[HN Gopher] Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs
___________________________________________________________________
Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs
Author : irajdeep
Score : 603 points
Date : 2022-09-07 06:02 UTC (1 days ago)
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| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| The 40 point spreadsheet from the Harvard Business Review article
| sounds like pure parody.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| Isn't life just a menu of frogs?
| Pigalowda wrote:
| "A life, Jimmy, you know what that is? It's the shit that
| happens when you're waiting for the things that never come."
|
| -Detective Freamon (The Wire)
|
| >Life is what happens in between all the frog eating. As we all
| wait for "the big break" and dine on these frogs and prepare
| ourselves for bigger frogs we end up mischaracterizing the in-
| between. It's unfortunate I squander this in-between time by
| preparing myself for the next frog rather than living in the
| present froglessness.
| danuker wrote:
| The author's favorite paper of all time, said in the article
| voiceover:
|
| https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/482/nisbett%20s...
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| I like some points of the article, but stating we are not
| naturally anything, and then in the next paragraph claiming:
| '"your base instincts" deserve more credit.', is very illogical.
| teamonkey wrote:
| It's an argument against the claim that there's virtue in doing
| things and that those who don't are lazy.
|
| There's a huge gap between any "natural" instincts (needing to
| eat, needing to sleep, breathe, keep warm, social connections)
| and the sort of tasks you need to do in your modern life, like
| writing a boring report. The idea of laziness - and that
| there's virtue in doing such things - is a cultural trueism,
| not a "natural" state of humans.
|
| > Why are we so hard on ourselves? I think it's because we have
| a bad theory about how our minds work, one so dastardly that it
| could have only been devised by the devil himself. It goes like
| this:
|
| >> We humans are, deep down, lazy and gluttonous creatures. If
| left to our own devices, we will do nothing but eat Pringles
| and watch Netflix. The only way we can escape our indolent
| nature is to exert our higher faculties over our base
| instincts.
| orzig wrote:
| Exactly. And, while it's true we're in a different environment
| than we evolved for, our instincts are obviously still
| relevant. We still get hungry, crave connection, etc. They're
| just filtered through different specific objects
| vanderZwan wrote:
| It's not illogical at all, although I suppose the author could
| have been more clear in separating the two points they're
| arguing against: 1) Humans are naturally lazy
| 2) Human instinct drives us to do things that are bad for us
|
| While connected by an implicit "being lazy is bad" value
| judgement, these are not the same things.
|
| Stating we are "naturally something" implies that there is an
| fixed equilibrium point that our behavior naturally converges
| to.
|
| The second claim about basic instincts is talking about the
| dynamic processes going on in your body that you are not
| consciously aware of. It's not saying anything about _how_
| those processes work. They can be perfectly valid, important
| processes that only act in response to contextual information
| (that is, it is entirely possible for them to not have a
| "natural, default" behavior).
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| Basic instincts is an other way of saying that we are
| "naturally" inclined to do certain things in certain
| situations.
|
| I understand that reading natural as a "fixed equilibrim"
| might mean that to you, but for me, and also others it
| doesn't mean that. So would be good to better explain that in
| the article.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| My interpretation of "fixed equilibrium" comes from the
| context of the "naturally lazy" claim, which is alleged to
| be touted as a universal truth by the gurus. A claim of an
| external, universal truth is that applies to all instincts.
| So then I take "not naturally anything" to mean "humans are
| extremely variable and contextual".
|
| I have to admit that my interpretation is biased by reading
| some post-phenomenological philosophy as part of my design
| master - I remember one paper that claimed that there is no
| "natural" endpoint because humans are always reacting to a
| dynamic context, one that is then changing in response to
| human interaction, meaning we're more like a chaotic
| pendulum swinging back and forth over ever-changing
| equilibrium points.
|
| And yeah, I do agree that the article is a bit ambiguous
| here and could be clearer.
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| Yeah although that claim by gurus "naturally lazy" can
| also be read less absolute, as "many people are inclined
| to be lazy in a and b kind of circumstances". Which is
| not far from the truth.
| gsk22 wrote:
| Even the assertion that humans aren't naturally anything is
| absurd. We're naturally many things: social, food-motivated,
| curious, horny. Those traits are not cultural, and are common
| to humans as far back as we can trace (many shared with our ape
| ancestors as well).
| nicbou wrote:
| The topic is nice, but above all I thoroughly enjoy the writing.
|
| I feel like I get a lot more done precisely because I don't like
| to eat frogs. I sleep until I'm rested. I don't touch my computer
| until I've had tea on the balcony. I work on what feels right,
| when it feels right, for as long as it feels right. If the
| weather is nice, I'll hop on my bicycle and forget about work.
|
| But when something sparks my interest, I have stores of energy to
| throw at it. My appetite for work is unrestrained by the frogs
| I've had for breakfast.
|
| I embraced the fact that I am not a machine, and that my output
| is neither constant nor predictable. I'd rather respect the tides
| of my energy than fight against them.
| mingusrude wrote:
| When I interviewed for my current job, I had to take psychology
| test and I'm very skeptical to those kind of tests. The guy
| that ran the test explained that this wasn't about putting me
| into a colored box but trying to figure out what I naturally
| preferred to do in a work situation with the idea being that
| things that I enjoy are probably things that I'm good at
| because it takes less energy to perform. I don't know if it
| works but it's an interesting idea, things that takes less
| energy, you do more and you're probably more proficient at it.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I'd walk immediately. These sort of hiring practices are
| demeaning and a warning sign that those running the show are
| blithering idiots.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| I had a similar experience which, when combined with my
| academic background, pointed toward a particular corporate
| need that (to my surprise) was mostly received as unpleasant.
| It's a decision support role starting with a risk-based
| statistical model of products, then devising for hypothetical
| competing devices the best selling points. The test was
| useful to decide which frog, reminded me of the movie Brazil.
| [deleted]
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| What is your occupation where you get paid to work only on what
| feels right, only when it feels right, for only as long as it
| feels right, with leeway to hop on your bicycle and forget
| about work whenever you want?
|
| Cause I am interested in this line of work. At least if it pays
| enough to live comfortably.
| dymk wrote:
| Remote software engineer at a company with good WLB
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Intersting. I am also a remote software engineer, but
| either working "feels right" a lot less for me than for
| you, and I feel like spending time outside riding my bike a
| lot less than you, or my employer is a lot less tolerant of
| taking the day off to ride my bike because work just didn't
| feel right.
|
| I am curious how many hours a day/week you work, and if you
| are open about this with your employer...
| dymk wrote:
| I wouldn't say that I'm taking my day off to go ride my
| bike without telling anybody, but I would say that
| working from home affords me flexibility to, say, take a
| few hours to get a massage, go work out, or take my time
| making lunch.
|
| I make sure I'm aligning my personal technical interests
| with the kinds of projects I work on for the company, so
| work feels more like a fun puzzle to solve rather than
| slogging through tedium. Generally I don't work late into
| the evenings, but sometimes a problem is really just that
| fun to solve, and I enjoy spending time on it. Other
| times, projects may be less interesting, so I work fewer
| hours, letting myself rest. Burnout is real, and it
| sucks, and I avoid it at all costs.
|
| My employer really just cares that I get my work done,
| not how many hours it takes to do it. If I'm getting
| "meets all" or "exceeds" in my yearly ratings, then I'm
| meeting or exceeding their standard, and we're both
| happy.
| nicbou wrote:
| allaboutberlin.com. I'm self-employed, and I have no direct
| customers. So long as my bills are paid, everything else is
| extra. I can invest time into more, better content, but I can
| also mess around with things that don't make money. More
| often than not, they turn out to do just that. "If you build
| it, they will come."
|
| Mind you, I still have to work, but there's rarely anything
| that needs to be done _right now_ , unless I goofed up while
| fiddling with nginx.
|
| Before that I was a contractor for a year or two. After
| seeing contracting colleagues disappear for months-long
| vacations, I wanted in on that.
|
| Before that I was a regular employee in Europe, where work
| culture is far more relaxed. I had more vacation days as an
| intern than my parents in the home country ever had. I also
| became really good at aggressively cutting meetings for me
| and my team, which gave us more time to experiment without
| affecting output.
|
| In Germany, you also have the right to reduce your work
| hours. Coincidentally, that's the article I'm currently
| working on.
|
| There's a minimum number of frogs that you have to eat. Mine
| is very low out of sheer luck. However there are different
| ways to bring most people's number down, starting with _don
| 't glorify eating frogs_.
| jamiegreen wrote:
| What's the business model for allaboutberlin.com, if you
| don't mind me asking?
| nonethewiser wrote:
| It's essentially the same question as the original
| question - how can you afford to only work when you want?
| nonethewiser wrote:
| How do you make money from that website? Seems like you
| have a donate button. But other than that?
| nicbou wrote:
| Affiliate links on things an immigrant needs during their
| journey. There's enough genuine demand to skip the sales
| pitch entirely. The quality of the advice gives the rare
| product recommendations a lot of weight.
| yohannparis wrote:
| What a great website, and nicely organized, and also well
| written. Congrats!
| Atheb wrote:
| I have a similar schedule, although a slightly more
| organized. I try to be available from 9 to 4, atleast through
| emails if I'm not in my office, because that's when other
| people also work and might need me. I often leave mid-day to
| go running or come in late because I went bouldering in the
| morning. If I don't feel inspired to write or work, I often
| instead go for a walk and read books tangentially to my
| research topics. Then some days I'll work 12 hours straight.
|
| I mostly work when it feels right, yes, and do something else
| when it doesn't. But I am doing my PhD and (in Canada) it
| absolutely does not pay enough to live comfortably.
| wnolens wrote:
| > work on what feels right, when it feels right, for as long as
| it feels right
|
| How have you achieved this?
|
| I once had a setup like this, but eventually the work which
| permitted that freedom got boring, and I was so void of
| responsibility that I felt a pain of meaninglessness. Climbing
| out of this hole was via a feast of frogs.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| One way is to minimize your responsibilities and requirements
| to maintain your lifestyle.
|
| Most people get indoctrinated into a 1:1 relationship with
| what they make and their lifestyle cost.
| taneq wrote:
| Sounds nice to either have no real outside demands upon your
| time, or to sufficiently lack emotional attachment to anything
| you do such that it can't exert pressure on you.
|
| That said, I don't know if I'd actually want to live that
| dispassionately.
| nicbou wrote:
| That's a very uncharitable take. What part of my comment
| makes you think that I live dispassionately?
|
| The whole point is that my work is almost single-handedly
| defined by passion. When that runs dry, I take a break and do
| other things. It's easier to do good work with a well-rested
| mind full of ideas.
| timmahoney wrote:
| Not to mention, the work you perform while in that rested,
| ready state is of better quality than it would be
| otherwise.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| I think what people envy is that not everyone get to
| achieve your set of options. This article is by an academic
| advisor for students at an elite university. I have a
| feeling that GP was a post that didn't need to be made, but
| to achieve your set of options, a lot of things have to go
| right. You can't have kids too young, you can't take on
| disabled family members, you can't make certain career
| choices because you have to pay for aging parents. Some
| people have to pick up and move everything because of
| politics. And drug and gambling addiction add at least a
| frog a day.
| nicbou wrote:
| I'm admittedly sitting on a winning lottery ticket, no
| doubt.
|
| But it came out of the many impulses I followed when I
| should have been eating frogs. Other impulses got me all
| sorts of connections, career boosts and other perks.
