site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2556 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 30, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Does anyone else feel "there's no other place like home" sort of way about this place?

I do. It's funny, I'be become somewhat prominent elsewhere, yet I never feel such warm rush as when writing for you guys. And that despite being not an amicable type. I've been among you, what, five years? And made maybe three friends. Even so.

It's a damn shame that Zorba didn't do good on his promise of establishing a recruiting pipeline. But that's hard, and now clearer why it's hard.

I wish I felt this way

I'be become somewhat prominent elsewhere

Where?

It's a damn shame that Zorba didn't do good on his promise of establishing a recruiting pipeline.

Well, if you're prominent, linking back to here every once in a while could help.

It wouldn't be good either for me or for us, unfortunately. Guess a few others are the same.

Not Trace though.

Yes, very much so. While I'm mostly a lurker, The Motte is unique place that is unmatched by anywhere else on the Internet. I am grateful that it exists.

I’m 99.9% lurker too and I echo your sentiments exactly. Headlines elsewhere invariably drive me here in lieu of their own native comments sections. There’s nowhere else.

(Also early follower of you on the other platform, and it's been great to see your recent growth.)

Link so we can lurk more Ilforte goods

What platform?

This place is the only place I have ever felt that it was worth it to discuss The News:tm:. Everywhere else is a complete dumpster fire. This was arguably always true but ever since the new decade the quality of the average internet user has decreased substantially.

Of course! When anything interesting happens in the world, you’re the people I want to discuss it with. There is an expectation here that good writing will be read and that (if the discussion prompts others to share their thoughts) intelligent and thoughtful people will engage with you about it. What more could one ask for? (Other than a growing community but that, sadly, was a consequence of our leaving Reddit).

Elsewhere on the internet there is such an endless flow of shitty commenters, trolls, people who just want to annoy you or insult you or whatever. Nobody has a skin so thick that being ratio’d on Twitter and having a hundred plebs call you a retard (etc) whenever you make a good point doesn’t affect them at all, at least in my opinion. Here arguments get pushback, but it’s almost always collegiate and friendly.

I even respect most of the people I disagree with (even Hlynka), which is more than I can say for anywhere else.

Does anyone else feel "there's no other place like home" sort of way about this place?

Yes of co... wait a minute, what exactly do you mean by this?

But seriously, yes of course. At one point I even set out to explore the Internet to see if there are other places I'd fit in better, and while I found a few that were adjacent (culture war rejects of various communities), they somehow never felt quite right, and seeing that the pattern that lead to the creation of this place was reproduced multiple times throughout the 'Net was more depressing than anything.

I've been among you, what, five years?

Huh, I could swear it was more than that.

It's a damn shame that Zorba didn't do good on his promise of establishing a recruiting pipeline. But that's hard, and now clearer why it's hard.

I dunno, I think it's doable, but just the maintaining this place is more than enough work for a single person.

This isn't well developed enough for a main thread post, but it's something I've been mulling around lately.

Are we too hard on small scale corruption from politicians? Politicians motivated by implementing their grand vision seems like they'll screw things up. If they're motivated by accolades from their ideological group members it can also lead to bad things. A guy who wants to keep things running smoothly so he can skim a little doesn't sound too bad in comparison.

This is partly motivated by thinking about the housing situation in Ontario (Canada). Various interests have collided to create a continuing housing bubble. Many politicians have invested in rental units. Municipal governments have shifted to development fees to avoid property tax increases. The urban left has been fighting for no housing until there's enough subsidized affordable housing for the needy, ie them. No one puts pressure on the bureaucrats at various levels of government to approve things. Trudeau has been brining in vast numbers of immigrants despite the housing shortage to keep the bubble going.

Here's my idea. On top of the rent, each unit has to pay a monthly $30 fee. $10 for their municipal, provincial, and federal representative. This money goes straight into the politicians bank account.

Suddenly politicians will have an interest in getting new rental housing on the market.

I think this would just end up in a costs spiral. And in this case you would need renters to understand what keeps rent low (largely doesn’t exists). And you would also have the other side bribing the politicians. The landlord paying a bribe to get them not to approve new housing.

Instead of competing on the vote you get a system where everything becomes a bribe.

I don't think we are.

Perhaps we can deal with an occasional bit of corruption here or there. But allowing corruption as a norm, results in corruption everywhere, which is outrageously expensive.

Suddenly politicians will have an interest in getting new rental housing on the market.

Or simply run in high-population districts that have a high proportion of renters.

The average MP would get about $58k/yr (2 million units * $10 / 343 seats in the upcoming election) from that fee, but some districts are three times as large as others and renting is unequally distributed.

