I think exercise, sunlight, good sleep and diet, and good social relationships are all more effective than SSRIs. But anyone who's had bad depression knows how hard those things are to maintain if you're depressed. SSRIs make some portion of people functional enough where they can at least build a healthy life. But definitely not everyone, and they are definitely not "the cure"
> Neurochemistry rewards you based on how you've trained yourself.
And how society has trained you. Most people understand the social impacts of appearing anxious and unsure. It's bad in pretty much every situation. I would say in most cases being angry will lead to better outcomes.
this is all meaningless AI nonsense. maybe you can recommend reading dostoevsky before learning the alphabet for 4 year olds. or you can realize there's a balance and meaning first is not the right strategy either. good luck with your blog.
It's more of a dance than a balance because the way we learn is going from the whole to the parts and back. Meaning first does not mean asking/getting them to grasp something complex. It is about showing and creating a world where the thing in question matters and has value. Teaching alphabet first without being able to show why (not explain) is absolutely wrong. The way we bringing meaning is by reading to them, creating a place where reading clearly has evident value because we derive value, fun, joy. There's a reason the US has a literacy crisis despite billions spent, access to tech and decades of research into how to introduce the mechanics of learning to read (phonics). How we introduce phonics with meaning is not a question that's asked because schooling philsophies often implicitly mirror the latest neuroscience trend (behaviorism, spare the rod spoil the child, cognitivism, it's not meaning it is the cogntive skills)
Also, there's really little value in criticism without having anything constructive to offer. How would you arrive at a balance?
> There's a reason the US has a literacy crisis despite billions spent, access to tech and decades of research into how to introduce the mechanics of learning to read (phonics).
I thought that the reason the US had a literacy crisis is because Phonics was specifically removed from the schools and replaced by ineffective methods
Phonics wasn't introduced for the longest time, and that makes it worse. But systematic phonics too can be bad when the focus is on narrow skills. Why in the world should I care about these artificial sounds (phonemes) is the question the mind naturally asks. And that needs to be addressed without just jump from drill to drill dressed up in fun. Interstingly this early focus on mechanics in both literacy and math can lead to a "hidden curriculum" where the most meaningful lesson is that the world has things I simply do not understand and I need to follow this ritual. And that leads to learned helplessness and so on.
I'll ignore the first paragraph because it's clearly someone just staring at a wall trying to be insightful without regard for any actual conversation
For your last line I have two points
1. Your point about micro schooling is meaningless. Education is a scaling problem . Yeah of course if you could surround every kid with 3 smart kids and 1 teacher, education is easy!
2. I don't have to pretend to have a solution to arrive at a balance. I think it is a hard problem. You are the one who seems to have the solution, so propose it here (but you can't, you just want to sound insightful)
scaling is definitely a hard challenge and made harder because we want to standardize whatever the product is. Does anyone know? But it isn't just us. There's a hundred year history of alternative education showing essentially this. Self-directed learning (Sudbury, Summerhill) work (even if small) because of this.
I understand the impulse to paint me as "wanting to sound insightful" but I am too old for that, and upvotes here are definitely not meaningful enough for me to care about that :)
Don’t agree actually. Have seen many busy working professionals fall into “extremism” and it’s pretty much always the same. They have a few issues they are firm on and align with one party, they don’t like the other side because of this, then they only hang out with people aligned with their views and only consume media aligned with their views. Quickly turns into lunatic talking points, and I’ve seen it happen to both the left and right.
In my experience, it looks almost identical, just mirror imaged. Lots of anger and fear, a strong certainty that they know the full story about every issue and that the other side is evil or idiotic. No grace or space in their hearts to consider that many of today's contentious issues are actually complicated, with overlapping and conflicting ethical arguments.
There are some other examples in the thread, but two that come to mind for me are Charlie Kirk's killer and the guy who shot the cop in Alvarado, Texas after the ICE protest.
Arguable another example is the guy who killed the United Healthcare CEO.
