ucontrol's comments

>We don’t buy into Kondo’s life-changing magic just because we think Japan is cool; we also buy because our country is, in many ways, increasingly like Japan.

On point.

OP seems to be a young European urbanite, and given the average age of the active European voter base (pretty old), I wouldn't say that recent political/electoral trends are demonstrative of the younger generations' (read: the future of Europe) values and beliefs.

That game man... It's really a piece of art.

This is very well said and accurately describes my impressions of Elon's speeches. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who appreciates his down-to-earth, authentic delivery, and it wouldn't be surprising if Elon and those around him are aware of the attractiveness of this approach themselves.

That is a very interesting perspective. It reminded me of the book Scale by Geoffrey West, which I've been planning to read for some time now. From what I've heard and read about it, one of the things it seems to do is examine organizations, corporations and cities as emergent complex systems that both emerge from life and appear to share many properties of life themselves.

God, it annoys me to see so many people spouting Rick & Morty-tier nihilistic verdicts on life and it being "pointless". Seriously, go outside and read some more books, and synthesize your experiences and observations.

Even without going into rigorous philosophical discussion, if you still confidently claim that all of it is fatally worthless even after having seen as much of what there is to life, I think you seriously lack perception.

It's just shallow pessimism, not a thoughtful outlook on conscious existence.

This is such a wonderful comment. It reminded me of the link between the World Wars and subsequent philosophical developments in the West (which culminated with postmodernism), a topic that I've always found fascinating. It's easy to underestimate just how profoundly WWI and WWII shook Western civilization and changed the course of history, and that they weren't just another group of conflicts notable solely for their sheer scale.

While your comment may seem simplistic, as years pass and as I study human history in more depth, I'm afraid that I'm beginning to nurture that exact sentiment as of late. It seems that Western civilization was not an inevitability, but a lucky roll of dice (or unlucky, depending on who you ask).

On average, we are not as intellectually capable as our civilizational accomplishments may indicate, quite the contrary. Seeing the missteps that we keep making, looking at our shortsightedness and our inability to act collectively towards long-term prosperity.. It's just depressing.

What bothers me the most is the degree of such incompetence. It should't be so widespread.

I am kind of disappointed by the community's response to his remarks.

Yes, some of them were quite inappropriate, such as:

>His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."

However, after that he says:

>There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.

Now, this latter quote is in my opinion a perfectly reasonable presumption, considering that hundreds of millions of humans historically lived in a myriad of drastically different environments and circumstance. These genetic differences among populations (I'm not talking about the rigid contemporary interpretation of "race", I'm talking about geographical populations) do exist, and it would be absurd to presume that for some magical reason it wouldn't affect cognitive ability as well.

And yet people would still get emotionally triggered and shoot this hypothesis down, just because of the way they are socialized and because it strongly deviates from the mainstream idealization of equality.

Not related to this issue - reality generally is not simple, and I am sad that even contemporary developed societies nurture expectations that are so simplified, idealistic, fictitious instead of being more mature and grounded in scientific reality, regardless of the topic at hand. I just wish that more people were more educated and scientifically literate, and that this would translate into better, proper political positions, instead of the idiotic clusterfuck we have today.

Obviously, these concerns will be a thing of the past considering the future potential of genetic engineering to amplify intelligence, and presuming that eventually such services would be available to your average person.

I'd say we need both.

In my opinion, many people make this mistake by believing that just because we've evolved to live a certain lifestyle (the example being pre-civilization hunter-gatherer societies) - that this way of life is indisputably the most comfortable and natural way for us to live, and that deviating from this lifestyle in any way is almost always detrimental.

In other words, they fail to take into consideration that reduction of challenge (e.g. through technological means) is also change in everyday behavior that deviates from the "orthodox" way of living, but nevertheless it makes life much better. We don't live how our bodies intended to live, and prehistoric behaviors are no longer practiced - but the fact that there is no need anymore to exercise this sort of behavior is a good thing, since the necessity to do so implied struggle, discomfort and scarcity - all unfavorable circumstance.

In short - living as nature intended implied struggle, and the cessation of that way of life is in many ways a result of removal of struggle, and not necessarily just some "unorthodox" living that allegedly puts our being under unnaturally high amounts stress.

My point: Yes, the contemporary lifestyle is stressful, and yes it is very different from the way we've evolved to live, but it's probably still much more comfortable and enjoyable than any aboriginal circumstance and prehistoric way of life our ancestors found themselves in.

Oh shut up.

The number of people that keep living in denial and rationalization of their sub-optimal circumstance astounds me.