The budget has funding for an additional 131k units by 2031, which is nearly 1% per year. Wow, all that work for a few hundred bucks. It's nearly a third of what you'd need to keep up with inflation.

The budget has funding for an additional 131k units by 2031

Every time I see something like this my head spins. You don't need to budget for housing, it literally builds itself if you let it.

I often have the same reaction. But to add some nuance, you don't need to budget for market-rate housing. You do need to budget for below-market-rate housing. Of course, it's probably a lot more cost effective to fix the regulations so market rate is lower so there's a lot less need for below-market-rate housing.

To paraphrase a great man of our era: regulate it until it stops moving. Then subsidize it.

At first glance that might sound like a libertarian quip, but I think it more or less describes a good portion of government actions.

Building new units in any significant quantity is practically illegal. Also housing vouchers for poor people. Sorry, all we can do is restrict supply and subsidize demand.

I think the one of the hidden major issues behind small-scale corruption is one of knowledge. The simple fact of the matter is that, for example, a real estate businessman on the city council will know more about city and country rules about building and zoning than fellow members, unless they try very hard to educate themselves. Thus the businessman, despite some ethical issues, is going to present as more of an "expert".

My related idea would be to maybe make a few selected statistics printed in the voter's guide right alongside the candidates, so people can look for themselves at the median city rent or total housing capacity over time and factor that into their voting. Maybe there are other alignment solutions, like requiring conflict of interest disclosures by candidates?

Rewarding representatives for hitting certain number targets seems like not a horrible idea, but I think that would run some of the issues inherent in making local government run more like a corporation. Sure, there are more efficiencies, but it also runs the risk of other types of misalignment. Choosing the right benchmarks would be a significant undertaking.

We already have a system where people pay money to receive housing, it's called the housing market. The market will provide plenty of housing if it's simply allowed to do so. We need to get the bureaucratic middlemen out of the way, not incentivize them to get even more involved.

We need to get the bureaucratic middlemen out of the way, not incentivize them to get even more involved.

The bureaucratic middlemen are the public sector employees. Politicians are the only ones who can get them in line. Right now the pols have no reason to pick a fight, and that's the problem I'm trying to solve.

Is being famous worth it? I used to think people who said no were coping. But it does seem awfully stressful.

"I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'Try being rich first. ' See if that doesn't cover most of it. There's not much downside to being rich, other than paying taxes and having your relatives ask you for money. But when you become famous, you end up with a 24-hour job." - Bill Murray

Of course, being famous often entails or leads to being rich, and in those cases it seems worth the trade, but in the worst case, famous people who can't monetize it or who go broke often seem to be miserable.

Being rich and having access is amazing. Fame, not so much.

Sometimes, being rich & and having access comes with the fame. Other times, the fame leads you to riches and access. But if you can decouple them, then the the fame by itself is a nasty thing.

You can't walk down a street without being accosted. You can't trust new relationships. You can't find quiet. You hog attention whether you want to or not. Your closest family members get jaded, as they struggle to form an identity that's separate from you. It's bad all around. There is a reason old-money tries to be anonymous.

Ideally, I'd be rich, priviledged an anonymous. But, I'd rather be all of rich, priviledged and famous than none of them.

Depends on what you consider being 'famous'. Are we talking about Brad Pitt/Kanye West levels of fame? Or is it 300k followers on instagram-type of fame? Former seems to be way too stressful. Latter wouldn't need many lifestyle adjustments, while still bringing in plenty of fame benefits.

Depends on what you want and what the fame brings you. Having lots of people you don't care about asking for your autograph sounds wearying. On the other hand, your increased SMV (assuming you're something like a famous musician rather a famous chess player) will outweigh most negatives for a lot of people.

It’s hard to deny the overriding social benefits: ease of finding many partners, ease of job transitioning, ease of friendship, and even benefits for your children. The stresses can be solved by wearing a wig and sunglasses when you want to have a normal night out I think, which is far effort than what a normal person must expend for the benefits of fame. So I would say it’s worth it (not in sense of acquiring but in possessing) for most normal people.

Depends on whether you're a narcissist I suppose.

I assume the answer is "it depends."

People coming up to you in public is a bit stressful. People sucking up to you is awkward. And you have to deal with journalists.

On the other hand, people will just employ you if you're famous, you don't have to worry about Linkedin. You can just get a sinecure from a big company.

I think it's some people's ingrained nature to do things that make them famous, the pros and cons aren't relevant to them.

