As a former amateur Twitch.tv streamer, I've always been fascinated by the rise and fall of internet personalities, and some of the biggest personalities seem to be game developers that found themselves in the spotlight.
Someone made this very in-depth video about the fall from grace of Phil Fish, the creator of Fez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w It seems to me that the combo of high pressure and a guy with a combative personality combined with internet anonymity to create a really messy situation that drove him out of the business.
I've also followed Narscissa (formerly Cosmo) Wright's fallout in the speedrun community after coming out as transgender. Once one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, I'd imagine transitioning is hard enough, but transitioning in front of a studio audience of anonymous gamers would be next level.
And so the same seems to be with Sean Murray and No Man's Sky. Inexperience plus overpromising and really high expectations created the current situation.
I don't think any of these people are malicious and I don't really know how I would have advised them to do things differently. Edmund McMillen, the creator of Super Meat Boy and other indie games once said in a podcast interview that he hates showing people what he's making before it is done for this very reason.
Edit: I know the circumstances of these people are not identical, I'm just calling for more understanding and empathy instead of assuming the worst in everyone.
Wait, let’s not conflate the cases you describe, where the trolling may have been and probably was malicious, with the case of No Man’s Land, where lead director flat out lied about the content of the game, and people who couldn’t control their hype fell for it and late raged. In the latter case, any professional shaming—which is the only shaming of Murray I’ve seen—is justified.
>In the latter case, any professional shaming—which is the only shaming of Murray I’ve seen—is justified.
Why? The guy obviously wasn't trying to make a bad game. He was just inexperienced, got in over his head, and failed to deliver the product he wanted to build on the timeline he promised. I would have assumed if any community understands that failure isn't an unusual result in the face of ambitious goals it would be the HN crowd. Meanwhile since the game's release he has continued to work on that product to get it closer to everyone's initial expectations. I understand being disappointed by the whole thing, but the vitriol directed his way was somewhat disturbing.
Please. He was lying up until the last weeks to release, where no practical development on the game was taking place. I’d see your point if promises were made years before release and the company was unable to deliver. But there was clear malice here.
Like the original article suggests, if he was truly malicious in intent then why would he continue to work on this game after release? Hanlon's razor suggests he just failed on the biggest stage he was ever on and he didn't know how to handle that.
To quote the article:
>When people ask you, “Will we be able to do X?” it’s easy to say “yes” because you already wanted to have X and you’ve already thought about how you’d go about making it happen. People love you, your work is valuable, and you don’t want to say no. People smile with delight when you say “yes” and when you say “no” they look disappointed and ask annoying technical questions that would – if you took the time to answer them accurately – being incredibly boring and hard to follow. In the short term, saying “yes” is always the path of least resistance.
>I know exactly how that feels and I know I’ve trapped myself in situations where I needed to crunch in order to meet my promises. Not because I wanted to work overtime, but because saying yes just feels so much better than saying no. I’m really thankful I made those mistakes in private meetings as part of a small company on not in front of international media. If Stephen Colbert had me on his show in March of 2016 and asked with delight if Good Robot was going to have different character classes, it would have been very tempting to say yes. After all, it was something I’d wanted to put in the game and maybe I’d be able to find time to squeeze it in before release. And if that interview happened to me when I was a young man and more easily dazzled by the limelight? Shit. I’m sure I’d make the exact same mistake.
I really can't imagine a developer who has lead a project of any size not relating to that on some level.
Why wouldn't he work on the game? It's not like after ONE over-promise he's never going to ever in the game dev business. His life a repeated game theory interaction.
Whether he intended to deceive or not, it makes sense to do some damage control for the future.
I don't believe this was the case here. Maybe the stupidity was underestimating the reaction of people who would be disappointed, but that's different.
To be fair, did he have a previous track record? I honestly don't know, but if he didn't have prior experience working on projects at this level then it's not hard to give him some benefit of the doubt.
Maybe he should've been more open and honest about the development process, but otherwise I just don't know how much blame he deserves. Professionalism is much easier when you have the perspective, time, and experience.
