My TI-85 story. While I was in prison, around 1996 or 1997, I found out a friend had a TI-85 calculator. I realized it was programmable, so I borrowed it over the weekend and wrote a program to track his stock portfolio. It was the first time I had programmed anything in 2 or 3 years.
Then I learned that the US Bureau of Prisons had a rule against any calculator (or device) that was "programmable". So I programmed the TI-85 so its startup screen read, "TI-85 NON-PROGRAMMABLE CALCULATOR". Problem solved.
Me in math class in 1996 - I had a TI-82 things are programmable so I have no formal education, my parents are illiterate, and taught myself to program, and I begged them to buy me one.
I spent time learning how to code on it, writing from scratch, the game Spyhunter.
I couldn't figure out how to draw with lines or pixels so I used ASCII or text.
I presented this to my teacher who told me "these aren't for games". I was crushed.
Makes me realize how lucky I was to have teachers who pushed me to actually excel in areas I was gifted in (and also pull me back in areas I was not gifted in :))
When I was in 7th grade I was getting 100% on all my math exams so my teacher had me test into 8th grade math (algebra). Then when I was a sophomore I was supposed to take precalc but my teacher thought I obviously didn't belong there either so she put me in her Calc AB class, which was the highest math class my school offered, but had me self-study for the Calc BC AP test during class time, taking her own time to sit down with me whenever I had questions.
A couple years later I TA'd for her precalc class and I spent most of my time in that class playing with my TI 8x (can't remember the exact model, maybe 84?) and programming very basic games on it. I showed her what I made and she was so impressed she said I should study computer science.
Guess what I did? Not that. I studied something completely different in college but now I've been a programmer for ten years and wonder why I ever doubted her at all.
Just goes to show how much impact a good teacher has on a student's life.
Some teachers, like many of us, have caveman emotions, live under near medieval systems and have access to god-like tech. (My version of a quote I read earlier this year.)
It's typical. They're supposed have authority and be better than you. That is the purpose of their position and their identity.
Don't be so quick to judge, because most people, including you would react the same way in similar contexts, for example if you were the top engineer at a company and someone started showing you up and being a hundred times better than you.
Not really? I've worked with people who were super productive with high quality work, and my reaction was to... gravitate toward working more with them. Some people are status driven. Some are not. Some are apparently pathologically status driven such that they'll compete with a literal child.
In any case refusing to nurture such a child (even in effectively passive ways like letting them quietly do something more advanced with no specific instruction) and not being reprimanded for it would reveal that the actual purpose of their position is daycare worker, which should be a bigger strike to the ego.
That’s what all people say. Everyone who is status driven will not admit or even realize they are status driven. But the fact of the matter is… it is human nature to be status driven. Everyone recognizes status symbols and possesses such a drive within them. It is also clinically tied with serotonin levels and observed in cross species behavior. To say you have no drive for status is an either a lie or delusional. The evidence is so ingrained in science.
Now. That being said, the drive can be suppressed. But suppressing the drive doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and that you don’t feel it. Also many people feel the drive at different levels of intensity that much is true.
Anecdotally your response to me indicates to me that you have not suppressed status seeking drives completely. The key hints are you’re referring to how you’re drawn to people who do high quality work. That is orthogonal to status seeking. Your status and identity is tied to a certain type of work you do and you take pride in. Have you worked with anyone who was so powerful that their work invalidated, crushed and basically humiliated anything you did. And let’s say this person is not malicious. He’s just so much better than you that your work and identity is inconsequential and eclipsed by his work.
If you said that you wouldn’t feel anything in the face of that then I would say that you truly do not seek status. I would also say you’re not human.
That being said a teacher holds his identity as someone who is better than children. He needs to be better than children in order to transfer his betterment (aka knowledge) to children. His role in society and identity rests on that foundation. If children are better then him and know more than him then that is inadvertently an attack on his identity. His reaction is natural and expected. It’s not that he has anything against the child, it’s self protection mechanisms to protect his identity via deluding himself. Very typical.
You see much of the same stuff with LLMs and programmers. A huge portion of HN was in denial for the longest time about the capabilities of LLMs calling these things stochastic parrots and thinking it’s impossible for the AI to take over. HN was just completely wrong about that and they were also wrong about driverless cars. The reason why they were so wrong is not because they’re making a logical and rational prediction… no they are choosing the prediction that most aligns with protecting their identity and skill set as programmers which is in the process of being replaced by agentic ai.
Again, I think you're entirely off base here. Maybe you are status driven enough that you can't wrap your head around someone who isn't, but I'm really just not interested in it. I want to give my family a comfortable life and spend time with them. That's it.
To color that a little, I've literally told the last 4 managers I've had very explicitly that I'm not at all interested in career advancement. When I was asked to lead my current team, I said "I've done it in the past and can if you want, but check with A and B first to see if they want to". I literally do not care about it. Work is a means to provide, and it does well enough that I don't need to chase it anymore. Actually the marginal pay for the increased responsibility kind of doesn't make it worth it, but like I said I'll do it if they need that. And so my focus is generally thinking about "how do I get one of my team members in a place where they can replace me?"
If we're talking about who's more human, I'd put forward that caring about who's best seems less humanizing than seeking to spend time with people you care about, remembering how lucky you are to have that time, and ignoring outside noise.
Especially when it comes to teaching, if your identity is "better than child" instead of "person who helps children reach their potential" I'm not sure what to say. Sounds like a narcissist.