But that said, most people who have drunk the kool-aid of one party or another are not nearly this extremist. Most of them just post nonsense on social media or even keep their views to themselves but still hold extremist views.
Well sure, and I'm not a lawyer or your lawyer, this isn't legal advice, etc.
I'm pretty confident that I know who killed both of those people. I'm pretty confident that both did it for ideological reasons. I'm pretty confident that both of those ideological reasons would be seen as "left leaning" in the American political spectrum.
As you say, neither has been convicted, but fortunately I'm not a court of law so I don't have to wait until they are convicted to draw inferences from what I see in the world.
Leave aside the shooters themselves for a moment. The other thing I find interesting is how those events are discussed and understood by other people, especially in contrast to right-leaning violence (like the people who killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good, or the person who killed Melissa Hortman and her husband and also shot John Hoffman and his wife, or even the guy who killed Jonathan Joss). Generally I find it to be a mark of extremism if you feel that political violence is justified as long as it is done against the other side. I've spoken to a lot of people who I would characterize as left-leaning extremists because they outright support the killings of Charlie Kirk and Brian Thompson, even if they wouldn't do it themselves.
This is different from understanding how they could happen, or sympathizing with the killers. I'm talking about people who outright cheer for this to happen more frequently. IMO they do not understand what kind of world they are asking for, but that doesn't stop them from cheerfully asking for it.
And similarly, I've seen people who dismiss the killing of Renee Good or Alex Pretti as justified because she "weaponized their vehicle" (no she didn't - watch the video) or because he brought a firearm to a protest (so what - that's legal ... and what about Kyle Rittenhouse?)
So basically, lots of words to say ... violence against people for ideological reasons sucks and isn't justified. Don't do it.
> I'm pretty confident that I know who killed both of those people. I'm pretty confident that both did it for ideological reasons. I'm pretty confident that both of those ideological reasons would be seen as "left leaning" in the American political spectrum.
One can easily say with as much certainty that it was from fascist infighting, something fascists are well known for. Fuentes was saying some rather incendiary things about Kirk prior to the shooting, after all.
Someone hating UHC and the health care system in this country doesn't mean they are left leaning either. The base level that you can assume is they are sick and driven to extremes by a corrupt and cruel system.
> Generally I find it to be a mark of extremism if you feel that political violence is justified as long as it is done against the other side.
Is it extreme to approve of violence on those who further an agenda of committing violence on a societal level?
> IMO they do not understand what kind of world they are asking for
That is the world we have lived in forever.
> violence against people for ideological reasons sucks and isn't justified. Don't do it.
You might want to get on the line with the government and let them know this. A lot of problems would be solved.
>One can easily say with as much certainty that it was from fascist infighting
I'd be willing to take this bet if you want. The prosecution just released some text messages purportedly including a confession from the mainstream suspect in the Charlie Kirk killing. Of course, all of this could be a snow job ... but I am relatively confident it was not.
>Is it extreme to approve of violence on those who further an agenda of committing violence on a societal level?
I suppose that depends on your definition of "violence on a societal level" and gets into some pretty heavy ethical questions. In general though, I'd say that approving of violence against people who act deplorably but do not intentionally and knowingly kill others is pretty extreme.
>You might want to get on the line with the government and let them know this. A lot of problems would be solved.
If they'd take my calls, I'd happily tell them this too. I have been disgusted at the violence done in the name of the people of my country by its current government, against people who were either totally innocent or at least not deserving of death for their crimes IMO. The cruelty of the state is unmatched in both its scale and temper.
And yet, one of the fundamental "rights" of a state, if you will accept that framing, is the monopoly on legitimate violence. I don't like that, and I hope we find a better point of stability for society some day, but this is what we've got to work with today.
Giving the police a smaller budget is the same level of extremism as murdering a bunch of refugees?
