I appreciate the point being made---that we're too reductive in how we view a healthy human body---but calling Patrick Mahomes "one of the greatest athletes on planet earth" is laughable. He's more healthy than many adults, but he's no means an outlier amongst _athletes_. Compare that claim to this header [1] by Cristiano Ronaldo. He jumped 2.6 meters, at pace, perfectly timed, to score a goal, in his mid-30s.
And more generally, I would take almost no health advice from American footballers, many (most?) of whom will go into old age with ailments and injuries due how they treated their bodies.
He’s the most successful player in the most competitive position in the most competitive league in one of the most competitive sports on Earth.
American football requires a different skill tree than world football. So of course if you only judge by the standards of world football he is not great. But why would you do that?
And athleticism as different from health. In fact, beyond a threshold I believe it is detrimental to it.
> He’s the most successful player in the most competitive position in the most competitive league in one of the most competitive sports on Earth
Isn't it exactly the point of the article though that this doesn't necessarily mean elite across-the-board athleticism?
Your statement would also have described Tom Brady for most of his career, and I don't think anyone would seriously claim he was a 99%ile athlete (certainly not for sprinting, agility, etc.)
Personally I can’t see how Brady is not a top athlete. It’s like judging a jazz musician on the skills needed in pop music or vice versa. You have to look at success within the genre or sport.
It seems like this is more about the semantics of what we mean by athleticism then?
It sounds like for you, being a top athlete simply means being very good at a sport.
I've always generally understood athleticism to be about raw physical traits, like speed, strength and agility (and is therefore only part of the range of attributes that makes up the overall profile of a sportsperson).
Out of interest would you consider people performing at an elite level in high-skill, relatively low-physicality sports like golf to be top athletes?
He benefits from superlative play calling and a superlative supporting cast (pacheco etc) with no way to clearly establish how much that benefits his stats. Contrast him with same size Caleb Williams and it gets interesting, for example.
I see you edited your post, it is now clearer what you meant. I think you have a very local perspective, but you have every right to enjoy that. I have nothing to win in a handball versus football debate, besides calling spades spades. :)
If you live in the Netherlands you have to assume others don't know as much about you as you do about the bigger boys. :)
We have our own kind of "American Football" in the Netherlands, it is called ice skating. But.. every Dutchman understands that being the world champion in ice skating doesn't say much as it is a highly local phenomenon.
But you still can enjoy the athleticism that such a sport requires.
It’s not that it’s from my country, it’s that the top athletes from a pool of 350 million or so people are all competing to play it at the top levels. I’m not sure how many are competing to be ice skaters, but that’s why I said it’s ‘one of’ the most competitive sports.
I don't know either. Speed skating is an Olympic sport, so it is practiced in multiple countries, but you can bet it has a relatively small pool of professional players compared to something like tennis or hockey.
The United States debatably has the most athletic population of an country and its the top sport in America where we funnel all of our talent (probably to our detriment). Regardless of the popularity abroad its where our athletes go.
When we do compete in other sports we fair above average to exceptional (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-time_Olympic_Games_medal_t...) with the notable exception of soccer, which we've never broken through despite investment and a decent population of players.
Don't kid yourself, just because other countries don't play American Football doesn't mean the players aren't freak athletes - they are
It’s not the #1 sport there, but NFL football is popular in Canada too. To me, it’s dominance in North America is enough to qualify but I respect your position.
There are different types of athleticism. Quarterback in the NFL is the most difficult and important position on the field. Without taking anything away from him, like most humans, Ronoldo wouldn't last a single NFL game.
True. But equally, Mahomes wouldn't last a single top-level soccer game. The running is much more continuous, and far longer than NFL players run in a game. NFL players have tuned their bodies for a different activity profile, one that fits the NFL but doesn't fit professional soccer.
To me that looks less impressive, as most humans do have very fine hand control. But that shouldn't take away any of your pleasure. I assume that the sport is competitive enough to have a high bar for entry.
