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Reading almost all the comments gives me the sad validation that people truly do not read the article before commenting...

This article is not about support chatbots. It's about clearing up your writing/thoughts and communicating clearly even if you used a chatbot to get there.

I forget where I read it, but this isn't a very thought-out view. _Especially_ with the example of access ramps -- yes, the ramps were originally put in after activism for better wheelchair accessibility. But who ended up using them a whole lot and benefiting from them? Parents with strollers. Would we say that the needs of parents of young children, or young children are a minority? Do we not care about their experience even when we're having a population crisis?

In hindsight, this is a pretty obvious conclusion if we would have taken a bit of extra time to consider why we might want accessibility ramps, but instead we get sidetracked by exactly the kind of thinking displayed by your comment.

When people say "accessibility is good for everyone" it's not a naive feel-good comment. It's an acknowledgement that at some point all of us could use help with accessibility (e.g. when you become a parent, when you get old, etc)

That's interesting. Most of the people I know would get (or have gotten!) bored of that after a few months, a.k.a. after the burnout has passed. On that list I include: me, my dad, his friends, multiple friends who quit their startup/bigcorp jobs etc. I myself quit on very little notice and spent a few months literally doing nothing but watching TV, and one day I just woke up and it had passed. The next few months I learned how to produce music, learned a new programming framework, treated parents way better, showed up for my friends, etc. Saw the same happen to my friends and my dad when he retired.

Monica is what I was looking for! Thank you!

An interesting consideration here that I don't see mentioned in the comments is the difference between the destination and the _journey_.

The paper asks, "would you want to know during the wedding ceremony whether your marriage is going to end in divorce?" There are 4 reasons offered for not wanting to know ("to avoid the negative emotions, to maintain the positive emotions of surprise, to gain a strategic advantage, to implement fairness") but my reason would be this: there is a difference between knowing the outcome, and knowing _why_. And there is a difference between being able to express _why_, and truly feeling it and accepting it. And I don't think there is any way to get there other than through living it.

The human mind and our capacity to learn/grow is incredible, but we only learn and accept things when we are ready to. Sometimes you learn a little too late (e.g. after your divorce) what it means to be a present partner, but that doesn't mean you didn't learn it as _soon as you could_. And no knowing the future can change that. I mean, how many of us have been told over and over that we should be grateful for something (e.g. our parents, our partners, our jobs) but only truly learned the lesson once we lost it?

Sometimes I think we have too myopic a view of what "knowing" really means.

Same situation, but I've started! I only spend about 30 minutes every other day, and it's extremely slow-going, but so fulfilling. I had the same goal as you -- _really_ learning & understanding math.

I finished pre-Algebra last year and I'm halfway through an Algebra text by Gelfand & Shen now. My friends look at me funny when I tell them I'm re-learning Math from the ground up for fun (esp. with a degree in CS) but it has been so rewarding. I probably won't get to finishing Calculus for another couple years but I'm already having so much fun. Stumbled upon deriving some exponent laws last month by accident and truly understanding the sum and difference of squares has been awesome.

Ahh, grammar & such! In that case, I'd actually say what you probably want is more input, and not output. Your brain should intuitively know what the correct tense and sentence structure is, and the only way it can learn that is by consuming VAST amounts of content in that language.

Then with a little attention, you'll start using the correct tenses and sentence structures as matter of course :)

As a language enthusiast who speaks ~5 languages at varying levels, I can relate to the feeling of "I am fully capable to have conversations about almost anything, but I don’t feel fluent at all". What I'd ask is: what exactly do you mean by fluent? In my opinion and experience, fluency is contextual. It's very hard to apply it in a generalized manner.

