[HN Gopher] Why obsessively following successful people online i...
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Why obsessively following successful people online is dangerous
Author : durmonski
Score : 186 points
Date : 2021-10-04 15:54 UTC (7 hours ago)
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| raspasov wrote:
| Don't listen to what successful people say. Watch what they do.
| Underphil wrote:
| Which in many cases is morally questionable or downright
| illegal.
| raspasov wrote:
| Sorry, I don't follow. How is the act of observing illegal?
| I'm not advocating for getting access to private information.
| Jarwain wrote:
| I think the implication is that "what successful people do
| is immoral/illegal"
| marcodiego wrote:
| Possible more relevant hypothesis: Why Obsessively Following
| People Is Dangerous.
| munk-a wrote:
| Or an even more general one: Why Obsessing Over Vicarious
| Actions is Dangerous.
|
| Everyone needs to live their own life and do what's right for
| them. Whether your life looks like your glamorous neighbors or
| not shouldn't matter to you.
| snvzz wrote:
| The essence:
|
| obsessively --> dangerous.
| randycupertino wrote:
| I have a friend who is going through a harrowing divorce,
| cheating on both sides, lots of family drama, she tried to light
| his car on fire, police called by neighbors for fighting, etc.
|
| On Instagram he and his (soon to be ex) wife just tagged
| themselves this weekend putting up Halloween decorations, all
| smiley buying pumpkins and cooking truffle mac and cheese, liking
| each other's posts.
|
| Meanwhile he is calling me at 1:30am asking if he can come sleep
| on our couch. I kind of want to ask him about the discrepancy
| between his online persona vs real life, but I don't want to
| offend him.
| bhouston wrote:
| Perfect Instagram is a skill you can deploy and unrelated to
| whether you are actually happy. Case in point:
| https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/09/16/police-compare-notes/.
| There were multiple photogenic posts of smiling people in the
| weeks leading up to the murder, when they were fighting a lot
| of the time.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >Meanwhile he is calling me at 1:30am asking if he can come
| sleep on our couch. I kind of want to ask him about the
| discrepancy between his online persona vs real life, but I
| don't want to offend him.
|
| In my house we call this _' Hashtag Blessed"_.
|
| Because the people we know that write posts with #Blessed are
| the ones with a completely different reality online.
|
| One dude is sleeping in his camper parked at work because wife
| saw a screen shot of pornhub on his phone (seriously Apple, so
| many accidental screen shots weren't a problem when the power
| button was on top), she's telling him he's cheating on her, and
| there was a couple in the picture, but the guy was clearly
| exposed, so while she's having a fit of over this and kicking
| him out she's seriously asking him if _" Like, are you gay
| now!?"_... Next day they need to do some cubscouts events, so
| it's _smile_ #Blessed.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > I kind of want to ask him about the discrepancy between his
| online persona vs real life, but I don't want to offend him.
|
| Struggling people are allowed to have, and share, enjoyable
| moments. Going through a divorce doesn't mean someone _must_ be
| miserable 100% of the time, nor that you have to hate your
| spouse. Nobody is obligated to share the negative parts of
| their relationships and lives online, even if they 're
| struggling.
|
| Having a perfectly happy and problem-free marriage isn't a
| prerequisite for posting a happy family photo online with your
| kids. Nor should it be!
|
| I don't understand why this is even a question. Just support
| your friend. Don't try to poke fun at the one moment of joy he
| shared online or call him out for some perceived discrepancy
| just because you know his struggles. It's not hypocritical for
| someone to have fun while going through tough times. It's
| bizarre that you'd even consider asking someone about this.
| deft wrote:
| >Just support your friend >JUST
|
| well, he is supporting him. Wondering what's going on
| mentally is part of that. I don't understand why this is even
| posed as a solution.
| nsonha wrote:
| I can only guess but as an average person I do have this fear
| of showing the slightest negativity can drive people away.