No, it doesn't seem like it. There's a mountain biking YouTube channel I watch where the guy is relatively unknown among the general public but who is a celebrity among mountain bikers, and he did a video where he was at a mountain bike festival and had to basically disguise himself while walking down the midway just to have a somewhat typical festival experience. He said it was kind of stressful, and this is just for dealing with normal people who want to say hi and tell him how much they enjoy his work, and maybe get a picture with him. Now imagine that plus it being everywhere you go, every day, and while most people are benign there are a few who absolutely despise you and send hate mail and others who are convinced that you're their one true love and won't stop stalking you. Any sense of a normal life is completely gone. If there's a restaurant you want to try you can't just go there; you have to have your people make sure they can provide special accommodations for you and the handlers that will be necessary to keep the public at bay. Any public place — a bar, a movie theater, a grocery store, whatever — is effectively off-limits.

I've had my own experience of being at the extreme bottom levels of the fame ladder. When I was in high school I was the captain of the academic team and we went on the local CBS affiliate's Saturday morning quiz-bowl show (hosted by a popular news anchor) and won the championship. This meant that I was on TV for several weeks over a period of a few months. At the time I was working as a cashier at a grocery store, and practically every customer recognized me from a local TV show that I was only somewhat aware of before I was on it. It's obviously nowhere near what being even internet famous is like, but people congratulating you and asking the same questions every five minutes does start to wear on you after a while, even though they're good people who just want to express their appreciation that you proved one of the worst schools in the state could hang academically with the best (our road to the championship included defeating a well-known prep school and a suburban public school that is consistently ranked among the best in the state [coincidentally located where I live now]).

If you make a mistake at work you might hear about it from your boss or a coworker but it's no big deal and you move on. If you release a horrible album or act poorly in a movie you have to deal with public criticism. Think of how hard your last breakup was and imagine if people were publicly speculating on what happened and hounding your ex for interviews. Imagine having to screen your own calls. Imagine the insecurity of not knowing if your last date actually liked you or was enthralled by your fame. Imagine dealing with yes-men who tell you you're the best and want a piece of you only to stop returning your calls at the first sign you might not be as profitable as it seemed. Imagine being functionally unable to make new friends who weren't also celebrities. Imagine everyone you ever met suddenly texting you to hang out. Imagine actual friends asking if you can put in word for them with the right people. Awfully stressful is an understatement.

I don't think so.

One, pretty much by definition, very few people can be really famous, so you're setting yourself up to fail.

Two, there's not really all that much tangible upside. Being rich is quite tangibly beneficial. Being famous is harder to put a finger on. You may get more social status in the appropriate circles, which probably isn't worth as much as you think. Probably in most situations, it's more like a gimmick - cool for about 5 seconds at a party.

Three, there are some pretty serious downsides. Check out Tim Ferris's article on it. TL;DR; is stalkers, death threats, extortion, media hit pieces, begging, impersonation, kidnapping, etc. All of the above can be especially difficult to deal with if you don't also have sufficient financial resources.

It depends what you do and do not consider to be the positive side of fame. If you're a famous writer, do you consider the opportunity to write books that lots of people will read into your calculation of fame? How about the money that comes from that? Or is fame just all the other shit?

I have heard that being famous is something you have to actively maintain, and it is not just something that happens without you being able to do anything about it. I think if you already are famous, and systematically begin to refuse every request to appear on TV, or attend a public event, or be interviewed for a newspaper, etc., then you will become not famous relatively quickly. So it would then follow that people who are famous are actively trying to be so, and that would indicate that they have made the calculation and decided that it is worth it for them.

That seems to apply to pundits, influencers, etc. They're continuously trying to get in the press.

But many artists, sportsmen, businessmen will actively try to be less famous. Naomi Osaka's meltdown about press availability, "I'm just here so I don't get fined," Elon Musk's efforts to shut down the plane tracking autism kid. JD Salinger's isolation was a stock plot point in thinly-fictionalized form for decades, Field of Dreams being the most famous example. Even the Divine Emperor Augustus, upon being told that he was being told that they were praying to him in temples in the provinces as a God, shot back asking what to do if people asked him to heal their gout.

I would hate being famous. I was involved in a local political campaign, in such a way that random people asked me about it in casual conversation, and I hated not being able to stop talking to them for fear of hurting the campaign. I can't imagine having that every day for the rest of my life. Luckily I'm high end mediocre at everything.

Even the Divine Emperor Augustus, upon being told that he was being told that they were praying to him in temples in the provinces as a God, shot back asking what to do if people asked him to heal their gout.

I mean, dude named himself "godlike". I don't think he really had grounds to complain.