|
| Some frogs you just have to eat, but I don't think that
| anyone's denying that. The original article is
| questioning competitive frog-eating. In my experience,
| refusing to eat those frogs is how you end up finding
| other ways.
|
| This guy who makes computers put it best:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYfNvmF0Bqw
| metacritic12 wrote:
| Summary:
|
| The author argues that the popular productivity advice to "eat
| frogs" (i.e. do the things you don't want to do first) is based
| on a false premise, that humans are naturally lazy and
| gluttonous.
|
| This false premise leads to a lot of unnecessary suffering, as
| people try to force themselves to do things they don't actually
| enjoy.
| manholio wrote:
| > we have a bad theory about how our minds work, one so dastardly
| that it could have only been devised by the devil himself. It
| goes like this: _We humans are, deep down, lazy and gluttonous
| creatures. If left to our own devices, we will do nothing but eat
| Pringles and watch Netflix. The only way we can escape our
| indolent nature is to exert our higher faculties over our base
| instincts._
|
| I believe that allegedly wrong theory applies perfectly to me,
| since I have watched myself descend into the junk food - junk
| flix routine. It started with a mild depression which was a
| perfect excuse at the time, and then continued down into the pits
| of procrastination where the lazy part of me was feeling
| fabulous. Thankfully, the devilish side went completely crazy
| with guilt and frustration, never mind their Satan worshiping
| sidekick - the wife - and eventually delivered me back into
| productivity heaven/hell.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Kind of makes you think what's more important: the ability to do
| things you want to do, or the ability to _not_ do the things you
| _don 't_ want to do... people do seem to give up on the latter
| one quite a lot in order to get the first one and then realize
| the trade-off they've made may have been somewhat non-optimal way
| too late to be able change it.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| That's one of the best things that HN has ever sent me. I
| especially liked this penultimate paragraph:
|
| "I no longer think there's something wrong with me; there's
| something wrong with Reviewer 2. I intend to have so much fun
| that Reviewer 2 will simply have to join in."
|
| I love the last bit: "..so much fun that Reviewer 2 will simply
| have to join in."
| wbharding wrote:
| I wonder if past generations have cared as much as we do about
| helping people feel better about their perceived failings? This
| essay fits snugly into a 2020s canon of NYT Best Sellers around
| "work less, enjoy more." My impression had been that previous
| generations principally aspired to get more done to advance their
| lot in life. If that's true, it will be interesting to assess
| later how long-term happiness compares between the "try harder do
| more" past generations and the "you're amazing why are you
| working so hard?" current one.
|
| Cal Newport is the only contemporary personality I know of that
| advocates for getting more done, but his method still conforms to
| the zeitgeist, in that his "get more done" is more precisely "get
| more important stuff done by doing less overall."
|
| Perhaps this is the natural evolution that occurs when a country
| has reached sufficient wealth where contributing gains to per
| capita GDP just ain't inspiring to a comfortable generation? It's
| interesting to try to contextualize the current popularity of
| anti-productivity literature vs what has come before it.
| jaqalopes wrote:
| I love and agree with this article, but I do want to defend the
| Pomodoro method. In brief, if you already don't enjoy what you
| are doing for work, applying a new time management strategy to
| that work will not increase your enjoyment. However, I have
| personally thrived using the Pomodoro method to help keep myself
| on track and hitting goals for the work I _do_ enjoy. In this
| light, moreover, I don 't think the analogy to a diet makes much
| sense.
|
| Still, overall an insightful and much-needed statement on one
| problem with the times we live in. I especially loved this line:
|
| > _These students inevitably end up as consultants or bankers or
| managers at tech companies, industries that richly reward people
| who are willing to work very hard for no particular reason._
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Like 15 years ago, before pomodoro was popular (or at least I
| didn't know about it) my sister asked if I knew a good time
| schedule for studying. She was in senior year of high school, I
| was in flight school. My answer of "about 15 seconds reading
| then a 10 second break" was _not_ what she expected. It 's what
| I was using and worked pretty well.
|
| I enjoyed that work very much. I was basically memorizing the
| book. No _way_ that schedule would work for something I
| disliked.
|
| On the other hand, I have actually found one minute on, one
| minute off, 30 times with an automated repeating timer to work
| on tasks that seem downright unbearable. The minute off you
| just do nothing. Do not do this daily! This is like a once-a-
| year thing.
| drivers99 wrote:
| > Do not do this daily! This is like a once-a-year thing.
|
| Why's that? (I'm intrigued by this idea.)
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| >I am _not-at-leisure_ in order to _be-at-leisure_
|
| - Aristotle
|
| If you're never _at-leisure_ , you're missing something
| important. Leisure is the very basis of culture [1].
|
| [1] https://www.worldcat.org/title/leisure-the-basis-of-
| culture/...
| blooalien wrote:
| Re; This particular quote from the article...
|
| > "Stop confusing productivity with laziness. While no one likes
| admitting it, sheer laziness is the No. 1 contributor to lost
| productivity."
|
| I was taught growing up that if it's something you _must_ do
| anyhow, then _true_ laziness is finding the simplest and most
| effective way to do a given task _quickly and correctly the first
| time_ so that you don 't have to waste time and effort doing it
| again or fixing your screw-up. Sounds pretty "productive" to
| me...
| throw10920 wrote:
| This is a definition difference. You're defining "laziness" as
| "effectiveness"/"efficiency", broadly - which is a valid
| definition that I've heard many times, but _not_ the only one.
| The article, instead, uses a definition of "laziness" that is
| "doing the things that you want to, instead of the things that
| you should do".
|
| _Your_ version of "laziness" is quite admirable, honestly.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| I heard a quote once that a general or some leader said he
| preferred "highly intelligent and slightly lazy" people because
| they found the most efficient and reliable ways to get things
| done, and quickly as a bonus!
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > General Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord, the present chief
| of the German Army, has a method of selecting officers which
| strikes us as being highly original and peculiarly un-
| Prussian. According to Exchange, a Berlin newspaper has
| printed the following as his answer to a query as to how he
| judged his officers:
|
| > "I divide my officers into four classes as follows: The
| clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each
| officer always possesses two of these qualities.
|
| > Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the
| General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of
| those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy
| qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the
| requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult
| decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got
| rid of, for he is too dangerous."
|
| Or
|
| > I do not know whether your Lordships are familiar with the
| saying of a German General that there are four types of
| officer but I think that it is relevant to what we are
| discussing. He said that there are four types of officer: the
| clever and lazy, the clever and industrious, the stupid and
| lazy, and the stupid and industrious.
|
| > The clever and lazy you make Chief of Staff, because he
| will not try to do everybody else's work, and will always
| have time to think. The clever and industrious you make his
| deputy. The stupid and lazy you put into a line battalion,
| and kick him into doing a job of work. The stupid and
| industrious you must get rid of at once, because he is a
| national danger.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| That's the one! Thank you for the text so I can cite it
| properly.
| danuker wrote:
| Bill Gates -- 'I choose a lazy person to do a hard job.
| Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.'
| bluedino wrote:
| A true lazy person would never do it.
| dade_ wrote:
| My father runs a business, one day many years ago in his shop
| he needed help moving a bunch of material. I explained it would
| be a lot faster to do it a different way, and he commented that
| would be the lazy way to do it. It wasn't the first time I'd
| run into this thinking, though it has stuck with me ever since.
|
| I explained this isn't about exerting less effort, but that for
| the same effort we get a heck of a lot more done. I guess
| that's when I first realized that management consulting can be
| a good thing.
|
| Of course, 30 years later, I know management consultants are
| often frauds that have no idea what they are talking about or
| doing. They make business benefits by slowing wage growth and
| by essentially forcing smaller groups of people to do more work
| by laying off their coworkers. Not the efficiency I had in
| mind.
|
| https://www.economist.com/business/2022/04/09/how-mba-wieldi...
|
| The protestant work ethic is a powerful tool, but people need
| to know that it is a religious value now woven into society.
| Not to avoid doing productive things, because I think it can
| provide the most amazing successes and a wonderful life, but to
| be aware that it is horribly abused in America by business
| management. "Idle hands are the devil's hands." And it drives
| all sorts of compulsion.
|
| None of this is new, but if I could go back in time, I would
| find Chuck Palahniuk, and explain to him that the problem in
| our society isn't the banks, but the big consulting firms. Oh
| that would be a much more satisfying ending to Fight Club.
| hbosch wrote:
| The matrix for effort vs. impact is something I find myself
| drawing in meetings a lot.
| Effort Low High
| +-----------+-----------+ I | |
| | m Low | Ok | Bad | p
| | | | a
| +-----------+-----------+ c | |
| | t High | Perfect | Ok |
| | | |
| +-----------+-----------+
| jventura wrote:
| So, it pays off to keep effort low most of the times,
| right? I agree with the matrix, so I cannot find another
| conclusion..
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| The best simple way to prioritize a backlog. Engineering
| team is responsible for assigning "effort" dimension;
| product/stakeholder team is responsible for assigning
| "impact" dimension. Then we see what's in high impact/low
| effort, and that's what we're gonna work on.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| I came up with almost the same activity but didn't think
| of having different groups decide the dimensions. Some
| random stuff:
|
| Use stack ranking. Avoids "everything is a priority" and
| related mistakes.
|
| Effort and impact both have a long tail distribution,
| something like power law. It's probably power law because
| it's easy to be off by an order of magnitude. "Impact" is
| easier to get wrong because it's going to the _high_ end.
| Don 't think most impactful and second most impactful
| have a similar impact because they're close in rank. It's
| easy for #1 to be 10-100x #2.
| SilasX wrote:
| > My father runs a business, one day many years ago in his
| shop he needed help moving a bunch of material. I explained
| it would be a lot faster to do it a different way, and he
| commented that would be the lazy way to do it. It wasn't the
| first time I'd run into this thinking, though it has stuck
| with me ever since.
|
| Bojack Horseman: "Are you gonna sail around the cape like a
| _real man_ , or are you gonna cut through the Panama Canal
| like a _Democrat_?"
| mlok wrote:
| As a Frenchman, it took me a while to realize it was supposed to
| mean "a painful thing to do"
| oboes wrote:
| Interestingly, there is a similar French expression: "avaler
| des couleuvres" ("swallowing snakes").
|
| It also means "doing things against your will", although it has
| the additional sense of doing them because you're gullible (not
| sure if this sense is also present in the English expression).
|
| https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/avaler_des_couleuvres
| praptak wrote:
| To me "eating the frog" comes from a joke.
|
| Two peasants find a frog and take a bet. One says he can eat
| the frog raw and the other bets $5 that he cannot. So the first
| peasant starts to eat the frog; halfway through he starts to
| feel nauseous. The second one starts to regret the $5 that he's
| about to lose. So he offers to reverse the bet - $5 back for
| eating the remaining half of the frog. The first one agrees and
| the second one eats the remaining half of the frog.
|
| They walk for a bit and one asks the other "Hey, why exactly
| did we eat that frog?".
| danuker wrote:
| For science, of course!
| egypturnash wrote:
| It comes from a line often attributed to the 19th-century
| humorist Mark Twain: _Eat a live frog first thing in the
| morning, and nothing worse will happen to you that day_. "Eat a
| frog" is intended as a metaphor for "do that shitty task you
| don't want to do".
|
| It appears to have actually been coined by a late 18th century
| French humorist: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/03/eat-
| frog/
| glandium wrote:
| BTW, as a 44 year old French that has never seen frogs on a
| restaurant menu, and never had any, I wonder how common eating
| frogs is nowadays. Escargots seem much more common, to cite
| something else we're known for.
| hirundo wrote:
| Our local supermarket in an Arizona small town sells frogs
| right next to the seafood in the meat department. Somebody
| must be buying them. Though I've never seen them on a local
| menu. Are they typical in a French grocery?
