aspirant

Can you believe kids these days get to grow up with cognizant computers? My starving teenage mind had to dial-up to a BBS.

Makes me wonder what a sense deprivation tank workstation would be like. Insane productivity? Or just insanity?

Then give up whatever device you are typing on, and never set foot again in whatever structure you are typing from. Surely you know that your activities have destroyed at least as much nature as whatever you're criticizing.

The tide is probably turning against that opinion: the aches and pains are not due to the body doing too much, but too little.

Actually, at such a low speed I find it only helps focus. It's meditative, similar to how a labyrinth is an ancient meditative walking device.

Also, our bodies evolved walking 10+ miles per day. Not standing in one place for hours. The broader point is about reconciling modern lifestyles with the evolutionary past that we are still largely bound by.

That is the last paragraph. Shouldn't be the last word though. You're seeing it cut off with the word "for" ? Anyone else?

Does it really just cut off? I colored the second, less essential half of the article grey for visual simplicity. Is it not showing up as such for you?

The extended content in grey covers my experiments with standing desks prior to this. tl;dr: Standing for a half hour leads to aching body parts — walking doesn't.

Anyone else trying a paleo diet? I'm reminded that PG himself referenced the diet in an essay years ago though I can't remember which one. I wonder if he ever went on it.

"In the USA in 2004, 317 billion cubic feet of natural gas were consumed in the industrial production of ammonia... A 2002 report suggested that the production of ammonia consumes about 5% of global natural gas consumption...

Natural gas is overwhelmingly used for the production of ammonia..." — Wikipedia

The bar over the ō is a macron. It is a diacritic marking a long vowel. Hence you should pronounce 'loc' like 'location.'

Right, because ending up a great musician instead of a great watcher of television would have been awful.

Anyone know of other teams who have implemented something similar?

When I was a kid, I would just walk around reading books all the time. And I was also the youngest kid in my grade, so I was quite small. I was kind of a smart aleck. It was a recipe for disaster. I'd get called every name in the book and beaten up. That was my schooling experience.

- Elon Musk

Surprised no one has mentioned Paul Graham's How to do Philosophy. We are after all hanging out in his living room. http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

"When someone is suffering from depression, they are sick."

That's what drug companies say. Another theory is that depression is a healthy response to something in the outer or inner life that must change. So a bout of depression, uncomfortable as it may be, can be integral to growth.

That's why we have the concept of values.

You can't tell whether something is good or bad until you hold it against some value like... speed of execution, or intuitiveness, or least code. Once you do, judge away.

That's why postmodernism is especially challenged, it can't decide what about life is valuable.

Your first if statment = false. Most specialization doesn't require increased training. You're thinking of brain surgeons when most specialization means operating a cash register or pushing a button on an assembly line. Therefore most specialization doesn't need increased training but a numbing of ambition.

I know an independent software developer who says his kids are going to learn to program and configure servers at the earliest possible age. He doesn't care if they pursue programming as a career later on, helping him with tech jobs will be just another one of their chores; like taking out the trash or mowing the lawn.

I think he's on to something as far as spotting what modern "chores" should be. And the kids will probably benefit from knowing they are doing something skilled that actually benefits their family.

Not true. That is what Abraham Maslow spent his life trying to tell us. People have needs. Physiological ones (air, water), and also psychological ones (challenges, self-esteem).

Therefore, we can know a want from a need because a need is anything that if you were to go without it, would result in your death or stunted growth.

This piece, like Walden, is about how we can trade what we have mistaken for physiological needs for legitimate psychological needs.

If you want more context, it was usually the employees of the company I founded that told me I needed to shower. It's not like I had flies swarming around me. Rather, they'd walk into my office and sniff and let me know it was about that time.

This seemed very efficient to me. Why go around guessing when you need to shower when others can more tell you more accurately?

But different strokes for different folks. I'd rather be known, not for my complete lack of odor, but for having an independent intellect.

That's what half of Thoreau's Walden is about.

Right. Washing dishes in nice soapy 90 degree water doesn't kill any germs. It just feels good on your hands.

But people gave me a lot of crap about using cold water anyway. So part of my process, just to be safe, was to ensure the clean dishes dried very well, next to a window, in the sunlight.

Right. Usually the Jungian usage is written 'Self' with a capital 'S'.

I quite believe in it now and looking back, credit it as the source that allowed me to quit various dead-end jobs, even when they paid a lot and were held in high regard by everyone around me. My ego said, "Hey, be content this is a great job!" But the Self doesn't care how much money a job makes. It cares about 'individuation' and growth.

This is part of a theme I've been writing about lately. It seems that many people reach a point in life where they begin to experience the unconscious mind as a distinct and separate intelligence from their conscious mind.

For me it started when I began to view the unconscious mind as a separate processor I could offload work to. But since then things have snowballed and I've found that the unconscious can behave, not just like another processor, but like a whole other person. And apparently I'm not the only one.

At any rate, these past few months spent hacking my mind has been quite a ride.

I know nothing about Canon's product release cycles. Is now a good time to invest in this puppy? Or will the 5D Mark III or some such thing be out soon?

Forget the exclusivity, what we're talking about is the summum bonum: the ultimate goal according to which values and principles are established.

A person whose summum bonum is maximum comfort and security will have a very different life than if they had instead pursued creativity, justice, progress, etc. above all else.

We're not talking about the abolishment of comfort and security, but rather their subjugation to what is greater.

"Advertising is the price you pay for being unoriginal."

I spent a month in Cambridge after writing this and now think this post was a bit rash.

Cambridge may be more about ideas than anywhere else, but it also seemed home, more than anywhere else, to people doing scholarship for scholarship sake and to people who had subjugated significant ideas to serve their little ideas.

Again and again I ran into people studying great thinkers and great thoughts for no greater reason than that they had never been out of academia, didn't want to leave, and were using these thinkers and thoughts as fodder for their thesis (job application) in order to get a professorship that would shield them from the outside world forever.

Encountering those sickly sorts will leave any results oriented person, like Charlie, wary.

I later found some material that comprehends both our thoughts.

""Systemic learning theory suggests that it is valuable to distinguish levels of learning.

It is clear that most learning that goes on within and outside learning institutions makes no difference at all to individuals’ or society’s overall paradigm. This is because it is first order learning or basic learning. Bateson distinguished three orders of learning and change, corresponding with increases in learning capacity.

Learning I - basic learning learning, thinking, knowing

Learning II - meta-learning learning about learning, thinking about thinking, knowing about knowing

Learning III: epistemic learning learning about learning about learning, thinking about thinking about thinking, knowing about knowing about knowing

Seeing as how no one may ever read this post, I'm not going to expound any more, but again, I have found studying epistemology to be exhilarating.