I think you are right. An even better counter example imho would be darts :)
Although... fine motion control is more natural for hands then for legs. In football, running on full speed, while keeping the ball close to the foot, then evading defenders (still on full speed), making an accurate pass to a team player. Almost any boy on the planet dreams about those skills, some are able learn a few of these skills somewhat. But it requires abnormal leg control.
In football there is a harsh filter of it not only being the global #1 sport, so insanely competitive, but also because it requires an insane fine control where we normally don't have that.
Does not take away from other sports like tennis, or base ball. For most sports the elite level will be unreachable for most humans.
You think kickboxing doesn't include very fine motion control? Stand on the ball of your foot and kick to your forehead height, please. Deliver power while doing that. No, you need to control your hands at the same time. Your target is about half an inch in size. Sorry, you were too slow. Sorry, you telegraphed your movement so your opponent evaded you.
American Football is debatably the competitive sports league with the greatest athletes in the world and he is a top athlete in that league by results. How can you substantiate a claim that he is not one of the greatest athletes on the planet if not by results and the competition?
Also your comment about Ronaldo is basically that he can jump high and run fast which makes him one of the greatest athletes? I think he's an amazing athlete but not because of his vertical jump. There were 30+ kids at my high school with a higher vertical jump than him.
The article's point is that there is more to athleticism than run fast, jump high. They are right.
There are only 100k professional athletes in the world. That’s 1 in 100k rounding to 10 billion people. So a professional athlete is already 4.2 standard deviations above average. Top 1% is only 2.5 standard deviations above average.
There are closer to a million professional actors… so actors in general are around 4 sd above average.
Another amazing feat of age is Noriaki Kasai, 51 Years old, still active in competitive ski jumping. Oldest Person to ever win a world cup competition. In 2014. And still (sometimes more, sometimes less) capable of performing.
Are you sure? Compare before/after for the main affected regions (Holland Tunnel, Queensboro) versus the unaffected regions. We definitely need more data, but I think there's an immediate reduction in the obvious places.
According to this data, traffic is reduced on the bridges and tunnels but not within Manhattan itself, e.g., going from Hell's Kitchen to Midtown East or Greenwich Village to Alphabet City.
Maybe 5 years ago, I was in a similar place. I had a particularly embarrassing moment at work when it clicked that I just... didn't know the basics. I was, to use an overused term, "mathematically immature".
So I made a commitment: I decided I would work through Khan Academy math for 1-hour a day for 1 year. I started with pre-K [1] (specifically counting) and watched every video and did every single exercise in order. I focused on mastery. I didn't rush myself, and I did not continue until I felt completely confident in the material. I just did this for a year. I think I go through roughly algebra 2. In my mind, it is critical to combine explicit knowledge (watch videos) with tactic knowledge [2] (do exercises). For example, you need to understand what a logarithm is conceptually but you also just need to do problems to get a feel for it. So this is fundamentally different than learning-by-grazing or just reading a book.
I could go on and on, but let me just say that it changed my relationship to math in a deep way.
I loved reading your comment. Your story is very similar to my own! A little over 8 years ago, I also started at the beginning of Khan Academy. Due to reasons related to my childhood, I had essentially no education growing up. When I was in my early twenties, I had only an elementary education. The highest level of math I knew was basic fraction arithmetic. I had never written an essay and I did not have a scientific understanding.
Having no education, I only did menial work for money. Yet in my early twenties, I was contemplating my lack of scholarship and realized I wanted to fill the holes in my education. I went to Khan Academy and, as you did, started with pre-K and worked my way linearly through up to pre-college math. Thankfully, I was soon laid off from my job, which was an opportunity to start attending community college.
I then transferred to a state school and double majored in applied math and computer science. Now I’m doing theoretical research as a PhD student in computer science.
The 8-year path from pre-K math to graduate-level math classes and now being published has been a journey. And I’m deeply grateful for resources like Khan Academy.
Deciding to commit to a daily study of math transformed my life.