Just face it and be honest. There is nothing noble in being a 50 year old for an infinity given the option to be youthful and mentally/physically fit instead.

Vanity, superficiality, shallowness... All these buzzwords that criticize something that is perfectly natural to desire, in an effort to signal some higher moral ground.

Come on.

Very much so!

It's so odd to see mentions of Internet memes and casual cyberculture on HN of all places.

Thank you for exposing me to the Psalm, I found it beautiful.

There is something about ancient texts and mythology that when put in a juxtaposition with modern advancements truly makes me appreciate humanity and how far we've come. It adds a completely new emotional layer to it, dare I say spiritual?

I hope one day I'll have the time to read the Bible, purely out of intellectual curiosity and historical appreciation.

I blame the Civilization series.

I understand what point you are trying to make, but it's hardly a fitting analogy, and I don't think it's a fair point.

One is a short-lasting altered state of consciousness.

The other is an idea, a change of perspective that can inspire action and positive lifestyle change. Or perhaps a descent into nihilism, depending on circumstance.

See, I have always considered that it had the opposite effect - by looking at the big picture, putting things in perspective and calling for a more humanistic outlook on life, it inspires empathy and action towards "making the world a better place". Far from trivializing widespread issues such as the ones you pointed out.

But then again, you already acknowledged this out in your previous comment, and I get that here you were just trying to explain what you thought the alternative was.

Excellent observation.

Most critical? Maybe not. But it is undoubtedly very much a significant and underrecognized factor.

The Overview Effect is a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect

A dull article ridden with blatantly false claims and oversimplification of an otherwise complicated topic.

>Gifted children who have a noticeable head start and whose skill development begins remarkably early _do not_ usually end up being game changing professionals in their respective fields.

Really now?

>Developing a skill set early on leads to competence in what is learned but stumps creativity and chances of innovation.

So having an deep, innate, intuitive grasp of a certain set of knowledge, made possible by said early exposure and disciplined training, has nothing to do with genius and potential inventive achievement in later life? But rather, it only allows for uncreative competence in what is learned and practiced, that and only that?

Really?

Is this man serious? How does something like this even pass for an article? How much thinking goes into writing something like this? Christ almighty.

I love it because the very things that Mr. Grant here paints as inhibitory to creativity are exactly the essential components of creative genius! His information is not only incorrect, it is the exact opposite of how things do work in real life.

It's not a zero sum game. Both of aspects in question - Disciplined skill development as well as Creativity - are essential for intellectual success and are interdependent.

Structure, discipline, strong parent engagement and emphasis on learning and skill development, AS WELL AS creative undertakings, play, leisurely engagement, passionate tinkering / creation - both aspects are crucial.

In order to be able to create, the child has to imitate first. In order to fall in love with a pursuit, it has to be exposed to it first. And in order to be creatively successful in a pursuit, the child has to be very skilled in it first. And parents' intervention, guidance and support are very important in this regard.

On one hand, I wouldn't completely dismiss the sociocultural norm of prizing competition and pursuit of individual power and status, since even though these motivators seem superficial and lowly to some, they have historically shown to be powerful facilitators of progress and development of humanity, and completely antagonizing them is unwise. We wouldn't be where we are without socioeconomic competition.

The iPhones and the planes and the supermarkets are not the problem - they are fruits of civilization and represent our progress as an intelligent species, at least in one regard.

Also, I don't think "ego-centric values" will be going anywhere, they seem to be rooted in our biology, from which dominant societal values are ultimately derived.

Of course, biology and basic societal expectations are not the only drivers of human behavior. Intellectual ideas, abstract thought, understanding of nature (in the broad sense), coupled with our faculties of emotion together act as essential motivators, and are often incorporated by society as general expectations and norm.

Obviously, taking a simplistic, power-driven, ego-centric behavioral paradigm to an extreme without incorporating the bigger picture into our perspective is a major mistake. We become short-sighted, basic and ignorant, leading to both practical problems as well as a philosophically undesirable state of humanity.

The concept you distinguished as one of the potential solutions - spirituality - and particularly your example of a physicalist/pantheistic spiritual outlook on the Universe that is not constructed dogma but rather a mental interpretation of scientific fact - is precisely the sort of thing that needs to be more common place. I have a hunch that a philosophy of that exact nature will be embraced in the not-so-distant future.

We are intelligent agents, isn't it common sense that we take as much knowledge as we can into consideration before we act, rather than being exclusively animated by immediate, manifest but somewhat animalistic motivators?