|
| The person might not be vain, it's just we're all trapped in
| this system of toxic positivity & unrealistic expectation
| created by social media.
| tombert wrote:
| Obviously I don't know your friend, but as someone who has
| dealt with depression and whatnot constantly for most of my
| life, and intermittently since I started medication four years
| ago, I can tell you that it's not terribly hard to make
| yourself seem happy and content online.
|
| It's almost _easier_ to appear happy online when you know you
| 're not; you don't want people to try and offer you unsolicited
| advice about how "exercise worked for them" or "changing to
| this particular diet changed my life" or crap like that, so you
| fake it [1]. You only post things that you think are
| interesting, you minimize how much you talk about your personal
| life, and when you do it's only to flex about something cool
| you did. Whenever I _did_ open up to friends later about my
| mental health stuff, they were always really surprised to hear
| it, and that was by design.
|
| [1] To be clear, I'm not knocking diet and exercise. If you're
| feeling depressed, eating healthier and getting regular
| exercise is probably the best (and cheapest) place to start,
| and offers a bunch of other benefits too. My life _did_ improve
| when I stopped eating Taco Bell ever day.
| vmception wrote:
| I mute people's posts and stories when their content is
| primarily rants, resharing some kind of social justice issue,
| resharing meme accounts, their children. So yeah I probably
| would not entertain a depressing couple's spiral for more
| than a few 15 second clips. They know that too.
|
| I'm only interested in the outgoing and interesting things,
| inspiration about locations or events, things that could
| include me. When these things really seem like they will
| never happen I typically remove them as followers and
| unfollow them. (Its much easier to curate your social graph
| as you go, instead of waking up one day and finding it too
| hard to fix your feed by unfollowing people)
|
| I like to know people personally and I do that in person or
| over direct message
|
| I only use the story for entertainment personally
|
| Like someone else mentioned, I don't find many people's
| online persona that interesting, and I have abruptly
| deactivated and/or deleted my own profiles before. Periodic
| curating has been good for me.
| [deleted]
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Why would you want him to put his drama online?
|
| Most people want to deal with their shit internally.
|
| I guess the wife could have put the picture of the burning car
| or a snap of an affair sex tape, but then they'd both have more
| drama to deal with from people contacting them trying to "fix"
| things.
|
| Intimate moments are private, happy moments are okay for
| public. Bad moments can be used against you so you keep them
| private.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think the the point of the anecdote is that what you see
| online in no way reflects people's actual struggles. If you
| try to compare your real self against someone's online
| persona you will never measure up.
|
| Unfortunately this fact is not made explicit anywhere - I can
| imagine the self-loathing Facebook or Instagram would have
| generated in my naive, socially-inept, teenage self.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| > Unfortunately this fact is not made explicit anywhere
|
| It's common sense that you don't put vulnerable stuff
| online. Parents should explain this to children when they
| are growing up. Sure I guess you could put disclaimers
| everywhere "LIFE MAY NOT BE AS HAPPY AS IT APPEARS" under
| each photo. Maybe California will require a banner for that
| soon.
| ksdale wrote:
| It's one thing to say that people might not be as happy
| as they appear, but quite another to say that someone's
| marriage basically doesn't exist, which is what the
| parent was saying.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| It's noone's business if they don't want anyone to know.
|
| Here GP is gossiping about them, this is what they were
| trying to avoid amongst their peers.
|
| If anyone REALLY wants to know they can find out when the
| single photos come out.
|
| I thought HN understood privacy.
| dudeman13 wrote:
| >It's common sense that you don't put vulnerable stuff
| online
|
| Yes, but do people have a gut, visceral knowledge about
| this when they see stuff online?
|
| Knowing something intellectually doesn't mean one's
| internal bias (and their effects on the individual) will
| stop working.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Gut irrational reactions are usually followed by a
| rational realization.