I'll give an example. I studied German in college, got to C1, and am comfortable reading/discussing the news, my hobbies, going out, day-to-day affairs. I learned a lot of my vocabulary by reading newspapers, and was regularly discussing geopolitics. I had no problem making friends in Germany, and I did not feel anxious speaking German. However, I would have trouble watching TV kids shows or spending time with a child in German. I have no idea what a lot of animals are called, or vegetables I don't usually buy. I've never learned how to say "You have sleep eyes" (or the local equivalent) or "Your shoelaces are untied" because it was never relevant to me.

On the other hand, growing up in an English-speaking country in a Cantonese household, I can say all those things in Cantonese. I'm very accustomed to a domestic setting in Cantonese. But politics? News? As if.

Folks often equate "Fluency" with "Speaking/understanding the language like a native", and I think this is a very unhelpful false equivalence. Comfort in a language across all situations and aspects are simply a function of luck and time, and folks in their native languages have simply had more time and more chances to be lucky. You can absolutely be fluent without equalling a native speaker, and honestly if you can have a conversation about almost anything, you're fluent in my books.

If you're looking for actionable items though, I'd advise thinking about why you feel non-fluent and being more focused. Is it humour? Watch comedies. Is it domestic conversations that won't come up by watching the news? Kids books, children's shows, parenting podcasts. Is it politics and general affairs? Newspapers. "Just speak with natives" is good advice in general, but it's not going to address your pain points unless you make intentional efforts.

You will get these things over (a long period of) time, but these are ways you can be more specific.

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EDIT: I'll add one last thing. In some ways, fluency is confidence. Even native speakers will reach the age of 50 and not know the meaning of common words. The difference is, they'll have the confident response of just shrugging it off and learning it (or not!) because they feel ownership of the language. Meanwhile, a non-native learner might think it's their fault and something they HAVE to learn. I think this is why a lot of non-native speakers actually have much larger vocabularies than a lot of my Canadian friends :P

Like many others I don't love the idea of a "How to work with me" manual because -- like much of this one -- they can come off as a one-way directive. However, context matters.

If a random person on my team or the manager of some other team handed this to me? No, no, and no. Huge red flag. But if I was joining a team for the first time and my manager handed me a manual of expectations and made it clear what they value, what they expect, and how they see the world, that would be a treasure trove for my career. After all, managing my career is essentially managing my manager.

That being said, this document... isn't that. I appreciate the intent, but like many have said, it can be a little self-indulgent :)

Wish it were so simple. I (and my partner, an Urban Planning graduate!) had the exact same opinion as you until half a year ago my partner finally found a job out of school... in a small municipality. So we moved away from our very compact city of Toronto.

The reality is just different here. We're not going to bike everywhere on the highway in Ontario in the winter, when it's -20C with windchill. We can't even get the government to bring internet to every street, much less bike lanes, street lighting, better infrastructure. My partner is really trying to make change at city hall, but it's just... difficult.

And of course, we'd love to have kept living in Toronto, but it's completely unaffordable and this is where the job was. And thousands if not millions of other folks are living in similar realities. Perhaps we could convince everyone who lives in small towns to move to the city, but the city is already a difficult enough place to live.

We should do everything we can as individuals to make this better, but that "everything" is getting the local government to actually do something to make biking a real possibility. Until then, blanket statements like yours are just humblebrags about either your city, your situation, or your amazing willpower.

+1000. Almost everyone who's "singled" me out to be a mentor has been some greedy CS + Business grad who asks me mostly emotional or money-related questions that I essentially can't answer other than with "It depends on you and what you personally want."

This one guy specifically, who keeps reaching out to me, once kept me on a call for almost an hour basically asking me whether or not he should re-neg on an offer he signed ONE WEEK BEFORE THE JOB STARTED because he'd kept applying and got an offer somewhere else that paid more. I basically said "I mean if that's what you really want, you should do it, but be aware that the tech world is small and it's not going to look good" and he just kept trying to rationalize it because he'd clearly already made up his mind.

Another time, he sent me an email that started with "I just wanted to thank you for your help last time" but then immediately would delve into some other totally asinine quandary he'd gotten into because he had no integrity and/or trust in other people.

