Started a business with my wife as well. It grew successfully and we still got divorced and now we still work together. Thankfully we managed it beautifully but it was definitely the hardest thing I've ever done emotionally. Worth it in the end, we are both much happier and the business continues to grow!
Some cars and trucks from the last 40 years were built incredibly well and when a specific vehicle was maintained well and not abused can provide very good options vs new super tech heavy vehicles. I have a Ford OBS truck from the 90s and I adore it. The only thing automatic on it is the transmission. Manual everything including windows. Considering a 2016 AMG GT as my next purchase for the same reason (different scale obviously). Just remove the GPS / cellular antenna and its pretty disconnected.
The venn diagram of 'homeschooled' and 'goes to church regularly' is not quite a circle but its not far off. Moderate to large churches also provide a great deal of socialization in this same way. Cross-socio-economic, racial, and other bases, all with a shared value system that creates a localized high trust environment that affords a greater degree of freedom for child autonomy.
I wonder how much is intentional as a painless / possibly even "pleasant" way to end things on their own terms. Its cheap, incredibly effecient, and leaves a better narrative than the more common alternatives.
My gf and I are the stereotypical software nerd meets astrology girlie (but doesn't take it too far). She likes to do rituals every so often and I've found that it does create a moment of reflection that you can use however you like. The last time we were camping she told me she wanted to do one so I bought some of that fire color changing powder (mostly just fine metal shavings of various types) and then glued a bit of that on some paper and made sort of a paper packet and then I had the whole group write on a packet something they wanted to let go of and then we all tossed them into the fire at the same time and the fire changed colors. It was pretty magical and I scored a lot of brownie points! So you could sprinkle some of that into your jar and just toss a handleful into the fire and watch the magic of your productivity ascend to the heavens. Or, you know, just watch physics at work.
I wanna mention that these are generalizations meant to apply to the general population. There are always exceptions, but those dont apply to most people.
No because the product isn't real. There is no actual shared benefit besides a quick dopamine release. I can't stress enough how important an actual physical thing is in human satisfaction. Video games do not give you a real physical thing. Social interaction through a video game is, generally, not fulfilling in anywhere near the same way as actual social interaction. Working on a project together in person that results in a thing you can see/hold/touch is drastically different than shooting virtual monsters or doing a virtual puzzle.
Social engagement and community involvement are very different than psuedo-interactions online. It involves physically being around others, creating or doing something together in person, looking at each other's faces and maybe even touching. Random things might happen to you that would never happen in a virtual world.
Yes, I'm aware that many people will say "I've had lifelong friends I met through video games." Yes, that's true. No denying it. That's not really what is being discussed, and a lot of those relationships often move into the real world anyway.
People drastically overstate how beneficial video games are while minimizing the things they give up for those video games(social interaction, uncomfortable situations which produce growth, new experiences in general, etc). Then as their actual social skills atrophy, they lean into it and say "I have social anxiety" when in reality it's self inflected and if they just got outside they would relearn those social skills.
> If the pendulum can swing so broadly ever 4 years I'd better watch it, right?
Honest question: If, other than voting every 4 years, you have no ability to impact change, why spend the time watching it? Why not spend the time doing something more constructive that you have the ability to impact? (aside from prior to the election to inform voting, of course)
Incentives, the opportunity cost of time, and monogamous cultural influence, mostly.
Touching another person is widely considered an intimate act and most of the general mainstream today are only intimate (physically, or emotionally) with their romantic partner. Broadly speaking we've lost emotional intimacy with close friends and small groups that we've had in the past.
So with that, what is the incentive for the artist to create? He can't sell his work. He can't distribute his work. Touch-based art is highly dis-incentivized in our modern western culture.
Licking and putting other people's body parts into your mouth also don't mesh well with "a monogamous culture", yet taste is a major factor in art, as in cuisine.
i've never seen the word incentive used more in my life than on hacker news. Is there some famous tech talk by a programming idol that involved the word incentive that's caused it to become such a weird fixture in this community? Sure, the entire world can be reduced down to a laundry list of incentives. But that's also incredibly reductionist, generic, and boring.
I think it’s a tendency to analyze everything as a system. Incentives are basically a pros and cons list but over an aggregate of people.
I don’t find it reductionist. Incentives don’t have to be monetary. Power, status, family, morality, societal pressures, personal satisfaction, fear, all can be incentives.
Incentives are a question of what shared experience is a driving factor for a group of people.
That doesn’t remove the nuance from individuals. Just because group X lacks incentive to do Y doesn’t mean that nobody in X does Y. It’s just less useful to speak about individuals. No one cares about why my uncle Rick did whatever, but they might care why 10% of the country is doing it.
I think it gets used a lot here because it’s a compact way to say “the world works in the way that it does because we have set it up to reward certain things and punish other things. This isn’t a static feature of reality, but something we are choosing as a society and can change.”
Don’t see it as reductionist, more like a callout that we’re dealing with a social feature, not some physical law.
I think that’s incorrect. octopi have camouflage because of natural selection.
Incentives are things that humans create, intentionally or unintentionally. There are the selection pressure of the human cultural world but they are the opposite of natural. They are the things we can choose to change. By calling them out, we implicitly question if we should be changing them.
It can end up being a bit pseudo-intellectual on HN (say it ain’t so!), but there is a real rhetorical context in which it makes sense to talk about incentives.