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| I've never seen them in French supermarkets.
| eru wrote:
| I guess eating frogs might be more common in South East Asia?
|
| Frog leg porridge is really easy to find in Singapore, for
| example.
| cageface wrote:
| Frogs are very popular in Vietnam, served in all kinds of
| ways.
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| They're common in Singapore because of the southern Chinese
| influence. You don't see them often in Malaysia or
| Indonesia tho (outside Chinese areas) because frog is not
| halal.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I think it's quite rare. I tried once because a friend was
| visiting from the US and wanted to try. With a bit of
| research, I found a restaurant specialised in frog, but yes,
| they aren't common.
| maeln wrote:
| Idk, I went to a lot of restaurant that had frog legs in
| their menu. On the other hand I had snails only once. But I
| think "traditional" french restaurant are not that common
| anymore in anycase. My city is full of restaurant from all
| over the world or thematic restaurant, only an handful of
| "classic" french restaurant (and its not a bad thing, I
| love the variety).
| lapinot wrote:
| Frogs are a protected specie in france: you can catch
| some for personal "use" but there are quotas. So all the
| frogs you eat in restaurants come from elsewhere in
| europe. Could explain the evolution. Also i'm not sure
| it's something "typically french", i'd definitely
| categorize it as region-dependent (eg from the Dombes
| near Lyon). Btw for frog fishing you need no hook but
| just a small piece of fabric, had some fun making a
| couple fly when a kid, see
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUDmb3ZMw5c
| thedailymail wrote:
| Only place I've eaten frog was in Cambodia. First time,
| at a street vendor, it was delicious. Second time, at a
| hotel buffet, it made me sick as a dog.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Now that I think of it, I remember that when I was a kid
| (40 years ago), occasionally my mother would cook
| snail/frogs. Snails more than frogs actually. Maybe it's
| one of these traditions that we're losing.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Frog's legs are eaten in Appalachia in the South East of
| the US.
|
| Not so much in restaurants but I was invited to a friends
| house and that was part of the meal. Tasted kinda like
| chewy chicken wings, not bad.
| stephenhuey wrote:
| I've had them several times along the Gulf Coast of
| Texas. Like the alligator eaten here, it's part of the
| joke of the long list of things that tastes sorta like
| chicken.
| iamthepieman wrote:
| The only time I've eaten frog was fried in a Cajun
| restaurant.
| ivolimmen wrote:
| As 47 year old Dutch guy I can say I ate frogs in the
| Netherlands of all places... but never seen them in France
| (but I did not specifically search for them)
| Bayart wrote:
| It's mostly a familly thing, I guess. I'm younger than you
| are but always ate frogs regularly.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I ate frog legs in a restaurant in France no later than this
| summer, but it was a Vietnamese restaurant...
|
| Snails, on the other hand, are not too difficult to find in
| supermarkets.
| sleepdreamy wrote:
| It's not uncommon. In the south they eat it, I personally
| have had frog and it tasted like chicken to me. I try all
| kinds of weird food because why not.
|
| I cross the line at eating spiders. Nope
| petercooper wrote:
| Wouldn't eating bread be more painful in France?
|
| _(Sorry.)_
| dcminter wrote:
| I've never eaten bread as delicious as the "boring" baguettes
| available from virtually every bakery in France. Maybe it's
| the yeast they use or something? So I'm genuinely curious as
| to where you're coming from with that.
|
| Edit: Oh. Pat yourself on the back for a pun well played.
| Whooshed straight over my head! Take my angry upvote ;)
| hashmal wrote:
| Baguettes "tradition" can only contain 3 ingredients
| (flour, water, yeast) so their quality matter, yes, but the
| preparation is what makes it all: how it's mixed, how long
| it rests, at what temperature, how the flour/water ratio
| changes through the process, etc. that dictate what the end
| result will be. It can take 10 years for a baker to master
| the process.
| petercooper wrote:
| Thanks, I'll accept your upvote graciously as I'm celiac
| and unable to eat that fantastic French bread anymore!
| dewey wrote:
| Why would eating bread in the country with one of the best
| bakery cultures be painful?
|
| Edit: It's too early, thanks to the more awake commenters to
| point out the pun ;)
| veltas wrote:
| Pain is French for bread.
|
| I hate this joke. There's a bakery I used to drive past
| called the "House of Pain".
| petercooper wrote:
| Ah, they did one of my favorite wraps. _Baguette up,
| baguette in.._
| scubbo wrote:
| Oh, well done.
| tartoran wrote:
| Well, OP messed up the pun a bit, pain is bread in French
| but painful means nothing in French. But still a good
| one, first time I hear it.
| praptak wrote:
| It's a pun, "pain" means bread in French.
| hnbad wrote:
| It's funny because in Germany we have a similar phrase
| "swallowing the toad". I think the idea is to swallow them
| whole. I think French cuisine generally only serves frog legs,
| not whole frogs?
| somenameforme wrote:
| Not just French. They're popular in many parts of the South
| US as well, particularly in areas with Cajun/French
| influence. And delicious.
|
| And yeah, just the legs.
| jaclaz wrote:
| Also in some areas of Italy, there used to be restaurants
| where frog (only legs, usually fried) were the main dish,
| though I believe they are little by little becoming more
| rare.
|
| Also they once were a very "poor" (please read as cheap)
| meal, while nowadays they tend to be "gourmet".
| _0ffh wrote:
| Same thing as with oysters, then.
| mlok wrote:
| Yes, we only eat the legs :)
| Findecanor wrote:
| Frog legs are eaten in many parts of Europe ( _except_
| Germany apparently) So much that some indigenous frog species
| have become endangered, and frog legs are more often imported
| from South-East Asia these days.
|
| BTW. I had also expected the article to be about actual
| frogs: about how endangered some species are, or how the
| flesh may contain pollutants or diseases.
| hnbad wrote:
| "Frog eaters" (using the word for "eat" that is used for
| animals, not people) is a German slur against French
| people, so yeah, Germany seems to have a strong aversion.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| It's probably (possibly?) a Mark Twain reference:
|
| "If your job requires you to eat a toad, do it first. If it
| requires you to eat two, eat the bigger one first."
| istinetz wrote:
| He's referring to, and quoting, a very popular self-help book
| titled "Eat the frog".
|
| The book itself is probably a wink to that Mark Twain quote.
| bambax wrote:
| Yeah me too! My first thought was, but frogs are... delicious?
| What is he even talking about?
|
| That said, I was very surprised by the quality of the article,
| and the writing. I was expecting yet another bucket of self-
| help motivating bullshit and it's the opposite of that! And
| also quite funny.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Yeah I thought the obvious answer is because they taste good!
| noduerme wrote:
| yeah, man's natural state is better than this bitter dystopia.
|
| >> using your "higher faculties" doesn't always leave you better
| off. As I wrote recently, smart people aren't happier
|
| glad we've come full circle, all the way through self help gurus
| back to self-referencing barbarians masquerading as intellectual
| saviors.
|
| no, the notion of work is not the devil. idle hands are. if you
| need evidence, check out all the people who apparently don't have
| to work and spend all their time on tiktok.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Who cares about all this? The work or not work is not an end.
| It's a means to an objective. I want to move the world closer to
| what I want it to be. I have a theory for what I need to do for
| that and it's going to take work.
|
| Out there I'm sure is my antipode, someone who is taking a
| different path to the same objective. I'll let them do that way
| and I'll do this way and let whatever works work.
|
| But for me it's hard work and if I don't finish it, power up my
| kids so that if this is what they want to do they'll have a head
| start.
| dabedee wrote:
| I care. I am sure other people who read such articles care. And
| there might be yet another category of people who find it
| inspiring to such an extent that they are moved to act or
| change something about the way they do things.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Good for you. But you're definitely generalizing from a single
| datapoint if you think people in general have very well-defined
| long-term goals beyond "what my society tells me I'm supposed
| to be doing". Why work towards goals that aren't worth the pain
| of getting there?
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Lovely concept and execution! Definitely going to share as it
| shows the diversity in humanity is real and just natural. There
| is no 'ideal' because other than genetic duplicates, everybody
| has variables it's so much fun.
|
| Reminds me of being a snippy teenager at "inspirational coaching"
| sessions or listening to some invited speaker...
|
| Speaker: Think outside the box!
|
| Me: What box?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Frogs are actually pretty tasty.
|
| Contrary to the article, I am a human piece of trash.
|
| The problem with those questions of what will make you successful
| that you hate doing, is that you can't say with certainty that
| the behavior will make you successful since there are multiple
| variables at play (most of the time).
| yboris wrote:
| A classic article on this: _In Praise of Idleness_ by Bertrand
| Russell
|
| https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| This essay is really hitting home for me (sorry for leaving a few
| comments in the thread, they are hopefully each contributing),
| and I think has some resonance with _this_ essay I also just saw
| today:
|
| > I'm a psychologist - and I believe we've been told devastating
| lies about mental health / by Sanah Ahsan
|
| > To return to the plant analogy - we must look at our
| conditions. The water might be a universal basic income, the sun
| safe, affordable housing and easy access to nature and
| creativity. Food could be loving relationships, community or
| social support services. The most effective therapy would be
| transforming the oppressive aspects of society causing our pain.
| We all need to take whatever support is available to help us
| survive another day. Life is hard. But if we could transform the
| soil, access sunlight, nurture our interconnected roots and have
| room for our leaves to unfurl, wouldn't life be a little more
| livable?
|
| --
| https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/06/psycho...
|
| Compare to from OP:
|
| > I think lots of people are stuck in that first relationship,
| stuck next to their tiny little pond, skeptical that anything
| greater exists. But it takes a lot of work to be satisfied with
| their relationship and their pond, because they don't get enough
| love to fill their hearts or enough fish to fill their bellies.
| So they end up reading articles about how to love things they
| don't love that much and how to feel full without eating enough.
|
| > ...When they get home at the end of the day and they're so
| tired that all they can do is sit motionless and watch TV, they
| blame themselves, as if it's their fault that they feel exhausted
| after racing to meet a deadline so they can avoid being publicly
| shamed. And that breaks my heart.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Regarding pomodoro: I've found that 5 minutes of rest is not
| enough.
|
| Through trial and error I've settled on 30min work and 20min(!)
| of rest.
|
| I have to force myself to stop working when my timer is up,
| otherwise my productivity that day goes down.
|
| On one hand it's just a somewhat smarter way to eat frogs, on the
| other it doesn't feel so.
|
| I suppose half of the problem is not knowing what amount of frog
| is too much for you.
| presentation wrote:
| I find it really depends on how motivated I am for the task. If
| I'm really motivated I can focus for hours and not feel bad at
| all.
| danuker wrote:
| Then there's this (the complete opposite of OP's link):
| https://www.wisdomination.com/screw-motivation-what-you-
| need...
