The pervert's guide to computer programming languages (2017) [video]

Wonder if they apply retroactively.

a) is utter nonsense

b) even if it wasn't, the theory presented has exactly zero practical application

It's kind of out-there but anything that gives a wider view of the choices programmers make might be useful.

Edit: Watching a bit.

I would view the quandary the presenter is discussing thus.

Human being are both power-seeking, ego-gratifying being and "rational", logic-using beings.

Now, human communicate with language. And a given "speech act", is not going to a pure exercise in logic or a pure exercise in power-seeking but some combination. Then, consider that humans interact with discreet "speech acts". A given speech act is going have an overt logical structure (simplify whatever math-y logic you wish) and it's going to involve some degree of power assertion. The power-assertion part by a fairly simple mechanism - identify yourself with a symbol and argue that symbol is "good" (and further associate symbols with each other, other symbols with "bad" and so-forth, all in dynamic process of power assertion). The most common example is a national flag but lots of judgements and colorations come in with this. Moreover, speech is a sequence of "speech acts" and first speech acts in a given context tend to "set the tone" - power is dynamic so the first speech act in a context to set the context the most.

So, with all that, I think it one can find a useful explanation why curly-bracket-semi-colon language and block-structured language have an apparently eternal "holy war".

Also, I think evolutionary game theory is a more coherent context for this. Evolutionary game theory allows the contrast between overt logic and self-seeking to be more clear and not have to call any process "irrational".

Psychology != experimental psychology

Yes, experimental psychologists have a field that almost completely crumbled, but at least they (1) admitted it and (2) some of them try to conduct science and succeed at it (most don't succeed unfortunately as virtually nothing is reproduced).

So how to deal with psychoanalists? What I did: see them as entertaining inspiration for philosophical thoughts. But you can also skip to his section "why psychoanalysis" [1]. I wasn't impressed. Also, those bullets are questionable.

So beware: in my opinion, this talk is not precise in terms of scientific accuracy, but it might be fun to use as an inspirational source.

[1] https://youtu.be/mZyvIHYn2zk?t=264