These people are impossible to help...

"Nuclear waste in canisters has never hurt anyone"

This is an interesting statement, and though true I think it's a bit disingenuous.

I'm no expert on nuclear or nuclear power, but I recently listened to a Canadaland podcast about nuclear waste [0] and did a little extra reading [1][2] on deep geological nuclear disposal. If what I heard/read is to believed, it sounds like although the international science community has agreed on the best and safest way to bury nuclear waste, this hasn't _actually_ ever been done.

It's one thing to say to a community "in theory, we all agree that if everything is done correctly this is the best solution" and another COMPLETELY to trust that 1) The task will be done right, 2) The governing body (NGO, government, etc) will be around for the full lifetime of the nuclear waste being a threat (~150+ years), and 3) Said governing body will be well-funded enough the entire time to do the job right.

I believe that the engineering solutions are sound, but I don't think it's fair to dismiss the concern "often good science isn't executed very well". Until this is addressed, I'm not sure "but the science says!" is going to be a very effective response. For something as high-stakes as this, we need a more comforting guarantee.

[0] https://www.canadaland.com/nuclear-waste-ignace-ontario/ [1] https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/nuclear-waste-pile... [2] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...

EDIT: typo

There's some real vitriol here and comments bordering on being open discriminatory attacks ("Russia is a wasteland of civilization and we should just nuke them", "stop drinking Vodka, Sergei"). I hope that folks remember that the state isn't the Russian citizenry, and even if there is a minority support for this in the country it doesn't represent the people... _especially_ when the leader is a murderous autocrat.

This is a disaster and heartbreaking for everybody on the ground, Ukrainian and otherwise. We shouldn't forget that when the USSR fell, folks had moved all over the place. Friends and families are very blended in the former Soviet Union, and there are many, many Ukranian-Russians as well. My wife was born Russian-Estonian, with a lot of Russian-Ukranian family, and it's unhelpful to have one half of your heritage bombed and the other half being called the wasteland of civilization.

Don't make the situation for everyone even worse, no one needs that.

I quite enjoyed the beginnings of this essay & the parts of assessing risk and mapping out problem spaces. But the essay seems to take a weird turn about halfway through ("3: The Prepared Lifesylte") where the author begins to give their opinion on how folks should best live their lives _in general_, under the guise of suggesting that it's a "Prepared Lifestyle".

For example:

- 3.3. Learn new skills --> supposedly this is to counteract the risk of your job market shifting ("develop useful and marketable secondary skills"), but the example list is pretty random and not necessarily all that economically pragmatic. So it just seems more like the author believes people should have hobbies...

- 3.4.5. Don't Hurt Yourself: Just in Case, Keep your Senses Razor Sharp --> Which basically says, don't drink or do drugs because that raises the possibility that you'll get hurt? I mean, absolutely it'll be crappy if an earthquake happens while you're high & sure if you're piss drunk you might do something dumb to harm yourself but if you really wanna talk about avoiding injuries... taking recreational drugs is probably like on the bottom of the list of things to worry about for anyone who doesn't have substance abuse problems. Feels a lot more like the author just being prescriptive about lifestyle choices.

- 3.6. Get in Shape ---> The author proceeds to dedicate 4/5 of this section to how (in their opinion) someone should change their diet to lose weight. There is then 2 sentences on how "being able to walk or bike for several hours is likely good enough to deal with all practical scenarios we talked about thus far". If that was really what mattered, one could recommend an actual exercise routine and probably spend less time lecturing folks on their theoretical obesity. Physical fitness is correlated with weight, but they're often unrelated. After all, plenty of regular (non-obese) people can't bike for hours at a time (myself included! I have terrible hip problems from a desk job, even though I can do plenty of pullups & work out regularly). If you want to be able to run long distances, you have to run. Same for biking. To focus on weight seems disingenuous.

...and so on and so forth.