| presentation wrote:
| What works for me is in between. I use both motivation and
| determination to achieve my goals, trying to use as little
| determination as is feasible. When I feel unmotivated, I
| don't try to fight it at first. If there's something else
| that's equally urgent but I am more motivated to do, I'll
| do that. If I'm just feeling sluggish overall, I'll go eat
| lunch or do a workout or drink a coffee or something. And
| once I don't have a choice but to will myself to do that
| thing, then I'll do that. Much of the time I don't need to
| because "resetting" myself will get me to that state of
| mind.
| Tade0 wrote:
| My observation is that even when I'm highly motivated _I
| shouldn 't_ go over the scheduled time, otherwise my energy
| to work will drop and with it, motivation.
|
| It's counter-intuitive to say the least.
|
| Perhaps there's something about sitting down for extended
| periods of time that causes this effect.
| akiselev wrote:
| This is a great article but the best part is an off hand link to
| a book review of _A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great
| Depression_ [1] which includes choice quotes like
|
| _> The writer George Jean Nathan claimed that before the 1920s,
| there existed only eight basic sandwich types: Swiss cheese, ham,
| sardine, liverwurst, egg, corned beef, roast beef, and tongue
| (yes). But by 1926, he "claimed that he had counted 946 different
| sandwich varieties stuffed with fillings such as watermelon and
| pimento, peanut butter, fried oyster, Bermuda onion and parsley,
| fruit salad, aspic of foie gras, spaghetti, red snapper roe,
| salmi of duck, bacon and fried egg, lettuce and tomato, spiced
| beef, chow-chow, pickled herring, asparagus tips, deep sea
| scallops, and so on ad infinitum."_
|
| I ordered it off Amazon right away only to immediately realize,
| to my horror, that the hardcover version I had chosen would not
| arrive until Saturday, a full fortnite after my aspic of foie
| gras, salmi of duck, and the $5 esp32-wroom dev kits that were
| part of the same order.
|
| What is this, the 1930s? Civilization is seriously going down the
| drain.
|
| [1] https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2022/04/04/book-review-a-
| squar...
| eesmith wrote:
| > The writer George Jean Nathan claimed that before the 1920s,
| there existed only eight basic sandwich types
|
| This is 2022 - you can get old cookbooks from archive.org and
| check if Nathan was right.
|
| He wasn't.
|
| For example, "The up-to-date sandwich book : 400 ways to make a
| sandwich", by Eva Greene Fuller. Published in Chicago in 1909.
| https://archive.org/details/uptodatesandwich00full/page/n7/m...
|
| Or, a generation earlier in 1884, the book "Salads and Sauces"
| by Thomas Jefferson Murrey (New York) has a chapter on
| sandwiches.
| https://archive.org/details/saladsandsauces00murrgoog/page/n...
| including "Apple Sandwich", "Anchovy Sandwich", "Beef, Raw,
| Sandwich", "Brie Sandwich", "Caviare Sandwich", "Clam
| Sandwich", "Curry Sandwich", "Dandelion Sandwich", "Duck
| Sandwich", and so on for several more pages, ending with "Welsh
| Sandwich". Look under "Goose Liver" for the foie gras entry.
|
| I hope I helped save your meal!
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Before the internet existed you could just say things
| confidently and nobody could check if you were right.
| Nowadays you check the internet and there's 100 blog posts
| backing up the lie. What a time to be alive.
| wizofaus wrote:
| And for each of those blog posts, several others refuting
| them.
| trelane wrote:
| and that's before we get to the _comments_
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| bbarnett wrote:
| I think it is a joke on the "there are only 5 story types"
| blather you hear, every so often.
| brudgers wrote:
| Yes, there are only two story types.
|
| + Someone goes on a journey.
|
| + A stranger comes to town.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| This is only true if you define journey as basically
| doing anything interesting. But then you are just saying
| that the only story type is "someone does something".
| pessimizer wrote:
| There's only one story type. Somebody runs into a problem
| and tries to solve it, but fails at the halfway mark
| because they didn't understand the problem well enough.
| They rethink the problem and try to solve it again, but
| fail at the 3/4 mark because they don't understand
| themselves. Then they defeat the problem by gaining
| understanding of themselves (or fail to defeat the
| problem because of a willful refusal to change, or have a
| partial/late revelation and a partial/late success.)
| Problem > failure of vision > failure of character >
| solution.
|
| Stories are attached to particular protagonists, but you
| can do things like overlap the stories of multiple
| protagonists or give a single protagonist multiple
| overlapping stories in order to develop narratives of
| arbitrary complexity.
| effingwewt wrote:
| That's just one story from two perspectives though?
| brudgers wrote:
| Two faces of the hero?
| pwython wrote:
| A caviare sandwich sounds like a really expensive "sloppy
| joe."
| robbintt wrote:
| Where is that dev kit $5? I think I paid $50?
| MrDresden wrote:
| Love tongue. Cook it occasionally and eat with horseradish
| mayonnaise
| the-smug-one wrote:
| Beef tongue is amazing! Try out tongue tacos.
| trelane wrote:
| Have done this, can confirm.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Tongue (with vinegar and garlic) is one of the traditional
| dishes for Christmas here in Argentina (or at least in my
| family). I never ate it in a sandwich, anyway.
| jakzurr wrote:
| My father made a wonderful tongue & beans soup; must have
| been 45 years ago. Little brother and friend come home, I
| tell them, "You've got to try Dad's soup!" They both raved
| about it, until I mentioned the meat was cow tongue. Years
| later I was still catching flack about that little incident.
| But he'd grown up on a farm and meat was meat; I thought it
| tasted great.
| teachrdan wrote:
| I was reading "Ramona Quimby, Age 8" to my kid and saw a
| reference to the Quimby family eating tongue as a cheap meat,
| due to budget cutbacks from Mr. Quimby going back to school
| to become a teacher.
|
| Ramona did not care for tongue if I recall correctly.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| > foie gras, salmi of duck, and the $5 esp32-wroom dev kits
|
| Never been a fan of chips in my sandwich, but each to their own
| I suppose.
| jonhohle wrote:
| But that satisfying crunch and galvanic shock of grounded
| fillings!
| mywittyname wrote:
| Full of minerals too!
| m463 wrote:
| > writer George Jean Nathan claimed ... before 1920s ... eight
| basic sandwich types ... by 1926, he claimed that he had
| counted 946...
|
| Can't help but think people wrote to tell him he was wrong.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > $5 esp32-wroom dev kits
|
| That's an awesome price!
| NDizzle wrote:
| I had this exact conversation with my 3 month old puppy just the
| other day. Toads, though.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Counterpoint: sometimes eating frogs is an opportunity, and if
| you don't eat them, someone else will and they will be better off
| because of it.
|
| Eating more frogs now can mean that you have to eat fewer frogs
| in the future, or in total, ALSO that your children and family
| will have to eat fewer frogs.
|
| I still believe that working hard is a virtue and the people who
| do will usually end up becoming the people who (and who's
| children also) are privileged.
|
| I agree though that the culture around it is a bit much, and it's
| not for everyone. Those type of people should not be forced to
| participate in that kind of culture if they don't want to.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| This is certainly true. The article speaks about how sometimes
| you must eat frogs. The point is that we often do not ask
| ourselves whether eating _so many frogs_ is actually necessary
| and instead take it for granted that we must do this thing that
| we hate and seek advice for how to do that.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Eating more frogs now can mean that you have to eat fewer
| frogs in the future
|
| Key word there is "can". We need to be very careful when
| deciding about temporal shifts in frog eating (more now, fewer
| later). If it's not a very tight loop, you are likely eating
| someone else's frogs so they don't have to. Be sure you're
| actually reducing the number of frogs coming your way.
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| This is the con. If you convince a whole generation of people
| of this, you have a lot of people eating frogs. Some small
| percentage of those people will have the extraordinary
| fortune of not eating frogs later, and then attribute their
| success to all the frogs they ate, and recommend frog-eating
| to everyone.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Eating frogs means more earwigs. We need maximum viable frogs.
| temple_os wrote:
| Obviously you have the right mindset but the point is that the
| majority of surface-level work addicts don't even have the
| intention of getting less work in the future as a result. Work
| for more work for more work -- no end in sight!
| more_corn wrote:
| I hate the author's snarky arrogant voice. Like nails on a
| chalkboard.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Thats a very epicurian piece. Yeah dont do things you hate, love
| yourself the way you are and dont have big dreams that you hope
| to achieve, you are already perfect.
|
| No thanks.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| I disagree with your take. The article is exactly about finding
| what you ACTUALLY WANT to achieve and then not getting
| distracted with eating frogs.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > finding what you ACTUALLY WANT to achieve and then not
| getting distracted with eating frogs.
|
| That's precisely the bad piece of advice. Nobody knows what
| they really want, most of the time, because people change,
| you change, and the environment changes. It's better to have
| a system that makes you do something to progress in your
| skills or your ongoing projects every single day, than coming
| up with a goal since you have no idea how to get there or
| that is even worth pursuing.
|
| If you are not seeing any progress, the problem is not with
| the idea that you need to progress every day, rather a bad
| technique you are applying.
| twoquestions wrote:
| So people are generally incapable of governing themselves,
| and require goals to be imposed on them to make meaningful
| progress?
|
| I sure as hell hope I'm reading you wrong, because _yikes_
| that is a frightening ideology.
| [deleted]
| kaon123 wrote:
| Great article. It is necessary to be reminded of this some time.
| I always like to remind myself of Steve Jobs' famous speech where
| he says something like:
|
| "As with all matters of the heart, you know when things are
| right". Which implies you damn well know when things are not
| right too. (source:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&ab_channel=Stanf...)
|
| Not sure if Steve Jobs is a devil according to this guy.
| irajdeep wrote:
| We've got the wrong theory about how minds work and it's ruining
| our lives
| kika wrote:
| Amazing piece. I always read such types of fiction with some
| white, but slightly darkening, sense of envy. Especially parts
| like "We humans are, deep down, lazy and gluttonous creatures. If
| left to our own devices, we will do nothing but eat Pringles and
| watch Netflix." I left my job in February with enough take to not
| work for another 10 years keeping my gluttonous lifestyle and 20
| or more without it. I kept myself busy with moving across the
| country (and then pushed a little further) for a couple months
| but 6 months later I ended up with a side project that I have an
| itch to productize, another project that I want to do for money,
| a consulting company and I talk to prospective employers at least
| once in 2-3 weeks. I don't remember when I was watching Netflix
| online, not downloaded while on the plane. These are the people
| from another universe. Somehow I believe their existence is a
| figure of speech for brilliant writers like Adam.
| causality0 wrote:
| I wish he'd used a different metaphor. Fried frog legs are
| delicious.
| danuker wrote:
| > your previous love was just a make-believe love, a childish
| imitation that you mistook for the real thing--an honest mistake,
| because you had never felt the real thing before?
|
| I'll share a personal story: I was burned by a "stuck in your
| head" "love". It was unrequited and I suffered a lot.
|
| I have since then read about infatuation, and am averse towards
| it.
|
| I'd much rather have a stable partner I can have fun with but
| also communicate, rather than the intense stomach-churning
| variant.
|
| The most important criterion I've found is that both partners in
| a relationship see the other as greater or equal to themselves.
|
| Satisfy that, and you get a long-lasting relationship, and you
| can stop chasing for the impossible ideal.
| d--b wrote:
| Jesus, this guy knows how to write.
| danuker wrote:
| Also how to read (if the same Adam recorded the voiceover).