There should have been huge amounts of skepticism related to his claims. Every report I remember seeing reflected a great deal of skepticism.
I'm sorry, but if anyone fell for this, they need to take a look at their relationship with media.
I should also add that the reviews for games come out rather quickly. If you're not buying within the first day or two, the amount of detail available is quite high.
Gaming personalities are particularly susceptible because of their audience: gamers.
It's one of the most politically polarizing cultures, where witch hunts and public opinion spread extremely quickly, and since nobody really has anything tangible to lose– except participation, are quick to choose sides. This is not a community where 50/50 splits of opinion happen often; unless you want to be a challenger, joining the majority and me-too-ing is a lot more rewarding.
Spend any amount of time on Twitch and it's obvious this community has serious problems with presenting maturity, too. Racism, sexism and homophobia are rampant for the same reasons.
Don't get too caught up in taking it personally; there's really no substance there. Thoughts are perpetuated through chat, YouTube and memes, and disappear as soon as everyone gets bored enough to invest in the next loudest thing.
Speaking of coming out as transgender, lead programmer on No Mans Sky, Innes Mckendrick has been there done that. He's done some great talks about programming in the game including a GDC talk that's on youtube, and earlier a talk on procedural world tech.
This is what most impresses me about No Mans Sky, the engine. I've only played it a bit on friend's playstation. They're onto something really cool with the new way of generating noise and using voxels to create detailed realistic landscapes.
Sean Murray did a talk on the noise generation, but it was a strange talk I must say. He spends too long on how many people played No Mans Sky, and how it 'really was actually' successful. He shouldn't worry so much and just get on with making games with this awesome engine. The story-telling and game elements will sort itself out in this game or the next.
Game devs can be amusingly self-conscious and troubled... just today I watched a talk by Davey Wreden the writer of The Stanley Parable. Wow, talk about 'in therapy'. Honest guy, nice guy, insists his life is okay now and he's no longer deeply depressed and addicted to self-validation. Brave talk... but dude it's a gaming conference, not a mental health conference!
This video bugs me. I don't disagree with it. In fact, the first time I watched it, I found it quite similar to my own take on Fish. Maybe just a few degrees off of how I feel.
Watching it for the first time in ~three years made me realize why it bugged me. The differences between the video and my opinions are the set of changes I'd make if I wanted to publish the strong argument for my perspective on the topic and be taken seriously. Fish is an interesting case study of internet-rando-turned-celebrity that doesn't adapt well to the fact people now care what he's saying.
The rough edges sanded and convenient omissions made by this video are the exact same tweaks I'd make to my perspective to hold onto my own credibility in the games echo chamber.
Can you give me examples where I'm breaking the guidelines? I've been extra careful to leave comments that contribute to the discussion and share a unique point of view.
While that is a possible sequence of events, it may have been a different cause/effect relationship. From what I saw losing the Nintendo World Championship wasn't something she was unhappy about and was glad to just be a part of it. Maybe girlfriend left because she couldn't handle the flack they were both receiving. Maybe transitioning is something Narcissa has been trying to suppress for a long time and finally couldn't anymore, and everything together happened.
I guess my point is, you really don't know all of that and you seem to be painting her in the worst possible light, which sort of is what I was talking about in my above comment. I can't say any of us would have been able to handle the same situation any better, same with No Man's Sky.
I definitely feel you, as I also went to Christian school for my whole academic career and decided I didn't believe right at the end.
Some thoughts,
The people who are making a strong effort like you seem to be, but that think they aren't very good still, probably actually are quite good. I'd ask what you feel like you are behind of. There will always be someone ahead and (what we might forget) tons of people behind you.
I look at my own life - I am pretty bad with women as a nearly 30 year old because I was raised in a strange puritanical culture and never learned how to woo effectively, but I also am currently working on starting my business full time which I couldn't have done with a family. I also was never taught evolution in school, but now I've become interested in it and by reading many books on the subject probably know quite a bit more about it than most people even if they did learn about it in school.