On LLMs, I found them to be useless but interesting right up until December, at which point I started a hard push for my team to adopt it (and get excited about it). I'm very explicit that my mental framing with them is "how do I get it to do my job". I'm well aware that "programmer" per se is not going to be a job in the future. That much seemed obvious as far back as the original chatgpt release. That's fine, and just means we have to ask ourselves what else needs doing. If we ever get to the point where the answer is "nothing" then I guess we're all doing pretty well.
>Again, I think you're entirely off base here. Maybe you are status driven enough that you can't wrap your head around someone who isn't, but I'm really just not interested in it. I want to give my family a comfortable life and spend time with them. That's it.
Read carefully the part about science. Status seeking is inherit in biology... it's tied to serotonin levels in your blood. When you say you don't seek status it is not only false, it is unscientific. You're a liar or delusional. End of story. I can literally cite science around this.
This tracks not only in humans, but across multiple species including the lobster. Status seeking is in built into biology and society. Saying you don't status seek is like saying you never felt the emotion of sadness or happiness. At your job, in society, the social hierarchies are everywhere and we are ALL wired to recognize and respond to these things and to SEEK it.
Additionally there is extremely high correlation with women and status. Men with the highest status tend to get the most women. And women are attracted to the men with the highest status. It's directly tied to sexual selection and evolution. Like... this isn't even just a measurable thing via serotonin... it's tied to the theory of evolution and anthropological origins of humans. You literally have no argument other than a pathetic attempt to counter science with anecdotal bullshit.
Saying you don't seek status is in itself status seeking. You're claiming to be holier than thou but it's all just bullshit status signaling because it flies in the face of scientific reality. I think you're more of a person who is unable to obtain status in the human social hierarchy... you're probably among the lowest of society so you might've just given up and called yourself a person who never felt the emotion to status seek. Understandable... but again not realistic.
Also when I say you're pathetically on the bottom of the barrel in terms of status. You shouldn't be offended... because you don't seek status... it's not intrinsic to your character.. You should feel nothing when I call you an utter social outcast with no status whatsoever.
>To color that a little, I've literally told the last 4 managers I've had very explicitly that I'm not at all interested in career advancement. When I was asked to lead my current team, I said "I've done it in the past and can if you want, but check with A and B first to see if they want to". I literally do not care about it.
Bro this is another form of status signaling. "Everyone wants me to be their manager but I don't care for it." lol. It might be true but then again it very well might not be since your statement is a bit braggy here. If you could share with me something people and society will find pathetic and shameful about you... that's more solid proof that you don't care about status. Something like, "Everyone hates me, I've tried to be manager all my life but nobody likes me." That's a more true signal of zero status seeking. But I don't see this in you at all.
To put it in perspective, I think I believe you don't actually want to be manager... but that has nothing to do with not caring for status. It's more likely you're balancing "status" with the extra responsibilities that come with higher status. You can't handle the price that needs to be paid to reach that level so you "settle". Again, very common. You maintain a baseline level of status high enough to keep your wife around (she will leave if your status goes low enough as your status is tied to your ability to raise your family) but it doesn't demand to much out of you. If status was given to you without cost... you would take it without hesitation because... again... you seek status, like all humans do.
>Especially when it comes to teaching, if your identity is "better than child" instead of "person who helps children reach their potential" I'm not sure what to say. Sounds like a narcissist.
No. You're just someone who can't face reality. You have to talk about everything in idealist terms. If a teacher thinks all children are smarter, more educated or better than him, what identity does he have left? How is he even qualified to teach children? A teacher or any human does not think of his job as some selfless charity to society where he is at the utter whim of sacrificing himself for the class room. He has identity and gains status from the role as a "teacher" and that is a huge part of it. It's the same with being a doctor... if you think people become doctors solely just to save people and that it has nothing to do with status... you're out of touch with basic reality.
You not only fail to empathize from the teachers perspective but you succeeded in twisting your response into a direct attack on me. Manipulative. But pointless. This is just an internet forum... winning the crowd doesn't mean shit. This is one of the few opportunities you have to say things that are True and real with no affect on your status.
Anyway what I present is CLEARLY not a narcissistic concept. I am clearly not a narcissist and neither are you. It is a basic concept of basic intelligence. Something you're lacking.
>If we're talking about who's more human, I'd put forward that caring about who's best seems less humanizing than seeking to spend time with people you care about, remembering how lucky you are to have that time, and ignoring outside noise.
When I referred to humans I was more trying to illustrate how your claims don't make sense. Humans seek status period. End of story. If you don't seek status, you're not a human... you're an alien... you clearly aren't an alien... so you're clearly wrong. That was the point.
I'm talking from a hard scientific perspective. You're well outside of that right now and you're only thinking from the perspective of your family. But status seeking is still there, but it's more passed to the status of your children which is still inline with natural selection and biology.
You care for the status of your children, do you not? If your children grew up poor and homeless but extremely happy with their life style would you be content? Or do you care about the status of your children and not want them to grow up ending up in the lowest possible strata of status in human society?
You use research as an argument, which is valid in a conversation where nobody has any information about specifics. E.g. in the pre-life, before a soul is about to be incarnated, you can point to that research and say: you are more likely than not to behave this way. Were the soul to reply, “no I am not, I know myself”, you could call them delusional.
But you’re talking to a person who can point at their actual life and say: I have been in that exact situation and I can confirm that I did not behave that way.
That’s a new observation, and afai understand Bayesian statistics, this is the moment where we must update our priors: how likely is someone who has observed themselves in the past not to behave that way, to behave that way?
Your argument is now incomplete.
Maybe someone with real understanding of Bayesian statistics can frame this better, or tell me why I’m wrong XD
Well how is his experience valid? He may be lying or unaware or delusional or lying to himself. All very common human behaviors.
