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Some lessons that will come with age. 1. There is no magic that will change human nature. 2. Rules that keep people from harming others are very important. 3
by civilized 5y ago
Some lessons that will come with age.
1. There is no magic that will change human nature.
2. Rules that keep people from harming others are very important.
3. Don't expect to live a "special" or "great" or "revolutionary" life. Aspire to something extraordinary if you see an opportunity, but ordinary things like health, moderate wealth, and family are also good enough, and will have to be good enough for most people. And there is something very special in simply living a very good ordinary life.
4. Try not to be pushed into doing things that corrode the moral goodness within you. You will not regret spurning material rewards to live in accordance with your values, but you will regret the opposite.
- zouhair 5y agoLet's start by making revolving doors illegal.
- etrautmann 5y agoEven if this is trolling, I don't understand? who doesn't like revolving doors?
- gurkendoktor 5y agoI guess it refers to this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)
- pirate787 5y agoRevolving doors -- when people work for companies and then that industry's regulators, and back -- are a symptom of the problem. The problem is the government is too large and engages in too many activities that pick winners and losers. The government should be a neutral referee. End corporate subsidies (including regulatory cross-subsidies) and flatten the tax code to reform this area. Also a ban is plainly unconstitutional, people have a right to free speech, free association, and to work for whom they choose.
- jrd259 5y agoCertainly they do, but the public also has a right to insist that its servants (regulators, in this case, but also the other branches of government) be free of conflict of interest. In the particular case, they should not hire directly from the very industry they regulate. Ensuring that the regulators have expertise will be a problem, but at least no conflict of interest
- anthonygd 5y ago> In the particular case, they should not hire directly from the very industry they regulate. Ensuring that the regulators have expertise will be a problem, but at least no conflict of interest That feels like trading a problem for an even bigger problem. Everyone has greed but not everyone has competence. The world is in desperate need of more competence. Greed isn't necessarily a problem as long as it's regulated e.g., most people want nice stuff but don't burglarize their neighbors. We all have conflicts of interest.
- zouhair 5y agoYou don't need to be part of an industry to say if their product is safe for humans.
- raxxorrax 5y agoProfoundly disagree. If you have worked in an industry for a few years, you have internalized its rules and logic. An outside perspective is valuable. Technicalities rarely stops people from achieving a goal and it is the second step. You want competence for strategically sound decisions to achieve a goal, but setting it should be done with input of people that have not been groomed that advertising is a human necessity.
- anthonygd 5y agoWe might be talking about different things then. Or maybe not. You want people in government making long term strategic decisions that steer society. They should be listening to the will of the people as to what direction to steer it. I hope we can agree on that much. I think people forget that "regulators" though are really just large organizations that enforce/interpret laws. The obvious example is the SEC; it has 4200 employees and none of them create laws, their rules are an effort to enforce the laws created by congress using their technical competence in finance. > You want competence for strategically sound decisions to achieve a goal, but setting it should be done with input of people that have not been groomed that advertising is a human necessity. That's the world we live in. Congress has been completely incompetent when it comes to regulating finance and I'd expect them to be even worse when it comes to technology. There absolutely has to be a layer of industry specific competence (from "insiders") to make any sense of industry specific laws. I don't want insiders choosing direction though; I want congress to be less reprehensible idiots.
- shawnz 5y agoYou'd rather appoint regulators with no industry experience?
- gnulinux 5y agoFirst, very condescending to assume a certain wisdom comes with age. Downvoted just for that. I think you're completely wrong, especially about 1. Human nature doesn't shape our technological reality, it is becoming more and more obvious that technological reality shapes human culture. And people mistake culture as "nature". Human nature is very plastic, trying to fit any one thing into "human nature" is (this is my humble opinion, please don't be offended) very bigoted.
- Oddskar 5y agoWhy is it condescending to state that certain wisdom comes with age?
- niknoble 5y agoFor the same reason it would be condescending to say that a person is too old to understand something.
- ectopod 5y agoIf you are young you surely expect to acquire more knowledge and experience over time. So you should expect to make better decisions in the future. You cannot say that every old person is wiser than every young person, but you can certainly say that older people (before dementure kicks in) are wiser on average. Of course, I didn't believe this when I was young either.
- civilized 5y agoThe appreciation and nuanced interpretation of simplified general principles is also a skill that comes with age.
- gnulinux 5y agoThere is no conversation we can have if all you say will be "you'll learn with age" especially without knowing other commenters age. You sound nothing other than like a religious zealot.
- bloqs 5y agoThis is excellent advice.
- uwagar 5y ago2. Rules that keep people from harming others are very important. u mean mandatory vaccination?
- civilized 5y agoIn our current context with COVID? I don't really think so. But keep in mind we've had mandatory childhood immunizations for decades and almost everyone supports them.
- shadowgovt 5y agoSometimes. They were required for smallpox in the army in the 1700s. They're required for measles, mumps, and rubella in most US schools today. Which diseases and how wide the requirement tends to be context-dependent. MMR in school, for example, is generally justified because school attendance is mandatory, so forcing people to be in an environment where a preventable disease will spread is inhumane if the spread can be stopped.
- uwagar 5y agobut i heard covid-19 vaccination doesnt stop spread.
- shadowgovt 5y agoThat's true but inaccurate (in the same sense as "wearing a seatbelt doesn't guarantee you'll survive a car crash"). COVID-19 vaccination doesn't guarantee a person cannot become infected or infectious. It significantly diminishes spread (a person stricken with the virus and extremely symptomatic is more contagious than a person who is carrying the virus but asymptomatic; mechanically, coughing, sneezing, and gasping for air with fluid-filled lungs sprays more virus-laden particles into the air; it also seems likely that a vaccinated person who picks up an infection throws fewer virus particles in regular breathing, though the studies that I've seen seem to have mixed results on that). The other reason to vaccinate people is load on medical services; even if someone who is vaccinated is infected, the odds they'll get so symptomatic they wind up in the hospital go way down. Hospitals filled with COVID-19 patients have far fewer resources to dedicate to "everyday" emergencies (heart attacks, car crashes, etc.)... The result being that COVID-19, left unmitigated, can cause systemic collapse of a country's health infrastructure and resulting death due to preventable conditions (because there's nobody available to prevent them). It's easy to forget (now that most people are vaccinated) how virulent this virus is, and how severe the symptoms are, unmitigated. There's a good reason the world medical community snapped into action on this one.
- kingkawn 5y ago5. Resist empty generalizations
- civilized 5y agoYou'd be surprised at how vehemently people can disagree with seemingly innocuous platitudes.
- eli_gottlieb 5y ago3a) However, most interviews and opportunities are full of themselves, so make sure you can spin a tale of how extraordinary you are and how your whole life has led to this job interview on an as-needed basis.