I do wish that the author wouldn't couch their personal opinions on how others should live under the guise of disaster planning. But the rest of the article is fantastic & very well thought out.

(EDIT: formatting)

To say the Nazis simply "used violence to seize power" is extremely reductive.

It's also well known that the Nazis were (at least monetarily) backed by Big Business & the wealthy capitalists at the time who were afraid of the rising popularity of Communism, as well as the threat of Soviet Russia. This included but was not limited to even American companies that happened to have offices in Germany (e.g. IBM). You can bet that money was used for anti-Semitic propaganda (which could deflect unhappiness towards the corporations to be aimed with the Jewish), and bringing this back to Free Speech, you can bet that this was allowed because of unmitigated free speech at the time.

I'm not entirely sure why you're being downvoted because I wouldn't consider your comment here that objectionable. And in fact you're right -- you did not say anything about Crimea/Tibet; that wasn't so much directed towards you in particular but an observation I was making about a lot of others I know who have said the same thing. It was a bit hand-wavy, and perhaps I should have left it out.

Thank being said, your original comment -- which is what I replied to -- was not so much about highlighting inter-tribal conflicts as it is now that you've edited it. I just want to point out that I really do not appreciate you editing your original comment then replying to me without acknowledging that you've done so, effectively trying to re-write history. It's extremely disingenuous and not at all in the spirit of HN.

While I understand this sentiment - especially since as you say, most (if not all) of today's accepted states and borders are the result of bloody, unfair conquest - I do personally struggle with a system of objection/dismissal based on the "well, it's a dog-eats-world" mindset. Interestingly, I've also found that many people (I'm being a bit hand-wavy here, I know) who are completely fine with dismissing indigenous land acknowledgements have plenty to say about Tibet re: China, or Crimea re: Russia, etc. Perhaps it's all realpolitik posturing, but if it has been I certainly haven't been able to tell.

Seems to me that so long as the peoples who "lost" in history are still around and able to generate sympathy, empathy, and understanding, it lands upon us to seriously think about whether or not we should continue the status quo and carry history into the present.

My own personal experience as a female software developer is that there is pressure from all sides to go into management, and this pressure can come from both ill and good intent.

Others have mentioned that it might be because of perceived superior communication skills (good?), or perceived lack of "good-enough" technical skills (bad?)... both of these add to the problem, but I've also experienced that diversity-aware companies tend to explicitly want females in management/leadership positions because it sends a stronger message re: caring about diversity than e.g. having a female senior software engineer (As unfortunate as it is, I think most perceive "manager/team lead" as higher up the ladder than "senior software engineer").

A specific example: I worked at a startup where D/I was a huge topic and where we spoke about it during Town Hall all the time. Complaints (mostly from females from within the company, not necessarily from the Engineering department) were always about not having females as team leads, as managers, as directors, on out executive board, etc. So every quarter, each and every competent female engineer would be encouraged to try taking a team lead or management role if there was one open. Of course, a bunch of us (myself included) had 0 interest but the prodding was there.

EDIT: Also, just in case someone is going to take this as proof that "women have it easy" at "woke" companies because the bar is lowered for going into management or something... I feel the need to explicitly state that the bar wasn't lowered. When I say "competent" I actually mean the dictionary definition of "having requisite or adequate ability or qualities". I worked with some badass female engineers, who were certainly skilled enough technically and socially to lead a team.

Diversity hiring is done by filling the front of the pipeline with a diverse set of candidates (i.e. getting the interview) but hiring decisions are made independently.

I don't think people realize how important this is. I certainly didn't until I had a random meeting with the recruiting team at $OLDJOB.

It's basic statistics, when you think about it. By the definition of "under-represented group", you know that there is a much higher likelihood that the over-represented group will make up the majority of the first X resumes you receive. This means that even if you're completely unbiased and will hire based on merit (whatever that means), simply choosing the best of the first X applications will lead you to fail at diversity hiring anyway.