> Your argument is now incomplete
If my argument is scientific and it’s incomplete then are all scientific arguments incomplete? If science is our best way of determining fact from fiction in reality then based off of the aforementioned logic isn’t the best possible way for humans to determine truth incomplete?
Also in Your attempt to prove me wrong have you thought about how MORE incomplete his argument was?
Everyone can be lying. But I’ve been around human beings long enough to know that there are two very different types of self delusion: valiant assumptions about what you will do in a never before seen situation, and observations about what you have done. GP’s was an objective statement:
> I've worked with people who were super productive with high quality work, and my reaction was to... gravitate toward working more with them.
Neither type of statement is perfectly trustable (nothing is) but IME there is a categorical difference. Your paper (and first comment, “don’t be so quick to judge”, which imo was ironically prescient) are about the former type.
Of course if you disagree with me on this fundamental distinction then we have found our contention :) which would be a nice end to this debate. Don’t you think?
Aren’t my statements exactly in line with what “he has done”? Why don’t you read it more carefully. I never denied what he “did”. More like I requested better evidence and I denied his rationalizations behind his life choices. I never claimed he didn’t do what he said.
If he’s drawn to people who do productive work that’s fine. I turned around and asked him for instances where someone’s work humiliated him or completely eclipsed any utility his work offers. Imagine he worked 10 years to invent the slide rule and some genius invents the electronic calculator in one day right after he showed his invention to the world. That’s devastating status damaging stuff. That’s the type of example I asked him for. Not “oh I’m drawn to work with productive people” lol. That kind of comment he made leaves room for him to imply he’s “more productive” than the people he wants to work with. He’s a poser but then that’s not abnormal… tons of people pose and are fake as hell.
Literally look at what he writes. He’s just incapable of admitting any trivial fault. He’s fucking controlled by status above a normal extent for sure. We don’t even have to get into the pedantics of science for this just use your common sense brain.
I have plenty of faults. Depending on your perspective, my entire point is a "fault": I'm lazy and unambitious and decided to top out and coast in my career when I was like 30.
I'm simply happy with that. I can't offer a situation where I've been humiliated because it hasn't happened. I've never seen anyone get humiliated at work. Most work is honestly pretty boring and straightforward. I'm not Leonardo da Vinci here hoping I don't get scooped.
I mean I suppose a week or two ago another engineer proposed some simplification to a problem that I'd prototyped a solution for that basically eliminated 90% of the work I was doing (basically smuggling some information into SNI so that I wouldn't have to build a bunch of code to track it), so I guess that happened? But I just said "oh, yeah, you're right. I can delete like 90% of my MR. Nice."
But then I do that to myself all the time too. I have some first approach, and then like a week later notice some simplification I missed. That's normal? I just join stand-up that day and day "good news I realized this problem is way simpler so I can delete half the work I did."
In fact that's why I like working with smart people. They can help see things you missed when you accidentally get stuck in a rabbit hole. I'm not going to be mad at someone for making my life easier. And as I've said, I go to work to support my family, not to fulfill some existential need. Whatever makes work simpler is good in my book. That's also why I've enjoyed adopting LLMs this year: they make it so I don't have to spend as much mental energy on things that are fundamentally not that interesting to me
>I can't offer a situation where I've been humiliated because it hasn't happened.
Then how do you even know what the emotion of "humiliation" even feels like if you never been humiliated before? Perhaps you felt such emotions in childhood but as an adult you've never been humiliated ever? Or perhaps you're going to tell a story of slight trivial humiliation when you accidentally used the wrong gender pronoun and that's the totality of your understanding of humiliation?
Your story is too perfect. It's fake-ish and as you tell more of it you're starting to see holes in it like your claim that you've never been humiliated before.
>I mean I suppose a week or two ago another engineer proposed some simplification to a problem that I'd prototyped a solution for that basically eliminated 90% of the work I was doing (basically smuggling some information into SNI so that I wouldn't have to build a bunch of code to track it), so I guess that happened? But I just said "oh, yeah, you're right. I can delete like 90% of my MR. Nice."
this is your least tame example yet, but it's still not humiliation. I in actually can't believe you felt perfectly fine and serene when the other engineer schooled your approach. I think if you were more honest with the story you would've admitted to slight to mild feelings of embarrassment and you just ended up humble about it as most humans would.
At this point you're just trying to show off your claimed non-status seeking personality... but your signaling has gone to the point where it's just a little too perfect. You should probably reply and add more realism to that story man, go ahead if you want:
Everything behavioral or psychological science adjacent tends to be "barely science" but sure.
Don't know what to tell you. I'm not the first person to not be interested in "the rat race" (hence the pejorative term for it existing). People like Emerson have probably made the case better than I can. I'm not interested in getting the most women. Actually that sounds gross to me. I instead found the best woman, and fortunately she's also not big on status seeking, and agrees she'd rather have more time with me than me making more money or having a bigger title. My work is a side plot in our lives; my primary title is "Dad".
Unclear how my criticism of a theoretical teacher (or more generally adult) who competes with the children they're supposed to be supporting is a direct attack on you? Self-report? If you're insecure about a literal child's abilities, the solution is to grow your own and show the child that everyone can always be improving, and there are always new things to learn. Or just be happy for their good fortune. Hamstringing them to make up for one's own hangups is clearly narcissist behavior.
It's also not just management. I don't want to climb the IC ladder either. It means more work, more stress, more responsibility, etc. for a relatively small amount of more money. I already make enough money, and I work for money, not status. That money is to pay for things we need like a house. Then once we have what we need, I plan to retire early and spend more time with my family. Maybe find some volunteer work that we could do together. That's it. Work is a side chapter, not my life.