Like all advice, this is good for some people and bad for others. I've heard a whole lot of advice to slow down, make sure you don't burn out, and don't miss life. And for people who are putting tons of pressure on themselves to achieve, this is excellent advice.
For me personally I've had a lot more free time than most people because I've worked part time freelance for the last few years, and I could probably reach my goals faster if I "kick it into gear" a bit. As I think Derek Sivers said, advice often reflects the state of the giver of said advice more than anything.
SEEKING WORK - Remote, Indiana USA - Full Stack Web Developer
Do you find yourself or your employees doing the same thing over and over again?
I'll build you a back office webapp to automate the tedious, repetitive, and boring parts of your business - things better left to a computer!
I've built several of these types of apps already. As one happy manager told me, "with your app we are doing with 10 employees what another similar organization needs 200 to do." I think that other organization was probably a bit over-inefficient, but it is still the coolest thing I've heard about code I've written.
It's crazy how much more effective your business can be if you automate.
I had this idea once that I would pay $10 an hour to have a fairly new programmer sit next to me while writing freelance code and be a human sounding board, design helper, and companion since I work by myself from home. Not really pair programming as I'd be mostly running the show, but they'd be following the train of thought and offering suggestions. Could be a good job for a college student.
I spent most of the last 5 years working about 10 hours a week at $90 a hour on a recurring freelance gig, which was enough to live comfortably in the midwest (my rent is currently $400 a month) and travel around eastern Europe. Not really enough to live in a city or have dependents, but I could probably afford that by just working 20 hours a week at $90 an hour.
I think what I did is very doable for other devs - my business proposal was: give me 10 regular hours a week, and I'll continue adding to your internal company app. Phone call with the client once a week. I automated a whole bunch of their processes using Django and it was a great win-win. They weren't large enough to need or be able to afford a full time dev and I could work part part time.
The extra time allowed me to try a bunch of things. I tried livestreaming on Twitch.tv, being a digital nomad, blogging, making products. I enjoyed not having an alarm clock and going on walks in the park whenever to think. I was able to really put time into working on myself, and my health and mental state are pretty good these days. I've read a lot of books.
I'll admit that I've wasted a lot of time surfing the internet - I think the danger of being fully self-directed is that you have to work hard to use the time well. Nobody is sitting on you to "do what you are supposed to." It has also been kind of isolating, but I'm also an introvert and have social anxiety, and working on relationship building is one of my soon future projects.
That sounds like a lovely way to spend your time! And also one which seems safe for some time to come which is good, ie you aren't risking your future earning potential with this approach. Congratulations!
That sounds like an absolutely horrible way to spend five years. I cannot imagine being you, living in the time of technological empowerment, immediately before the time of atmospheric-carbon induced catastrophe, and having no goal or direction of how to spend my immensely valuable life force. I could absolutely not live with myself.
Funny you should say that - when I first started doing this I tried to get some of my friends to join me. They all fell apart from the lack of structure and went back to their old jobs. And that's not to say it was a moral failing on their part - I don't think everyone is wired to do this sort of thing, maybe even most people.
I'm also not saying that I wasted all of my time or that I did nothing of value - just that it has taken real effort to figure out what I value. I think the existential crises I've come through have been really important for my growth, and I wouldn't have had to think about it had I not had to direct my time myself.
I suppose everyone has existential crisis at different points in their lives. When I was younger I became obsessed with global warming and the danger it presented. Sometimes I forget not everyone has had that crisis; hopefully you found the purpose or direction that you deeply identify with.
I'm just deeply bothered by the amount of tech talent we have that works on, frankly, dumb things. We face real, tangible problems and existential risks in the next 1 - 5 decades that will not just "solve themselves". So here I am, looking at these massive problems, while all us rich web developers tell ourselves "it won't happen in my generation". It's really bothersome.
