yowayb

sorry this may be way off, but feels analogous to me.

reminds me of http://www.thai-language.com/ (it's safe). it was around long before Google Translate got good enough. i don't know the authors/maintainers, but afaik, everything is entered manually. this is the "analytical" approach to language. most translations before Google Translate went full ML used an analytical approach.

anyway, long story short, turns out "analyzing" a language to "understand" it GREATLY underperforms probabilistic/statistical methods like ML.

also reminds me of trying to label parts of speech in Vietnamese. there's a school of thought that finds it useful...then there's another school of thought that plainly points out words that can be verbs, nouns, adjectives all in different contexts.

i feel like there's some provable equivalency between gambling and pyramid schemes

not quite as difficult, but reminds me of a fix I found on reddit for Subaru Outback parasitic drain: https://www.reddit.com/r/subaru/comments/1evozzf/dead_batter...

Rugged Individualism. The Hero's Journey. Jesus Christ. The ethos of the one weird man and the one weird trick. None of these have anything to do with prevention. The myths of the western world are all about story arcs: conflict + resolution. And this is very much embedded in any venture, whether private-sector or public-sector. We much prefer to read the harrowing article of a poor brave man saving someone from a ridiculous dangerous situation than preventing it to begin with.

This truism, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", is so true...that like so many truism, it has become a minor, persistent annoyance of thought. It can be safely filed away with the Austrian school of economics.

i personally think that incompetence is actually the norm. that such things like trains even exist, imo is very much due to extraordinary people being incentivized to do extraordinary things. trains are extraordinary to me. this is not to diminish your sentiment in any way.

in fact, i think your sentiment is fundamentally the same that drives extraordinary people to do extraordinary things! it's a deep dissatisfaction with the way things are, and when it's coupled with resources, support, etc., that's when impressive things happen!

this also means that i don't think it helps much to shame people broadly or politicize the matter.

it's odd to me this comment is so far down. my mind immediately went to "picks and shovels". am i old?

Outside of engineering, nomading and migration in general creates a form of social decoherence (eg, difficult for foreigners to get things done, hard to make friends, etc.).

great explanation, thank you!

aside, re: 'socialism', Moscow has no ads, and I have to admit it certainly helps with aesthetics.

This was cited in the Austrian school of economics. I've found the Austrian school of economics to be sensible. But...actual American economics is like the opposite.

I think this is true. I also think a lot of co-workers actually like each other.

I have fond high school memories at gas stations

I once paid $3500 for a very deep and low chaise lounger/sofa. It was very high quality. You did have to get used to having your feet on the seat because it was so deep, but it was a great guest bed.

But more importantly, to me, at the time, it looked very cool in my tiny downtown apartment.

Simple but true. I think some famous people said something about this. I think true from every vantage point. I think this is also very compatible with the parent post. Some leadership are not very good at creating good incentives. Actually, I've never been in leadership but I suspect it's also just really hard and there's potentially external factors that obviate even the best incentives.

A lot of money is made this way. It'll take an act of Congress (or something on that level) but many of us are already "on the take" so to speak, so I doubt it'll ever happen.

Years ago I joined a spiritual workshop called The Art of Living in San Francisco. There was a lot of mindfulness, and the instructor followed the curriculum, except for one particular exercise.

The exercise was 2 parts. First, you put away your mat slowly. Second, you put it away quickly.

I immediately thought, oh wow this is interesting. We've spent all day on slow stuff, but now the curriculum has varied to show us that speed can also work when required. I began to think there was more depth to the workshop than I originally thought.

But she ended the exercise as soon as we did the 2nd part, and she clearly didnt like the exercise.

I don't personally believe that everything is better done slowly. A lot is, but there's no reason to banish speed.

There's never been a single day in history without war. Indeed, there's never been a moment in all of biological life without violent conflict.

In high school, I had a visitor from West Point. My dad (Killing Fields survivor) was so excited. I (16 year old boy who only knew video games, porn and comics) later threw an impressive tantrum that defeated my father.

I threw away a golden ticket to see the world for what it is (instead of from within my cocoon in the suburbs of Los Angeles) and become a man at a more appropriate age.

Instead, I became an overpaid Peter Pan in San Francisco.

Theres some effect, I can't remember the name, where experts in one field (engineering) think they understand other fields (war) because they're so smart at their own field. I think this very much applies here.

If you're at Palantir and think you're the bad guy, first make the honest effort to convince yourself otherwise.

Failing that, leave and make room for patriots.

I don't like hurting others, but you really need to understand there are others that absolutely want to hurt you for basically no reason, and that hurting them first is highly effective, and as both firepower and intelligence (Palantir) improve, it becomes less fatal (clear historical trend).

[tangent, allegory]

From the article,

>trust failure

And from you,

>...of course we want to have pretty colors...