My wife is also on board with this. She was unsure what it would be like when I transitioned to full remote, but then I did and she realized she likes being around me all the time, and wants me to quit once we've paid for the things we need.
I don't think they would be happy homeless so it's somewhat of a silly question. I try to set them up for success and what I think will help them be happy, but that of course includes showing them how to stay grounded. I do hope they'll have modest wants so that it's easy for them to see life as the gift it is.
>Everything behavioral or psychological science adjacent tends to be "barely science" but sure.
Your arguments aren't even science. Barely but sure? What about your own anecdotal statements? That's even less reliable. If the science is all we got, then it's the best we got.
>Don't know what to tell you. I'm not the first person to not be interested in "the rat race" (hence the pejorative term for it existing). People like Emerson have probably made the case better than I can. I'm not interested in getting the most women. Actually that sounds gross to me. I instead found the best woman, and fortunately she's also not big on status seeking, and agrees she'd rather have more time with me than me making more money or having a bigger title. My work is a side plot in our lives; my primary title is "Dad".
We can frame it in terms of the science. You do seek status, but like many you have the inability to pay the cost of reaching higher social status levels, so like many settle for some sort of middle ground. It's extremely common. When you have kids, a huge portion of your "status seeking" shifts to the status of your kids. You work to promote their status in life and you derive a lot of pride from that. In the end it's still status seeking. Whether you seek it for yourself or your genetic future, evolution built you that way.
>Unclear how my criticism of a theoretical teacher (or more generally adult) who competes with the children they're supposed to be supporting is a direct attack on you? Self-report? If you're insecure about a literal child's abilities, the solution is to grow your own and show the child that everyone can always be improving. Or just be happy for their good fortune. Hamstringing them to make up for one's own hangups is clearly narcissist behavior.
It's very clear. You said I sound like a narcissist. That is clearly an attack. It's like if I said your statement sounds like it was said by an idiot. That's also an attack. But it's sort of indirect attacks that skirt around the rules. I didn't say you were an "idiot"... I said your "statement" sounds like it was said by an "idiot". I just cut through the bullshit and went for the intent of the statement.
>If you're insecure about a literal child's abilities, the solution is to grow your own and show the child that everyone can always be improving.
No one is insecure about a child's abilities. They're insecure about their OWN ability to help children. That is the source of the person saying that calculators are "not for games". The person saying that needs an excuse for himself to qualify as a teacher. It happens so fast the person saying that doesn't even realize why.
>It's also not just management. I don't want to climb the IC ladder either. It means more work, more stress, more responsibility, etc. for a relatively small amount of more money.
I've already pointed this out. You're not willing to pay the cost so you settle.
>My wife is also on board with this. She was unsure what it would be like when I transitioned to full remote, but then I did and she realized she likes being around me all the time, and wants me to quit once we've paid for the things we need.
She settled too. Most people in life settle. Top alpha status is hard to get and their are huge costs in getting that status. Everybody wants it, but they just don't want to pay the price.
>I don't think they would be happy homeless so it's somewhat of a silly question. I try to set them up for success and what I think will help them be happy, but that of course includes showing them how to stay grounded. I do hope they'll have modest wants so that it's easy for them to see life as the gift it is.
So they seek status. Because they won't be happy homeless as being homeless is low status.
>I try to set them up for success and what I think will help them be happy
So you think success (aka status seeking) is intrinsically tied to your children's happiness. Stop signalling bro. You're own language and statements reveal yourself.
>I do hope they'll have modest wants so that it's easy for them to see life as the gift it is.
Again this is the evolutionary strategy of "settling". Your passing your own status seeking strategy to your children. And your strategy is based off of "cost" it is not based off of a lack of desire for status. Again, you think optimal cost/benefit ratio is to be a SWE or something. Some people target something lower then that like janitorial engineering. But if status fell on each of your laps for free, you'd take it.
Also it's not just cost/benefit. Status also measures capability. You and your children may be incapable of getting the statuses you want so you settle. When a person is unable to talk about their own weaknesses and lack of ability to get the status they want, then I know they intrinsically seek status. That's why your anecdotal statement of how you turned down a management opportunity even though everyone wanted you to be manager is kind of off. You were humble bragging and bragging is a form of status projecting.
Again, if you truly don't seek status... tell me about something shameful and pathetic about you that if people in general knew about it would lower your status.... can you do that? If not, then that's my point. You, everyone, and that teacher seeks status and the way they talk and what truths they admit to themselves is a result of THAT status seeking. To characterize that teacher as some kind of narcissist or evil person is a complete lack of empathy and misunderstanding of human nature.
Keep in mind, this is the internet, anything you say here doesn't really affect your status in real life. So you're not doing anything in reality to affect your status. But it's still tangible evidence because I believe that status seeking in biology is so strong it will affect your ability to even say something extremely shameful and pathetic on an anonymous forum. Your genetics and behavior were evolved for a time when humans didn't have internet so it doesn't account for this loop hole where you can write and say things publicly that don't affect your status... hence why I'm sure you're gonna maintain your idealistic frame here.
If the best you have is garbage, then you just say that you don't have anything useful. It's like exercise science: there's almost nothing useful there. Don't pretend there is.
If you accept that premise, then you can't frame it in terms of science. You can frame it instead in terms of culture and philosophy, and just say that status obsession is bad. Especially, again, if it turns into literally competing with or feeling threatened by children.
And really, not everything is about status. In fact, if you want something status lowering I guess, we're kind of Billy No-mates, so I don't even have people to compare status with. I've got no Jones' to keep up with! And that's fine.
