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jlizzle30

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No I just don’t have time to write an entire epistemological defense of “reproduction and parenting is a key milestone for humans”. It should be self evident. If you don’t think so, consider what happens if untrue (hint: no more humans).

There could be a great discussion about whether male parenting and reproduction comes from the bio/psycho/social drives.

For this context, I think trying to make these distinctions is a distraction. By way of common sense, reproducing & parenting has been a HUGE factor in the propagation of human life (this is so obvious it's kind of funny to write).

New(ish) parent here. Two things:

First, the bad news: lots of comments saying stuff like "Don't have kids to fill a perceived hole in your life". In general, the advice "Don't do ____ to fill a hole in your life" is good for frivolous things, but I don't think this applies to being a parent. Parenting is a biological and psychological life milestone. To me it's felt more like leveling up my maturity than buying or achieving something. An analogy is something like going from relying on my parents to moving out and being independent. I realize this step isn't for everyone, but am skeptical about 95% of ppl so confident they don't want to take a step their linage has done for thousands of years.

Second, the good news: my experiences (and accounts of friends as well) suggests that attachment to a child is less biological and more developed than you'd expect. When my daughter was born she felt like a stranger; I didn't know her. The more time I spend with her, the more she learns and depends on me, and the more I grow emotionally attached to her. This suggests you'd get 98% of the parenting experience through adoption vs being a biological parent. You'd miss out on stuff like "o wow her eyes look like mine", but at least in my experience, this has been less important than I would've thought. The big stuff like seeing them learn, their innocent joy, and you 'paying it forward' in the circle of life would be the same. (NOTE: these are my 2 cents as a biological parent. It'd be worth reading some adoptive parent accounts as well). Also, if adoption is not for you, I'd still recommend getting involved in helping kids in some way (education, financial, etc.); again, what are we here for if not to help the next generation?

Project Ideas 4 years ago

In the same way dropping foreign aid on a country to ‘solve’ hunger can make the problem worse, EA money could distort market forces if it became big enough. I suspect it’s very difficult to find investments that return more net good than standard businesses.

30 software developers

- iOS rider app

- android rider app

- iOS driver app

- android driver app

- ride/driver matching

- routing/supply

- security/compliance

- fraud detection/prevention

- backend rides services

- backend user services

^ 10 teams of at least 10 people off the top of my head. Amazing how underestimated engineering resourcing needs are.

there's a natural "limit" on the happiness I can enjoy at any given moment

This is roughly my experience, although, you can choose between peaks & valleys vs emotional stability. Highs are generally followed by lows and vice versa. The classic rockstar chooses to swing wildly between drugs/sex/crowds/etc. and addiction/depression/death while the buddhist munk reaches nirvana by maintaining an even keel.

Keep in mind there are other life considerations besides 'happiness' of course:

  1. retrospective life satisfaction
  2. responsibility
  3. morality
  4. procreation
  5. etc.
I don't generally trust psych research, but Jonathan Haidt's book The Happiness Hypothesis is a good read on the subject. He highlights things that do/don't marginally increase baseline happiness.

Here are the dragons: ... Buying a house or an apartment will disproportionately affect other areas of your life

I agree with the general caution about buying a property and the baggage it comes with. Unfortunately with kids there be dragons in renting as well: having to move when getting priced out.

Any rules of thumb for how much cash compensation a founder can expect to draw in the first ~5 years of a successful startup? The stock compensation numbers make is sound like these founders are rich but it isn't liquid and could go to zero.

Do founders need to be independently wealthy before starting a company?

I was inspired to go into psychology after reading Malcom Gladwell, Freakonomics, et al. Net-net the degree was disapointing. In some ways an intuitive sense of people is superior to what the field's been able to discover. 'Noise' is a good descriptor.

Thank god I transferred into CS.

if you want to know if someone knows CS fundamentals, you don’t want to give them a problem they can trick their way through

Right. But this is a critique overused questions the candidates may have already seen rather than linked list questions.

In my experience, linked list questions come up because they're a simple data-structure that gets at ordering vs look-up tradeoffs.

Former college hockey goalie here (now a SWE).

Dryden is correct. Hockey goaltending has become incredibly technical and an essence of the game has been lost as goalies have gained mastery.

This is less about equipment being 'too big' and more about the technologic and strategic progression goalies have made. There aren't any equipment regulations that can unwind this progress.

While I played, I was vehemently opposed to changing the net-size. Now, as an outsider with no horse in the race, I think it's the right thing to do.

Every so often at practices, myself and my goaltending partner would agree to make 'highlight reel' saves for a drill or two. What this meant was abandoning our technique and adopt an athletic, intuitive style that resembled something of the past (kick saves, stacking the pads, catching the puck dramatically). We did this because it was fun; the shooters enjoyed it more too. Making the nets bigger would inject these elements back into the position.

Someone close to me was recently hired as a new grad at Amazon. He only had one 30 minute conversation with a human to verify he was real before they extended the offer! The rest of the process was automated (virtually proctored coding sessions, multiple choice behavioral assessments, etc.).

Value judgments aside, you have to respect Amazon's efficiency.

As an anecdote, I'm close to someone who had issues w/ their microbiome causing havoc for a year after taking antibiotics. They tried all kinds of diet and probiotic treatments to no avail. In desperation, a doctor prescribed an experimental approach where they'd take antibiotics again to kill the 'bad bacteria', then go on a heavy probiotic regimen. This worked thank god.

This is much better than chatting face-to-face on Zoom, but team meetings mostly consist of someone sharing their screen while going through JIRA, a doc, deck, or spreadsheet. I'm not convinced screen sharing is as effective in 3D, which eliminates most meetings.

The year of the coworking space:

- Substantial number of tech workers remain remote as vaccines role out

- Remote workers crave community after covid lockdowns

- Commercial real estate is cheap

If remote is the future I expect to see mega coworking spaces filled with desks, gyms, spas, bars, workshops, etc. Will have the benefit of being able to choose who you're around every day and without the gaze of your company's HR department.