This is really inspiring, thanks for sharing. I should do likewise. I wound up dropping out of school (had kids too early, don't ask), which was... not a good decision. I do work as a developer but I need more domain knowledge in mathematics. Never too late to start, I guess.
I don't think so. My problem was that I had a weak grasp of many basics concepts, and more critically I did not know in which areas I was weak. So while it's easy ex post to say "I could skip such and such section", it would have been impossible to make this judgment ex ante.
And in fact, I think a failure mode many people make is trying to predict which things they already know and then skipping those. This allows for blind spots to persist.
I suppose the one way to skip things correctly would be to have a coach. But that comes at a new cost ($), but maybe that works for some people.
"Before" and "after" are generic terms. A car might stop before the crosswalk (space). You might eat dinner after work (time). But "ex ante" and "ex post" specify a relationship to an (random) event or to specific information. For example, a data scientist might compute a quantity "ex ante". This means that the quantity was estimated using only forecast data. No historical data was used. It would not make sense, however, to say that a car stops ex ante the crosswalk.
I could have easily said "afterwards" and "beforehand", but I like "ex post" and "ex ante" when referring to before/after having access to specific information.
If you, or someone else is seriously considering learning math from the basic at a high level, I’d recommend picking up “art of problem solving, pre-algebra” book, and walking up from there.
These sets of books are universally considered to be among the best math education resources by mathematicians and others, and they start from the very basic (such as the number line and basic operations), but without the need of practicing elementary school material like counting.
I think if you've literally never seen the material before, you might be right.
But for anyone who's graduated high school, a lot of it would be at least a second encounter so you'll be reviving forgotten knowledge which is much easier while also diving deeper in your second pass.
My favorite quote on the meaning of life, from Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning":
> For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment. To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: "Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?" There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one's opponent. The same holds for human existence. One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.
I remember reading this book and there were 3 paragraphs of philosophical value in the whole book. This is one of those three paragraphs. I found the book very disappointing. "The meaning of life is to live every moment as if it had meaning?" That is a thesis which felt foreign and useless. I felt no closer to meaning after reading that book.
It was in a self help psychology book that I thought communicated the core idea of meaning and purpose the best: Meaning == Feeling
The author (I believe of: running on empty) made the statement that a struggle to find purpose is the same thing as a struggle to feel and that life's purpose is to feel. Feelings are the fuel for our lives. So those with blunted emotions obviously feel no sense of purpose because the purpose of life is to feel emotions.
Struggling with a lack of meaning is the same thing as struggling to feel. If you knew what would make you feel, it would obviously be meaningful to interact with that.
Bringing this idea back to Frankl, his work becomes much more accessible: The purpose of life is to live every moment with feeling. Finding meaning means seeing what makes you feel.
“The meaning of life is to live every moment as if it had meaning” sounds wise and livable to me.
> a struggle to find purpose is the same thing as a struggle to feel
I think feeling is a means to an end, and that there are deeper reasons for a lack of purpose:
- Loss (eg after death of loved ones, or of abilities)
- Change (eg of the shape of a relationship) that is hard to adapt to
- Inability to end current adversity (eg emotional pain that can’t be stopped due to circumstances)
For those, people find “workarounds” that numb their feelings (drugs, workaholism, constant distractions etc) so they don’t have to feel the emotional pain (which they currently have no real fix for) all the time. The search for a purpose is IMO a search for anything that resolves the emotional pain. As soon as the pain is gone, “feeling” is safe again and no longer has to be suppressed.
I read Frankl's book as a depressed person who saw lack of meaning as the root of my problems, namely of anhedonia (used casually, not medically). Frankl's book is written for normal functional people. What wasn't clear is that the state of anhedonia is not a result of lack of meaning, anhedonia is lack of meaning.
I was reading it hoping for an algorithm to find any meaning at all.