Again, I've "settled" precisely because I have exactly what I want. It's not the "costs" so much as it is the absence of value. You could argue that I wouldn't pay $100 for a turd because the cost is too high, but the real point is I don't want the turd. You'd have to pay me to take the turd. Like you'd have to pay me to take the higher status job, except they can't pay me enough, and if they did, it would be because I'd be able to save enough to quit shortly thereafter. So really there's just no sustainable world where I keep the higher status position. Because I really, truly, don't want it. It can only distract from what's important to me, and fill my head with things that are not.
Being homeless is an unhappy affair because it's some combination of cold, rainy, snowy, hot, sunny, and stinky, not because it's low status. And because you have nowhere to store e.g. food or clothes, so your situation is precarious. And nowhere to cook, so difficult to eat healthy meals. I highly doubt most homeless people have social status as a top concern.
I'm not sure what I could say that's "shameful" because I'm generally a pretty happy person. In techie circles, I suppose one thing is that my kids are all girls, and I'm going to encourage them to be stay-at-home moms instead of chasing careerism, try to put them into social circles where promiscuity is heavily frowned upon and the primary reason to go to uni is to find a husband (an "Mrs degree"), etc. Very much against the zeitgeist in my work world (and on this site), but I think it's the best way for them to find happiness. So we moved to the South to stay away from West Coast values.
> If the best you have is garbage, then you just say that you don't have anything useful. It's like exercise science: there's almost nothing useful there. Don't pretend there is.
If you think my statements are garbage think about your own statements. You call me out for presenting valid scientific papers by denigrating the whole field of behavioral science which you then refute by pulling out random anecdotes which aren’t even backed by anything.
> If you accept that premise, then you can't frame it in terms of science
I don’t accept that premise. All science has the possibility of being wrong. It is often wrong. But it is the best we have and it has resulted in remarkable things such as going to the moon.
Anecdotes are weaker than science. If behavioral science is trash to you then the your anecdotes are raw shit.
> Again, I've "settled" precisely because I have exactly what I want. It's not the "costs" so much as it is the absence of value.
The foundation of economic theory is based on unlimited human wants and desires. We baked this assumption into theory because it’s so ingrained in human behavior that it’s the foundation of the financial world.
How about I give you an extra ten million dollars with no strings attached? If you say you don’t need it then I see it as more likely you’re just virtue signaling and lying. Bro be real.
> Being homeless is an unhappy affair because it's some combination of cold, rainy, snowy, hot, sunny, and stinky, not because it's low status. And because you have nowhere to store e.g. food or clothes, so your situation is precarious. And nowhere to cook, so difficult to eat healthy meals. I highly doubt most homeless people have social status as a top concern.
Oh let me change that to being homeless in sunny CA with free shelter and food. Most homeless people in SF have completely free access to food anyway. Or how about if your kids worked as a poor waitresses for the rest of their lives but were happy? Obviously that’s what I mean right? No point in getting pedantic about specifics when I’m talking about status.
> I suppose one thing is that my kids are all girls, and I'm going to encourage them to be stay-at-home moms instead of chasing careerism,
That’s a pretty tame one. Not really going to lower your status. You got any sexual kinks? Perverted stuff you like to do in bed that you’d never admit? Do you have any slight interest in men that you’d never admit? Anybody in your family you hate and you think should die?
That’s the level of things I’m looking for. If you truly didn’t care about status you’d be able to admit it.
But if your your perfect ideally on every level I find that harder to believe unfortunately.
We can end the argument here. You won’t be able to prove your stance (event though I’m not even asking you for scientific data) and the science I presented is the highest level of evidence anyone on earth can offer in an argument anyway. It’s not going anywhere so I’m happy to end the argument here but if you want to continue I’m still down.
As a side note, status is even more important to women than men. Your own daughters will date based off of status and they will by nature generally hold status of themselves in higher regard than you. Men are less concerned with status (though still concerned) and are not in actuality concerned with status when selecting a mate as opposed to women where status is part of the main criteria. If you want to empathize with your daughters and women in general than understanding status is part of reality. But of course like you, ironically, being concerned about status, is signal for low status so often people are in denial or they lie about it.
I was calling the science garbage (i.e. denigrating the whole field), not what you wrote. And yeah if the methodology and data are garbage, there's no point in using it. It's like saying chatgpt 2.0 is the best we have, so we should use that. No, we should just say we don't have anything useful. And no, psychology did not get us to the moon. Actual science does not have the problems behavioral and social "sciences" have.
Physics is founded on spherical cows. Doesn't mean it's true. But sure I'll take extra money. I already said I'm working to accumulate more of that. So I can quit. But I wouldn't take $10M if it e.g. meant I had to be CEO of a F500 or something for 10 years. You literally could not pay me to have to do that job for a decade. And if you paid me $5M/year or something, I'd quit after 3 months and be happy.
I wouldn't want them to be homeless in San Francisco either because it's dirty and unsafe, and again I don't think it's a road to happiness. If they really enjoyed waitressing, whatever, but the thing is I think if you're truly happy with life, you'll probably want to form a family and share that happiness. And then something like waitressing is likely a distraction from that, just like software is for me.
I'm pretty sure "actually I don't want my girls to go into STEM and want them to be homemakers" is way more status damaging in the software world (when my first was born a colleague literally asked if I was going to teach her to be a programmer. Uhh, sure) than sexual proclivities of all things lol. But alas, I can't even say I'm into butt stuff.
I don't think I'd characterize being gay as an "imperfection" or something to be ashamed of?