Companies say they want to hire the best person but this is subject to reality and part of reality is wanting to hire this person as quick as possible. So it really is paramount that the pipeline is front-loaded, or you'll be thwarted by the reality of statistical majority.

Ah, I see what you mean. You're saying that intent does not excuse action, and if somebody is repeating things that are racist then they are engaging in racism, and a racist is someone who carries out the act of racism. Therefore they are a racist.

I can't disagree with that. Thanks for making the effort to explain.

----

EDIT (5 minutes later): Man, now that you put it that way I can't stop thinking about how obvious that is.

"Just because they're repeating racist things doesn't mean they're a racist" Is a pretty weak line of thought, since that's quite literally the definition of racist. It's alarming what you internalize living somewhere for long enough. Sorry ojnabieoot, I've got it now.

Hey, I agree with everything that is being said here but I think it might be unnecessary here to be making personal attacks such as calling somebody racist or implying white resentment because somebody is mis-informed. Especially because -- growing up in a racist society -- we all have internalized racism in some way, which we're just slowly trying to unlearn.

Just based on current events, even many dense non-Whites (myself included) have just started to realize how deep the problem goes when it goes to both conscious and unconscious bias.

We can definitely do better, and I hope the trends do indeed show that we're heading that way.

But humans are social creatures, beholden to social norms. Doing something just because other people do it is literally how society works. There are very, very few (if any) "well-adjusted" members of society who don't do many things just because that's how other people do it (a.k.a. it's "trendy"). If you behave otherwise, you're likely be socially outcasted.

Of course, if you're saying society at large is irrational I pretty much agree... but within the context of social expectation, I'd say it's pretty rational to compute that your contribution is more likely to land once a movement has already started. If anything, those who first begin the movement are the most irrational (since the likelihood of success is much lower compared to the personal cost to the individual).

In other words: if you live in an irrational system, the only way to be rational is to behave irrationally.

EDIT: Italicizing.

Just want to say that I really appreciated this thoughtful response about tradeoffs. I had a common knee-jerk reaction to your initial post: "Well how convenient, someone who's not in an oppressed group is advising keeping out of politics, which is essentially encouraging the status quo".

It is indeed true, that when you choose to fight the status quo (which there are many valid reasons to do), it makes it much more difficult to keep constant mental peace.

I have to double this comment. I understand that this is shorthand for "Medicine developed by following the scientific process conceptualized in the West during the Enlightenment", but it's a pretty big misnomer. Language matters, and the continual use of the term "Western medicine" makes it sound like non-Western places don't create & practice science-based medicine.

As both a professional programmer and a serious musician I have to _strongly_ disagree with this statement and implore you to consider your biases. I can only assume that you're making this assertion because you either a) don't play an instrument very well, or b) don't play an instrument at all.

First of all, even though "all in one" songwriter/producers exist today, you don't see them in the spotlight until they've already worked on their craft for many, many years. But in most cases, the commercial songs we listen to involve AT MINIMUM 1+ songwriters, 1+ producers, vocalist(s), professional instrumentalists (if it's not a band and/or a song where everything is programmed), an audio engineer, and probably a mastering engineer. And that's on top of the scaffolding of a bunch of other peoples' work (beatmakers, sample packs, recording studios/labels, etc etc). Each one of these people may not be formally educated, but you can bet they've spent years with trial and error honing their craft.

If you are talented you can paint great pictures or be a great guitar player in 1-2 years.

What makes you think that? And if we're going to have such a low bar for "great", can't we say the same thing with programming? I mean, I know people who go to boot camp for 1 year, work for another, and then call themselves intermediate programmers and get paid $100k+. Same goes for law. I'm sure some real smart and performative people could become great lawyers within a year. The only reason that would never happen is because you literally have to go to law school for X years as mandated by law.

Don't mean to have such an aggressive reaction here, but I am really tired of the crafts being devalued so offhandedly.