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Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

gavinray97.github.io

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Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#441

Post by konart »

bko wrote: post #322
dadpassthebeans wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Lost my passwd to my throwaway so i had to create another, sorry) Me? I have nothing to offer. My elementary aged kids will be in middle school soon and I am not looking forward to having to try and keep them on the straight and narrow. At home my parents afforded me a long leash and I rejected most of what my superiors at school/etc fed me. As soon I was able, I GTFO. Took many risks and things worked out okay for…

> Took many risks and things worked out okay for me in the end. I could tell my kids to do the opposite but I'd be lying and they'd know it. "Do whatever you want and things will work out because it worked out for me" is not a good (or honest) message for children. [survivor-bias-airplane.jpg]

I'm not the parent commenter, but I think this is not what they are saying.

This is more of a "Do what you must, come what may" thing.

You can and should teach your kids the ways of life and make them understand that

- the choices are theirs

- responsibility for said choices is also theirs

- results may not reflect choices

Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#442

Post by lordsauce »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #411
lordsauce wrote: post #159

I apologize in advance for rambling. I never comment or post anywhere, but your post motivated me to share part of my story. I very much relate to the feeling that sharing can be too personal and too easy to misread. Thank you for sharing. It’s refreshing to see that there are people who will take a chance on you. Your story helps with the burnout of pushing through with little to no results and exponentially diminis…

Having your friends refuse to refer you and a professor out-right reject a request for letter of rec reeks of there being more to the story. (More helpfully: when applying for job's you'd be called over-qualified for, just lie. Especially jobs that don't require a degree anyway, just leave it off the resume. Had to do that for a bit during the pandemic slump).

This is the type of response I expect, since it’s the natural conclusion to jump to, but it’s also a reason why I keep my story to myself.

This same professor willingly approached my parents and me, wishing us well when I graduated, with no mention of the letter. The same friends called me sobbing, that they “forgot” to refer me to their managers, despite receiving daily reminders from me. They even tried to offer me money to remain friends. I don’t know what to make of that, either. Other friends have simply said they don’t know my quality of work, despite having me help them with assignments in college and beyond.

I appreciate the advice, however. Oddly enough, I’ve been rejected by companies due to my interviewers’ disbelief that I had actually accomplished what was on my resume. Maybe lying will convince them lol

Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#443

Post by shrubby »

hnlmorg wrote: post #437
shrubby wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Escape can be done with a lot of things, most of those aren't as harmful as alcohol. Even in substances there are some with very light harms compared to ethanol, but "this is what we've always been doing".

You're now making a rational argument against an irrational condition. As I keep saying: the underlying causes behind alcoholism is something that needs to be specifically addressed if you don't want alcoholics to simply switch to something worse. This is why support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous talk about people's lives and their struggles. They aren't trying to address the access to alcohol, they address the me…

Root cause is the human biases and lying due to cognitive dissonance? And alcohol is a symptom that's easy to grasp.

You’re talking about waterfall management by laws and I’m talking about individual consciousness and the capability of understanding our biases? I guess that explains the perceived differences.

I stated earlier that I really don’t have the resources for this discussion in extent, but I’m leaving a draft for a blog post based on this too. I’ve been creating a matrix of different human habits to perform the cost/benefit calcucaltion. For alcohol and for practically anything individuals do.

I’ll try to sum it up here really quickly and hope for you to provide the pluses, should you have those, for alcohol. You already mentioned with strong emphasis that its normal thus right. And I don’t think either of the “facts” that we’re used to doing something (like smoking, before it was approached with honesty) or because others are doing it (like social media on the predatory and attention wrecking platforms) are good reasons, but I’ll accept that these are pluses to you.