But wanting someone (especially family?) to die is uh pretty hardcore. So no I can't say I've got anything like that for you. I honestly just never need to interact with people I don't like. It's pretty easy to choose your own social circle once you're an adult.
I'm not at all claiming I'm perfect (e.g. I could probably lose ~10 lbs of fat. I could always stand to have more muscle), and I realize it's in vogue to have mental health issues, but there's a reason being normal is... normal. I have to imagine most people don't really have anything to be ashamed of, and most adults grow out of whatever insecurities they may have once had.
Being the Grand OP I suppose I can jump in with some thoughts after reading and skimming the thread.
The teacher (Mr. R) was a math teacher. He lived in his bubble and my guess is he had no children, or no boys. I had excessive mental energy without a proper outlet or direction. I managed to change every Apple 'error' sound to an annoying rendition of his name (Mr.R) would ring out on every computer until it was corrected.
While I may have been smarter and more talented than him - I was not above him in any respect during school. He had more experience and grounding in life - of which he offered me zero.
In hindsight I wish he did the following, which is how I behave today with others; ask hard questions and give them direction to meet their goals.
I do not blame my parents for their inability to see I was in the top 2% of intelligence. I cannot blame the teacher really either. Each of us have potential to be wonderful at something. We need to learn what it is and have the ability to use our talent. I finally learned my talent despite my desire for status. I ignored status, adopted the idea that I need to to develop my talent, and it has now paid off dividends.
Being happy is actually very simple, just not easy. Do the things that make you happy.
>I do not blame my parents for their inability to see I was in the top 2% of intelligence.
Bro. Is this not status seeking? This statement is arrogant. But it could be true.
>I ignored status, adopted the idea that I need to to develop my talent, and it has now paid off dividends.
What sort of dividends? I bet you it's related to higher status.
>Being happy is actually very simple, just not easy. Do the things that make you happy.
In a way you're right. It's paradoxical because of the human drive for status. Gaining high status involves a lot of stress and activities that don't inherently make someone happy. It's a competitive world for a high status position.
Not competing is low stress and involves many behaviors that make you happy. But ironically while one part of you is happy, another part of you is unhappy because you are aware of your low status.
So people usually choose a middle ground. Everyone basically seeks status to some form or degree, it is fundamentally impossible to have this status seeking be absent. The person I'm talking with more likely meant that he... like many people ... compromised on status.
I would assume it is not true and yet I say I am 6'5" you believe me?
We could debate the idea of status, happiness, and motives although we would split ideas into atoms until there is nothing of substance to discuss.
I will answer your question: What sort of dividends - at one point I wanted a specific title, degree, job type until a discussion and decision I had one day that lead me to take a different approach. There are many exercises that determine your true motive. You are offered a job at 4x your income. No one will know your name and your work has no value outside of income. Would you take it? You are offered your dream job, title, schedule, etc at 50% of your current income. Would you take it? Once you find the combination of values in the equation you discover what makes you happy. Me: No stress. Work from home. Using my skills at least 50% of the time. Zero tracking of hours.
> That’s what all people say. Everyone who is status driven will not admit or even realize they are status driven. But the fact of the matter is… it is human nature to be status driven. Everyone recognizes status symbols and possesses such a drive within them. It is also clinically tied with serotonin levels and observed in cross species behavior. To say you have no drive for status is an either a lie or delusional. The evidence is so ingrained in science.
Isn't that just a kafkatrap?
Consider the following exchange where a sane man finds himself in a psychiatric ward:
John: I'm telling you, I'm sane. I don't have any delusions of grandeur and I don't think that I'm Jesus.
Evaluator: I see, your subconscious delusion and erroneous insistence upon sanity are more pervasive than I thought. Your repeated attempts to assert that you're not Jesus is clearly a defense mechanism. I'm afraid I cannot recommend your release.
Something went wrong here.
Or to rephrase: suppose that a person existed who was not status driven. Would you be able to detect such a person if they existed?
Change your example too John saying he doesn’t have experience the emotion of fear. He has never experienced such an emotion in his life.
The thing many people do not understand is how ingrained status seeking is in not just human biology… but biology altogether. Even the lobster has serotonin and is status seeking. It is also in built into our society. Practically every facet of every culture across time has status seeking imprinted into it. Among academia and people who study the biology and behavior it’s unequivocal that people are status seeking.
Basically to help you understand where I’m coming from it’s like this guy is claiming he’s never felt jealous before. “I’ve never cared that someone has more than me or covetted what another man has. It’s just illogical! I’m baffled that other humans act so illogically”.
It’s like that. It’s fake and it’s posing a bit. A lot of HNers like to position themselves as super intelligent people who are incapable of being status seeking or jealous or even feeling scared because it’s “illogical”
With Inform7 targeting the ZMachine VM you can literally say that =).
Inform6 it's a 'small' OOP language where with the English library the syntax it's dumber than VB6, Lua or anything else. Basically the objects and logic describe themselves as a dumbed down config file. You create a meta-object for rooms and light, and then copy and paste to create rooms, containers and tools based on atributes (again as if it were a simple config file).
Lib should be the English library, you can get it with
git submodule update --init --recursive
or copy informlib to lib/
To play the game:
frotz cloak-of-darkness.z5
Or LectRote under Mac... or WinFrotz under Windows, it will work the
same.
With Inform7 you just write clauses in English, the interpreter will write IF6 code for you and then call the inform6 compiler to create a Z5-8 game ready to run.