|
| The irrational reaction itself may be triggered by the
| event of seeing someone else's happiness, but is probably
| a manifestation of a deeper self issue like an insecurity
| or unfulfilled fantasy.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > I think the the point of the anecdote is that what you
| see online in no way reflects people's actual struggles.
|
| > Unfortunately this fact is not made explicit anywhere
|
| People don't wear their struggles on their sleeve in
| person, either. People are allowed to have fun even while
| struggling elsewhere in their lives. There's no rule that
| people aren't allowed to thrive or be happy in public if
| they're struggling with something private.
|
| I don't understand why anyone would think that social media
| would be any different.
| psyc wrote:
| One of the reasons I quit FB was I didn't recognize my close
| friends' online personas. It was too bizarro-world for me. If I
| asked them about it, they felt attacked. So it turned out I
| simply preferred not to know what they were up to online.
| nsonha wrote:
| On the flip side who knows what is real. Some people prob
| feel freer to be themselves online
| (cough...millennials...cough)
| vmception wrote:
| _Gen Z: exists_
| nsonha wrote:
| shit I got the terminology wrong. I AM a millenial, I
| meant Gen Z
| nradov wrote:
| Before Instagram, many families would send out Christmas update
| letters to all their friends and relatives full of almost
| entirely happy news. Then you'd hear about the pending divorce
| a few months later. People haven't changed.
| [deleted]
| iratewizard wrote:
| And here I thought that following successful people was the one
| obsessive behavior that wasn't dangerous. Thank you for your blog
| spam.
| yupper32 wrote:
| The title doesn't really match the advice.
|
| The advice is separate from the number of successful people you
| follow online. The advice is simply to follow through with the
| tips you see from the successful people you follow with some tips
| on how to do that. Very meta.
|
| I do find a bunch of irony in the dissing of self-help books,
| when you could copy-paste this entire article verbatim into like
| half the self-help books out of there and it'd fit right in.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I stopped following a bunch of people on LinkedIn. It seemed like
| all they did was repost stuff from others - mostly infographics.
| None of the information was even helpful to an IC like me.
| georgewsinger wrote:
| I have the opposite complaint of OP (though technically
| orthogonal to his point). I'm extremely annoyed at having to sift
| through the thousands upon thousands of self-help tidbits and
| life tip nuggets that fledgling VCs and founders -- who have
| accomplished *literally nothing whatsoever* once you round down
| -- offer on social media platforms. I'm talking about people who
| have written 100 small checks, but who haven't hit even a single
| grand slam. Or entrepreneurs who built an incremental SaaS
| business and got acquihired 5 years ago, and think that people
| need to hear their hot takes about success and life. It's
| extremely annoying.
|
| On the other hand, I really enjoy the occasional pieces of fluff
| and advice offered by, e.g., the true outliers (e.g., the Elon
| Musks and Peter Thiels walking among us; the people have have
| actually come into contact with reality and accomplished non-
| trivial things that are very hard to repeat and generalize from).
| Not just tech billionaires; I think the same for the comparably
| successful scientists and technologists.
|
| These people can't give you cookie cutter formulas for success
| other than "try to break other formulas". It's still
| inspirational, IMO, and far preferable coming from them than the
| phonies on Twitter seeking validation and fame.
| durmonski wrote:
| Following more and more people leads to more time wasted.
| kritiko wrote:
| What exactly is it that you do?
|
| I must say, I'm envious of "thought leaders" but the net result
| seems to always lead back to "create your own knowledge product
| and sell it to other people."
| sylens wrote:
| I was excited to click through to this but was a little
| disappointed when I read it because it wasn't discussing what I
| was hoping for.
|
| I think there's also an issue where you can follow a bunch of
| people that are already very successful and at the top of their
| fields on Twitter; they comment on the latest news, post their
| big conference talks, their brand new tool on Github, etc. You
| may have had a very unproductive day (or week) at work, and
| seeing these other people continue to ascend and excel makes you
| feel like you are not working hard enough. If only you picked up
| that new front-end framework. If only you went and got another
| certification. If only you created your own side hustle and
| turned it into a profitable business.