So based on the homo economicus narrative we are rational and will make a rational choice, right? Then this matrix (a quick draft, for reference only, I hope you give me more minuses here than the buzz, the norm and the herd instinct) should work as the guiding light. https://imgur.com/a/NgV6dt9

Then we have the homo ephicus (ethical human with a twist of brutal praxis) that knows that human “mind” is actually an intuition making decisions and strategic reasoning and excuses and post-hoc justifications (thanks Jon Haidt & Hume) we use to lie to ourselves and to our societies.

So with the lingo of THN: normal =! right

human =! reason

human === lying

But sorry, I can’t do this more clearly as the homo economicus world is putting immense pressure on the cog, I’m positioned to be. I’ll keep you in mind should I have the time to make this bit better.

Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#444

Post by hnlmorg »

shrubby wrote: post #443
hnlmorg wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're now making a rational argument against an irrational condition. As I keep saying: the underlying causes behind alcoholism is something that needs to be specifically addressed if you don't want alcoholics to simply switch to something worse. This is why support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous talk about people's lives and their struggles. They aren't trying to address the access to alcohol, they address the me…

Root cause is the human biases and lying due to cognitive dissonance? And alcohol is a symptom that's easy to grasp. You’re talking about waterfall management by laws and I’m talking about individual consciousness and the capability of understanding our biases? I guess that explains the perceived differences. I stated earlier that I really don’t have the resources for this discussion in extent, but I’m leaving a draf…

I’ve never argued against the negative psychology of the minority. And understand the how it affects substance dependence. In fact I’ve talked about the psychological effects of addiction many times before on HN and have studied it in detail. Likely more than yourself owing to the fact that I also know there’s a chemical dependence component of alcohol addiction in the worst cases, which you’ve neglected to mention.

But I was never talking about addicts. I was talking about the majority of people who drive. And this is why you keep getting replies from me after your silly strawman arguments that all drinkers are alcoholics who need the government to save them.

The point you keep ignoring is that you’re repeatedly just talking about the minority and them extrapolating that like it’s equivalent to smoking. And that is simply just your own prejudices in action.

Take the cake example I keep making and you keep ignoring. People comfort eat. People get addicted to sugar. People get fat from sugar and cause a huge burden on health services, and cut their own lives short. But you’re not advocating the outright ban of sugar. Why? Because it can be consumed responsibly. And that’s the crux of the matter.

And even if we take your silly pop-science comparison with smoking, the end conclusion is still the same; smoking isn’t illegal either. It’s just heavily regulated )just like alcohol already is). So by your own silly comparison, you’re effectively just arguing for the status quo.

Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#445

Post by nunez »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #390
nunez wrote: post #379

> Working at Techtonic was the best possible early-career experience I think anyone could have had. They did contract development, a lot of which was greenfield Saas MVP launches, across various tech stacks. There was not a lot of time for mentorship so it a very "trial-by-fire" experience -- either figure things out and ship stuff, or get the boot. I *always* tell older people looking to switch into tech to start at…

> It doesn't pay well, and the work can be brutal (nights and weekends; on-call) but it's a great way to get the experience needed to get the job that does if you're starting from zero. sadly that's a non-starter for a lot of people in this economy. doubly so if you have kids.

lots of people with kids take jobs with a lot of hours that don't pay well...

Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#449

Post by ProllyInfamous »

qmr wrote: post #198
embedding-shape wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most crashes, but not all, are accidents. I think I'm talking about accidents, not crashes.

Someone is always at fault. Look into auto lobby and this "accident" term history. Use the language of accountability.

My vehicle has collision insurance – is this an intermediary term (or something more specific)?

Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#450

Post by ProllyInfamous »

mgambati wrote: post #122
ProllyInfamous wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He had a fully-enclosed helmet, was wearing leathers and boots, and has years of experience. Was legitimately sober (I talked with him right before he left). One hand now looks like a grimreaper's bones, sticking out from blood-caked jerkybits. ---- Certainly speed was a factor but isn't that why ya'll ride?

Well, I don’t speed. Had a accident once that made me learn the lesson.

May your rides continue Perfectly.
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