With WWI, how did the european powers manage to convince their civilians to go die in the trenches fighting a meaningless war? Or Vietnam in the US
The saying "if everyone jumped off the bridge..." is funny, because people will say it and forget what it means the moment everyone around them starts jumping off the bridge
Nowadays we just send out the poor and desperate. I've always felt conscription was better. How many military interventions would the Pentagon be allowed to sign off on if Wallstreet bankers had to serve in the front lines? Can you imagine the SHIT STORM about burn pits if it involved a billionaire's son...
In ancient Rome everyone in the elite had to serve a few years as an officer in a legion.
There's a common misconception that the US volunteer military is only poor people.
Surprisingly enough, the top US income quartile enlists at a higher rate than the bottom income quartile. There's a big list of things that disqualify recruits, not having basic literacy, no recent prison time, no high school dropouts, obesity standards, mental health standards, no marijuanas use, no children...
Afaik, in times of ancient Rome men who gave orders to fight were standing in front of the people they gave orders to, not in some remote office or bunker.
As for wall Street and conscription - they would find a way to get their sons out of this trouble I am sure.
In most countries, they simply conscripted them. There was no "convincing". Australia is one of the exceptions, although certainly not because the government didn't want conscription.
> In most countries, they simply conscripted them. There was no "convincing"
But who conscripted them and dragged them off to war? Was it the politicians who decided to go to war? The "convincing" isn't necessary once it's reached critical mass
We didn't have conscription in WW1, but we did in WW2 and then "National Service" in the 50s. In the 60s there was a draft that had a "ball draw" every month with the date (a ball numbered from 1-28/30/31) and if you turned 18 on that date of the month, you were drafted.
There were exemptions but it still seems a cruel form of gambling in a way.
> And I state that free healthcare and handouts make people more dependant on the government, since governments can always provide some reason for decreasing the handouts or healthcare provided for various reasons. For example, perhaps at some point a government might decide to withheld free healthcare for civilians that refuse vaccination. Civilians at the bottom of the food chain would then feel more pressured in taking some vaccination in order to keep access to free healthcare of government handouts.
This sounds right, but the same issue of refusing services is just as valid (if not more valid) for private businesses. It would be a harder argument with respect to public healthcare because the first amendment is binding with respect to the government and not private companies. Said private companies and insurance companies can (and likely do) charge more because of things like vaccination.
The problem is not a matter of private vs public healthcare but of punishing violation of the first amendment and enforcing legislation that protects religious minorities from discrimination, especially on insurance companies.
The private sector is more unregulated than the public sector with regard to things like religious freedom. Corporate HR departments can get away with more coercion and subterfuge than the government, hence the current situation in the US where employers control freedom of speech and other things more thoroughly than the government ever could. It's far easier to exert power through the corporations than it is through the government
This article has just enough ambiguity for the author to be seen as either an insufferable dickhead or a decent person in a bad situation
If he's complaining because his employees haven't memorized some niche part of documentation by heart and - gasp - need to look something up, then he's the former
But if he's complaining because employees don't understand basic fundamentals like scope, then he's entirely in the right
Actually edit:
> I started with offering my help. Can't solve a problem? Come get me. I will come over, sit on your chair, and finish your task. You'll sit next to me and memorize the way the work should be done.
I don't like this, It seems like bad management with subtle insecurity. imo it would be better to show the employee how to go about solving the problem themselves so that they can do it and feel confident in their own abilities, as opposed to just doing it for them
I'm trying to imagine this teaching method being used in other disciplines.
Don't know how to drive? Watch me and memorize what I do.
Don't know how to play chess? Watch me and memorize what I do.
Don't know how to swim... etc.
Though there are some jobs where you absolutely must watch someone before you even attempt to do it yourself (e.g surgery), it's not typical and probably not needed for something like programming where you can view the source. And it'll certainly prolong the learning process compared to having people do it themselves.
But isn't that exactly the first step in how humans learn? I mean, first you watch someone drive, then you get shown diagrams and explanations on how to control the car, then you get into a teaching vehicle with an instructor - one that has a steering wheel and pedals for the instructor that can override yours in case you make a mistake on the road, finally once you're proficient enough, you take an exam and (hopefully) get your driver's license. Similarly for chess - a big part of learning chess is reading analyses of games that already happened, i.e. watching people play the game with some explanation. Swimming (or any sport) as well - the instructor shows you the motions, then you do it slowly until you get the hang of it, then get let in the deep end of the swimming pool, etc.
