‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’ • Hacker News Board

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#651

Post by Noumenon72 » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 1:03 AM UTC

solatic wrote: post #611

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #145

This probably won't be popular, but what the hell. I feel like, if you strip away the outward trappings and dogma, this is what religion is good for. Not in a "believe in Jesus" or "trust in God" kind of way, but in a "how to orient your life" kind of way. Which is to say, the actually useful portion of religion generally teaches that your best life is probably not focused on you. It isn't about finding yourself, or…

> It's in being of benefit to the human beings around you. And in serving those around you, you become something that is worth being. I both agree and disagree with you. On the one hand, you're right that most people would be happier if they committed more and gave more. Human relationships are a positive-sum game. But people who mindlessly follow that advice are asking to be exploited. History is full of dictators w…

How does it prevent you from being exploited? By only helping coreligionists who are not supposed to exploit each other?

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#652

Post by jf- » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 10:08 AM UTC

JimboOmega wrote: post #648

jf- wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No? I'm not even sure what fields... It’s an easy strategy to fall back on, you don’t like the implications of a piece of research? Claim the researchers are just propagandists. Make this claim of anyone who finds against your claims, actively attempt to damage their careers due to their obvious bias, and effectively censor any research proposal that doesn’t declare it’s findings as being within acceptable bounds b…

> It’s an easy strategy to fall back on, you don’t like the implications of a piece of research? Claim the researchers are just propagandists. Make this claim of anyone who finds against your claims, actively attempt to damage their careers due to their obvious bias, and effectively censor any research proposal that doesn’t declare it’s findings as being within acceptable bounds before being carried out. Of course th…

I think I’ve said as much as I need to at this point. However regarding your friend, incels, and other such people: some people have mental and personality disorders that make them act extremely towards themselves and others. I don’t think we should misrepresent reality for the sake of such people, certainly not for fundamental truths of life that affect us all. There are better ways to help them, ways that don’t involve distorting reality for the rest of society. Being realistic in this case does not mean being unduly pessimistic as they may be, but nor does it mean denying the reality of one’s position.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#653

Post by maire » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 1:17 PM UTC

digianarchist wrote: post #108

40acres wrote: post #18

Everyone around us is fighting their own little war. I've felt similarly to the writer -- I moved out of my childhood home the day after graduating college and started work that Monday. I only moved 215 miles (NYC to Boston), but it felt a world away, especially considering most Americans live relatively close to where they grew up and 215 miles in Europe goes a long way. I've made and abandoned friends at almost eve…

Your story has a similar outline to my own. I moved from the UK to Canada which has been excellent for my career but at the same time has put enormous strain on my relationships as I just don't get to see people thanks to splitting a really shitty vacation allowance (3 weeks Canada wtf). Now I'm torn between putting down roots in Toronto, moving out to the sticks, moving to Europe to be close to everyone or doing the…

You should try contracting. When my son was in high school I switched from full time employment to contracting. The pay was about the same and I took every summer off.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#654

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 12:19 AM UTC

castlecrasher2 wrote: post #440

toomuchtodo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I used to think exactly as you stated the above and I don't mean to suggest how rigid you are but my recent experience with family is that relationships must go both ways, and when your attempts at expressing yourself go unheard or ignored then perhaps cutting ties is the right approach. I would encourage you to use this as a growth opportunity. I had a similar situation occur with a close family member who died un…

I appreciate your reply, but starting a message with advice instead of understanding leaves me wondering if you're more interested in being an advice dispenser than understanding where I'm coming from and then giving advice. Forgive my reaction, my family is adept at that very thing: pretending to listen then dispensing the advice they think will fix you and your problems; I've now realized that empathy means simply…

Assume positive intent on my part.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#655

Post by zaphod4prez » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 2:06 AM UTC

adamrezich wrote: post #538

saeranv wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Belief in science is nothing like belief in religion. The former, ultimately, is a belief, based on evidence, in the scientific method (empirically acquiring knowledge). So yes, I would argue that even if someone doesn't understand all the scientific principles behind climate change, they can still reasonably trust "science" and "scientists", since that work is built on top of empirically-backed, peer-evaluated resea…

"Science" and religion are both equally fallible because both are interpreted, disseminated, and perpetuated by man, which as we all know is about the most fallible thing there is. It's obvious and demonstrable that various religious institutions have had varying levels of corruption over the years as their power has waxed and waned based upon how much faith the people have in them. Why is it such a stretch to see th…

Okay, here's where I see an important difference.

Let's break it down into a few constituent parts. We have a thing (scripture / spiritual belief OR the scientific method as applied to the world). Then, nasty, messy fallible people who probably don't floss... do stuff with that thing: they teach it, they do it, they investigate it in their own messy wayd. And then regular joe-schmo's who aren't so involved in the doing-something-with-the-thing get reallll impressed by these doing-stuff people (priests/rabbis/gurus whatever OR scientists of all sorts).

Okay, well here's the thing. I agree that everybody is messy and fallible. I agree that hand-wavy "Science people are right!" talk is wrong, imprecise and has potential to be harmful. At the same time, I believe in the scientific-method-applied-to-the-world. I believe in its power to reveal truth. I do not have that same belief in scripture-or-organized-religion-applied-to-the-world. And I think that's REALLY important. Of course people do stupid things and make mistakes, but when someone puts blind faith in people-trying-to-adhere-to-science, it scares me a lot less than when someone puts blind faith in people-trying-to-adhere-to-a-religion. In fact, I'd much rather people put blind faith in "scientists" than in... any other type of group, really, at least when it comes to revealing knowledge.

