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I feel like we need another effect for people on hacker news that consistently do the opposite - take obvious intelligence and pretend it's equivalent to Eliza.

Because that’s the group that’s captured it

Someone (throwtato@protonmail) sent me a death threat from my hacker news email alias over this thread - ridiculous, but not surprising given the left wing extremist violence. The most hostility I've see on HN is from trans leftist activists.

I don’t know why I spend time on HN anymore - it used to be a place to learn things and interact with interesting people. Now it’s just a crappy subreddit. The interesting people mostly fled to private channels (or X) long ago.

With PG’s retarded “Free Palestine” arch, it’s probably best to just leave.

Anyone saying “misogynistic domestic slavery” has bought into a much dumber political religion, maybe without even realizing it.

This guy’s entire post is about riding a sad Caltrain to some Palo Alto job and being disappointed his memorization of obscure computer trivia or generic software job didn’t provide meaning in his life.

My point is that marriage and kids provide a deep sense of purpose and fulfillment and a certain kind of narrowing clarity and that ideas of what leads to a fulfilling life are well established in old cultural communities for a reason. He’d no longer be looking for the meaning in obscure trivia - which was never the correct place to find it anyway.

The other bit is a lot of jobs are bullshit (probably most) with enormous amounts of waste building stuff that doesn’t matter. You can fix that by working at Tesla, spacex, etc.

I suspect nothing you believe about either of them is remotely true.

I didn’t say I was committed to the religions - I said they’re a battle tested adaptive cultural technology we should be careful about throwing away because there will be unintended consequences. They are very effective at helping people live meaningful lives and have community.

You can choose to be obstinate and read what I wrote through a political lens with no charity - that’s kind of the political religious substitute I’m talking about.

People are looking for meaning in the wrong places - it’s not a huge surprise, it’s something secularism has largely failed at.

There are places you can work that are more meaningful or where there is a culture of cutting down on bullshit. Elon Musk is famously good at running places that do both.

More people would benefit from getting married and having kids - a lot of (Judeo-Christian) religion’s cultural ideas were good even if its empirical claims are wrong. Religion is in some ways a battle tested cultural technology, throwing it away will have unintended consequences for most people.

Alex Karp touches on some of these ideas indirectly in The Technological Republic which is worth reading anyway for other reasons. A lot of people in the west today grow up without a cultural core and end up aloof believing in nothing, or worse substituting some bullshit political ideology as a poor substitute religion.

iPhone 5(s) was peak case design imo and the last to have a flush camera iirc. The 12 and 13 mini were close, but still had the bump.

My personal favorite would be that style with modern chips and a full glass display. Basically an updated mini without a camera bump.

They'll never make this though because the minis proved the market is tiny.

I loved the mini and bought both the 12 and 13 mini. Also bought it for my siblings. Unfortunately after its sales Apple is very unlikely to ever make a small phone again.

The configurator is interesting and something I haven't heard of before!

It's a double edged sword because the amount of time I spend online (X) has been directly responsible for the most valuable opportunities and generally knowing enough of what's going on to leverage that for big financial and career returns. It was pretty easy to drop all non-X social media though (all meta) and just avoid short term video generally.

I've been tempted to try the lightphone 3 though - theory being if I have a separate hardware device that might be enough to help because I can leave the iPhone at home. In theory the Apple Watch could do this, but in practice it hasn't.

Another thing I think can work is committing to avoid using it for one day a week - you get a lot of the benefits, it's more doable, and the downside is minimized.

You downplayed what Tesla FSD can do and said I was being narrow minded and the Bay Area driving is "easy mode" and said vision isn't a general solution. I think none of this is true.

People here just whine and complain - yes they’ve “only” just sent a skyscraper to space for now and caught the booster on reentry, it’s a work in progress (along with their reusable rockets, earth scale telecom side project etc.)

My point is people will still be calling him a fraud when they do get it to mars, no evidence is sufficient for the HN cynic that thinks their “above the fray” ethos makes them smart.

Tesla has had massive success despite the haters, the model y becoming the literally best selling car on earth and you wouldn’t know it from HN. FSD has gotten really good, good enough to use more than not as they continue to improve it.

The best thing about capitalism is the losers here don’t matter - the winners get rich and keep going.