For you "meaning" seems to mean something. For me "meaning" was a null pointer exception. The variable name "meaning" is understood in a general sense, but when you try to manipulate the idea or collide it with other ideas, everything breaks down. If you can't de-reference "meaning" then Frankl's work is quite opaque since "meaning" is primarily a feeling and most people's understanding of it is intuitive rather than prescriptive. Frankl is never able to jump out of the intuitive understanding of meaning, and so for someone who the idea of "meaning" is not intuitive his work was quite inaccessible.
Once you understand that meaning is feeling, then you can think about meaning in a more prescriptive sense and his work starts to make more sense. I would probably have a wildly different experiencing reading it now than when I originally read it.
I had a childhood where my feelings did not matter very much. My dad was a narcissist and my mom was too busy bread-winning. This resulted in suppression of emotions since they had very little value. As an adult the lessons learned as a child are carried through.
Childhood emotional neglect is the state of not learning how to have purpose because you don't matter. The depression stage of grief seems closer to the state of having lost meaning.
I guess for a summarized critique of Frankl, it's that much like the article posted is saying, meaning is not a linear monolothic idea. If you frame the conversation around meaning as Frankl's book does, that's a very different conversation than one framed around emotional regulation. The emotional regulation conversation helps find meaning, but the meaning conversation is unlikely to help a person with emotional regulation.
I agree with you on that there is no clear definition or discussion about "meaning" itself. But I don't agree with the idea that meaning == feeling. It sounds to me that if I apply that definition to how I live my life it'd only leads to a hedonistic one that only pursues momentary satisfaction of my feelings.
Don't know about `==`, but I take parent's comment as: you intuitively know that you have found meaning, because of the way you _feel_ when doing/thinking certain things, like playing with your child, working on a project, running, reading a book etc.
If I feel content while doing something, then that something gives me meaning.
> For you "meaning" seems to mean something. For me "meaning" was a null pointer exception.
No it’s the same for me. The thing is that I don’t care at all about that when I’m well. I haven’t thought about the meaning of life for a year probably (ok I’m very busy). When I was in a bad place (also was raised by narcissists), I obsessed over meaning and purpose all the time. But that’s just a symptom of depression IMO. Like I said, my take is that the search for purpose is a proxy for concrete problems that need solving. Something that the conscious part comes up with that feels like finding a solution to would make us feel better.
> Have you found ways to overcome or manage the effects of that neglect?
No, but I haven't tried professionals or medication. I watched a number of Stanford lectures on psychiatry and while I was rabidly against medications (unless they had a street value because that indicates they do something that people value), I found the lectures pretty convincing and they changed my mind. Sapolsky in particular has some great lectures.
> emotional regulation
That's a fun bit of ambiguity. Am I saying help a [person with emotional regulation] or help a [person] with [emotional regulation]? I meant help a person regulate their emotions.
Running on empty talks about it. I can't say I am sold on her treatment protocol which involves work including writing reflections focused on bringing attention to emotions and being able to better describe them.
But yeah, blunted emotions and dis-regulation inhibit the ability to do work. It creates comfort seeking behavior rather than growth seeking behavior. If you can't imagine emotional payoff, how are you going to motivate work? Not work like a job, but work like learning to read sheet music, or put yourself in social situations where you might face rejection.
I think the authors core idea was that emotional neglect as a child creates a situation were you de-value your emotions (because you don't want to burden a parent with them, for example), which creates suppression and blunting of emotions, which then manifests in all types of mal-adaptions which ultimately creates a situation where the fuel for life, emotions, isn't there and then you feel like you are "running on empty."
The author explicitly states that emotions are that fuel. Emotions are what prevents a person from feeling like they are out of fuel.
I think there is a class of people for which they are looking for "fuel" to their life, and I think that is the same thing as looking for "meaning."
> Are you suggesting the lack of emotional regulation is what prevents people from finding meaning (whatever that means)?
So taking the idea that meaning is emotions, lack of emotional regulation makes it hard to feel the feelings you want, which is nearly tautological.