Naomi Osaka seems to be a tennis player who has an Instagram account with 2,8 million followers, where she last posted a short video of herself 4 days ago. From what I can gather with some quick googling, her problem with the press conferences did not really have much (if anything) to do with being famous, just being contractually obligated to attend an event where she was subjected to questions that made her uncomfortable.

The plane tracking autism kid seems to be someone who poses for press photographs and gives interviews to various parties, probably anyone who will have him, trying to promote his various business ventures or social media projects. Or did you bring that up as an example of Elon Musk trying to be less famous? Because that does not seem plausible at all.

From a quick glance at Wikipedia, it seems that J.D. Salinger did not like to give interviews, but was giving one as soon as there was some copyright dispute that he was trying to influence.

The anecdote about emperor Augustus does not seem to be about him being famous, but about common people being silly.

There can be endeavours where being famous is required in order to succeed, and it can be an unpleasant surprise if you did not know it before hand, or you find out that you do not like being famous. But then it should be simple to just give up the thing, and anyone who does not probably has calculated that pursuing it is a net positive, despite having to be famous.

So, what are you reading?

I’m still on The Poacher from Stratford. Thoughts below.

Last week I finished reading Chingiz Aitmatov's novella The White Ship. In spite of the shoddy translation and atrocious typesetting, it was very affecting, and the ending had me tearing up a little bit even though I'd sort of guessed what was going to happen around chapter 2.

About one-third of the way through China Mieville's The City and the City. Loving it, the Kafka comparisons are well-earned.

I finished up Harassment Architecture the other day.

In summary, it's a book I would only have a paper copy of and only recommend to very few people that I know very intimately - since high school at a minimum.

It's plotless, written by a 20-something, and printed somewhere kind of random in SC. It's satirical, hateful, aggressive, and could be in some ways more subversive than something like The Anarchist's Cookbook. I was recommended it on Amazon I think after reading a linked blog post here (which worries me) and only saw it discussed directly here once by @Etw0.

I was reading it while on a train in Europe during pride month, which was probably the best possible situation for getting value out of it. I may expand on it this Friday, but the main themes of the book were underlined by, to borrow the author's framing, being in a land full of gluten-intolerant LGBTQIA+ cucks surrounded by meaningful architecture created hundreds of years ago.

If you're here, you may like it, though I'll stop short of recommending it as I mentioned to start. A good mix of catharsis and humor. I don't imagine a centrist moderate, much less a leftist would be able to stomach it at all.

The downside of having finished it is realizing I probably won't be able to talk to anyone about it face to face. Anyone who'd agree with parts of it may not process it as deeply, and anyone else maybe capable of doing so would be too disgusted by it to finish. So a general feeling of loneliness and frustration afterwards.

What is it about? Like I get it’s bigoted against LGBT, but so are a lot of people. Is it a series of humorous anecdotes offending the lefties?

It's a first-person screed from the perspective of an "Alpha Male". There's very little plot, it's more poking holes in the lies we tell ourselves as a civilized society. What's meant seriously vs satirically is going to be different for everyone and that's part of what makes it interesting. Essentially bemoaning the state of the world and perhaps suggesting we should burn it all down.

It's unthinkably transgressive in 2024, but not far off from a 2008 LAN Party (Xbox, not PC). I can't imagine a woman really enjoying it, either. It's pure masculinity, toxic and otherwise.

Master and Commander was great, it does such a good job capturing experiences that are completely foreign but really happened. When they're being pursued by a frigate for days, and they can see it in the distance, and it's gaining but over the course of days, the dread and tension it brings. It's a masterpiece.

I've started And The Band Played On, got it at the coffee shop on their second hand book shelf. God is it brilliantly written. Not sure what I think of the arguments, but the passion that drips from it, written as he was dying.

On audio I'm halfway through Two Towers, and I'm thinking I might skip to the first half of Return of the King and complete that line of the story, then go back and do the whole Frodo storyline in one go after. Experimentally. It would throw off some aspects of Gondor, I think, but mostly listening on audio I'm just not in the mood to have Gollum in my earbud. Idk.

On Shakespeare, I'm excited for the local Shakespeare festival, doing Cymbelline a couple towns over. I was just thinking of that play.

I can vouch, secondhand, for @pigeonburger 's point here. Most of the folks I know who powered through the jargon really enjoyed the whole series.

Reading Russian lit has taught me that the best way to get used to unusual words and uses is to just motor through it and figure it out later. For a while reading Dostoyevsky was difficult because I was trying to understand every word and reference and every relationship and every name and nickname. When I just let it wash over me and hoped to pick up what was going on later from context, I came to understand more. I'm sure I'm wrong about a few things in the naval jargon.

