nonzero

I actually comment even simple code because comments show up a different color in my editors. Comments for me are often an additional mnemonic trigger rather than necessarily a store of detailed information. It's like indenting or bolding text. It helps with "chunking" while skimming code.

I always wonder about the debate of whether hunter-foragers worked 11 hours a week for food and shelter or were always on the brink of starvation and warfare. I wonder if we'll ever know, since there's so much earth left to dig up and so many stories we can tell with the few arrowheads and bones we find. I do know that whatever you believe in about scarcity has a profound impact on how you work, buy, and vote, and that by controlling the narratives surrounding scarcity in human evolution, you control the policies that the society creates and enforces.

I don't know if you've read the essay, but I couldn't figure out how the author's theory of "ultimate purpose" of money could be falsified. In fact, how is any description of subjective motivation falsifiable? Maybe neuroscience can elaborate on one facet, but in the field of inner human experience, I doubt we'll come up with anything close to what constitutes a theory in the hard sciences.

Evolutionary psychology strikes me as myth-making, not in the pejorative sense but in that it forms an understandable, cohesive, and easily retold story around a bunch of observations. It's ironic that the article labels the rationale primitive societies give for the importance of their media of exchange as "mythologies that served more as proximate motivators of behavior than as theories of ultimate purpose or origin."

Couldn't we say the same thing about what people think of money today? From "money is the root of evil" to our various economic theories, we are just telling ourselves stories that, as time passes, become more comprehensive (explains earlier theories and more). If our economic theories are myths, which I believe they are, then how should we mold the narrative to inspire us toward more cooperation and less starvation and violence?

My thoughts exactly. I figured maybe there was some other crap in the ... that necessitated the convoluted 2nd part of the || statement, but I couldn't think of anything that would.

I wish programming documentation in general were divided into two heavily linked parts, one conversational introductory section and one concise and technical reference section (like a manpage). By heavily linked, I mean the "conversational" section should have plenty of links to the reference section inline with the prose and vice versa. I don't like reading references when I don't even see the big picture. On the other hand, I don't like getting too used to intro material because it's too verbose to refer to later. But if the conversational part has links to the reference section and vice versa, I would get into the habit of following the links and gradually familiarizing myself with the layout of the reference section. Unfortunately, as it is, intros rarely have these links or footnotes to the references, and I have to search for items specifically, losing out on the holistic view.