As you can see, no AI needed, no LLM's, no huge GB sized software,
just a Pentium MMX could be enough for i7, a 8-16 bit machine for Puny Inform games (kinda like Inform6 'lite'), a 16 bit machine for z3-z5 games and maybe a 'high end' 16 bit computer for Z8 games. A 386 PC would be enough to run 'complex' text adventures. And consistent enough unlike LLM's where the objects' enviroment is lost everytime.
Irony is lost on this guy ... :D
Edited to add: I comment on the guy you commented on, not you. Just in case. I did not want to reply to them to not give offense.
I have an almost identical story. I wrote a few games: snake and a choose your own adventure fantasy thing. And likely others that I can't remember, but yeah, I had a teacher tell me basically the same thing. I was pretty sad because those really took a lot of time.
In high school our computer class was in BASIC. They taught us to swap two variables A & B like this:
h = a
a = b
b = h
But I knew the BASIC we used had the SWAP command. On an exam, I used SWAP A,B instead of the above. I got the lowest passing score, a 70%, and the teacher wrote, "Do it our way please". No thanks Mrs. Mott, I'll take the 70.
Those folks can FRO. The teacher my wife would have had for a Pascal class in high school refused to let her apply, saying it was not for girls. Her father said, you can take it at community college.
I do not learn from textbooks at all. I learn from playing. I played with all my toys "wrong" when I was a kid, or so I was always told. I always turned to the last chapter of a math book to see what I'm going to learn or to see if I could figure it out from what I already knew (what I would now call "first principles"). I took appliances apart and tried to put them back together. If I failed to do so my dad would help me put them back together, as long as I didn't tell my mom he was encouraging that behavior :) I watched my older sister play piano and learned the songs she was playing by ear, then asked her to teach me to read music.
This behavior often came out as rebellious or prodigy behavior in grade school but I don't think it's any of that. I think it was just a matter of giving a curious kid space to play and learn and grow. kids like me often don't thrive in rigid environments not because we don't like rules or think they shouldn't apply to us but because our brains just don't work completely linearly.
I'd wager that most kids actually learn better like this but it's not super efficient to cater to 30 different curious kids wanting to learn 30 different things.
How long were you locked up in the clink for? Did you get any access to computers there? How did your time there affect you or change how you think? Thanks for sharing
I served 60 months of the 70 month sentence. I had a computer restriction, so I couldn't be around a computer.
Since I wasn't able to use computers or the Internet for that time, I did/read/learned a lot of things I wouldn't have otherwise learned. Learned how to make hooch (prison wine), how the law works and how to maneuver the court system (useful for both civil and criminal cases), got more fluent in French by speaking with some native French speakers from Benin, learned how to work out & lift weights (which I still do), and learned the value of freedom.
Thanks for the reply, I see you are quite the legend and am all caught up now.
Are you still coding these days? Does AI instill any new sense of awe and wonder or a new found passion for coding/computers? Hope you are in a better place now. Cheers.
I'm not sure how much he actually used it after I wrote it for him, to be honest! But we did have access to daily newspapers, and some of us got weekly stock charts called "Daily Charts" by Investor's Business Daily (all paper, of course). Some of us were into trading stocks (this was during the Internet boom 1995-2000). Another weird skill I learned that is still useful to this day.
In high school my stats teacher told us we had to get a proper calculator. She didn’t set any upper limit so i went down the calculators rabbit hole… and got an used ti-86 from 1999 off ebay for 35 euros (this was in 2007 or so).
I programmed software to solve exercises in ti-basic and spent every lesson doing essentially software testing: basically whenever a classmate was called to the blackboard to solve an exercise I’d input the exercise data and verified I got the right results.
I got 9.5 out of 10 to the immediate next test. The teacher took off half a point because i miscopied a number (0.3 rather than 0.03, i still remember that after almost 20 years). It would have otherwise been a perfect test.
Fun times.
I still have that calculator, i turn it on every now and then.
I remember naming that calculator “Annarita”, like a girl I used to like and that (of course, lol) barely knew I existed at all.
My TI-85 story involves the fact that it only had 2D plotting (though I think newer models such as the TI-89 had 3D).
I had a 3D calculus class so I wrote a program in it to plot a 3D isometric mesh of a surface using the 2D rendering library. It was slow but got the job done. I used it to help pass a test or two.
I also experimented with drawing random surfaces and objects like a tire. They looked pretty cool for a calculator screen.
The math lab at the college had a cable which you could use to take data off or put it on so you could in theory have exchanged programs with others but this was before the internet so I didn't.
I still have mine and enjoy the sliding the cover off - a trip down memory lane.
Later I rewrote the program in QBasic on a PC for fun and it was lightning fast!
They did! The TI-89 is how I aced the AP Math exam.
The TI-92 had recently come out, and it had a QWERTY keyboard and could solve symbolic calculus problems like "find the derivative of 2x^3". This was a problem for the AP exam, since you could just type in the problem and get the answer. They fixed this by banning calculators with QWERTY keyboards. That's just about exactly when the TI-89 came out, which also did symbolic calculus but did not have a QWERTY keyboard, and so it was totally allowed on the exam. Boom, 5/5 exam score for Jorji.
I had a similar story -- just absolutely acing math with my TI-89 until one teacher finally learned that this TI-83-looking calculator could do symbolic stuff ... just an absolute nightmare after that
Spent some time on ticalc.org too, making some not-great stuff to get me thru those years
I was told that one of the designers graduated high-school in '81 and college in '85, so the HS calculator was an 81 and the college calculator was an 85.
They had different models with different capabilities. As they made minor style changes, they bumped the numbers slightly. The 81–82–83–84 were basically the same concept, as were the 85–86. The 89 and 92 were higher-end models. The 80 and 73 are simpler models intended for middle school.
