Techn0logist

How does welfare possibly hold people back when they're required to look for a job on it?

Someone who risks homelessness may have more incentive to find a job, but they're also going to have more difficulties. It's easier to look for a job on a full stomach; it's easier to look for a job with a roof over your head; it's easier to look for a job with internet access; it's easier to look for a job when you're not constantly worried about losing it all. Welfare gives you a stable place from which to find employment.

If your argument is that people abuse the position of welfare, and don't look for a job, then that's a criticism of its enforcement, not welfare itself.

Holding people accountable for their actions is important, but we're still at a point where the internet is considered by most to be inherently benign. Putting all our attention on a few individuals allows us to pretend that the internet isn't a complete Pandora's box for society -- that it's just Zuckerberg's fault.

Exploring the repercussions of what is happening is far more important than the character of whoever notices them.

I suppose I'm not an 'advanced musician', but I've been playing piano for 22 years and have never practiced a scale in my life. I think it's a detestable, anti-creative task and heavily rooted in the rigid, mechanistic classical tradition.

I still know and remember all of the Western "scales" by improvising music based on the notes contained within them. A scale is just a collection of notes. They really, really don't need to be played in one particular order over and over.

Well, besides just getting a cheap place?

1. Live with other people. Hopefully you should already be doing this. Every sane single person in their 20s in New Zealand does.

2. Go further, and share your room with another person. It's not so bad. You can put a curtain in the middle of the room. I've done it and it was fine.

3. Pay someone a small weekly fee to freely use their kitchen and toilet, and sleep in a van in the carpark. If you insulate your car and have a mattress, as well as find someone game, you'll learn to enjoy it.

I don't consider any of this to be "hardship". You might. I think many of us have a hard time accepting how possible it is to be comfortable with less.

If these really are unthinkable, then just find a cheap place.

That's actually an extremely fascinating experience. I only have two comments, both of which you've probably already considered:

1. Become a freelance web developer

2. If fish oil helped you, then avoid consuming vegetable oil (which is sadly used for 99% of takeaway/restaurant meals) and eat lots of salmon. It's possible that chronic inflammation and Omega 3/6 are related. I wouldn't be saying this if fish oil didn't help -- the fact that it helped says a lot.

Isn't that merely the slippery slope fallacy?

Firstly, the internet does not permanently and completely eliminate our agency, it reduces our agency due to the fallible nature of self-control.

Secondly, all of the other activities you listed do not reduce our agency to the extent that the internet does. Some things are more addictive than others. To claim that meteorology and the internet have the same risk to our agency is absolutely absurd.

Thirdly, establishing distance from the internet (e.g. not involving computers when they aren't necessary, using the computer at the library instead of keeping one at home, adding restrictions to a smartphone or using a dumbphone) is not the same as giving it up altogether.

This is a naive and harmful view of self-control.

You can love something to pieces, yet still find yourself unable to do it, merely because the draw of the internet is too powerful. We are not optimized to deal with the stimulus of the internet. I have found that unfettered access to it is reducing life quality, and I'm not waiting for twenty double-blind peer-reviewed studies to show this obvious reality.

It is much healthier to admit that we have limits, that we are fallible in the face of such overwhelming pleasure, and accept the approach of physically distancing ourselves from the internet.

I read about it in the newspaper for the small town my parents live in, and I have a completely non-technical friend duped into a weird Bitcoin ponzi scheme. It's getting there.

What job field are you in? I think I've been in web development too long, because this is not my experience.

It's obvious why:

1. How much does an electric guitar cost? Comparatively, how much does it cost to pirate music software on the device you already own?

2. How many people do you need to form a rock band? Comparatively, how many people do you need to start producing?

3. How many sounds can an electric guitar make? Comparatively, how many sounds can a computer make?

Using a computer is cheaper, easier, more versatile, and more original than an electric guitar. Let it die.

The only argument to be made for the electric guitar is that you actually play it, and this applies to every other instrument, so I see no reason to mourn for the electric guitar in particular.

For those making snarky comparisons to "eating food" or "waking up in the morning"...

If I had a group of people, and wanted to find out the terrorist, which would be a more useful metric for raising my probability of discovering them?

  1. The person eats food
  2. The person wakes up in the morning
  3. The person uses the dark web

Pair it with other useful metrics and you have a good algorithm for who to keep an eye on.