So the question becomes "Do I have trouble finding meaning because I have suppressed my emotions?" I certainly figured out quite young that it's easier to stop wanting something than to seek it out and struggle or fail, particularly without help. Do I really not want the thing, or was my desire suppressed? Would there be meaning in me getting it? Would there be meaning in seeking it out? Even if I suppressed my desires, is that desire still there? Have I suppressed my desire for meaning because the work is onerous?
I am not sure if those are the right questions or what the answers are but I think they poke in the emotional regulation/work/meaning/emotions direction and start sketching a framework upon which to think about the problem.
I recommend her book. I thought it was going to be a slog, but 1-2 chapters in and I felt like I was reading my own biography, I read it in a day. It's pretty mechanical rather than wishy-washy. Most concepts are well defined and technical in nature. She doesn't make many appeals to intuition and everything is pretty "cause and effect".
> unless they had a street value because that indicates they do something that people value
This usually only means that doctors restrict access to those drugs because they have a potential for addiction and abuse, and people seek them out on the street once they're addicted and their doctor has recognized this/declined to continue them on it/they want an abusable quantity. Exceptions for things like insulin which has other unique reasons.
Potential for abuse and addiction is not a good sign of value. It's a sign of it's potential to ruin or end your life.
All the anti-depressants come with a warning label that says may end your life, yet they have no street value and I've never heard them referred to as addictive (although they seem to have withdrawal).
Ketamine, mushrooms, LSD, etc. have street value and you hear way more "mushrooms helped my depression/ketamine is like a light-switch for depression" on the internet than you ever hear positive stories about SSRI's and the like which is more likely to have stories around sexual dysfunction or withdrawal syndrome than glowing reviews. Nobody says psychedelics are addictive.
Street value represents demand and lack of street value represents lack of demand and lack of demand represents lack of effect.
So I think the idea that potential for abuse is what drives street value is wrong, wrong in the sense that there is an element of truth, but it isn't the truth.
I think that reasoning is sound.
I think there is a fine dunning kruger line to be walked here and as I admitted (in the context of what you quoted) that I think there is truth to what I just wrote, but I don't think it is the truth.
SSRIs "end life" because it causes changes in mental health, which is often a turbulent thing for people who take SSRIs. It's not the drug itself.
Self reports of extreme efficacy on the internet happen for things like homeopathic medicine and isn't really evidence. I am aware of studies that do show efficacy for these though.
Psychedelics aren't addictive but they cause severe impairment which is dangerous. Also they're fun which the DEA hates.
As I said, it isn't just abuse. It's also addiction and danger and fun police.
There are lots of people who are unable to clearly feel emotion (Alexythemia). Are these people doomed to wander without purpose or meaning? Obviously not.
Emotions are fleeting, ephemeral, things that should definitely not be used to drive our lives. You can have 10 different, conflicting, feelings in 5 minutes (and for some of us this is a common occurrence).
Meditation allowed me to get past my random thoughts and emotions and achieve some semblance of coherence to my inner life. Detaching from my emotions has done more for me achieving any meaning in my life than following them.
Defining my values and using them to guide my life has created meaning for me. YMMV
Her book running on empty quite literally states that alexythemia is damaging to a feeling of purpose. She states alexythemia directly contributes to (1) emptiness and numbness, (2) suffering in silence, (3) questioning the meaning and value of your own life, and (4) escape fantasies.
I had medication induced alexithymia and since I've experienced both sides of it, I would add my voice to saying that having alexithymia causes major problems in finding purpose in life. Making any kind of decision was terrible; I couldn't decide what jobs to pursue, couldn't pick what hobbies to do, etc. I felt like crap physically because I couldn't feel any desire for food or other sustenance.
I also ended up with a drug problem because I tried drugs at this time and it was the only way I could feel anything and make choices.
I went through clinical depression and solved that partly through Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) [0], which has "The Happiness Trap" as its core text. The core idea of this (as you'd expect from the title) is that pursuing happiness as a goal is pointless and futile. ACT emphasises values over feelings as the core of meaning, and distancing oneself from one's feelings as a way to deal with them. There's considerable overlap with stoicism, which also de-emphasises feelings as a source of meaning (or anything). Both of these treat emotions as things to be treated carefully, as a probable source of misery and dis-ease, and not something to be embraced as one's core path to meaning.
