polymathemagics

Yeah, and for a lot of earners in high tax states, the effective interest rate you pay is essentially almost half off thanks to the mortgage interest tax deduction. If your marginal tax rate across federal / state / local is high (mine's 46%), then you can get back almost half the interest. Which shortens the gap between a 3% vs 6% mortgage, the effective difference being more like 1.5% than 3%.

I'm of two minds here.

On one hand, I absolutely agree that you should try to focus on maximizing the positive aspects of your life rather than overly focus on beating down the negatives. For instance, I'm happiest when I'm taking a lot of recreational classes outside of work, and when I'm doing that - my phone usage is not a problem - it's a fine way to spend my limited free time because I'm already doing the things I love.

On the other hand, in the morning especially it feels like looking at my phone can kinda derail my day sometimes. So I download Opal and just set a hard block (impossible to skip) from 9:55pm - 9:35am, that way I'm able to use my phone during the day, but not the very first thing in the day. I find that works well for me.

Agree that people should not do active investing, although the solution would be passive investing (index funds), which allow you to focus on friends & family without missing out of the economy's long term gains.

Reading these comments make me feel sad about the state of Hacker News. As with any large public forum, it's turning into an anti intellectual space where takes like "economics is not a science, it's a social science!" are the best we have to offer. It's either engineer syndrome, or it's brigading from other niche political forums. I'm tired of reading knee jerk reactions to fields from commenters that have zero experience in but have all the conviction in the world.

Fair - I did not give any arguments, just my personal experience as someone that was really deep into that subculture. I'm also not an economist, so I would defer to the professional consensus, which I think we'd both agree is that modern Austrian economics is not considered a serious thing. I think we should be wary of debating a highly technical topic as a layman - it's very easy to be wrong, and it's hard to get feedback from people more versed in these topics. For context - I wanted to be an Austrian economist when I started college, I was majoring in math (real analysis, etc) and econ with the intention of starting an econ phd. I fell in love with computer science instead. I look back on my libertarian / austrian phase as just me having too much time on my hands as a high schooler, being a pretty smart student, and there being a wealth of info online about it. It feels even better as a smart person to think that you know something others don't, including professional economists. I just want people online to be aware of the Austrian rabbit hole, because the von Mises institute is just a think tank in Alabama that's very good at creating an online presence that feels legitimate and scholarly, but it's not really. That's not to say there's not interesting arguments, I'll always be attracted to some libertarian ideas, e.g. some of Walter Block's Defending the Undefendable. But I think most people can relate to having strong convictions about something, growing older, losing the conviction, and then being wary of taking extreme positions in topics that they know little about.

I would recommend against Human Action. It's "Austrian" school economics, which is considered heterodox, and it's something that's understandable by a layman but generally not be considered good economics. I fell into the trap when I was in high school of reading Mises and Rothbard et al, I wish I had not.

For what it's worth, CBT was hugely helpful for me. I read The Feeling Good Handbook (kind of the CBT bible, a new edition of Feeling Good). CBT is definitely a tool that you want on your tool belt if you're struggling with anxiety/depression. It may not be the be all end all, but I like that it puts control and responsibility into the person's hands, namely the thesis that thoughts precede emotion. It's helped me reframe my mind to give me more control over what I think and feel, to separate the true reality of life ("that person and I didn't talk for long", "I haven't heard from a friend in 24 hours", "I'm not currently doing anything on this saturday night") from the normative, subjective spins your mind can put on reality ("that person didn't like me", "I have no friends", "I'm a loser with nothing to do").

There's definitely a discussion about whether CBT should always be the therapy of choice. Personally, I think you need to be at the right spot for CBT to be effective. For me, I was a functional person who could somewhat identify what I didn't like about my mental state and was very open to trying to improve. I'm guessing CBT is probably not as effective if you're experiencing severe mental health problems or breaks in reality, or if you have milder symptoms but don't want help/change. Sometimes when I'm really down, CBT essentially feels like "you're sad because you're too stupid to be happy!" At the same time, I imagine every therapy works better if a person is at an okay spot and open to change. And CBT can probably help people all over the spectrum to various degrees.

If you're experiencing mental health problems, give The Feeling Good Handbook a try! It's a large workbook where you read and work through written exercises. Very helpful to me so I try to evangelize it when I can (and give out copies to people I know who struggle). I never tried in person therapy but that'd also be immensely helpful too. The great thing about CBT is how simple it is though, so reading a book (aka bibliotherapy) for a self-motivated patient can do the trick. Indeed, he spends the first chapter reviewing studies that claim bibliotherapy is just as successful as in person therapy. (Not sure what I think of that... I imagine book readers are more self-motivated than the average in-person patient but they were experimental studies so I'm sure that's already controlled for... nevertheless, bibliotherapy was good for me.

About me: I lost my dad in high school, my mom in college, and my sister to suicide after graduating. Pair that with an interesting childhood (alcoholic mom, bipolar sister) albeit a financially comfortable childhood. It was (and still can be) an incredibly hard stretch of time. At the same time, I was exceptionally gifted at school and really looked up to my teachers so I was and am very lucky and traditionally successful. If you're struggling, get help! Take responsibility! Your mind CAN change in small but subtle ways in how you frame your life and the daily happenings of it.

Guitar playing (justinguitar.com)! Swing dancing (or other types, look up classes in your area)! Writing (journal, or essays, look up writing nights on meetup)! Weightlifting (r/fitness FAQ beginner routine).

Designing Data Intensive Applications is not exactly what you're looking for, but it touches on some API topics and is a genuinely great technical read for application programmers.

Such a good book, recommend it to any software engineer.

Does anyone know of other books like this? That teach theory with good pedagogy?

Completely agree, fantastic book. Does anyone know of any similarly wonderful technical books?