #40
ivape wrote: post #16

This will get down voted, but a lot of this is mostly cliff notes from things like Sermon on the Mount. We are mostly godless here on HN, so I suppose the message has to be carried via agnostic vehicles. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%205-7&v... It's all kind of in there, here's a piece I like: "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, an…

A sermon (supposedly) by a guy who said he's going to cast most of humanity into a lake of fire for all eternity, and cribbing many of his greatest hits from those who can before. Not a fan of sources that revel in the idea of the Torment Nexus.

[deleted]

Re: Barlow's Principles of Adult Behaviour

#45

Post by willhslade »

Fricken wrote: post #8

In Canada we keep it simple. You have to reach 18 years of age and then all your behaviour is adult behaviour from that point forward. There's nothing else to it.

That's not true about age of consent nor is it universally true in Canada for legal drinking or smoking age or being tried as an adult. You can vote, marry and join the military at 18 however.

Re: Barlow's Principles of Adult Behaviour

#46

Post by elvis10ten »

andrewstuart wrote: post #11
throwaway2503 wrote: post #2

I'm curious what it means to give up blood sports

Boxing in all its forms. Hunting animals. Rollerball. Fight soccer. Naked fencing. That sort of thing.

Is that fight and soccer? Cause I couldn’t find a sport called fight soccer.

Re: Barlow's Principles of Adult Behaviour

#47

Post by bitwize »

EarlKing wrote: post #37

This seems to overlap quite strongly with a certain Code of Ethics[1] that people were up in arms about not too long ago... [1] https://www.sqlite.org/codeofethics.html

People were up in arms about it because it's unworkable as a code of conduct for an open-source project.

Codes of conduct are specific, enforceable standards of professional conduct that apply to all contributors to a project that cover things like appropriate language and behavior in project spaces, equity and respect towards other community members, and especially, protecting members of marginalized communities from further marginalization or discrimination. They contain specific procedures for raising complaints (as well as protecting the complainants from retaliation), determining responsibility, and meting out disciplinary action.

The SQLite Code of Ethics is vague, can't be reasonably enforced, and its authors declared no intention to enforce it. No means of raising a complaint of a Code of Ethics violation is provided, nor is there an establishment of a committee or process to adjudicate complaints and administer disciplinary action. It is, per its authors again, merely a symbolic gesture. Furthermore, being a Christian seems to be a requirement to be in compliance.

So you can understand why people might be "up in arms" about it.

Re: Barlow's Principles of Adult Behaviour

#48

Post by dissent »

Point #2: Say nothing behind another's back you'd be unwilling to say, in exactly the same tone and language, to his face.

This has essentially been shut down in the modern corporate workplace, at least in the Anglosphere. The overpolite "be nice, be respectful" culture punishes anything that can be construed as "not nice", forcing it to go unsaid or at least pushing it underground. We talk in code and euphemisms about these things. You are justified in avoiding any kind of negativity entirely to protect your income. The net result is everybody loses a little.

Re: Barlow's Principles of Adult Behaviour

#49

Post by andrewstuart »

elvis10ten wrote: post #46
andrewstuart wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boxing in all its forms. Hunting animals. Rollerball. Fight soccer. Naked fencing. That sort of thing.

Is that fight and soccer? Cause I couldn’t find a sport called fight soccer.

It’s soccer where punching and kicking is allowed.

Re: Barlow's Principles of Adult Behaviour

#50

Post by bityard »

lucianbr wrote: post #29
bityard wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't worry about taking every single one of these literally. A rule like this is meant as a compass bearing, not a precise set of directions to a perfect life. Besides, it's totally possible to negotiate in good faith without lying. Professional negotiators actively advise against lying because A) you might get caught B) it's harder to remember a lie than the truth later on. (This is how a lot of criminals get…

I feel that "don't lie, just omit the truth" totally misses the point. It's "rules lawyering", not being an adult as the author seems to envision it. At least that's my reading.

"Don't lie, just omit the truth" is not even close to what I said. (It could be argued that putting words in someone's mouth is a form of lying...)

If you ask me for some information that I don't want to share and I say I don't want to answer that, or it's not important, that is not lying by omission. Or lying at all. That's me protecting my privacy. Giving an incorrect or misleading answer instead would be lying.

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