|
| There are benefits to surrounding yourself with motivated,
| successful people - it can also create and foster a drive in you.
| But it's also important that you can relax and take the night off
| after work , even if you're not keeping pace with the most vocal
| and prominent avatars.
| jordanmorgan10 wrote:
| TL;DR Seems to be the old adage since the early days of self-help
| content: Don't dwell, do.
| hidden-spyder wrote:
| I'm having trouble understanding that adage. Would you please
| elaborate on it?
| bryceacc wrote:
| dwelling would be thinking about doing things. People often
| get caught up in the research portion of vacations or hobbies
| and they just watch videos and read articles about it or
| scroll through hashtags of the subject on twitter or
| instagram but never actually get about _doing_ the task.
|
| So don't think about doing it, actually go out and do it
| slightwinder wrote:
| Isn't everything done obsessively dangerous?
| philwelch wrote:
| Yeah, it kind of reminds me of when they used to say we
| shouldn't panic about the coronavirus. Of course you shouldn't
| panic, because panic isn't a productive response, but you
| should anticipate, prepare for, and mitigate risks.
|
| Of course, then the people who told us not to panic about the
| coronavirus ended up panicking about the coronavirus because
| when they said "don't panic", they meant, "ignore the problem
| until you are overwhelmed by it", which is exactly what leads
| people to panic in the first place.
| tus89 wrote:
| Even browsing HN?
| mikeInAlaska wrote:
| > Why Obsessively Following Successful People Online Is Dangerous
|
| Facebook Network Admins Are Doing Their Part To Reduce The Risk
| ducktective wrote:
| What about reading on all the cool things people create on HN?
| adolph wrote:
| There's some fine print at the bottom about patio11 being ok.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Here's a reason that seems obvious to me: Cults of personality
| are dangerous, for cult members and for the community. Among
| other things, they are delusional; they aren't reality. Also,
| they give far too much power to the personality.
|
| Why has that obvious knowledge been forgotten? Have we forgotten
| to be skeptical?
| lbriner wrote:
| People mostly don't know how to measure advice. You ask one
| person and they tell you "it's all about marketing", someone else
| will say that "technical excellence is more important than
| anything else". Even though a lot of advice is contradictory and
| very context-dependent, people don't notice this and lap it up.
|
| The truth is that probably most successful people can't tell
| luck, serendipity and hard-work from wisdom. Times change,
| opportunities change etc. so how much is advice really worth?
|
| The only good advice is an answer to a specific question with
| very clear boundaries: "How much is a good amount to spend on
| Facebook advertising?", "If you have a product aimed at the mass
| market and you can correlate success of click-throughs, spend as
| much as you want as long as it's less than what you make per-
| click".
|
| Otherwise you get stuff like, "Facebook is great value for money"
| or "Facebook is a disaster" both useless pieces of advice.
|
| I also suspect that those with the correct brain for business
| probably don't need very much advice because they will quickly
| work things out themselves.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I've noticed that people are uncomfortable with nuance.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| The "learn the secrets of how $SUCCESSFUL_PERSON did
| $SUCCESSFUL_THING!" is almost always garbage content. Despite
| that, it's a massive, massive "industry," that will never die.
|
| Once you see the extent of the Matthew Effect [1], it's hard to
| unsee it.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect
| ask_b123 wrote:
| Reminds me of this essay by Chesterton (The Fallacy of
| Success): http://web.archive.org/web/20200216164109/http://ww
| w.gkc.org...
| samhw wrote:
| The other problem is that there's no reason to assume
| $SUCCESSFUL_PERSON even _knows_ what made them successful. I
| was once hanging out with a friend of a friend who was pretty
| successful in finance, and he said he could no more explain
| how he succeeded than I could explain how to ride a bike.