| jongjong wrote:
| This seems to be a major epidemic nowadays. I suspect that
| mechanistic, meaningless, purely mimetic pursuit of success has
| some pretty negative consequences on society. I suspect it might
| explain why so many people are interested in engaging in politics
| (or company politics) and zero-sum value extraction schemes
| instead of just adding value... They're not interested in the
| process at all, only in the outcome; financial success and social
| approval from authority figures.
|
| Many people are spending most of their lives doing stuff that
| they don't want to do, so of course they tend to look for
| shortcuts instead of trying to do things the right way. They have
| no intrinsic pride in the work they do; it's all about status,
| money and power. As people have become more free in their
| personal lives, on the career-side, we've never been so
| constrained.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| A friend recently got what he thought was a great gig with an
| engineering firm - turned out it was more of a cult - rah rah
| sessions, after work bowling, softball - and they weren't shy
| about shunning anybody who didn't want all in right away.
|
| He got bullied and saw others bullied too - we figure it's why
| they prefer to intern pipeline and hire and retain - a lot
| easier to brainwash when young.
|
| I mean it's not a bad company, they do strong and good work -
| but acting like it's the best place ever? Well, most of them
| have only worked there. We were like, offhand we've each had
| two better jobs than that one.[0] They used culture as a bait
| for lower pay too.
|
| There's something really disturbing about a company in 2022
| wanting to act like a cult rather than accept the job market is
| turning more mercenary by the day. Oh well, their choice to
| fail.
|
| [0] - Daniel Tosh "America #1" stand up bit for reference
| bsenftner wrote:
| I wish I could say this is not normal, but I see this
| _everywhere_ : employers want cult-like fiefdoms, and many
| are successful creating them. These companies are filled with
| young developers who _completely drink the kool-aid_ and
| become no less than fan-boys for their oppressor, as anyone
| that has had more than 1 job would look at the environment as
| darkly Orwellian.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| Alternatively, some may prefer a basic safe haven from all
| the chaos out there, because their temperaments make too
| much rapid change intolerable.
|
| Past a certain point, this sort of neurodivergence can be
| severely detrimental for no good reason, but I do
| understand why sometimes people accept a non-optimal
| situation for a while just to have some stability and
| simplify their lives.
| jongjong wrote:
| Having worked for many different tech companies, the concept
| of 'cult companies' seems like a trend. Though I can't say
| for sure if this is only affecting the tech industry or all
| industries.
|
| One of my ex-colleagues was hired straight out of university
| by a company and he did not take a single holiday in 4 years
| because his boss would always try to make him feel guilty or
| would imply that there would likely be negative consequences
| for him as an employee.
|
| After he eventually quit and changed companies, he had very
| low expectations and he couldn't believe how much better that
| second company was... It was a startup so it wasn't exactly
| low-stress by my standards; it goes to show how extreme the
| differences can be between companies that even a job which I
| considered challenging seemed like a walk in the park to him
| given what he had experienced before.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Years ago, I had a very local Hongkong Chinese boss. My
| holidays were constantly being challenged as "Hey, can you
| move that holiday?" By dumb luck, I was listening to him
| one day talk to his boss about an upcoming wedding. "It is
| so important. I cannot miss that wedding." After that,
| every single holiday of mine was a wedding or funeral. And
| I heard him several times "defend" my holiday plans: "Oh,
| he cannot move that holiday -- wedding/funeral". Ri-don-
| kulous!
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| This was exactly my experience at Goldman Sachs. Sorry, I
| should be posting under a throw-away, but let's be real for a
| moment. That place was nothing but a cult. Yes, they make
| lots of money, but you need to sell your soul. I never worked
| in a place with so many sheep (non-believers but scared to
| speak-up) _and_ assholes (believers, only because they profit
| / climb the corporate ladder) _at the same time_.
| Fortunately, I escaped after two years of that prison
| sentence. (The whole experience feels like Shawshank
| Redemption when I write about it now!) All the global
| investment banks where I have worked, Goldman had the fewest
| number of mid-career/senior hires. The intern/fresher
| pipeline was _so_ deep. Now I understand why! They are so
| much easier to brain-wash.
|
| Two stories stand out in my new hire training:
|
| We had _multiple_ "partners" (super senior, old-school MDs)
| tell us: "At Goldman, there is not publically available org
| chart." Fucking dead wrong. I raised my hand at each of those
| bullshit meetings and said, "I'm sorry, but this is
| incorrect. There is a website where you can view and search
| the org chart." (It was amazing -- no lie/joke.) Each PMD was
| so "surprised" to learn this. Not sure if real, or
| encouraging people to do face-to-face networking.
|
| Second, they showed all these weird propaganda videos about
| how Goldman is closely tied with the US gov't, especially
| during World War 2. So weird, creepy, and out of date! Many
| senior partners leave Goldman and enter US politics. In
| American English, they call it "the revolving door" (between
| private industry and politics). Many democracies have this
| problem. But why celebrate it? Fuct! The whole thing felt so
| sleazy. Why is this important to non-US citizens? Many people
| looked bored and only read their mobile phones during these
| 90 minute(!) videos.
| nkurz wrote:
| > Sorry, I should be posting under a throw-away
|
| Nice post, and I upvoted, but it might say something about
| your personality that you seem to consider 'throwaway2037'
| a part of your identity and not a throw-away. It makes me
| wonder if some of what you consider to be a 'cult' might
| just be what others think of as 'community'.
| jakzurr wrote:
| Yeah, I'm kinda chuckling about this. But I'm also
| wondering if it was a typo, and they actually meant,
| "Sorry, I shouldn't be..."
| bbarnett wrote:
| Oracle?
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Negative - as mentioned in a couple other comments here, a
| different industry. Not a really large company either, like
| 1700 people, which is a good place as a private firm with a
| 60% margin on professional services and low overhead...
|
| I worked at Best Buy so I recognized the signs immediately.
| The expression was "man he/she really bleeds blue" and if
| you hung out with the managers after work - because they
| all hung out together (and drove the same Scions lol) -
| you'd be in line for the next promotion. For some people
| that was a good path. Store Manager life and pay is legit.
|
| It's definitely a "high school hero" type thing where
| there's not of lot of experience with leadership outside of
| sports like football. If it's all they know, yeah, it's
| their playbook. Fortunately here in Texas I know that
| playbook and I'm helping him go Mike Leach on them and
| they're really surprised and not taking it well. Which is
| good for him.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Why is this downvoted? It is a good post.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| I was speaking about my Best Buy Retail experience but
| they do have other large operations that are different.
|
| I'm not sure what drugs the Shipping people are on though
| - we routinely shuffled 40+ unsold copies of The
| Benchwarmers into a bye bye crate and they'd show back up
| a month later but 50+. They were inventory gaming and
| probably doing some book cooking now when I look back on
| it.
| Supermancho wrote:
| Note: The blue-shirt Best Buy experience is certainly
| cultish. The software developer side of Best Buy is not
| (unless you count wokeness and scrum-agile cultish).
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| I know there's a big difference between corp and retail
| there. MN hq and all.
|
| I did abuse the heck out of the BB IT at the time using
| flash drives and paint.exe admin tricks.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Name and shame please.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Not until the payout is in the bank, but yes there will be
| a reckoning for their unethical wickedness toward innocent
| well-meaning employees who just didn't want to drink the
| kool-aid.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > He got bullied and saw others bullied too
|
| > I mean it's not a bad company
|
| These two statements cannot exist together when discussing
| the same organization.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| One department is all he can speak to so the others might
| be unicorns and elf burps.
| discordance wrote:
| Reminds me of that delayed gratification experiment with the
| kids and chocolates, except instead of eating the 2x reward the
| kid will then hold off for even more (for their whole life)!
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Yes, this is one of those ideas that keeps me up at night.
| When I'm looking at this system in aggregate, I become aware
| that we're racing toward asceticism. Me and the person next
| to me are competing in what we can do without. Even more
| disconcerting is that as soon as we reach a new equilibrium
| of austerity someone will find a new way to jump ahead with
| another form of self-denial. Or in other words, those who
| live in excess are meant to be punished. It's completely
| absurd. I'm lucky I fall asleep before continuing too far
| down this path of thoughts
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I agree with your basic diagnosis, "Many people are spending
| most of their lives doing stuff that they don't want to do".
| But I want to add: most of their lives doing things they find
| _meaningless and pointless_. (See Graeber on "Bullshit Jobs"
| for just an instance, not exhaustive).
|
| So I don't agree with your next conclusion, I don't think
| that's leading to "shortcuts instead of trying to do things the
| right way." To do things they _don 't want to do_ the right
| way? To do things that are meaningless and pointless, but do
| them the "right way"?
|
| I agree with, I think, the OP, in that what you are suggesting
| is metaphorical "get better at eating frogs, why are you so
| lazy about it?"
|
| But I agree with your basic explanation. My interpretation of
| why people might engage in office/politics is: to try and find
| _some_ meaning in life. The politics seem meaningful because
| politics (of both varieties) are actually core to what humans
| as humans do.
|
| The problem is not "How do we figure out how to force ourselves
| to do the meaningless boring stuff we don't want to do the
| right way?" The problem is: How do we find meaning in our lives
| that have been structured so we spend most of them doing
| meaningless things we don't want to do, and are not sure how to
| live otherwise. And, with regard to harmful or unhealthy forms
| of "politics" or "drama": In what ways do our attempts to find
| meaning backfire?
| kbuchanan wrote:
| I hated college. I never finished for the frogs. But I'm a
| lifelong reader. I don't regret failing to get a degree, but
| I regret that I wasn't in the _right mindset_ and that I
| could have used the time to _create_ meaning.
| hcks wrote:
| > They have no intrinsic pride in the work they do; it's all
| about status, money and power.
|
| Damn these modern people, why would they look after things so
| irrelevant as "status, money and power" instead of taking pride
| in completing Jira tickets?
| AvocadoPanic wrote:
| Agile with a pedantic scrum master is a particular kind of
| hell.
| fluoridation wrote:
| No, instead of taking pride in doing something they actually
| enjoy.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| >They have no intrinsic pride in the work they do; it's all
| about status, money and power
|
| the guy with status,money and power is obviously more
| attractive than the guy who, although he loves his work, is
| more or less unsuccessful on those parameters. it's
| intraspecific selection at play. One of the only remaining
| factor influencing human evolution today. People understandably
| value what increases their SMV.
|
| Konrad Lorenz has written an interesting part about it in his
| book "Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins" (4. Man's race against
| himself)
| jongjong wrote:
| As bad as it sounds, I think this does seem to describe the
| situation correctly.
|
| This is the kind of attitude which helps the individual at
| the expense of the group. When the group is too dumb to see
| through bullshit, the people who produce bullshit have a huge
| advantage within that group.
|
| I've seen this dynamic at play first hand in groups and
| communities of various sizes. It's just incredible how
| sometimes individually smart people can form a group but
| somehow, as a group, they act really dumb and they fall for
| obvious BS over and over... And the people selling BS within
| the group keep screwing the group over and over again and
| group members just ignore all the evidence that they are
| being screwed. Meanwhile those who are working in the
| interest of the group are shunned because the group ignores
| the tangible evidence and believes the BS narratives which
| paints those people as harmful.
| thenoblesunfish wrote:
| I agree about the negative consequences, but I'm not so sure
| about "nowadays". Haven't most people, throughout history,
| basically copied what other people did, followed the standard
| paths, etc., when it comes to trying to make a living? Haven't
| almost all of them been constrained by needing to do so, or
| fearing the unknown of not doing so?