And before I get piled on for saying "smaller budget", think about what calls to "fund the police" would mean (a bigger budget), and think about why it's called "defund the police" and not "abolish the police".
the easiest way to understand their value is to be a pedestrian. it is insane how quickly you realize how safe and careful they are vs. humans. the "bugs" with getting stuck in intersections and stuff like that means very little to me if I can bike or cross a crosswalk with confidence
I totally agree with you. Here in DC they use a public charger that's on one of my running routes, so I interact with them more often than the average Washingtonian. I feel more comfortable around them than I do around human drivers.
Easiest to understand their value as a pedestrian in a place that doesn't care about pedestrian and looks at their deaths as irrelevant.
We know a lot about how to improve road safety for pedestrians, but its just not valued in some places.
Replacing 100s of millions of cars with smart robot is not safety solution. Actually improving road safety with cheap well proven methods is the solution.
I agree if the money was given to organizations which would actually effectively use the money to make road safety changes. But with this form of claim I always come back to the idea this was originally funded by corporations. I don't think the opportunity cost of corporate funding is public infrastructure unless it's profit motivated. So if it makes safety improvements at low safety per $ I still support it because its opportunity cost is more likely ads or other corporate investments.
I feel like you have an overall rant about transportation you want to make so just make it instead of adding tangential comments to everything
If you can't go down any street in any country and find people staring at their phones while driving, speeding through stop signs, and making routinely dangerous decisions then you are less aware of your surroundings than the people texting while driving. You are the person this technology is meant for. People who don't pay attention.
You prevent speeding by structuring the road environment so to make speeding less. Comfortable, you narrow roads, you impact the visual field, you have speed bumps, raised cross walks, automatic cameras that hand out tickets when you speed, you change the road surface to create noise, you curve streets make it so cars can't go straight.
Same of stop signs, if stop signs aren't overused people respect them more. Stop signs are an anti-pattern that should only very rarely be used. You constantly see people running stop signs because stop signs are badly placed. Where I live, its very rare that people run stop signs because there are far fewer of them. It still happens, but usually not when traffic is high, because most people do value their live.
The US is well known for building roads that are great for driving fast on, then just slapping a bunch of stop signs down and a bunch of maximum speed limits (that are barely enforced) and then complain when people don't follow the law. People look at their phone because the roads are straight and wide and they think they can look at their phones.
People react to intensives and to enforcement. Give them the right intensives and most people will follow them. And best thing is, these changes even work on Waymos too.
I agree with you as long as it's passive commuting (NOT driving). I had a few jobs / cities with long (45+ minute) commutes and I also got a ton of reading done that I wouldn't I wouldn't normally
My experience is that for people with kids, this benefit basically disappears and they want every spare second they can get
your misrepresentation of the timeline makes your comment meaningless. Germany has been winding down nuclear reactors for 20 years.
the only actual story here is that the market trend (both tesla in the US and all chinese EVs) pointed towards EVs being the future and German/Japanese brands have not been willing to give up their cash cows to EVs. The brand value will remain (e.g. germany MIGHT be ok), but the value and reliability differentiators will disappear.
yep. I've tried everything from a bunch of mechanical keyboards to topre keyboards and I finally just came back to the mx keys mini, the magic keyboard mini, and the logitech mechanical mini. they just feel the best over the long term and are close enough to my laptop keyboard that it doesn't feel like I'm making a big change.
Two of my mechanical keyboards are "low profile", and they are very smooth & comfortable, but they feel niche/custom enough that they need more brain power to operate.
As I noted, they're en-US layout, and I can touch type it, but I need my native alphabet and letters while typing daily, so I get them out when I'm going to code at home.
The best part of MX Keys Mini is not the switches but the materials. They are heavy duty and made to be typed on it, all day, every day. Combined with auto-layouting it has, it's a very practical device, esp. if you're using multiple different machines at the same time.
Logitech's wireless keyboards, as you know, automatically switch modifier key layouts when you switch between Mac and PC hosts.