All of them are basically a multi-generational scam perpetrated against the hapless parents of American high school students who were told that they needed to buy overpriced anachronistic calculators for their kids to succeed in school. In my opinion the calculators have overall caused more pedagogical harm than benefit; the students would be better served by some combination of (a) problems that can be solved without the tedious but trivial numerical calculations these calculators support, or (b) are solved using a real programming language. If someone really wants to assign simple numerical problems, give the kids slide rules.
Calculators of this type used to make sense for an engineer doing work in the field somewhere, but make no sense in the context of a classroom.
Huh. I have only good memories of this calculator. Would buy for my kids in a heartbeat. The fact that it barely changed is a feature to me. I know exactly what they’d be getting.
The scam doesn’t just work in the US. In The Netherlands most secondary school students had, and I think still have, to buy these. I imagine in other countries too.
There is an interesting side effect from having always used TI calculators. They use a dot as the decimal separator, not a comma like we do here.
There is usually some option to switch, but the hardware button obviously stays the same, so I’ve always been taught to just make that switch in my head, and it has become the natural thing for me to do.
I see 1,000.50 on a screen I write down 1.000,50.
When I use software that uses a comma as the decimal separator, I get annoyed and it takes some mental effort to enter the right values.
… that continues no matter what. I gave my kid my 89 from the late 90s—I was happy to avoid the TI student tax. Then a year or two back, the college board banned the 89 from certain tests/classes and so I had to cough up for an 84. Even if you take care of your stuff, treat it well to pass on to your kids, the Man finds a way to extract their cut.
Plenty of students succeed just fine without owning a graphing calculator (they can spend a few minutes learning the handful of test-relevant features and borrow one for the exam). Thankfully as of this year there is also a Desmos option.
I think you can flash a TI83 Plus ROM to a TI73 by using an exploit? One exploit was that flashing an OS writes all the ROM, then checks the signature afterwards, then erases it if it fails. Pull batteries at the correct time and...
One other factor that others haven't yet covered is that the different lines had different capabilities, e.g. the T-89 had Computer Algebra System symbolic manipulation meaning it could pretty much solve many types of math problems on its own, so it wasn't generally allowed in school. And then the Ti-85/86 was a step down, but had matrix support that the lower models lacked, so it was necessary for some specific types of classes.
My favorite was always the TI-85/86 line. I loved those F1-F5 buttons right beneath the screen, which made the interface overall better to navigate. The first programming I ever did was on one of those (either the 85 or 82, can't exactly remember at this point which I owned first). And, the only thing of note I ever had stolen from me was a TI-82, taken out of my unattended backpack by another student during gym class :( (And I had even carved my name into the back of it with a knife, so it would've been identifiable.)
This. The thread's confusion comes from looking at these as computers: more capabilities are always an improvement.
In common use, they're intended as mathematical learning aids, a function for which very specific sets of functionality (and no more) are required.
F.ex. basic matrix ops but no auto-solvers
Similar to how you wouldn't give a kid learning how to construct an argumentative essay access to a full LLM if the goal is learning how to perform the task.
From a product POV, sure. From an end user’s perspective, I strongly dislike that. There’s no room for growth there. Buy the model that does matrices when you’re taking linear algebra, and you learn that model through and through. Then take an engineering class where you need a solved, and now you have to use a different device that works subtly differently in enough ways that you have to learn all about it.
I just want one device that does everything so my new learning can build on my old.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere here, I love the TI-85 I used through college. I’m no partisan. However, I think that for anything outside a school context, that means skipping any device marketed as “ok to use on tests” and buying an HP. I scarcely need the cool stuff of the HP50g or DM42n I picked up along the way, but if I ever do, I know it’s already in there and waiting for me to discover it.
They were different lines. The numbers aren't mean to be chronological; similar to how AMD released some 5000 series AM4 Ryzen chips long after they'd moved on to AM5 and 7000/9000 series.
TI83 (1996) was a successor to the TI82 (1993) which was a refresh/update of the TI81 (1990).
TI85 (1992) was the second model they made, originally intended as a higher end version of the TI81.
Similar reasoning for the rest of their line up. Different models had different features, and then those models would get incremental updates/refreshes over the years.
I wasn't part of the team or anything, so if anyone has any insight to why exactly they called it that in the first place, I'd be interested to know, but generally speaking the answer is: When they released the first one in 1990, they didn't name it under the presumption that this family of devices would be a staple educational/academic electronics device for the next 3 decades with dozen(s?) of different iterations/generations over the years.
A lot of it had to do with capability. The TI 92 was considerably more capable than the 83. The 89 had better software than the 92 but with a smaller form factor. The 92+ was the 92 with the 89 software.
i created a program to make it appear like i wiped my formulas before before a calc 2 final in high school so that when the teacher witnessed us wipe the phones it seemed legit.
In HS, teachers hadn't even caught on to that possibility yet.
I programmed quite a cheat sheet worth of formulae etc into my calc. Right before the test, I dropped it onto the floor. The battery cover popped off and the AA batteries popped out.
These were TI-81s (IIRC) so no battery backup -- it was a full memory wipe every time you changed batteries. Sooooooooooooo... goodbye cheat sheet!
However, I aced that test anyway, legitimately. Creating the cheat sheet actually helped me to learn the material. There's a lesson or two in there somewhere...
Then I learned that the US Bureau of Prisons had a rule against any calculator (or device) that was "programmable". So I programmed the TI-85 so its startup screen read, "TI-85 NON-PROGRAMMABLE CALCULATOR". Problem solved.