| veltas wrote:
| In the doctor and sweet shop owner story the article's author is
| the sweet shop owner.
|
| Sometimes I think the sweet shop owner is helpful to some people,
| but not to me! I need that disgusting medicine. To each their
| own.
| tdullien wrote:
| FWIW, I think this is among the better pieces that I have found
| on HN recently.
| dcminter wrote:
| Same and I was skeptical at the outset. I particularly liked
| the analogy of the conscious/unconscious to the director and
| his intern!
| istinetz wrote:
| I strongly disagree with the author.
|
| What brings me pleasure is playing strategic computer games. I
| was addicted to playing dota. I was playing 12-16 hours a day,
| which left no place for socializing, career, family, even basic
| self-maintenance suffered. Anything meaningful, art, self-
| improvement was cut. It's a disgraceful, shameful life.
|
| The meaning of life is not the blind pursuit of pleasure. We are
| humans precisely because we follow higher purposes.
| mordae wrote:
| > higher purposes
|
| I chuckled. I have yet to see one.
| istinetz wrote:
| I have defined for myself what are the higher purposes I want
| to follow. It's not an issue of them existing or not, for me
| the issue is that I _am_ naturally lazy and I _do_ naturally
| gravitate towards random bullshit, contrary to what the OP
| blogpost described.
| mordae wrote:
| It's just about personal aesthetics. You no longer like
| yourself, so you went and started to change yourself to
| better fit your new aesthetic sense.
|
| Obviously the sense is informed by what you perceive.
|
| You higher could be pretty low for someone else. Like
| yourself in a couple of years.
|
| It's the biggest lie of them all that some behaviors are
| higher than other. That's how they sell you church, work
| week and other frogs.
|
| Why? Because most of us converge on the same basic idea
| that with cooperation, we can have generally more fun. So
| we invent ways to get others involved in our shit. Some of
| it manipulative, because ends justify the means. Well,
| except when you like to play on hard and limit the set of
| your means, because it's more fun that way.
| istinetz wrote:
| >It's the biggest lie of them all that some behaviors are
| higher than other.
|
| Disagree.
|
| >You higher could be pretty low for someone else. Like
| yourself in a couple of years.
|
| Possible, but I can console my future self with the fact
| that at least I'm not a filthy nihilist.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Except that you're talking about a game hyper-optimized to be
| addictive, and while I can't speak for your specific case, in
| general having an addiction usually involves said addiction
| being a coping mechanism to fill some kind of hole in someone's
| life, or avoiding the pain of some unresolved trauma. Which is
| not at all the same thing as being proof of humans inherently
| being lazy and needing self-help gurus to fix that.
| throw10920 wrote:
| Can you please link to evidence that Dota 2 has been "hyper-
| optimized to be addictive"? Because I've _never_ seen any
| indication that that 's what Value is doing to it, and that
| is highly inconsistent with my personal experience playing
| the game and interacting with its community.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| I suppose it's all relative. Sure, it's not slot machine or
| [any recent lootbox game] levels of vile tricks, but come
| one, _it 's free-to-play_. Of course it's trying to keep
| people hooked. I also know multiple people who had to cope
| with Dota addictions ruining their relationships and lives
| (although I do happen to know quite a few game devs, being
| a programmer living in Malmo, so that's a skewed
| demographic of gamer-oriented people). At the very least
| there is a vulnerable segment of society that should avoid
| these types of games.
| istinetz wrote:
| >Except that you're talking about a game hyper-optimized to
| be addictive
|
| When I stopped playing dota, civ took it's place, then
| reddit, then tiktok, etc.
|
| I've resorted to hard blocking a long list of apps and
| websites. I've seen other people on hackernews having the
| exact same problem and stumbling upon the exact same stack of
| solutions.
|
| My point is, it's not the one game, it's the entire internet.
|
| >said addiction being a coping mechanism to fill some kind of
| hole in someone's life
|
| I've been to several therapists, which have proven useless. I
| don't think there is a hole in my life, besides the fact that
| _I 'm wasting my entire life on stupid shit because I
| procrastinate_.
| [deleted]
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _When I stopped playing dota, civ took it 's place, then
| reddit, then tiktok, etc_
|
| These are all still examples of things hyper-optimized to
| have addictive feedback loops.
|
| > _My point is, it 's not the one game, it's the entire
| internet._
|
| Fair point, but the author is most strongly disagreeing
| with the "human nature" claim of laziness, and everything
| you've described so far strikes me as an external influence
| coopting human instinct. Kind of like how cheesecake and
| other hyperprocessed foods coopt our instinct to _really_
| like eating fat and sugar, which from an evolutionary
| standpoint was a _very good instinct actually_ for the sake
| of survival until extremely recently. Should morbidly obese
| people lose weight for the sake of their own health? Yes.
| Should we shame them for being obese when healthy food is
| hard to come by and extremely bad food is cheap and easy to
| find? No.
|
| I understand how that might feel like arguing semantics
| when the end-result is still that you feel like it's hard
| to get control over your life and addictions, but the
| difference between blaming oneself and seeing that this is
| an external influence that one shouldn't hate oneself for
| is a very significant one.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| If you told a king from 500 years past that in the future
| there is a magical "other" world inside a crystal crafted
| by the finest of mages where conquest, diplomacy, and
| economics can be practiced to perfection without risking no
| lives nor resources but that of time, and that this
| endeavor is both stupid and a complete waste of time, he'd
| think you're not only mad, but foolish to squander such an
| opportunity to learn how to govern a kingdom, and by
| extension, yourself.
|
| Your mistake is not one of playing games, but of thinking
| there's nothing to be learned from doing so. Sid Meier's
| Civilization is not some slot machination to drain you of
| everything. It is the design of one of our era's greatest
| minds, in the pursuit of understanding the systems
| underlying our Earthly existence, and the democratization
| of that research to the fingertips of all.
|
| For someone who enjoys balancing the needs of a kingdom,
| you've yet to learn to balance the needs of your own body.
| robocat wrote:
| I will add learning teamwork, and learning
| incentivisation, and learning how to bend or manipulate
| rules. It is a great time to be alive if you have any
| sociopathic tendencies.
| istinetz wrote:
| I know and agree that there are lessons to be learned
| from civ and dota. I never said it was a _complete_ waste
| of time, but it is an addiction that takes over your
| life.
|
| Tiktok, reddit, binging netflix, in contrast are probably
| directly harmful.
| [deleted]
| throw10920 wrote:
| > conquest, diplomacy, and economics can be practiced to
| perfection
|
| This is a ridiculous analogy. The _vast_ majority of
| video games have so little application to the real world
| as to be effectively useless. This is relevant in the
| particular case of Dota 2, which, while an _incredibly_
| interesting game, has virtually no relevance to the real
| world.
|
| "Virtually" because if I say "no relevance" then pedants
| will quickly point out that you can learn some basic
| economics by looking at the skin marketplace, or
| something. Yeah, sure, and you can learn more about human
| anatomy by having sex. The ratios of learning for those
| things compared to doing dedicated learning (textbooks,
| classes, internet research, practice) are at least in the
| ratio of 100 to 1, if not more, for all but the tiny
| minority of games _explicitly_ designed to have a
| significantly amount of learning potential (e.g. Kerbal
| Space Program).
|
| Using your own analogy, if you told said king that using
| this crystal took you 100 to 1000 times longer to learn
| about things than the magical libraries that we also have
| available to us, which also only cost your own personal
| time, and then advocated for their use, he'd definitely
| think that you were crazy - and you would be.
|
| > It is the design of one of our era's greatest minds, in
| the pursuit of understanding the systems underlying our
| Earthly existence, and the democratization of that
| research to the fingertips of all.
|
| Sid Meyer is not "one of our era's greatest minds" even
| in the particularly narrow field of video game
| development.
|
| > For someone who enjoys balancing the needs of a
| kingdom, you've yet to learn to balance the needs of your
| own body.
|
| There is no "balancing the needs of a kingdom" going on.
| The Civilization games are optimized for entertainment
| _first_ , and if educational value is optimized for at
| all, it's _definitely_ not in the top 5. If you take
| someone who has put thousands of hours of Civilization
| into any position of authority (and no other relevant
| training), they 'll a pathetic, miserable mess, and not
| able to keep up with someone who's read a just few dozen
| hours' worth of well-chosen history, economics, and
| military strategy books.
|
| If you could learn to rule merely by playing Civ, then
| American anime enthusiasts would be able to learn
| Japanese merely by watching anime, which virtually
| _never_ happens, and it 's pretty well known that it's
| not a feasible learning strategy.
| hoseja wrote:
| I suspect we never had a chance or guidance to experience
| the fabled depths of human experience.
| banannaise wrote:
| > When I stopped playing dota, civ took it's place, then
| reddit, then tiktok, etc.
|
| _All of which are also hyper-optimized to be addictive._
|
| Perhaps part of the problem is that you live in a world
| surrounded by things that are hyper-optimized to feed your
| addiction rather than bring you joy?
| throw10920 wrote:
| On what grounds do you base your assertion that Civ is
| hyper-optimized to be addictive?
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Not the person you asked, but I would guess the fact that
| _" oh shit I forgot to sleep it's six o'clock in the
| morning"_ is a universal funny-because-it's-true joke
| made about all Civ games since forever? "One more turn
| syndrome"?
|
| Honestly, on what grounds would you _deny_ that Civ games
| are addictive given this common knowledge?
| user_7832 wrote:
| Hey OP, do you have issues with time
| management/procrastination, organization and planning too? If
| so a) read up about executive disfunction, and b) ask your
| doctor to test you for AD(H)D. I had a very similar story and
| struggled with motivation for years, until I realized its a
| fundamental symptom of AD(H)D that isn't really well discussed.
| istinetz wrote:
| yep, this is the diagnosis I got as well. Unfortunately, adhd
| drugs are legal, but not mainstream or easy to come by in
| Eastern Europe.
| tuyiown wrote:
| Maybe you've lost access to a confortable middle ground, and
| I'm very sorry for you, but hopefully the vast majority of
| humans still can find balance between exclusive pursuit of
| pleasure and doing things things you hate every single minute
| of the day.
| istinetz wrote:
| Cool. I'm not the one making sweeping generalizations, OP is.
| csours wrote:
| I don't think the author is arguing that you should seek only
| pleasure or always avoid discomfort. The author is saying that
| you should notice what is pleasurable and what is causing
| discomfort.
|
| Frustration is a kind of pain and pain is a signal that we
| should avoid a stimulus. It is frustrating to 'eat frogs'. You
| can force yourself to go through frustration, or you can use
| tools help manage those feelings. Or you can try to address the
| source of those feelings. Or you can choose to not engage in
| activities that bring up those feelings. We have words for some
| of these things like 'procrastination'
|
| The point is that those feelings are real and they are not your
| fault. It is not a failure to feel frustrated. It is a signal.
| Forcing yourself to go through frustration repeatedly may
| strengthen that signal, laying down cognitive and emotional
| scar tissue.
|
| Noticing a stimulus does not mean being fixated on it. It does
| not mean that you give that stimulus more power. It can feel
| that way at first, like noticing a tiger in the room; but the
| tiger has always been there.
|
| ---
|
| On another level, the article hints at the real purpose of
| mental/cognitive/emotional therapy. "Therapy doesn't fix
| anything, you have to fix yourself" is a common way to say
| this, but I would say "Therapy is a way to see your situation
| more clearly, help you develop tools to deal with your personal
| situation, and help you decide what to change about your
| personal situation". Therapy can make you feel worse in the
| short term, and sometimes life does just suck; but it can also
| help quite a lot.