Hopefully that made sense, if anyone has thoughts or disagrees, I'm more than happy to hear it.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#656

Post by zaphod4prez » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 2:20 AM UTC

samhain wrote: post #523

jf- wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s more a value system, or maybe an ideology, than a religion. Though I’ll agree the two do more or less occupy the same cognitive space. There is no need for anything mystical to be involved. Today we are experimenting with new phenomena that have never been available to humanity en mass. Effective birth control, gender equality, freedom from restrictive social norms, all of these are very new, and indeed evolut…

>Effective birth control What if at the end, we end up realizing that all there is to life is a struggle in order to propagate our own DNA, and that really this struggle may not be worth it? Humanity as a whole could decide that this is all there is, and then that ultimately there really is no point other than what you make it. What if humanity bucked it's genetic programming, recognizing it for what it really is. An…

What's the "this" that is all there is? What is the struggle you describe, exactly, and what would it mean for it to be "worth" it? What do you mean by freedom, exactly, and on what basis is it good (you imply that it's good and important to be "truly free")?

Those questions are semi-rhetorical (although I'd love to hear an answer if you want to have a convo about it), but your paragraph rings some alarm bells for me. Have you read Thomas Nagel's "The Absurd"? I think it directly and decisively addresses many of the concerns you bring up.

Here's a link to the paper: https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/The%20Absu...

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#657

Post by kaizendc » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 3:09 AM UTC

samhain wrote: post #525

technobabble wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship – be it J.C. Or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mothergoddess or the Four Noble Truths or so…

>If you worship money and things – if they are where you tap real meaning in life – then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. The only reason he has to assert it like that is because it isn't true. He has a lack of imagination if he's not able to imagine someone who doesn't worship anything. I imagine he'd just move the goalposts though, and say "oh well they worship their lack of w…

You're right, the hedonic adaptation is all imaginary. David Foster Wallace and the many psychologists who support it's existence are all wrong.

Perhaps they should read your dissertation on it?

/s

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#658

Post by larksimian » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 9:49 AM UTC

adamrezich wrote: post #562

phs318u wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep raising the straw man of "settled science" - who here, or in fact in the scientific community, believes this let alone proclaims it? Even in broader (non-scientifically literate) society, there are few people (in my experience) that believe science knows everything already. Science had its "protestant" moment - it was called the Enlightenment, and it result from questioning the dogma of settled knowledge as…

I'm not going to list politically-charged examples because that's highly unlikely to lead to productive discussion and everyone here knows it. I'm not knowledgeable about philosophy or metaphysics but is there even anything approaching consensus on whether or not there even is a "knowledge ceiling" that an individual or even society could ever achieve? (If so, I'd love to know how anyone came to that conclusion lol)…

Science as a system of producing knowledge (and rules for what to do and how to live) differs from religion in key ways:

1. It places empirical observation as the ultimate form of evidence, as opposed to scripture/existing knowledge.

If you observe something that contradicts existing theories and other people can make that observation then existing theories are disproven, the end. This still takes time to propagate, but really only for highly complicated abstract theories(of which climate change might be one!)

2. Science has a built in competitive market type process for selecting 'scripture' and an incentive to constantly be updating it.

Religions have more bureaucratic/despotic approaches to updating knowledge(college of cardinals/pope, influential preachers etc).

3. The core questions science tackles are physical and amenable to observation and maths. The core questions religion tackles are metaphysical, or to put them in evo-psych terms to do with selecting and reproducing rules of behavior that produce good societies in which to live over tens/hundreds of generations.

In as much as science tries to enter into that hyper-long term planning game it should be treated with extreme suspicion, it's a different statistical environment to that of physics and the existing statistical tools of science are probably not up to the task. It's the land of Taleb's fat tails and iterated games and exponential chaos, not statistically modelable quantum experiments(top pick a complicated but tractable problem).

Shitty metaphor: Hard sciences are about solving P problems, or at worst approximating NP or worse, but still computable, problems. Religion and social science are about providing heuristics to uncomputable problems(if you have a C program and all it does is return then it definitely halts etc). In as much as people take the NP approximations as seriously as the P solutions, they're in for some rude awakenings. In as much as a lot of our society does then we're in for a bumpy ride.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#659

Post by JoeAltmaier » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #629

notyourday wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, everyone should read feminist theory ( of course we must exclude Paglia because she is not a true feminist as she contradicts the true feminists ) to debunk Evolutionary Biology. /s, in case it was not obvious.

What exactly is the point of evolutionary biology that you feel is being attacked? To the contrary, Dworkin's point is rooted in biology, specifically the fact that sex is expensive and risky for women in a way it isn't for men. She describes the women in communes who had to take care of children without any support (or risk unsafe abortions) due to the free love culture. She deemed the sexual revolution male-centric…

Because communes? That's a small nail to hang a theory on. Sounds a lot like what-about-ism.

And what's the revolution about today? Because its still here. And women are advancing into every social institution continuously, the risk having been abated by chemistry and physics. Is it still male-centric? Should it now stop because of a 1960's confused theory?

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#660

Post by RedPill101 » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 7:01 PM UTC

You're hitting the wall soon and I see a lot of cats in your future. You've probably been riding the c@ck carousel in your twenties and you just woke up from your tinder fantasies. It's too late. Remember that nice guy you kept ignoring favoring the chads for a quick night stand ? You could be a happy mother right now, have that nice house in the suburbs you made fun of with your friends.