> I think writing that sounds good is more likely to be right.
Paul's point would make sense if his case was about greater verisimilitude, which might sound like splitting hairs, but is an important phenomenon in philosophy. Many dictators have sounded good but their core messages were abhorrent.
In the same vein, there are thousands of fiction books, some more brilliantly written than others, but nothing in that spectrum makes any of their stories any more real or true.
> I know it's true from writing.
Well, some things just appear to be true. I admire Paul's writings and I believe his honesty in trying to get to the truth, but in this specific essay, it seems like what he's alluding to is the appearance of truth. Good writing makes core ideas look more true, but it can't objectively have a relation to truth itself, only with our description of said idea.
My hypothesis is that those people I worked with circa 2007-2015 that did Scrum really well (not everyone did), were happy about using Scrum, and delivered good results, ended up progressing/moving into management and lost contact with the day-to-day work.
1. They have an imaginary reality based on what it once was.
2. They don’t accept the evidence.
3. They have incentives to build systems of people to increase their salaries.
I’ve said that many times over the years. The irrational mimicking of what others are doing created this Frankenstein model of working that proliferated over the industry.
This is an important point. Being able to give the benefit of the doubt is critical in an environment where trust is so vital. Team meetings/retreats are essential for that because it gives you more context about how people tend to react IRL, and when reading text it becomes more chill because you know who's on the other side.
I see most discussions around liking/disliking remote work include the infrastructure/equipment as argument. I personally like remote in great part because of it.
I love my 4k display, my standing desk, my keyboard, my Aeron Chair. However, I doubt that if those were offered it'd be reason alone for me to go back to the office.
This. Before the pandemic I'd go work from somewhere nice once or twice a week. That made home not that boring. Not possible anymore with the pandemic, although things are starting to feel normal again and last week I worked from a coffeeshop in front of a nice lake which was wonderful.
I recommend taking a look Obsidian.md. I used Roam but now am in Obsidian because I can have my files with me, backup it the way I want, and it's free.
I agree with reason 1, but reason 2 is an answer for, "should I use PG search in the same PG instance I already have", and that's a different discussion. You can set up a replica for that.
This summarizes my situation, with one exception: the occasional trips (~twice a month) to work from the local coffeeshop, and/or ~twice a year trips to company retreats, helped varying the scenery and avoiding feeling burned out. Now I don't have that escape valve anymore and so, despite being remote for 10+ years, I'm dreading it.
Agreed, what you describe is the status quo, where we have small evolutions through diets and drugs.
But I'm not completely on the pessimistic side because there's one thing that could change everything: the moment someone discovers how to effectively revert human cell decay (which has already been done in lab rats btw), then reality changes completely and living to 200 and beyond is achievable.
It could very well be like turning lead into gold, an ideal so close but never achieved. But on aging, I think humans already know what needs to be done, so I wouldn't put all my bets against it.
It is ridiculous if you associate pay with degree/profession, but it is not if you associate pay with the offer and demand equilibrium. If there are no revenues to be taken or no demands for a professional, there’s no reason to pay them more. Degree does mean someone deserves to make more.
> To-do lists are for things that aren't a real priority, otherwise you would be giving them your full attention and the tracking would be unnecessary.
I disagree with this bit, but perhaps it’s because “real priority” is vague. To-do lists offload tasks from memory to ensure we don’t forget them. It’s totally possible for something to be a “real priority” (whatever definition) and someone forgetting about it.