|
| ---
|
| A tool that helped me -
|
| Emotion Wheel - https://feelingswheel.com/
| banannaise wrote:
| You know what's funny? DotA involves _a lot_ of frog-eating. A
| lot of it is a slog, and a lot of it is really frustrating. You
| hadn 't decreased your frog consumption. You were just eating
| the wrong frogs.
|
| It seems that now you're eating different frogs, and you're
| feeling happier and more fulfilled. You might even be eating
| less of them now, and that might be part of what's rewarding.
| vermarish wrote:
| Yeah, it's tricky. Some places will just mix frogs into their
| burgers, so you've just gotta stop eating at the Chum Bucket
| and pay attention to what's in your mental diet.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I think addiction is it's own thing -- which is not about a
| lack of pleasure either.
|
| The main thing I think is missing from the OP (which I liked
| very much) is discussion of the concept of _meaning_. (and
| perhaps social connection).
|
| I think what most "frog-eaters" are missing is meaning, not
| pleasure. People will gladly do hard things that seem
| meaningful.
|
| I think addiction is primarily about a lack of meaning (and
| social connection) as well -- rather than being about a surfeit
| of "pleasure" or lack of "discipline". It's an attempt to deal
| with a lack of meaning. (It is noteable to me that you point
| out that your 12-16 hours a day of playing, while (you claim)
| was "pleasurable", was not in fact "anything meaningful").
|
| I think OP is really talking about a lack of meaning, control,
| and social connection in our lives. It's this same lack that is
| part of what leads to addiction. And in fact the solution is
| not "just try harder to do the things that seem meaningless and
| without joy, you need more discipline" -- that's the message I
| get from OP, and I think in fact it applies to addiction too.
| "Trying harder to be more disciplined" is not a great strategy
| for escaping addiction.
|
| > But it takes a lot of work to be satisfied with their
| relationship and their pond, because they don't get enough love
| to fill their hearts or enough fish to fill their bellies. So
| they end up reading articles about how to love things they
| don't love that much and how to feel full without eating
| enough.
|
| This seems so relevant to addiction to me.
| istinetz wrote:
| >I think OP is really talking about a lack of meaning,
| control, and social connection in our lives.
|
| That is indeed a much more defensible thesis. But to do
| anything meaningful, you need to eat a bunch of frogs - to
| build a rocket, you need to call and compare suppliers,
| manage accounting, etc. If you avoided all of that annoying
| stuff, you would find yourself, years later, with very pretty
| blueprints and no rocket.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > That is indeed a much more defensible thesis. But to do
| anything meaningful, you need to eat a bunch of frogs - to
| build a rocket, you need to call and compare suppliers,
| manage accounting, etc. If you avoided all of that annoying
| stuff, you would find yourself, years later, with very
| pretty blueprints and no rocket.
|
| I do think there's a certain audience that needs to hear
| that, specifically the do-nothing crowd or someone (like
| your former self perhaps) whose life is dominated by bad
| habits. I think the article is addressing the other side of
| the pendulum. There are plenty of people who are not
| addicted to some sort of obvious time waste, but they _are_
| addicted to self-flagellation.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I'm not sure about that. Or at least I'm not sure it
| requires any one person to spend more than a small portion
| of their time doing anything that feels like eating frogs.
|
| But mainly, I think the basic thesis is about how we
| diagnose our dissatisfaction. The very common way is what
| you seem to be suggesting: You need to get better at doing
| hard things, it's your fault for being lazy. How do you
| expect to be able to do anything worthwhile if you are so
| bad at doing hard things? That is the common perspective.
|
| The OP's suggestion (tweaked a bit by me to have meaning)
| is that this is all wrong: If your life is mostly composed
| of things that are unpleasant, lacking meaning, control,
| and social connection, of COURSE they will be hard to get
| done and burn you out, and it's not your fault. The
| solution, if you can find a way to do it, is to increase
| the meaning, control, and social connection in your life --
| tasks will not feel as unpleasant if in a framework of
| meaning, control, and social connection.
|
| The problem is not your lack of discipline, it's that you
| are not getting enough meaning, control, and social
| connection in your life. (Granted, it's not necessarily
| simple what to do about this, especially when it's how our
| society is set up).
|
| But I'm curious, if you feel like sharing (or if not these
| are just rhetorical for other readers, no problem), as to
| your personal anecdotal experience with the problem with
| computer games. (which I'd call an "addiction" from my
| experience, but you may or may not). How did you get out of
| it? Or are you out of it or still struggling? In what ways
| has it been about discipline and trying harder? In what
| ways has it been connected to meaning, control, and social
| connection in other parts of your life? Has the theory that
| your problem is with discipline and procrastination and
| just not trying enough been useful to solving the problem?
| If not, are you willing to consider a different
| theory/framework? What things in your life give you
| meaning, control, and social connection, do you feel your
| life is full of those? (I do not, personally, I'm having
| problems with the lack of those and am not sure what to do
| about it).
| foobiekr wrote:
| There is no actual meaning, though. Just what you can pretend
| is meaningful for awhile.
| techno_king wrote:
| csours wrote:
| Don't be angry at your frustration, it already feels bad enough.
|
| Don't be angry at your shame, it already feels bad enough.
|
| Don't be angry at your fear, it already feels bad enough.
|
| Don't be angry at your anger, it already feels bad enough.
|
| All of your "bad" emotions can feed other "bad" emotions.
|
| The "bad" emotions are a way for your mind to tell you to avoid
| or change something. They aren't bad in the same way that hunger
| isn't bad. Hunger feels bad, but it's a signal that tells you to
| change something or do something.
|
| ---
|
| This is not a comprehensive comment. There are very important
| things I didn't say here.
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| So good article, I felt recently the same like a torture with
| all, make money, do this or that, travel more, enjoy more, do
| more ...
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _For legal reasons, I'm not saying the people who write this
| stuff are literally Lucifer in human skin. It's just that, if I
| wanted to maximize human misery, I would 100% try to convince
| people to spend more time doing things they hate_
|
| When Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett wrote _Good Omens_ thirty
| years ago they already hit upon this idea when Crowley, a demon
| and one of the main characters, tries to explain to his fellow
| demons that nowadays it 's all about optimizing micro-evils for
| the biggest net amount of evil. Sure, things like corrupting a
| church leader _sounds_ more impressive, but if you cause the
| phone network to be down for an entire morning in London that
| ruins so many more people 's day ever so slightly, leading to
| more sinful thoughts in total and pushing them to take it out on
| others, who then take that out on others, and so on.
|
| (my money is on that joke being written by Pratchett, it fits his
| kind of satire so perfectly)
| hprotagonist wrote:
| And then crowley's utter and abject horror at the discovery of
| what we can do to ourselves, no Hell involved at all.
| staticassertion wrote:
| Reminds me of Supernatural's Crowley optimizing hell to just be
| one big line where everyone just has to stand and wait. The
| simpler solution.
| samatman wrote:
| How would we describe the state of standing and waiting for
| all eternity? Being in limbo, perhaps?
| vanderZwan wrote:
| The British remake of "The Room" by Sartre
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| No, being in limbo is when you try to bend backwards under
| a stick for all eternity.
|
| [shows self out]
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Inthinkblimbo would be waiting alone. This is waiting with
| people you can communicate with. Thats right. Hell is other
| people.
| samatman wrote:
| I would suggest double-checking this intuition with
| Dante.
| mijoharas wrote:
| I also seem to remember that Crowley had a hand in the shape of
| the M25 to help maximise misery.
| WoahNoun wrote:
| Found this on the wiki page for the M25.
|
| >The M25 plays a role in the comedy-fantasy novel Good Omens,
| as "evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of
| Man".[14] The demon character, Crowley, had manipulated the
| design of the M25 to resemble a Satanic sigil, and tried to
| ensure it would anger as many people as possible to drive
| them off the path of good.[122][123] The lengthy series of
| public inquiries for motorways throughout the 1970s,
| particularly the M25, influenced the opening of The
| Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where the Earth is
| destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass.[124]
| db48x wrote:
| I bet he had read The Screwtape Letters though.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| and, considering to whom the book was dedicated, some other
| famous english apologists as well.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Any claimed author who's not read _The Screwtape Letters_ has
| no business writing modern literature.
| noSyncCloud wrote:
| This doesn't work even as a joke.
| beefield wrote:
| I need to check, are you sarcastic? I have so far avoided
| Lewis due to an impression (way too old impression to
| remember where I got it, may be unfounded or not) of the
| texts being close to christian/religious zealotry?
| db48x wrote:
| I haven't read everything he ever wrote, but I think that
| most of his books are just fantasies, or perhaps early
| science fiction (Out of the Dark Planet). Many of them
| are allegorical; you might see parallels between them and
| concepts or elements from the Bible, or you might ignore
| that and just enjoy the story. I think you could enjoy
| The Screwtape Letters in the same way you would enjoy
| Good Omens, as a fantasy that has demons in it.
| protonbob wrote:
| I mean he was a Christian and he did believe strongly in
| it and tried to share his beliefs with others. I'm not
| sure if I would call that zealotry though.
| Loughla wrote:
| I'm not trying to guess why you would say that (and by
| that, I mean the fact that you would avoid writing
| because it's trying to preach to you), and I do want to
| say that Lewis is, overall, very close to proselytizing
| in his writings (generally it's pretty explicitly stated
| that's what he wants to do). But.
|
| Avoiding something because it disagrees with your
| worldview, or because it is 'too close to [insert
| literally anything here]' is not a great way to expand
| your understanding of the world. Being exposed to things
| you disagree with is step 1 in understanding how or why
| they exist, with few exceptions (CP, explicit hate
| speech, most calls to violence, those sorts of things).
|
| Read the screwtape letters. Yes, they're intended to make
| you consider your immortal soul and embrace Christianity.
| But also yes, it's an amazing piece of literature.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| That said,"Letters From the Earth" by Mark Twain is an
| excellent companion volume to the Screwtape Letters,
| taking an opposite position (and from the perspective of
| a somewhat more exalted demon).
| beefield wrote:
| Well, I consider myself being relatively open to all
| kinds of new ideas. But at some point you need to realize
| that certain genre is not going to give you any new
| insights and it's better to move on. For example, I have
| read total of three books published by CATO Institute,
| and and by standard Bayesian rules, it is going to take a
| _lot_ of convincing to give them one more chance.
| failrate wrote:
| Then read 3 CS Lewis books starting with Screwtape and
| see if this is true for that as well. Quite slim books,
| top.
| ska wrote:
| > But also yes, it's an amazing piece of literature.
|
| I think you are overselling. It's worth a read, but the
| writing is often stilted and repetitive, the central
| conceit interesting but tired by the end. It's not a long
| book, but probably would have been better as a shorter
| form.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| I was wondering if they were the first to comment on this, or
| if this is a problem that has been satirized for much longer!
| :)
| latexr wrote:
| > my money is on that joke being written by Pratchett, it fits
| his kind of satire so perfectly
|
| Pretty sure it was written by Gaiman. I'm not finding the
| interview where he said this, but (if memory serves) Gaiman
| wrote that part of the story and had shelved it when Pratchett
| contacted him:
|
| -- Do you have plans for that thing you sent me?
|
| -- Not really, why?
