Boo. Sure it’s probably wrong to call someone “cogent”. But is there such a huge difference between saying “Harry has cogent writing” and “Harry is a cogent writer”? Is the reader confused about the meaning?
I might use “prosaic”, “flowery”, or “confusing” in the same way, even though strictly speaking those words are describing the writing and not the writer.
> The best essay would be on the most important topic you could tell people something surprising about.
The premise is wrong (or at least not obviously right) IMO, so I have a hard time taking any of the rest of it seriously. Could the best essay not be the most emotionally moving? The best when heard aloud? The most convincing call to action? The most accurate? The highest grossing? Driving the most engagement? What about the topic (any topic) that you could tell the /most interesting surprise/ about?
If Paul Graham didn’t run this company he certainly would not make it to the front page for his lazy philosophy.
This is not the first time that the whims of the rich have gutted cities. Compared to the explosion of suburbia and white flight in the 50s-80s, the current situation is much less dire.
My hometown of Minneapolis lost 30% (!!) of its population between 1950 and 1980. The only major difference now is that rich people are losing money instead of making more of it.
There are a few people street lights near me in Seattle and now I probably know why. I thought it was a vain (!) attempt to deter intravenous drug use.
This article tries to out-logic racism (so smart!) but completely overlooks that different cultures have different experiences regarding who is a part, what it means to be a part, and how their culture meshes with the whole. And the sudden and intense interest in biological difference is kind of creepy too.
Obviously people of different cultures are slightly genetically different, otherwise how could you be racist against strangers! In the case of the professor who learned she was not ethnically indigenous, people didn’t want her out just because she, individually, was pretending to be native. It’s because there is an entire industry and extensive history of non-native people smothering native culture, telling native people through movies, books, etc. of what their own culture is or what it means, and of native arts and symbols being used by white people to make a quick buck. She /symbolized/ a sore point for the community and furthermore she was not open about it. The whole situation was unfortunate, but the author seems more interested in her case to prove his own point than in the concerns of the community he is poorly explaining about.
It’s true that a new change can intriduce more bugs, but I have a suspicion that the excel team is working with brains and a test harness that most software projects don’t have the time or money for.
Starting a career in something you love is a good way to poison your love and mess with your self image. Starting a career in something you happen to have some talent for is the way to go.
In my experience the less judgement I bring to a situation, the better I will be able to listen. If someone is telling me a story where I feel like they were morally wrong or where “one easy trick” would have solved their problem, it is very hard for me to not want to blurt out advice, admonishment, or shut the conversation down.
The funny thing is that being quickly opinionated is highly valued in tech, so my maladaptive behavior (in part) got me accolades and promotions. I actually think this tendency to have a hot take on everything immediately is a large portion of why engineers rub non-engineers the wrong way
Ok I enjoyed the article as a piece of self-indulgence. I agree it is pretentious and I don’t write like that. But just for funsies:
“Once your ‘personality type’ has been found, it feels like you know something definitive about who you are. You only answered some small number of questions about small segments of your life, but the quiz authoritatively asserts it has seen you to the core. In this way the quiz turns ‘when X happens I do Y’ statements into ‘I am X kind of person so I always do Y’ statements. This is probably bad.”
This is misanthropic tech vision at its finest. I got a job recommendation from an Uber driver. My aunt (against TOS) built a private driver business based on her personality after driving Lyft from the airport. I had a great conversation with a Somalian driver who’s favorite music artist was Dolly Parton. Once a driver saved me from a hairy situation with an irate customer who was chasing me and throwing things, I tipped him $20 and we laughed about it—I was just happy to have someone to witness the crazy.
Not to mention the thousands of people who currently make a respectable living driving people around.
But maybe I’m just one of those extroverts who doesn’t mind being around people.
I’m glad that global trends are proving Malthusian arguments about population growth wrong. I do think it is true that people (as a population) will have as many children as they can easily support. But what Malthus missed IMO is that with education and technology the baseline for what people think of as an acceptable life for their children is increasing.
In 1850 you might have a few more kids, thinking they could farm more and through hard labor your family could break even on resources. Your family of 8 all shares a single bedroom and you only send the smartest kid to high school (begrudgingly).
In 2024 people are putting off children because they won’t be able to afford a nanny, because the price of globally-sourced instantly-available groceries are too high, or because they are feeling their life already has enough richness and direction. If I cared for my children in the way we used to during population explosion they would be taken by CPS.
The inflection point where our global population levels out will be Interesting Times, but I’m optimistic for the long term sustainable culture that may result.
His blog posts are one of the main things that keep me coming back here. Insightful, and he often is able to put into words things about the industry that I can only feel in the periphery of my heart.