Is working 40 hours a week for an employer worth it
Yes so long as that employer is really changing the face of technology or changing the economic forcing functions that drive the activities of humanity
No if it's twitter or the government
Yes if you plan to start a company but don't have enough runway, so you can accumulate runway at your job
No if you have greater than $50,000 USD in cash and want to start a company
In one of my favorite books, Antifragile, Nassim Taleb argues that health is largely subtractive - if you want to be healthy, remove unnatural things from your body (sugar, medicines, sitting too much, etc), and only undergo surgery, go to the hospital, or take medicine in very serious cases where the harm of not doing something outweighs the potential complications. Especially since hearing more about more about how the American health system is not exactly incentivized to always look out for the best interest of the patient, I'm inclined to agree with him.
>if you want to be healthy, remove unnatural things from your body (sugar, medicines, sitting too much, etc),
?? What is "natural"? How do you define "natural"? Is there a single point in human evolution that you call "done" and emulating that discrete point is natural, and anything before or after is 'unnatural'?
I always struggle to understand "natural" woo because it is, at its core, an undefined and meaningless word with absolutely no scientific or medical relevance.
>and only undergo surgery, go to the hospital, or take medicine in very serious cases where the harm of not doing something outweighs the potential complications.
So, basic modern medicine? If your general doctor is recommending unnecessary medications or not doing cost/benefit for you, then medicine isn't broken, your doctor is.
>Especially since hearing more about more about how the American health system is not exactly incentivized to always look out for the best interest of the patient, I'm inclined to agree with him.
Why on earth would you conflate the profit motives of healthcare middlemen to imply that the science behind medicine isn't credible?
This is a shockingly ignorant statement openly peddling ludditeism and implicitly denouncing science in favor of the pitiful naturalism fallacy.
Really surprised to see such irrationalism on this forum.
> Why on earth would you conflate the profit motives of healthcare middlemen to imply that the science behind medicine isn't credible?
Because marketing often distorts the results or outright lies. It's not necessarily the science that is the problem, but the marketing and approach in pharmaceutical sales that will push this. This has been, on occasion, reflected in terms of studies, efficacy and results in terms of manipulation of data.
Personally, I feel that compulsory licensing models as part of a dual-sourcing (at least two manufacturers for any drug) would help resolve or reduce a lot of the issues surrounding this. As well as reverting to some prior legal and cultural issues in terms of how marketing of prescription medications is done. TV/Youtube/Dr.Office advertising has gotten pretty horrible, and does very little to actually help people.
Why on earth would you NOT assume that institutionalized greed affects the results of medical science?
Who is funding the science? What are their financial motives? Who conducts the research? What are their financial motives? Are incentives aligned to produce quality medical research with the patient's best interests in mind, or the bottom lines of medical companies (pharma, medtech, even hospitals, etc.)?
I'm shocked and surprised at your shock and surprise. I don't think your arguments are irrational. I simply think they are naïve.
>Why on earth would you NOT assume that institutionalized greed affects the results of medical science?
Because I studied medical science and research for many years, have family in the medical field, and write medical software for a living.
Or rather, I understand very clearly how greed and the capitalist motivation affects health care, as it's literally my life. But with a realistic understanding comes the end of emotional histrionics and petty exaggeration.
AKA: I'm basically informed on this subject, unlike most of the commenters here.
>Who is funding the science? What are their financial motives? Who conducts the research? What are their financial motives? Are incentives aligned to produce quality medical research with the patient's best interests in mind, or the bottom lines of medical companies (pharma, medtech, even hospitals, etc.)?
What is GLP?
What is GMP?
What is a NME?
How many NME's does the FDA approve per year?
>I'm shocked and surprised at your shock and surprise. I don't think your arguments are irrational. I simply think they are naïve.
I'm not shocked or surprised at your response, it's a classic case of Dunning Kruger where you are so ignorant regarding medical science, the intense science based regulation of the FDA, and the business of creating drugs, biologics, devices etc, that you are inherently incapable of evaluating your or mine competency here. If you think I am naive, that is a real testament to the depth of your ignorance on this subject.
If you'd like me to answer your questions honestly, I'd be more than happy to take some time to source and answer your question from the perspective of someone who has studied this subject academically and participates in it professionally. But the book linked will discuss I believe every one of your ethical concerns.