|
| -- Because I know what happens next. So either sell me the
| rights to it or write it with me.
|
| And then continued the interview with something like "and
| because I'm not an idiot, I didn't pass up the opportunity to
| write something with him".
| pnf wrote:
| This joke was originally written by CS Lewis in The Screwtape
| Letters.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Unless I misunderstand you I think you're talking about the
| story (or perhaps that chapter) as a whole, and I'm talking
| about one particular passage in that story
| latexr wrote:
| > I'm talking about one particular passage in that story
|
| Gaiman's initial draft may have included more by the time
| they had the conversation, but the moment I remember from
| the interview was specifically about that conversation
| amongst the demons. It stuck with me because I found the
| idea funny and it's what made me want to take a look at
| Good Omens.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Oh wow, really? Heh, guess I underestimated Gaiman then!
| That could explain why it appealed to Pratchett though :D
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| I also seem to remember that the story went on to say that
| Crowley at one point had been praised for his work in the
| Spanish Inquisition. That was the first he'd actually heard of
| it--humans had come up with it on their own--so he went and had
| a look, and then went and got blind drunk, because there are
| some things even demons would rather not think about.
|
| That kind of abrupt tonal slam, from comedy to horror, leaving
| the reader feeling something like they just had a bucket of
| cold water unexpectedly poured over them, is classic Sir Pterry
| too. I read the Discworld series start-to-finish earlier this
| year as a minor bucket-list project, and I wish he was still
| around. He had a commendable simmering rage against the
| powerful and callous that boiled over often, and that's
| something we could use more of today.
|
| I also did not expect to write a comment today using the word
| "bucket" in two unrelated idioms, but here we are.
| aeneasmackenzie wrote:
| > I also seem to remember that the story went on to say that
| Crowley at one point had been praised for his work in the
| Spanish Inquisition. That was the first he'd actually heard
| of it--humans had come up with it on their own--so he went
| and had a look, and then went and got blind drunk, because
| there are some things even demons would rather not think
| about.
|
| Well, it makes sense that demons wouldn't want to think about
| strict judicial procedure and rules of evidence.
| groby_b wrote:
| If you think the main thing of the Spanish Inquisition was
| strict judicial procedure and rules of evidence, you might
| want to seek treatment.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| I think it's a joke, the punchline being the suggestion
| that that's what offended the demon in the story
| creativeembassy wrote:
| To be fair, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition...
|
| ...I'll show myself out.
| Jiro wrote:
| >That was the first he'd actually heard of it--humans had
| come up with it on their own--so he went and had a look, and
| then went and got blind drunk, because there are some things
| even demons would rather not think about.
|
| This seems like one of the things you might say to diss
| humans, but which doesn't actually make sense when you think
| about it. I don't believe for one moment that an actual
| demon, who does the kind of evil things we normally think of
| demons as doing, would find human evils shocking, let alone
| _unthinkable_. The whole point of being a demon is being and
| doing evil. If the demon can 't comprehend some human evil,
| he's a failure as a demon.
|
| It can at _most_ make sense as a joke. It makes too little
| sense taken seriously to actually be horror.
| tikkun wrote:
| I made a summary of this article, because I found it a bit hard
| to read. I used GPT-3!
|
| Here's the summary:
|
| The author is saying that people who write about productivity
| are, in a way, the devil, because they convince people to do
| things they hate. The author is also saying that these people are
| not literally the devil, but are just as bad.
|
| The article argues that humans are not "naturally" lazy, and that
| the feeling of being a "lazy piece of trash" is actually a result
| of the unconscious mind doing its job. The unconscious mind is
| only able to communicate with the conscious mind when there is a
| problem that needs attention, which can make it seem like the
| unconscious is lazy. However, the unconscious mind is actually
| responsible for solving a lot of problems without the conscious
| mind even realizing it.
|
| The author is talking about how people who are successful often
| have to eat a lot of frogs (do a lot of things they don't want to
| do), but that doing too many things you don't want to do can lead
| to burnout. The author suggests that people should stop and think
| about what they really want to do, and not just do things because
| they think they should or because other people are doing them.
| The author also talks about how some people never get to
| experience true love because they're stuck in bad relationships,
| and how this can be just as bad as eating too many frogs.
| [deleted]
| colemannugent wrote:
| This is a shockingly coherent summary. The accuracy leaves a
| bit to be desired, but this is perfectly usable for distilling
| things you don't have time to fully evaluate.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I felt the same. I read the full article. Then, I returned to
| HN. I was surprised to see the top post was talking about
| GPT-3(!). Then, I read the GPT-3 summary. I think: "Hey, not
| bad! This could be a real tool for everyday use!"
| crazygringo wrote:
| I had no idea GPT-3 could be used for this, this accurately.
|
| I suddenly feel like I need a browser extension to add such a
| summary to every article I read. Especially for less newsy,
| more long-form "conceptual" pieces where the author often
| doesn't make their actual real point until halfway through.
| Infernal wrote:
| As someone who has not "used GPT-3" what does it mean to say
| that you used it to make a summary? Just dump the full text of
| the article into a tool and request a summary output?
|
| I have only seen GPT-3 used when it takes a prompt and then
| generates more related text, I didn't realize you could run
| that process in reverse.
| dwohnitmok wrote:
| > I have only seen GPT-3 used when it takes a prompt and then
| generates more related text
|
| This is a fully general technique. Any repeatable problem can
| be rephrased as a prompt + related technique via the
| following structure: Problem: <Example of
| Problem> Solution: <Example of Solution>
| <...maybe include one or two more examples>
| Problem: <Real Problem> Solution: <Ask GPT-3 for
| the solution>
| Tenobrus wrote:
| The main interesting thing about GPT-3 is that prompt
| engineering turns it into an incredibly general tool. This
| summary was likely generated with a prompt something like:
|
| Here's an article about x: <text of sample article>
|
| A quick summary of the article, focusing on the main relevant
| points and keeping critical detail: <sample summary>
|
| as an example, then duplicating that with the real article
| and text.
|
| That's the "few shot learning" from the original paper. It
| could also be that it's good enough at summarizing
| specifically that you don't need an example, just the right
| framing prompt around the article text. Either way, that kind
| of prompt engineering is how you get "text completion" to
| perform basically any text processing task, generate code or
| play tic tac toe, so on
| redhedgehog12 wrote:
| Not OP but I've used GPT-3 quite extensively and can imagine
| that's exactly what they did.
|
| You can give it anything - or nothing - and ask for any kind
| of output.
|
| The relevance and accuracy of what it gives you can vary
| lots. You can give it examples of the types of things you
| want back etc. You don't necessarily have to give it examples
| either, just ask it a question. It normally performs better
| on semi-complex tasks when you give it examples though.
| akincisor wrote:
| Is there a firefox extension that can give me a GPT-3 summary
| of any given page? That would be super useful.
| pvillano wrote:
| If you don't have one hour to meditate, meditate for two hours.
|
| If you find the article hard to read, consider listening to it.
| It will take longer but it will be easier. The author's reading
| of the article has a little extra humor too.
| rfgrffr wrote:
| frodetb wrote:
| > > We humans are, deep down, lazy and gluttonous creatures. If
| left to our own devices, we will do nothing but eat Pringles and
| watch Netflix. The only way we can escape our indolent nature is
| to exert our higher faculties over our base instincts.
|
| > First, humans are not "naturally" lazy, because humans are not
| "naturally" anything. ... We're different today not because our
| genes changed, but because our culture changed.
|
| But those faults are in fact undeniably persistent to us as a
| species. It is not without reason that many of our religions,
| since antiquity, have framed this issue, man's struggle against
| his impulses, against his baser self, as the struggle against
| evil.
|
| If you're of the opinion that religion is bad for the same
| reasons that those motivational coaches are bad, then I think you
| still have to admit that this fight against our selves is far
| from novel.
| presentation wrote:
| That's only if you consider them faults. Preserving energy by
| not doing things you don't find rewarding isn't necessarily a
| bad thing.
| frodetb wrote:
| I'm making no judgement call here, with respect to the
| "cardinal sins". I'm only highlighting that we've worried
| about committing them since forever, unlike what the author
| is suggesting.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| Related reading:
| https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/113360634364/the-stan...
| http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/approval-extraction-advertise...
| ttyprintk wrote:
| Taking tests is an important frog. It's been quite a few years
| for me, but lately the movement to dethrone tests like SAT made
| me wonder how disadvantaged kids can distinguish themselves
| without a quantifier for potential. If it's essays instead of a
| math score, then maybe an essay is like this article says,
| improved messaging makes bad startups look like good ones.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| I agree, but taking a single test that's mostly about merit
| rather than compliance is not really what's being talked
| about.
|
| For what it's worth, my family is not wealthy or educated and
| I was able to go to a high-quality-but-not-prestigious magnet
| school in significant part because of my SAT score :)
| ttyprintk wrote:
| But the linked article (GP to yours) is about Y-Combinator
| and yes it is a bit of a different topic than the (better
| written) posted one about frogs.
|
| It's been quite a few years, but without the SAT, the only
| test that would distinguish me from a socio-economically
| disadvantaged background was a military assessment test.
|
| So when the SAT came under fire after a high-profile
| cheating scandal in Hollywood, I heard a lot about
| replacing the test with an essay.
|
| The article about Y-Combinator is about IQ and things that
| are not IQ. It also has this interesting quote about
| messaging --- message coaching can obscure the bad
| candidates among the good ones. I feel replacing the frog
| of SAT preparation with the possibility of an essay-as-a-
| service feels punitive to kids from difficult backgrounds.
| superchroma wrote:
| Well, I think people have big aspirations, and these typically
| are achievable with lots of money, and people think you have to
| 'eat frogs' to make that money.
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| I've started to believe that the aspirations that our culture
| promotes and pushes are the problem itself. Instead of
| creativeness Western culture promotes monetary success. Instead
| of happiness in a family we dream of making a billion dollars
| in a startup. Instead of dreaming about exploring the galaxy we
| dream about private space travel and mining. Instead of solving
| humanities greatest challenges via learning and science we push
| private businesses profiting from half fixes and pointless
| changes (carbon credits or slow introduction of electric
| vehicles without public infrastructure as examples). I'm not
| against people being rewarded for their work but the reward has
| become more important than the work itself. This is likely a
| result of the huge wealth inequality Western culture is dealing
| with, when someone has dramatically less they are always drawn
| to those that have more and are willing to do almost anything
| to get there.
| hnbad wrote:
| Ironically, eating frogs mostly helps making the frog industry
| a lot of money, not the frog eaters. Most of the people
| achieving things that require lots of money tend to be the ones
| who already started out with lots of money (even if it wasn't
| enough money to do those things right away).
| happymellon wrote:
| Except when "you are what you eat", and rather than the big
| aspirations you actually become really good at eating frogs and
| don't get the opportunity to do these great things.
|
| Which is the big point about all these depressed kids with no
| direction.
| Sharlin wrote:
| That's of course totally culture-specific, and the entire point
| of the article is that people should be thinking more about
| whether their aspirations are in fact their own or are they
| just having goals they think they're supposed to have, and
| wondering why they feel sort of empty inside.
| presentation wrote:
| If you have goals beyond feeling good in the moment then
| sometimes it's worth feeling bad for some time to achieve them.
| Most people definitely spend a lot of time doing things that will
| never lead them to that deeper satisfaction but that shouldn't
| stop one from trying. And to enjoy the struggle along the way.
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