Master and Commander was great

Honestly, the whole series is fun, and since you're already past the biggest obstacle (the nautical jargon) you should check it out

I'm thinking of picking up more of them, is it something where you want to go in order or is it pretty episodic?

The adventure in each book tends to be fairly self-contained, especially earlier on in the series, but the books definitely have a single overarching narrative. So I guess it depends on how much you care about Stephen and Jack's personal lives vs just enjoying your time on the ship. I'd say read the second book, and if you like Diana and the dynamic on land, read in order. If Diana annoys you and you find yourself groaning and wondering when they're going to start murdering French privateers again, you're probably safe to skip around.

Wadsworth's The Poacher from Stratford, a book on the Shakespeare authorship question, has an unfortunate aspect of subtle but pervasive mockery under a veneer of objectivity, perhaps somewhat deserved, but still frustrating. Very rarely Wadsworth deigns to break the illusion and offer the most inane forms of contempt (“J. Thomas Looney, not to be confused with the Baconian, George M. Battey”). The information itself is appreciated, though by now at least some of it is known to be inaccurate.

For those anti-Stratfordians who seem more likely to have mental issues, there is often an element of a “hidden place” or something similar, some one thing which establishes complete proof of the proposition but is not really intended to be checked. Delia Bacon claimed that she had a historical study which proved her case that Francis Bacon was Shakespeare, one which she never published, and also that manuscripts would be found in Shakespeare’s grave, but (if what I’ve read is true) she lost the courage to unearth it. Similar things are noted in some of the other anti-Stratfordians, and not only Baconians. I wonder if something like this is necessary to underpin the general faith for certain kinds of minds. They may even believe it. Perhaps Delia never did write that historical study, but had a false memory that she did. In her telling, “It seemed better to save to the world the power and beauty of this demonstration, its intellectual stimulus, its demand on the judgement.” I do still wonder about the accuracy of reports of her insanity, given that this was the 19th century.

The book, in my opinion, gets less interesting after the Baconians are dealt with, no doubt because the Oxfordians were recent history at the time this book was written. Greenwood and Looney are given short thrift, and the familiar ciphers and buried documents take center stage again. I’m not finished yet, so there is still space to impress me.

Overall, it was worth reading, with some caveats. There are hints of familiar tropes, such as Shakespeare’s “genius” and allegations of snobbery, but these are surprisingly subdued. Most of it delves into details about the works and methods of anti-Stratfordians, with some terms like “literary sincerity” (the idea that an author’s life necessarily exerts a direct influence on his art) perhaps deserving a second look. The evident sneering (at least, that’s what I saw, it isn't always open) thoroughly undermines any claims to fair play, and it leaves an unpleasant image of a face behind the mask which outwardly says “Our role should be not to suppress debate but to instruct students how to consider the Oxfordians’ (and others’) arguments carefully and thoughtfully.” Nevertheless he did after all bother to write a book about the topic. A somewhat inauspicious but still valuable beginning to academic overviews of the topic.

How do you evaluate health/diet/workout claims? For example just heard yesterday that a tea spoon of vinegar before meals and eating meals in order of greens-proteins-fat-carbs reduce the insulin spikes. Sounds plausible but if I try to search online then it is just bullshit popular science articles and reddit fanatics.

greens-proteins-fat-carbs sounds like it's trying to fill you up on greens and protein so you don't overdo it on the fat and carbs.

Apple cider vinegar seems to have some insulin benefits: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31451249/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8243436/

But I admit I don't understand where that's coming from. With white vinegar you'd be tossing a spoonful of dilute acetic acid into the hydrochloric acid in your stomach, which doesn't seem like it would do much. Looks like your stomach lowers pH when you've consumed a protein meal. So this could all be about lowering your stomach pH. With ACV there's probably some beneficial residue from the fermentation.

A lot of diet claims are like traditional medicine. A nonsense process that results in healthy behavior.

The big one to watch out for is vegans. There are a lot of people who are vegan/vegetarian for ideological reasons and consider it their moral duty to make health claims to promote veganism even if it isn't backed by any real science.

I assume they're mostly bullshit if they don't match what I already know about health, diet, and workout. I am rarely disappointed when I actually investigate. Even in examples that aren't quite bullshit, they're usually totally irrelevant even if they're directionally correct. In this case, there is simply no way that a teaspoon of vinegar before a meal is something that will have any meaningful impact on my health or physical performance.