I've been depressed (but also not - I'm 'lucky' in that my depression is/has been situation based rather than innate/chemical). I think the problem with chasing happiness in particular is that it's kind of similar to chasing the high of a drug: It's not possible to be actively happy 100% of the time. I know in my depressive times one thing I liked to do was set myself impossible goals, and I think 'being happy' is one of them.
In my case, I needed to be more in touch with my emotions because I have severe dissociative issues and a very adversarial relationship with my own body, but I don't seek out any particular emotion. I see my emotions as data being passed to me from my lizard brain and I believe that to make appropriate decisions I must pay attention to all relevant data. In the same way that when planning an outing I must consider my physical capacity, when planning a goal or project I must also consider my emotional data. I try not to ascribe meaning to the emotions themselves, but I view them as invaluable indicators of meaning. If that makes any sense.
I don't think these two things are necessarily incompatible.
"Emotions is meaning" is not "happiness is meaning", but that "feeling is meaning". I imagine that the acceptance in ACT involves allowing oneself to feel the feelings and understand them. I think Dr Jonice places most of her focus on this.
She makes it clear that feelings do not directly imply action, but that feelings imply relationship to a need, so understanding an emotion through the context of your needs helps inform the right action for the emotion.
She says neglect means your parents never helped you understand the relationship between emotions, meaning, and actions or never treated your emotions as valid and meaningful in the first place, resulting in suppression (she doesn't use the term experiential avoidance, but it sounds like the same idea).
> The core conception of ACT is that psychological suffering is usually caused by experiential avoidance, cognitive entanglement, and resulting psychological rigidity that leads to a failure to take needed behavioral steps in accord with core values.
It says it right here and this is consistent with her works. I think she would define "not emotions" or "not feeling" as experiential avoidance.
I imagine the approaches and techniques both schools would exercise are probably similar.
Honestly, reading what you wrote, without any real context of who you are or how you think, it sounds like you might still be experientially avoidant. I don't understand the difference between stoicism and experiential avoidance. "distancing" seems much different than "accepting," "embracing," or "treating as valid." But maybe words like distance mean different things to each of us.
I also am a total layman here, so I am probably ignorant.
I am not sure how a person would have values without emotions. I would expect values to be a product of emotions.
> I don't understand the difference between stoicism and experiential avoidance.
I agree with you that I see a lot of people using stoicism as experiential avoidance, but there is a difference between experiential avoidance and healthy stoicism.
Healthy stoicism recognizes that many (perhaps even most) unpleasant experiences are quite survivable and that feeling poorly is no inherent reason to panic.
To use an example with physical 'emotions': Stoicism recognizes that standing outside without a jacket in the mid 50s (F) might be uncomfortable but that's it. You're not going to die. You're not going to have any lasting damage. You just have to deal with being uncomfortable. Another example is that I have MS and find standing in one place to be quite uncomfortable but it doesn't cause any permanent harm - therefore instead of freaking out when I'm uncomfortable the answer is to ask myself 'do I want/need whatever thing I'm in line for?' and if the answer is 'yes' then I'm going to experience some discomfort and that's okay because humans have evolved over millions of years to experience some discomfort and as long as the discomfort stays at the 'not dangerous' level it's fine. Keep an eye on it but proceed.
It's also in being able to practice this skill so you can tell the difference between discomfort (warning) and acute danger signals. The more familiar you are with your body's reactions to chill, the easier it is for you to sense when that danger line is crossed and frostbite might set in or your body temperature is dropping perilously. The more I practice being uncomfortable, the more I can tell the difference between 'this thing is harder for me than an able-bodied person but I can do it if necessary' and 'this is not right/something is wrong and I need to disengage'.
> I am not sure how a person would have values without emotions.