I'm sure you're well read and educated. I won't ever be as knowledgeable on the subject as you.
I have the benefit, though, of not having my entire livelihood and career dependent on my faith in the systemic health of mainstream medicine.
Maybe you're right. Honestly based on the tone of your initial comment, I have written off your impartiality, and so have little desire to learn from you. I'm sure you feel the same towards me. So here's to coming to a stalemate while putting other people down on the Internet. Maybe that's the important learning point, for me.
>Then you should be familiar with how generations were lied to and told that Fat caused heart disease and low-fat/high carb was the best way to eat.
I'm familiar enough with the FDA to know the difference of the Office of Food and Vet and the Office of Med Product and Tobacco.
Why don't you go research what CDER is, and try to determine whether or not diet guidance has anything at all to do with CDER and the actual topic of this thread.
Taleb expounds on his definition of the natural - anything that man has done for 100s of years without observing downside.
There is reasonable cause to believe that people are very interventionist in a lot of cases where all that is needed is letting the system sort itself out. Diabetes medication for instance (again - not in all cases): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da1vvigy5tQ
A lot of openness to low quality scientific work done in a lot of domains and our eagerness to think that anything with numbers slapped on it is better has given us wonderful gifts like high-fructose corn syrup, trans-fat, thalidomide (all within the last century).
The Taleb metric is just that a lot of systems don't respond in a linear fashion to random input. High levels of consumption of a substance only materialize with a delay of a few decades in horrible ways and the negative result can undo all the positives over the duration of the use of said substance. Thus is it important to err on the side of those things that have been (i) well tested over centuries and (ii) strong evidence doesn't exist that said substance is actually dangerous (tobacco for instance).
Note that thalidomide is still used as a medicine; it is a very effective drug when other drugs don't work. The issue was that it was given to pregnant women, when it was known that it shouldn't have been.
I think some nuance here is needed. My understanding of "natural" primarily comes from an understanding of evolutionary history. If humans have been doing something for millions of years, it is likely to be more "natural" and therefore not cause harm compared to recently invented things. But it is not a black and white thing, but rather a spectrum.
Some examples:
Trans fats were invented because they thought saturated fat, which was consumed by humans for a long time, were not healthy, and this new thing was supposed to be better. Then it was found to cause all kinds of problems and are now banned in many places. Here I think it was pretty cut and dry.
An anecdote I've found others corroborate: I used to have foot pain. Some people suggested orthotic insoles, but I also found the barefoot shoe proponents saying that shoes without any padding at all (more "natural") work better. Five years later I never have any foot pain. The Vivobarefoot or Vibram Fivefingers shoes are definitely not something that was around a million years ago, but the principle is the same.
In healthcare, an example in the book is how many people are prescribed statin drugs if their cholesterol is too high, even if there is no other visibly problematic symptoms. Taleb would argue the far better solution is to improve the person's diet, or just wait and see if something happens, than to start taking a drug that isn't.
The author once strained his back lifting weights. The doctor suggested an expensive and invasive surgery. Instead he just rested for a while and the problem went away. On the other hand, my mom recently had neck surgery to replace several vertebrae. She'd been in pain for years and nothing could fix it. So in this case I think Taleb would agree that the risk of a dangerous surgery might be worth it in that case.
An extreme example from the book: in the early 20th century children were given doses of radiation to treat acne. We obviously look at this and scoff, but it is the same idea.
> Why on earth would you conflate the profit motives of healthcare middlemen to imply that the science behind medicine isn't credible?
I'm looking at the profit motives to see where I should be cautious. I feel like this very site is where I've read many articles about how scientific studies had bias because of funding from the companies invested in a certain answer. From what I can see, if you follow the money, you can explain a great deal of the behavior of large institutions.
So I'm not at all advocating ludditeism or against science. Rather I'm against scientism (I think the word he uses in the book) - the belief that science has all the answers and that newer things are inherently better than older things just because they are. They may in fact be better, but not always. Sometimes atheists I meet are just as close-minded as the religious.
A good hypothesis can be used to make predictions. I'm just saying with my foot issues that the heuristic of "subtractive medicine is better than additive medicine" was able to predict that removing padding from my shoes would make my problem go away. And it did. That does not prove anything but it worked here.
Say that the padding had worked, you might have rationalised it to to be that it's unnatural to walk on hard surfaces ("our ancestors never walked on concrete").
There are also probably many instances in your life where this hasn't worked, but you've cherry picked the example that does.
It's very likely that your body healed itself regardless of the padding. You might have just needed time. You've figured that it's removing the padding but it might not be a factor. It's why studies need decent sample sizes to make strong conclusions.
That's fair enough, but also why I looked for other people who had similar experiences. I'm definitely not always right, that is true. I am not a doctor, lawyer, or accountant.
I'm pretty sure the early hydrogenated oils were created (Crisco, 1911) because they had similar and in some cases superior properties to animal fats and butter, but were cheaper and had a longer shelf life. The idea they were healthier came later.
Infant mortality and life expectancy are improving with modern medicine and diet. Most of our problems today stem from the over consumption of food and lack of physical activity. Cancer rates are at an all time low even though media makes it seem like everything(non caloric sweeteners, plastics, herbicides) around us causes cancer.
Except that the US, a major proponent of modern medicine, ranks very poorly compared to other nations in the infant mortality charts -- especially against countries that prefer natural non-western medicine, and life expectancy is clearly linked to financial status -- those that can afford health care. IE: where I used to live in Arkansas, the average life expectancy is 67, whereas in a rich state like Virginia, it's 87. What's the difference? Ability to afford health care.
Everything is correlated to obesity. Arkansas has the highest obesity rate in the nation. When you look into our infant mortality rate it is linked in preterm births. Preterm birth is highly linked to obesity and is trending up.
I would argue that yes, sugar is natural, but the degree that people tend to eat sugar these days is unnatural. I'd argue that is the root problem. And to respond to the first image of the comic, that nobody lives past 30, some things I've read suggest that was more due to infant mortality skewing the average, deaths from war, and deaths from what today would be preventable diseases. If an ancient person avoided those three things, they lived quite a long time, and didn't get cancer or heart disease.
I have no exact sources for those last few assertions, it's just what I remember reading (I think also in the Antifragile book).
While sugar (a really generic term usually referring to sucrose) is natural, it occurs in the highly fibrous stalks of sugar cane. Most sugars naturally occur within fiber, while modern food practices extract and/or refine leaving the fiber behind.
My grandfather used to tell me about a Chinese king who paid his doctors only when he was well, not the other way around.
I used to really dislike private insurance companies but after teaching about Charles Babbage using math for "Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives" I realized something:
Insurance companies are the most aligned with your wellness financially. They want as many healthy people to pay in as possible.
And thus a government health insurance system with universal coverage would be even more financially aligned with increasing health.
I think one of the greatest things you can do as a startup is to improve health for people, through diet and exercise apps and preventative checkups etc. and the insurance companies will PAY YOU to do it!
What do you think happens when insurance is provided through your employer and you develop a health problem that interferes with your ability to do that job?
The short answer is you can get a continuation of your same health plan for a certain period of time, but you have to pay more because your employer isn't subsidizing your premiums. Generally this extension lasts for 18 months, though if you qualify for disability it can go for 29 months. And you do have to pay the full price for the plan because your employer is no longer providing it for you, though you may get government assistance.
I've gone through this; you should be aware that COBRA is a retroactive continuation of your coverage, from the day you leave your job, but it's not actually continuous. It can take weeks for the paperwork to go through, and during that time you effectively have no coverage. I found this out because I was scheduled for a surgery the week after leaving my job, and while checking in the hospital told me they couldn't verify my insurance. I was delayed about an hour while trying to convince them that I'd applied for (and paid for) COBRA already, and that I was, or would be, covered for the surgery that day. Eventually the department head allowed me to be checked in, but I'd gotten lucky.