There are studies on this that you can plug into google scholar and access via sci-hub. Roughage (fibers), fats, cinnnamon and some other things totally reduce insulin spikes or the “glycemic load” of the meal when eaten beforehand or within the meal. Walking for 15min directly after a meal does this as well. Not sure about vinegar or protein. I would type in: [term] glycemic load. Sort by 2020 to see new research.

fanatics

TBH this is wildly important information for how little awareness there is of it. We have inexpensive and effective ways of sizably reducing the problems caused by insulin spikes, which are myriad and severe.

Finding studies is easy but I don't trust myself to be able to scan the literature and ignore the garbage (which is most studies in nutrition and fitness).

TBH this is wildly important information for how little awareness there is of it

Yes but there are reddit fanatics for literally every single nutrition and fitness trend out there.

I think if there’s no profit or fame incentive you can trust them. Or if you trust someone like Rhonda Patrick / Hubermann I bet he’s talked about this.

Huberman used to seem a lot more grounded. He's had a lot of hacks on in the last year or so. His shilling for Athletic Greens also doesn't instill confidence.

What’s the deal with the Athletic Greens. Why am I marketed that stuff everywhere

I don't know. For a while I was getting penis enlargement ads in Instagram. Which is perhaps more worrying in terms of what algorithms we are triggering.

I do know AG1 is untested and unregulated and seems pretty pricey. The sheer amount of what's supposed to be in it raises enough warning bells for me. Reddit thread on the topic-- though of course you are free to ignore that as it is on reddit.

People are motivated by ideology in addition to fame and profit.

The reddit fanatics have no shot at profit or fame and you can find them for all sides of any question. Similarly, the influencers you mention have a shot at profit and fame and accordingly you can find them for all sides of any question.

Preparing to enter a corporate job for the first time, anyone have advice for me on dos and dont's and/or how to navigate the corporate environment?

What’s your role?

I’d give advice for a technical professional. Not sure I’m qualified to say what works for management or, God forbid, leadership.

Write stuff down. Keep personal records of everything. All your meetings, all the tasks you did, etc. Do it immediately after the fact. If you have to learn something, write a document detailing what you learned. If it's a meeting, note who was present, link important documents, and make short notes of the decisions.

This isn't to cover your bases or protect you or anything. It's just to keep everything straight. Don't count on just remembering things. Corporate can move very slowly, and being able to refer to what happened in a meeting a month ago is very useful. As well, it's very helpful to have a paper trail when it comes to things like getting promoted.

Pretty much what JulianRota said. Don't worry too much about it.

What kind of job? IMO it matters a lot. Working in corporate IT is a very different experience from working in sales or finance.

There is a "game" and you'll learn how to play it. Take these with a grain of salt:

  • Whatever your job is, your job is to make your manager happy
  • Figure out how your manager (and others who have power over you and your career) are rating you, and optimize for that.
  • On the above, it may not matter how your coworkers rate you, so you may not need to optimize for their opinions.
  • It is easier for others to judge superficial details than deep ones, so that's what they'll do.
  • You are always "busy". You help others by "squeezing in" the work between X and Y.
  • The helpful guy who always accepts extra work will inevitability end up with lots of extra work. This is okay if this work counts towards something (e.g. promotion), but otherwise can be harmful if it prevents you from doing higher impact work, so act accordingly.
  • Do visible, high impact work. If you do something, and nobody knows about it, did you really do anything?
  • Go to the social events, build relationships. Relationships outside your local team can be particularly valuable.

Maybe these are obvious, but I have seen people who don't get it. To be clear, I am not saying don't work hard, but work hard on things that matter, and there is a skill in figuring what what matters.

I think that this is heavily dependent on what field you work in. I have worked in corporate IT for almost 20 years now, and in a healthy environment it's nothing like what you describe. It may be different for other fields of course.

I've worked in IT/dev for about 10 years, and I've found these things to all be true both in functional and dysfunctional workplaces, although they are more important in the latter. If you have a fantastic, altruistic manager, you might be able to ignore some of these, but even then it's probably unwise.

I don't know how comfortable with small talk you are, but I recommend practicing it, some people assume if you don't engage or reciprocate small talk with them then you hate them or something.

Oh baby I'm a MASTER of small talk. No worries there.

What are some good ways to improve small talk?

Ask questions. Not too personal. Listen to the answers. Look engaged and reasonably happy to be there. Smile.

Conversely, expect to be asked similar questions. I can’t say I’d prepare answers, but just don’t be surprised. Keep your answers short; they want your input, not your life story.

It’s all part of a casual conversational quid-pro-quo stemming from desires to socialize.