Social values can be managed in my experience, but personal ones are hard. I had a very firm idea of what the social contract should look like (so like me with no emotions still followed the rules of the road and returned my carts to the corral) but next to zero personal direction. So I had the value that education is important and a society with an educated populace functions better, but no ability to decide what I should learn next. Emotions help you add nuance to your values so they're something other than principles that you get angry when other people transgress.
Except for the last two sentences, this seems like a non sequitur. It conflates value of one's self (meaning of life) with action by one's self (mission in life). The question was not "what's the meaning of what I do", but rather "what's the meaning of me". And the horrible corollary in this conflation yields "your life has no meaning" when you stop acting. "May as well pull the plug, as he has locked-in syndrome."
Nonsense. One's life meaning is traditionally simply their social role. The reason people lack meaning now is that we started determining our social roles by way of market whims, which means our roles are temporary at best and imaginary at worst. It also creates a market for braindead individualist philosophizing to explain why everyone feels so lonely and lost. Sterile precarity is the problem, not the solution.
The context in which frankl wrote this was as a concentration camp survivor, quite different than the postmodern capitalist lends you seem to be evaluating it through
Notably, man’s search for meaning was 1946 iirc and postmodernism didn’t really ascend until some time later
When reading this question I just happened to recall a Soviet writer, who was Jewish, who I think did see the concentration camps and write about them but wasn't a victim of them.
But, this person didn't write in favor of communism despite being a writer in the Soviet Union. Their books were censored.
I found his book "Everything Flows" to be extremely interesting. It is a fictional account of a Soviet gulag survivor returning to his home, and reflecting on the people he meets and his life.
I don't agree with this approach at all, but even accepting what I think are its foundations, this seems to be conflating "social role" with "employment". Unless I misunderstand.
Before employment, there was only social roles. In other words, they should absolutely be conflated. It is absurd and foolhardy to attempt separating them.
> One's life meaning is traditionally simply their social role. The reason people lack meaning now is that we started determining our social roles by way of market whims
John Stuart Mill noted that liberalism leaves the determination of social roles to individuals because the end result drives more progress than the alternatives.
> Sterile precarity is the problem, not the solution.
What to do instead? Non-sterile precarity as in feudalism?
Can I make a suggestion? Most people in this thread will think you are wrong about the Cayman Islands. In this context, your comment, "Caymans is just a better jurisdiction," is provocative. You also claim you can think of 24 things that are better. Fine. But then this rambling comment with jargon and the all-too-common implication to "do your own research" is, from a rhetorical perspective, not persuasive. I'd be genuinely curious to hear a more detailed, layman-oriented answer.
It practically requires people to play devil’s advocate to anything I observe about the cayman islands
But the article also contributed to that, it acts like its a big mystery when the reality is that academic research groups could just never get enough money to dry run forming a hedge fund in the cayman islands and say “oooh I get it”
now they finally did some research and realize this is the worst kept secret, everyone is using the Cayman Islands already for a multitude of reasons that have nothing to do with hiding anything from tax revenues
Isn’t this analogy wrong? The question implied is: if shoplifting were legal and if some people shoplifted to feed hungry babies, should we make shoplifting illegal?
If it weren't wrong, it would not be an analogy. Most intelligent people will realize that the current state of the law is irrelevant, but if you really can't get past that:
If shoplifting were undesirable and if some people shoplifted to feed hungry babies, is shoplifting then desirable?
Same, but I have a hard limit for how many days per week I would prefer going into the office. I cannot fathom those who have a life outside of work actually wanting to spend 5 days a week going to the office when they have a choice otherwise.
> I figured people were going to take issue with the opening anecdote about art, but that was simply the author trying to frame the story in an interesting way. The rest of the article was more compelling.
I don't disagree, but this is simply bad rhetoric. Don't start with an incorrect/misleading/confusing example, and then expect readers to stick with you for the more compelling stuff.
And more generally, I would take almost no health advice from American footballers, many (most?) of whom will go into old age with ailments and injuries due how they treated their bodies.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMZ1O6uFdAE