| These things are often tacit knowledge
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge), or 'unknown
| knowns'.
|
| In that friend's view - and I think mine too - that's the
| reason why 'how I succeeded' books by people like Warren
| Buffett or Bill Ackman almost always turn out to be total
| dross. Not because they don't want to share their secrets
| (after all, their secrets would require so much capital to
| apply as to be impracticable for most) - just that _they have
| no idea_.
|
| They do _know_ it, at least on some level. For many of them,
| they could do it again if they had to. They simply aren 't
| consciously aware. (Like Auden once said: "I knew it all the
| time, but I never realised it before!")
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Or assuming that it can be replicated even if it is known.
| I suspect this is more true of other types of elite
| performers rather than financially successful people, but
| imagine asking Mozart or LeBron James how to perform at
| their level. There is literally nothing you can do until we
| figure out how to transfer consciousness to a new body.
| samhw wrote:
| Yeah, totally agree. That factored into my answer too:
| "their secrets would require so much capital to apply as
| to be impracticable for most" was my explanation for why
| they probably wouldn't mind explaining it if they _did_
| know.
|
| After all, it nets you lots of extra money in book sales,
| with no real concern that anyone will genuinely read your
| book and then supplant you.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Yup. Another analogy is that you probably have a friend (or
| maybe you are that friend?) who happens to very good
| attracting (romantic) attention when you go out in public.
| Ask them what their secret is. They might have some basic,
| universal things like "dress nicely", "have good hygiene",
| "get in shape", etc, and those things might help you (10%
| of the way there), but in reality, they just happened to
| have been handed some lucky genetics that made them
| attractive / charismatic, so none of the advice they give
| you will work (in fact, some of it might back-fire like
| "smile at strangers").
|
| On the other hand, if you can find the person that _isn't_
| naturally good at the skill but was somehow able to get
| decent at it, even if they're not the best at it, they're
| more likely to have beneficial advice.
| bumby wrote:
| > _if you can find the person that _isn 't_ naturally
| good at the skill but was somehow able to get decent at
| it, even if they're not the best at it, they're more
| likely to have beneficial advice._
|
| This reminded me of the advice to learn how to run a
| marathon, don't look at what most people in the race were
| doing to train, look at the person who's doing well
| despite looking like they shouldn't be there.
|
| I.e., don't look at the 140 lbs guys at the front of the
| pack for advice, look to the 280 lb guy in the middle of
| the pack.
|
| Not sure how sage that advice is, but it was an
| interestingly different way to frame the problem.
| ozim wrote:
| I really like that take on this topic, my personal story
| about it was at the university.
|
| While studying older students would start talking, how
| they get a good grade/easy questions because they gave
| cookies/whatever or how some prof was super cool for them
| in some way.
|
| Of course thing was they probably were in a group that
| prof liked, they had a good connection, maybe someone
| from the group had good jokes that made that prof laugh.
| Maybe they were showing up with whole group to his
| classes and no one made a fuss or other silly stuff at
| his lectures.
|
| Then freshmen would pick up the story and would try to
| "trick their way" with the prof that would of course
| backfire as they totally missed the context of why for
| the older guys prof was happy with some cookies to ask
| them "easy" questions.
|
| Just being in shape without any context - like how much
| in shape - might backfire when some girls think you are a
| buff so probably aggressive and get scared instead of
| interested. So just trying to talk up a girl on the
| street while buffed might scare her much more.
|
| I would not focus on "natural skill" but I would focus on
| understanding that there is infinite amount of details to
| life and whole context is missing if someone gives high
| level advice.
| xorfish wrote:
| > The truth is that probably most successful people can't tell
| luck, serendipity and hard-work from wisdom. Times change,
| opportunities change etc. so how much is advice really worth?
|
| The ability to work hard is also always 100% luck.
|
| Humans do not control their DNA or what environment shaped them
| to be able and have the desire to work hard.
| nsonha wrote:
| Is this just a thrown away observation or meant to be some
| sort of insight?
|
| Determinism isn't exactly useful as a personal guideline, or
| anything. So I don't know why some people keep digging that
| hole.
| vmception wrote:
| It is insightful on how to direct your energy. For many
| people, some activities should remain enthusiast hobbies
| because it wont take them anywhere.
| nsonha wrote:
| it's not, it just tells you that everything is a waste of
| energy because none is of your control.
|
| I'm sure there are ways to interpret this as: this
| arbitrary list of things is achievable, the rest is out
| of your reach. But then it's your job to find out what
| those things are, the determinism "insight" is useless.
| vmception wrote:
| Its useful for me, and surely this or any sample size of
| 1 undermine your point as otherwise your point is
| unfalsifiable.
|
| I am familiar with a key difference here:
|
| Some people find nihilism to be demotivating
|
| Some people do not
|
| For me, it helps me remember to try to recognize my
| privileges, support systems and luck. I respect people
| that play the cards they are dealt. Any child prodigy
| with a lot of resources could just as easily done nothing
| with them, so the nihilistic approach more so helps me
| not resent people that won a birth lottery and also
| appreciate what I do before I forget and start giving
| generic success advice.
| CivBase wrote:
| Are there any credible studies demonstrating a strong link
| between genetics and motivation/drive/work-ethic? I don't
| doubt that DNA plays a part, but I'm hesitant to accept
| claims that it's 100% genetic.
| dudeman13 wrote:
| You can get there from the definition of phenotype.
|
| Doesn't work if you think humans are special and above
| biological definitions though :)
| robbedpeter wrote:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5068715/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ#:~:text=Ea
| r....
|
| https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://www.gwer
| n...
|
| So genetics plays a significant part in personality traits
| and iq. Having high conscientiousness is the trait that
| correlates with work ethic and drive.
|
| It's definitely not 100% but genes play a big part. Twin
| studies are cool - even though there's usually something
| tragic involved with twins separated at birth, it gives you
| an excellent way of assessing genetic influences on a huge
| array of factors.
| [deleted]
| xorfish wrote:
| DNA is just one puzzle piece that explains human behavior,
| together with many other factors.
|
| Those factors are not yours to control. Even if you are
| able to influence some of them, the ability to do so is
| dependent on factors you do not control.
| munk-a wrote:
| That's a rather fatalist view to take - I don't actually
| disagree with it but being unable to control your
| development doesn't free you from responsibility for it.
| We don't actually control anything at a basic level - we
| are just responding to different environmental effects
| with the learned behaviors we got from earlier
| environmental effects - in that way we are just
| perpetuating machines that will echo observations from
| earlier times. That isn't to say we can only parrot what
| we've seen - we can compile quite a complex response from
| all the experiences we've garnered... but we are nothing
| except some genetic starter (which we can probably mostly
| write off as just experiences we gained before birth as a
| genetic super-organism) and experiences.
|
| _That all said_ that still leaves us with our
| individuality, desire to act and responsibility. And it
| leaves us with as much control over our ability to act as
| any other control - you can accept that our actions are
| rather mechanical results of prior experiences but not
| reject the fact that they 're still our actions.
| xorfish wrote:
| Biology and especially neurobiology has made huge steps
| to understanding the brain and how human behavior comes
| to be. DNA (Genes are only a very small portion of our
| DNA, the interesting stuff happens in the other 95% of
| our DNA) interacts with the prenatal environment, the
| culture you grow up, the relationship with your parents,
| the levels of hormones in your blood, how warm you feel,
| how long ago your last meal was and many more factors to
| form human behavior.
|
| > And it leaves us with as much control over our ability
| to act as any other control
|
| No, there is no fundamental ability to control. We have
| some illusion of control. Don't mistake this for saying
| that humans can't change, we just have no control over
| how we change.
|
| Judges that decide over parole won't attribute their
| decision on the last time they ate, even if it is the
| single most important factor to their decision.
|
| It will be interesting to observe how society will react
| to this in the next 50 years when the science will become
| harder and harder to deny.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| > Judges that decide over parole won't attribute their
| decision on the last time they ate, even if it is the
| single most important factor to their decision.
|
| This finding doesn't replicate[0]. In the original study,
| there was a more mundane explanation: "Defendants without
| representation have their hearings scheduled at the end
| of sessions, before breaks."
|
| You have much more confidence in the current research
| than I think is warranted. Genes are indeed a small
| portion of our DNA, but your statement that "the
| interesting stuff happens in the other 95%" is unbounded
| and poorly defined.
|
| Personally, I think we have some control over things, and
| probably less control than most people perceive
| themselves as happening. But this research is in its
| infancy and having trouble with basic replication, so
| holding a strong opinion is a recipe for making poor
| decisions off it.
|
| [0] https://www.annieduke.com/no-judges-dont-give-
| harsher-senten...
| xorfish wrote:
| Thanks for correcting the judge study. It seems that
| cases with a higher chance of success are also scheduled
| earlier as the time it takes is less certain.
|
| My understanding is that a portion of the remaining 95%
| are responsible for turning genes and whole chains of
| them on and off or something in between.
|
| There is no place in the physical world where this
| control could come from.
|
| The factors that influence are hugely complex and very
| hard to separate. Just because we do not understand how
| certain factors interact and influence our behavior
| doesn't mean we have control.
| kiba wrote:
| The fact that we have no "free will" and that there's
| always a reason for our actions at the end of the day
| doesn't constitute useful advice for automata like us
| trying to do better in the world nonetheless.
|
| Except maybe in how we think about justice perhaps. But
| that's not useful now.
| xorfish wrote:
| > Except maybe in how we think about justice perhaps. But
| that's not useful now.
|
| This is a big one.
|
| Income and wealth inequality is another one.
|
| The only reason why someone should have more than someone
| else is to incentivize to increase the total cake. But
| you probably can redistribute far more without reducing
| the total cake too much.
| munk-a wrote:
| > No, there is no fundamental ability to control. We have
| some illusion of control. Don't mistake this for saying
| that humans can't change, we just have no control over
| how we change.
|
| Again - in a way this is something I entirely agree with
| but not in the important way. We are all automata in a
| society and society can attempt to fix broken components.
| Even if all your actions are just a result of past
| experiences - you yourself are no more meaningful and
| it's thus appropriate to assign you responsibility for
| your actions. If your experiences had shaped you
| differently then you'd probably make different ones - but
| you are who you are because of how you were shaped - and
| the you who is shaped in that manner is responsible for
| the actions you've taken. Hypothetical other yous that
| had slightly different experiences don't exist and are
| therefore irrelevant - but you're responsible for what
| you do.
| xorfish wrote:
| > you yourself are no more meaningful and it's thus
| appropriate to assign you responsibility for your
| actions.
|
| I don't follow this.
|
| We don't blame people for actions when we think that they
| don't have control over these actions.
|
| If someone has their first epileptic episode while
| driving a car and they kill someone because of it, we
| understand that they had no control and don't hold them
| responsible for the accident. Why should it be different
| if the causes are more complex and harder to trace back?
| munk-a wrote:
| I think that that difference we draw - the line between
| having responsibility for your actions and not - is
| pretty arbitrary. I think it's good that it exists since
| when we're at our most vulnerable it exists to protect us
| from ourselves (and some people spend their entire lives
| in such a state if they have a debilitating developmental
| condition) - but it mostly exists to give all of us folks
| in society a good deal of comfort that if things ever go
| really off the rails we'll be given more of an allowance
| to recover - thus preventing some doom spiraling where
| feeling mentally unbalanced makes you paranoid about what
| you're going to mess up in your life which leads to more
| unbalancing.