Practice. Exposure. That’s what worked for me. It’s not a quick or easy path though.

Are there any specific talking points you default to when meeting new people? How do you handle conversations with someone who may be uninteresting, shy, or closed off?

I don't really have specific talking points, no. Just whatever has caught my interest, what we might have in common, et cetera. I guess a lot of it depends on context like if you meet someone at a job, might start by asking them job things. Most of it is figuring out what you might have in common and going from there.

Asking open ended questions (instead of yes/no questions) helps a lot.

Weather is a universal, if cliché, starting point. If it's summer, you can ask if they're doing something for their vacation. If it's December, you can ask what their plans for the holidays are. Sports, if your city has a sports team that has the attention of a large portion of the population (here it's our hockey team).

The only divisive topic that's allowed is sports because it's sort of an agreed upon topic most normal adults nowadays can still have diagreements on without significantly affecting their esteem of the other. Avoid controversy, avoid politics, even if you think the person agrees with you (they might not and just be keeping quiet about their real opinion) and others might overhear and alter their opinion of you over it. Others with either less awareness or stronger filter bubbles might still bring politics up, being unaware (or not caring) that the topic is divisive, in those case stick to uncontroversial, non-committal answers or statements.

You don't necessarily have to remember every little detail of their answers (if you can, though, great!), but try to remember a few points to reference next time you chat with them. If, for instance, the person tells you that they're going to stay at her parents over the holidays because her mother is sick, next time you see them, ask how her mother is doing. That kind of stuff.

It feels almost gross of me to write it down, because I feel like it is faking sympathy for my fellow humans, but I certainly needed to figure out how to have small talk myself, and it wasn't because I didn't care about others.

Most advice is by people who ended up in really dysfunctional places for some reason and are mad about it and probably over-reacting. I'd say just go in with an open mind, lean towards keeping your head down and learning at first. It's usually a good move to start out as bland and inoffensive as possible in dress, speech, mannerisms, etc. Read the room and get a sense for what's acceptable there and what isn't, and relax as appropriate.

This is the best advice.

This is true. I was going to give advice based on my experience, but I have indeed worked only at very dysfunctional places, so I suppose the better advice would be "try to determine whether the company you work for actually functions reasonably well, and if not, go work somewhere else.".

This advice is often useful if used judiciously.

I have to agree with this. You can and should spend political capital to say "no" clearly every once in a while. But if a superior asks you to do something super stupid or wasteful, you can do it slowly or not at all. Especially if you stay busy doing useful things.

Probably can provide some advice - It largely depends on what your role will be but here’s a bit of what I’ve learned (25Y in the private sector, now sr. mgmt). Since it’s a new environment for you, first off I’d listen and observe. try to get a sense of who among your colleagues get things done, if you’re interacting with managers be cognizant of where the alliances and fissures between areas are, listen more than you speak at first. Some orgs are internally competitive, some are not, a lot depends on the personality and attitudes of the corporate leadership. Of course YMMV depending on your particular situation.

There will be many things that piss you off. You will see levels of earth shattering idiocy and incompetence from people making 10x your pay. Don't let any of this get to you to the point it shows in your words. Don't burn any bridge that you don't have to. Always be professional.

Can someone please explain how on earth, looking at this poll of polls, why a Conservative is PM, and has been so for years and years, instead of Labour with literally double their polling average? I understand there was a flip two and half years ago, but that seems like an incredibly radical shift in such a short time. Hatred of Boris Johnson only? Was it purely how shit Jeremy Corbyn was? Post-Covid stuff? But if so, why the lag until late 2021 for this to become evident? And clearly Truss made it all permanently worse, but even before, having 10% less polling-wise then the other big party while being PM still seems pretty odd.

There hasn't been an election in five years.

I assume you're American, or familiar with the American system. Between the 2004 and 2008, the House swung from a 30 seat R majority, to a 79 seat D majority, all while a Republican President remained in office. Between the 2008 election and the 2010, Republicans would win back the House with a 49 seat majority. So in six years we saw movement for 110 seats to D, then 128 seats to R.

That volume of change isn't really that crazy in five years time, or in two.

As for the why, it's Brexit. Brits voted narrowly for Brexit, and once it had been approved a slightly-larger majority was in favor of moving forward with it. The Conservative PMs of the time didn't want to Brexit at all. They dilly-dally'd about actually getting it done, leaving the country in limbo, while Labour as a party wanted to avoid doing Brexit at all (although Corbyn was weirdly out of step and Euroskeptical). This combination lead to Boris Johnson winning with a message of doing the damn thing, running against a Labour party that never had a really good message on Brexit neither rallying to go back on it or showing any prospect of executing it.