You likely lose your job and your healthcare insurance, at least after some period of time, I'm assuming.
(Fortunately I can't speak from experience.)
So you did not, in fact, have insurance against a very bad situation. All the more reason to eliminate employer-based health insurance tax incentives. I don't buy anything else through my employer. Why should I be insuring against my future medical bills through them?
It obscures my effective insurance premia (via a lower salary), on top of the already obscured price of healthcare, since most insurance policies cover so many incidental, non-catastrophic medical costs.
Therein lies the difference of opinion between the Democratic and Republican points of view on US healthcare. Democrats want a system where insurance companies have to cover everyone regardless of their health, and (most) Republicans want (or have voted for) a system where the unhealthy are off in one pool with insurance they can't afford, while the healthy are in another pool with insurance that's cheap but doesn't cover any actual healthcare.
While I love that and the related books, I think this is somewhat silly. At a base level where you are depriving your body of everything, food is medicinal in nature. Without it, you die.
Now, I get that being cognizant of what you add to your body seems beneficial. And, to a large extent, adding extra burden to your liver and other organs is not a good idea. However, to think that you should avoid all medicine unless acutely sick seems disingenuous. And to modify that for allowing chronically sick people opens a wide door to a ton of chronic states.
> only undergo surgery, go to the hospital, or take medicine in very serious cases where the harm of not doing something outweighs the potential complications
Is there anyone, in the world, advocating for getting surgery or taking medicine when the harm of not doing so is less than the potential complications? I'm pretty sure if a doctor did that it would be malpractice.
> if you want to be healthy, remove unnatural things from your body (sugar, medicines, sitting too much, etc)
You should not stop using medicine without discussing this with your MD. I said medicine; you should do the same with drugs. Some drugs should not be quit cold turkey. To name one, alcohol.
Furthermore, the reason you should try to not use too many medicine, is because medicine (and drugs, and herbs) have side effects. So you (and your MD) need to think critical if the good outweighs the bad, and this should be reflected throughout the lifetime of the usage of the medicine. Because before you know it, you end up using medicine B, C, and D all because of side effects related to medicine A.
As for 'unnatural', criley2 touched upon that subject; how do you define that? Is synthetic counterpart always worse than natural counterpart? I find such advice downright dangerous. Following that logic, St John's Wort is always better than a synthetic anti depressant. St John's Wort has its place (if standardised!), but it has a lot of contra indications. It doesn't work well with a LOT of other medicines and drugs. For example, it is dangerous if used together with an SSRI or with MDMA. Yet, if people follow the advice by this writer, they'd prefer to resort to a herb like this (perhaps not even standardised) because "its natural".
I knew people who ate raw meat regularly, and had to be administered to hospital because of food poisoning. Yet refused, because the hospital wasn't 'raw food' enough. Don't tell me this "it has to be natural" bullshit. It stems from a fear of the unknown, technology or science. It claims to argue that only Earth and nature are good. I'm not buying that (I'm not buying the 'natural is bad' either though). What is good or bad for you has to stand on its own merit. Drawing the line between 'natural' and 'unnatural' (whatever that indeed might be) is a silly oversimplification. Don't buy into it! People who use it are trying to grab your money out of your pocket to make a run for it.
What is the difference between medicine and drugs?
It seems highly relevant since there seems to be some quibbling about using the word natural and that it has no meaning (I agree, but another comment mentioned exactly what Taleb meant by natural).
I could not agree with you more! Today is my last day clutching a frothy latte, ever! I gave up on chocolate recently due to Cadbury's being bought by Kraft and since then I have moved to the equally sugary fruits for my treats.
So now I am going to eat what I eat when I am not well - fruit, salads, fruit and more salads. No beige foods and not necessarily cooked meals. So no chips either.
I also happen to be vegetarian so I really just want to fine tune what I eat rather than go on a diet, which rarely works for people who do such things.
I also think there is something cool about being 'powered by fruit, nuts and vegetables' with only a bicycle for transport.