|
| And, on the otherside, we are a funny animal that takes
| comfort in the fact that we control our own destinies so,
| even if we don't - we'd like to empower ourselves as if
| we were in some manner. At a basic level our
| misunderstanding might be the fact that the ability to
| choose equates responsibility - without any
| responsibility (good and bad) your choices have no power
| - choosing to not do the shitty thing lets you avoid a
| penalty and so you can be happy with yourself. This
| equation of choice and responsibility is why punishment
| is so necessary (both big-j Justice like cops jail and
| the like - and little-j justice like being shunned, not
| getting a raise and failing to find an equal partnership
| in a relationship) so responsibility exists to add
| meaning to our lives. In fact denying it to people
| permanently (i.e. the developmentally disabled) does come
| with a strong cost to their sense of self - a lot of
| folks who live in support systems can struggle to define
| themselves, but, at the same time, neurodiversity means
| that different folks can find contentness in different
| ways.
|
| It's all terribly complicated I think.
| k__ wrote:
| this.
|
| I'm a dev/tech blogger, and I can say, following the right
| people is half of the success.
|
| Not just because of the things they say, but because they can
| share your work.
|
| Every time my work was shared by an influencer in the field, I
| got one or multiple job/project offers and over the years I
| made a good living out of it.
|
| "being good at tech" only helps in the next step, when you need
| to proof that you can write better about a tech topic than the
| average marketeer/content creator.
| bena wrote:
| Success is multifaceted. If there's a formula or equation for
| success, it's a combination of luck, talent, work ethic, and
| several other things. And not to mention every facet is
| fungible with every other facet.
|
| If you're lucky enough, talent and work ethic matter less. If
| you're talented enough, maybe you don't need as much luck. Etc.
| But for the vast majority, there's going to be a combination.
|
| I think that's what people don't truly get. You can work as
| hard as possible, but you do need a little luck to get that
| work noticed.
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| There are some interesting observations here, but the piece
| basically ends up in the same place all self-help content ends
| up: here are the _x_ things you should do.
|
| > Instead of just watching, reading, listening to other people
| doing fancy stuff. We need to get going. Overcome the general
| feeling of malaise by start running, failing, getting up, and
| trying again.
|
| This is basically the same advice that a lot of self-help gurus
| give. The only difference is in the packaging.
|
| Here's a tangential piece of advice about listening to
| "successful people online": not everything is as it appears. In
| fact, much of the time these days, it isn't. Never forget that
| you have no way of knowing whether people are as happy, rich,
| etc. as they say they are, and even if they are, you have no way
| of knowing whether or not the advice they're selling you is how
| they got to where they are.
| [deleted]
| iainctduncan wrote:
| I stopped reading after the fifth one sentence paragraph or so.
| Author needs to stop reading successful bloggers telling them how
| to write for the internet. It just seemed to me like the article
| style was a symptom of the problem it was supposedly about.
|
| That kind of writing
|
| is so bloody annoying
|
| please read some books
|
| and then write more.
| danuker wrote:
| I am also guilty of this. Can you give me an example of a
| blogpost you enjoyed reading?
| 0des wrote:
| London Review of Books has quite a few.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| It's called broetry.
| robohoe wrote:
| This maybe just an anecdotal conjecture, but I've noticed this
| a lot lately with many news sites. It seems that with the
| advent of social media and smart phones, our attention spans
| have drastically shortened. Now all the articles have
| paragraphs that are 2-3 sentences long.
| Wistar wrote:
| In between which are often gratuitous photos and ads.
| xmprt wrote:
| I agree. I don't even mind short paragraphs because I think
| they can be used for good effect but not if it's every single
| paragraph.
|
| It just strikes me as lazy writing. If each sentence is its own
| paragraph then you don't have to worry about structuring the
| article well or writing transitions or intro/outro sentences.
| [deleted]
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