But these are people who already "know how to drive" in principle, they are presumably just not driving well.
The solution to that isn't to have the instructor drive them to the store and back. The right way to approach that is to have the instructor watch them drive and give them tips and feedback in real time. Observe and correct. With programming then they're running the keyboard themselves and they're the ones actually doing the work, which is going to reinforce the learning in a way that just watching isn't going to (similar to how note-taking helps to reinforce memory and learning in lectures).
This takes a whole lot more patience though since you can't just sit down at the computer and start bashing keys yourself but have to "use your words" and requires some ability to instruct.
And I've done quite a lot of this kind of mentoring at my last job and this was the approach I've most often taken.
Where I found it more useful to drive the keyboard myself was in sessions where I was working on solving problems that were at my level where I didn't know the solution. That way they could watch my entire thinking process as I figured it out in "real time" and see where I went down avenues that didn't work out and how I thought about finding the right solution, along with the workflow that I used.
I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to replicate that after they were done watching me, that is more to show where there's more room to climb.
He complains that those guys didn't perform as well as he expected. Google is not an issue, performance is an issue. It's hard to judge whether he was right without delving into specifics which were not exposed.
In the absence of any specifics about how this person was measuring "performance" or "productivity", it's not unreasonable to extrapolate from the details he does provide which reflect poorly on his management ability.
Also want to add that in the coming years they will start pushing biometric logins (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/may/11/techscape...) in the coming years. This will tie all accounts to the same biometric data and identity, which will make blanket data harvesting and profiling much easier and more economically feasible.
> As early as 2010, Facebook’s marketing director argued that “online anonymity has to go away.”
These companies have a financial incentive to destroy online anonymity to the detriment of the rest of society, and biometrics are the latest attack
> Privacy is not something that can be controlled at the individual level when you're up against billion dollar budgets.
But the billion dollar budgets are spread across an incredibly broad scale and have to handle a ridiculous amount of data. Certain patterns scale very well for the companies, e.g. using google chrome while logged into the google account
If we just avoid the big players and use a bunch of different, unaffiliated services, it makes mass surveillance more expensive and less likely to yield a strong ROI
Defeatism just gives these companies a better ROI with respect to surveillance, and it also makes us more susceptible to pushes to erode privacy, like the current one to replace passwords with biometric data
> For example, intentionally visit websites (manually or automated) that you don't believe it. This will trip up their algorithm. How are they supposed to know what you actually think or believe in?
Imo the claim "We can suggest what you should do next, what you care about. Imagine: We know where you are, we know what you like." is just a sales pitch to the data industry in disguise.
They know what we do, but it isn't possible to know what we think without making a bunch of assumptions
> Every advocate of Progress I've read or spoken to sees it as managing and extracting value from other people - and not establishing a basic stability from which others can be free to actualize and thrive. Even basic income is really about putting the managers of such a scheme at the centre of it, and it's to the point where even the very word 'free' is triggering. I'd argue that belief in Progress is not a benevolent, charitable, or altruistic sentiment.
A lot of people talk about progress in this way, but it's really just their own aggression expressed in ideological form
But I do think that progress is an actual thing: just look at what the printing press accomplished, and what the internet is in the process of accomplishing. I think that making more information accessible at a lower cost is the core of progress. Who knows where this will take us, but it's made certain things possible that were not possible before. Life expectancies are also longer than they've been. But this kind of progress isn't a moral imperative like the political kind. It's just something that happens as a result of production
Sure the internet greatly improved access to information, and definetly helped science and tech.
But at what psychological costs?
It has greatly reduced: stability, attention spans, empathy, being satisfied in what you have and probably greatly increased depression and anxiety.
All those are key to the psychology of happiness and personal growth.
And since our material well being is already good, and science and tech would still advance, it does seem that happiness and personal growth are much better indicators for progress.
You are saying "wow this tree has grown to block my favorite chair from the sun. I am a dumb bitch who doesn't understand how trees work. If only there was sun elsewhere. Let me cut down the tree because I cannot be creative and also I am an idiot."
imo the most bizarre thing about the Aztecs was the sheer magnitude of human sacrifice. In order for human sacrifice to be such a big tradition during times of peace implies a completely different sense of self and life as a whole. When the missionaries came and tried to put a stop to the sacrifices, the victims actually fought to be sacrificed. It's just bizarre (and unsettling) how culture can push people to do things to their own detriment
But to their culture, you're not a very good whatever to not be willing to sacrafice yourself for the betterment of the group.
Everything is a matter of perspective. You believe that the gods they believe(d) in are not real, but to them, it was. They were happy in their ways of life until the foreigners came in and forced their beliefs on them. Are/were they better off being forced to stop? No way to know. Soldiers in ancient times thought it was better to die in combat than escape to fight another day.
I'm not going to say that no victim ever fought to be sacrificed, but most commonly their victims were taken from neighboring tribes, and were certainly not willing.
The destruction of the Aztec empire is usually attributed to Cortés, but really he had 500 men, some horses, and some guns/arquebuses. Not quite enough to besiege and overrun an island-fortress with 200,000 inhabitants.
No, his secret weapon was 100,000+ people from neighboring tribes, who were very tired of having the Aztecs raid them for sacrifices and enslavement. This is also why the violence witnessed during the conquering was so brutal that even the Spanish tried to rein them in (without much luck).
Cults like this generally target and recruit damaged or otherwise vulnerable people. Also, they generally keep the crazy dialed down to a minimum in the beginning, then slow boil people over the course of several years. It often starts with "love bombing"; the cult heaps positive attention and praise on somebody who is unaccustomed to receiving anything like that.
This is brilliant. I thought I can't be manipulated easily. But after watching the video, I think I could have joined such a cult at some point. It basically boils down to giving love and attention to people who didn't get any and made to feel like a looser in their life before, specially by parents.
Have raised kids and teens. They can be dumb as absolute shit.
One daughter at 18 asked who she should vote for. So I tried explaining both sides of issues so she could make up her own mind.
She got pissed and just told me tell her who to vote for. She had zero interest in thinking for herself from about 17 until 23 when she started to ask questions and wanted to understand things.
Which was weird as she had been a highly independent thinker until hormones went crazy.
>She got pissed and just told me tell her who to vote for.
This sounds like so many zoomers I've encountered on the internet. "Just tell me what to do". There's just so much information in their world they don't cope well with the uncertainty.
I remember voting for the NDP at about age 18. I really believed that investing tax money in people who were in need was the most important investment we could make. I really thought that perverse incentives and corruption would be negligible. The Liberals won in our riding. We do FPTP in Canada, so my vote didn't really change anything. Then I voted Libertarian a couple years later, to send a heartfelt message that "I like freedom". Of course they were even less likely to win than the NDP.
Both times it was like a roller coaster, or a lottery, to form my underdeveloped opinion, wait in line, identify myself, give my papers, and later find out my chosen party didn't win. Your daughter missed out.
I don’t know the answer to your question, but according to Wikipedia, 85% of the world population is religious. So really it’s a small minority that don’t believe in obvious lies.
> e.g. the labour market, often revolves around free markets being good -- because it favors this typical HN's user position.
Care to explain? I'd imagine that something along the lines of unionization wouldn't hurt the salaries of tech workers.
> Thinking the imbalance is unfair is a mark of expected privilege as they have in other space
I find it interesting to refer to labor exchange value as a "privilege", as if it were something arbitrarily bestowed from some higher authority. Wage is the result of adversarial relationships between demand and supply and not one of some arbitrary authority doling out favors left and right with strings attached
> Wage is the result of adversarial relationships between demand and supply and not one of some arbitrary authority doling out favors left and right with strings attached
Except there are:
- systematic biases in access to the skills needed for this contest
- systematic asymmetries of information/social capital/access which skew access to high earning professions
- outright discrimination against minority groups and women in payment
All of which means current remuneration is in part (not wholly) a reflection of privilege.
> systematic biases
> outright discrimination against minority groups and women in payment
How do you know that demographic differences are significantly linked to wage differences and there aren't other factors at play? For example, a mother may want to spend time with her children and work part time instead of full time. Would you consider this discrimination? Do you think the mother should be paid a full time salary for working only part time? If the husband of the mother works full time and earns more because of it, would you consider this difference in compensation to be a product of privilege? I'd love to hear your thoughts
Yeah it makes perfect sense for a woman to maximise their time and resources to their fertile years, and not shift that over to older age.
Funny also how nobody is looking at the expense gap, if women are making the same money as men, then obviously they should share expenses 50/50 as well. How many couples actually do that?