And from me, [allegorically] sounds oddly like a certain immigration problem America has been arguing about.

And back to the subject-matter rigor that HN demands, none of this matters when you've got competent engineers that understand security and good management that keeps it all together.

But there's a fool born every minute, even in tech, so we (I was a security sales engineer) get to keep scamming companies into buying whatever we promise will solve all your problems!

Vietnam is extremely safe because there are communities everywhere. There are old folks watching young folks. One viet friend said there's an expression "rice-powered cameras" which refers to people that start filming when something is happening.

I created a Gemini project and trusted just that folder. I custom built godot with a module in a sibling directory, which it shouldn't have access to, but was able to run 'strings' on the binary. When I asked, it admitted fault and promised to control itself.

For me, this is the point of the article. People fought and the best decision was the result. And I suspect there's a fundamental cultural difference that makes the fight much less fair in America.

I used to have bassdrive on. So good.

Sorry I didn't mention maturity matters. "The game" is truly complex, so 2 more things:

First, nearly every western girl goes thru a "hoe" phase. This is when they're figuring themselves out. And we go thru this phase too obviously, but we still have this double-standard nonsense which blinds us to what a woman really is, so I have to call it out.

Second, you have to be cool with this. This is the importance of rejection experience. You need to go thru it, know that you're alright, and that calm goes sooo far in getting you laid/married.

Everyone makes mistakes. It doesn't help if you're visibly uncomfortable because of a mistake she made a while back. To be clear, the mistake I speak of is sleeping with shitty guys during her learning phase ("the chase").

But I like The Game and the whole pickup artist thing because it breaks down the mechanics in a way that I think is more accessible to "nerds".

The bar/nightclub excursions compress social dynamics from weeks/months to hours. It's very instructive for dating and business/job-hunting.

But the endgame is even more important. I know of at least 5 couples that started off playing the game around each other, and later married. Attractive people, just too busy banging all the other attractive friends (yea, San Francisco lol).

This is just one expression among the vicissitudes of social expression, but don't forget the fact it is also very much a numbers game (when zoomed out far enough).

Yes "the game" is actually impossibly complex for any book to capture, and I agree much tech has made it more challenging in many ways. I do have to recognize that quite a few of my friends found their wives online.

That said, I think finding a wife in countries that tend more traditional is a great approach.

I've seen it work over and over. In one striking case, there was also very high mutual appreciation, from the guy for her traditional qualities, and from the girl for his pragmatism and diligence.

In 2013, I went to Pebble Beach for an expensive car show. I met a couple guys that started newlydivorceddating.com. They told me they purchased thousands of fake starter profiles, so the site wouldn't seem dead.

Tangent:

I was a "pickup artist" (2005-2010). Most of it is creepy bullshit, but the process teaches you a powerful aspect of hookup-style dating (as opposed to courting for a long-term relationship): guys need to be ok with embarrassing themselves.

I'm sure there are ways to optimize online dating, but the SNR was always bad, and it only seems to get worse.

So yea I'm encouraging guys (or whatever the current term is for the one that takes the initiative) to work thru rejection.

Of course, it's not that simple. If you simply memorize interactions that have been posted online, you'll quickly find yourself subtly outed as a weirdo.

But that feeling of rejection is important. That's how your mind+body learns in real time. It's much harder for some of us that didn't quite socialize properly at younger ages (often due to horrible things like broken families, bullies, etc).

And there are of course lighter approaches (what i described earlier often occurs within bars/nightclubs) within more casual groups that may involve more introverts.

However, if you can get over rejection (and certainly pace it; don't be a sociopath) it will dramatically accelerate so many things (many of which do lead back to dating), and you can avoid these scammy dating sites altogether (I personally find 100% guarantees like this very compelling and will regularly consider if I can can just completely avoid entire classes of stuff).

This is going to sound a bit wild, and only viable under 70 or so, but I've met a lot of 55-70 expats in walkable southeast asian cities. There's obviously varying circumstances so do the research, but you can almost get adopted by your landlord family, where you're getting home cooked meals, rides, doors held open, etc. This part of the world is so family oriented, it just comes naturally to many of them.

I've personally found that the most comfortable human spaces incorporate layers of exposure as described in the article.

I also find our cats' preferences to mirror ours (even when we're not around), with the added depth of how they fit into cabinets and other small spaces.

I feel as tho our failure to architect for cats properly is more a symptom of laymen approaching architecture.

Aside: on a much larger scale, I've found commercial construction often sucks at this (except at the high end) while haphazard diy builds often naturally incorporate this.

SCIP is a "nod" to SICP

As a nomad, can confirm. Coming back to America, the scale and quality of materials is remarkable.

There has never been a moment in the known history of humanity without war going on somewhere in the world.