I am not convinced about any medicines, particularly pain killers, I will save those and the antibiotics until I get past 8 on the A+E pain scale.
vaccines, antibiotics etc. are pretty big improvements upon the natural order. Brings the famous New Yorker cartoon about cavemen observing their life spans to mind.
I'm attempting to start do the whole solopreneur online make your own business passive income thing, and it hit me one day that I was spending a whole lot of money in expensive places to sit in front of my computer and type. So this year I moved back to smalltown Indiana. I have a relatively giant apartment above a storefront in one of these small town main streets. It is mostly quiet and costs a whole $360 a month.
There is a coffee shop with 2 tables and a nice owner to talk to, and a couple of my friends work at the one webdev shop in town. I live two blocks away from a tiny little dance studio where I take dance lessons once a week, and am close enough to a city that I can drive there if I have to. Also the internet here is better than many large cities I've been to.
My relatively small savings from freelance should last me way longer than it would have in Chicago where I was before. I kind of wonder if there is an opportunity here to start little startup colonies in small towns.
Sure, it's no cultural center, but I've been pleasantly surprised at the friendliness of the people I've met here. The towns around this one certainly vary in quality of life, but if you look around you may find some cool places.
The main street may not be able to support a grocery store with Walmart down the street, but it is supporting a custom bike shop, a funeral home, and several local insurance companies. Maybe one way to revitalize these small towns is to bring in tech jobs that can be done from anywhere. It's certainly working for me so far.
I play around with NodeJS and front end frameworks like React for my own side projects, but all of my paying client work is made with good ol Django. It just does so many things well and is very mature. I recommend for production code using libraries that have a strong community and have been around for a while so that they don't keep changing all the time.
Don't forget that Django and React make a great combination.
You probably still want Django to handle server-side rendering for most of your site (unless you're a masochist). Django Rest Framework for the API, and React (or whatever) to handle the app-like parts.
This was my original approach. After all, no need to do an SPA for regular pages. Only the app-type parts with a DRF backend and an Angular/React frontend.
But... as I started publishing these apps on mobile app stores (cordova), I found myself also having to write a REST endpoint and client side renderer for the app versions.
Even though I'd much rather do a contact form, for example, in a server side view. But if I also need the REST API and client-rendered version for the app version, I might as well only write it once.
1. On the whole 'normal' websites with an overabundance of client-side rendering are in a kind of 'uncanny valley'. They nearly behave the way a normal server-side rendered site would but something always breaks whether it be the back button or link behaviour, caching/refreshing or something. So from the user's perspective it's often a bit off.
2. It's still more work from the developer's side. You have to implement stuff you get for free with server-side rendering. And currently (and for the foreseeable future IMHO) Python/Django is still simpler, more maintainable and nicer to work with. So I'd prefer to keep the client-side code where it belongs - the parts of the site that are more like an 'app' than a 'website'.
This year I want to get my first SaaS app out the door. Just started working on making a tool with my friend for documenting and testing apis.
Tangentially related, I've been reading a book called The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal that has a lot of good ideas that apply to making changes in behavior if you have trouble (as I often do) getting things done.
Someone made this very in-depth video about the fall from grace of Phil Fish, the creator of Fez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w It seems to me that the combo of high pressure and a guy with a combative personality combined with internet anonymity to create a really messy situation that drove him out of the business.
I've also followed Narscissa (formerly Cosmo) Wright's fallout in the speedrun community after coming out as transgender. Once one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, I'd imagine transitioning is hard enough, but transitioning in front of a studio audience of anonymous gamers would be next level.
And so the same seems to be with Sean Murray and No Man's Sky. Inexperience plus overpromising and really high expectations created the current situation.
I don't think any of these people are malicious and I don't really know how I would have advised them to do things differently. Edmund McMillen, the creator of Super Meat Boy and other indie games once said in a podcast interview that he hates showing people what he's making before it is done for this very reason.
Edit: I know the circumstances of these people are not identical, I'm just calling for more understanding and empathy instead of assuming the worst in everyone.