Women are underrepresented in the top level of society, but always turn a blind eye to the fact that they are underrepresented in the bottom of society as well.
Women should get the same share of rewards as men, but not take any of the risks? How does that make any sense?
If women are taking place in the boardrooms, are they also going to increase their share in prisons? Among homeless? Premature death?
And self actualisation is having children anyway, so women are already at endgame. The reason why men work so hard with careers, is because it enables them to have children and start a family, not because it's just fun to play around with money and power.
The fertility thing is far worse than that. Modern society is actively teaching women that their value as a partner comes from things which they would normally select men for. Ambition, money, etc. So women are gaining things men don't really care for, while losing the things men do select for. On top, their higher socioeconomic status generally translates into a smaller dating pool, as they select equal or higher socioeconomic men. The surface of the bell curve only grows smaller as you go further.
And the answer to this? Trying to shame men into liking something else instead of being honest and admitting women are sabotaging themselves listening to the "work is life" mantra.
> So women are gaining things men don't really care for, while losing the things men do select for. On top, their higher socioeconomic status generally translates into a smaller dating pool, as they select equal or higher socioeconomic men.
Yeah it's as if it's been decided suddenly that men are attracted to highly educated high earning women, which really doesn't work. Men are attracted to the prospect of having children, which means youth and health, and there are very real practical matters that have limits to their flexibility.
> - outright discrimination against minority groups and women in payment
No there isn’t.
Purported wage gaps for women have never been on a peer basis and always about aggregate earnings — which fail to reflect the realities (such as the fact men die 10x as often in the workplace).
Agreed on pay gaps but There is plenty of evidence that women and minorities are interviewed at different rates and differently In Practice. That’s enough for my statement to be true (in the sense that they end up being paid different amounts because they do different jobs because of the discrimination)
> (in the sense that they end up being paid different amounts because they do different jobs because of the discrimination)
Or maybe there's the idea that some groups of people are more willing to do certain jobs than other groups of people and money isn't the only factor? Take investment banking for example: it's incredibly stressful and also predominantly male. Is it possible that more men than women choose to do investment banking because they value the money more than having low stress? Money isn't the only factor in evaluating inequality.
Your line of reasoning assumes that there are no other factors at play and each person is just a bag of demographic categories and nothing more. Also (more importantly) it assumes that everyone prioritizes money to the same degree, but we both know that this is wrong and certain demographics are more money-obsessed than others. But hey, maybe we can fix things by guilt tripping everyone to worship the dollar in equal quantities, maybe that will fix our ails as a society?
Unionizing indeed wouldn't hurt for a vast majority of workers. However, people on HN seems to generally be anti-union because, by virtue of their career position, they do not experience the instability that a lot of people suffer under. Moreover there is also this idea that unions would reduce their career/salary prospects. i.e. HN people tend to enjoy a comfy position on the labour market that makes them removed from and sometimes disdainful of the plight of a majority of workers.
When I say privilege, it is less about the value of the work itself, and more about the overall stability (and of course wealth) that CS jobs have guaranteed over the past 20 years. As you mentioned it, adversarial is a good term here. A lot of HN people have not experienced how adversarial and imbalanced the labour market really is (think people stuck in the poverty trap working retail jobs in the US for instance).
So you have a lot of people here that seem to apply the labour market logic they're accustomed to, to a social relationship setup they ultimately see as a market -- which is a bad thing in my opinion.
> Moreover there is also this idea that unions would reduce their career/salary prospects.
I don't know why it would, but you did also say it was just an idea. I have a hard time believing that an SWE union wouldn't be able to improve compensation and wlb
> So you have a lot of people here that seem to apply the labour market logic they're accustomed to, to a social relationship setup they ultimately see as a market -- which is a bad thing in my opinion.
Yeah I wholeheartedly agree with this because it's essentially the commodification of relationships, which makes me sick to my stomach
The idea that a union would lead to a loss of revenue is a recurring anti-union rhetorical point because unions usually involve membership "fees" (which are more organisational cost payment). There is also the idea that unions are corrupt, but it's more of a tu quoque than anything.
It was just as bad before this
With WWI, how did the european powers manage to convince their civilians to go die in the trenches fighting a meaningless war? Or Vietnam in the US
The saying "if everyone jumped off the bridge..." is funny, because people will say it and forget what it means the moment everyone around them starts jumping off the bridge