If we're talking generic party preference polls, which I think is the UK analog for the listed poll, the US is still much more stable. If we take the Presidential popular vote margin as an indicator (though a bit faulty vs generic party preference, since personality matters, but presumably an overestimate of the real generic gap), we can see a maximum swing of 25% over four years, and that was after Nixon was impeached for Watergate (!), and a few other swings north of 20% also in the 60s, which was a major time in US history with civil rights, the Vietnam war and draft, and a ton of social unrest and violence. Since (and including) Reagan in 1984, we've seen mostly 5-10% swings. I was able to find a few links to actual generic party polling that goes back to 2012, and the largest generic ballot delta was 8% there, and it seems to roughly match within a few percent.

In contrast, we just saw a generic swing of +12 (if we're doing the actual 2019 election) to -21 in three years, for a delta of 33. Is the takeaway then that Brexit was actually earth-shattering politically? Is Brexit the UK's Vietnam?

Or (the more boring answer, but maybe just more true) is party affiliation in the UK simply unstable? I guess one explanation is simply that Reform "stole" all of the Conservative votes, that makes the totals more in line with at least the last 10 years of expected swings.

(In US-related news, a 2020 generic ballot polling average had Democrats up 7%, but 2024 the same generic ballot average is statistically tied. This looks absurdly bad for Biden.)

I don't see why the presidential popular vote is a better guide than the congressional margin, congressional margin is much closer to what is actually going on in parliamentary politics.

And I would say that Brexit is, in its own way, significantly worse than Vietnam. It depantsed the entire political class, as they were collectively found to have no plan to get the thing done or for what came after.

Well, the original poll that I posted and numbers I cited was from an opinion poll-of-polls of UK voters, not Parliament MP counts. I'm just comparing apples to apples here, with another similar poll-of-polls of US voters. Maybe a similar pattern exists for the House/Parliament, but since the next election hasn't happened yet, we don't have new MP counts to compare, so it's a moot point on that level. I guess we'll see! UK and US both use first past the post, right?

Yeah, maybe I undersold Brexit. I thought things would end up more or less becoming business as usual, but I guess that wasn't so much the case. It's interesting though, if Brexit was really the cause, there's clearly some sort of lag going on (as people sour on Brexit?) because the slide doesn't seem to have stopped with the completion of Brexit, other than a brief 3-month bump after formalization (end of 2020, right?)

Between the 2004 and 2008, the House swung from a 30 seat R majority, to a 79 seat D majority, all while a Republican President remained in office. Between the 2008 election and the 2010, Republicans would win back the House with a 49 seat majority. So in six years we saw movement for 110 seats to D, then 128 seats to R.

That's the margin, though. Not the overall total.

2020 is when net migration tripled, due to policies put in place by Boris Johnson and continued by Rishi Sunak. Conservative voters feel betrayed, so they are voting for the low-immigration Reform party instead. If you combine the vote shares of those two parties, you get around 37%, which isn't far off what Labour is getting.

Conservative popularity was declining before Johnson reinvigorated it with his charisma. But when right-wing voters discovered that he was just an open-borders extremist with a blue rosette, they turned against him.

Combine that with damage to the traditional image of competence that the party benefits from due to a failing health system, high inflation and poor economic growth, and voters don't really have any reason to vote Conservative. After all, we already had crazy-high immigration, reckless money-printing, economic stagnation and activists wokeifying institutions during a decade of Conservative government. What's the worst a Labour government could do?

This election is best understood as the Conservatives losing, rather than Labour winning.

If for writing scientific papers it was common for scientists to enlist the help of lawyers to make the case for the hypothesis more convincing, how would:

a) the number of theories which are supported by a consensus of scientists change?

b) the percentage of theories which are supported by a consensus of scientists, but are actually false, change?

As a lawyer who has to review medical and scientific information regularly despite having absolutely no scientific or technical background, God no.

Reminds me of a corporate case I heard about, a few decades ago, with a contract that had been drawn up by a team of accountants and lawyers. Unfortunately none of the lawyers could understand the maths, and none of the accountants could wade through the law, so they specified quite different responsibilities for each party in certain circumstances. Big panic when they found out.

Look at patent law cases that actually go to the mat. Then look away quickly. That retinal burning sensation and after image of Satan is what you get with this unholy union.

Do you know a good one? I read the Amazon One-Click patent and was filled with a mixture of disgust and reluctant admiration for the sheer chutzpah on offer.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats