This is a really good book which documents the development process of Encarta. Its a fantastic story. I found it so engrossing it inspired me to become a developer. Its also a fascinating snapshot of a very interesting time in Seattle's history, at the intersection of grunge and the nascent tech boom.
A person who follows a path laid out for them by others from the age of four without veering will encounter challenges later in life involving self-direction and identity. 'Set for life' is a dangerous delusion.
Unfortunately, if you get there, there's not enough therapy in the world that will help. You can never pay someone to teach you to love yourself, or to decide for you who exactly you are, or decide for you what you want. You have to claim it for yourself, and if you walk the path laid out for you by others you will not have the tools to do this. After pair bonding with the mother, the foundation is laid as a toddler, parents praising effort, not outcome, and teaching kids to learn and explore and create for the sake of their own curiosity, not tying that process to external judgements and motivators and robbing them of their agency. The goal of parenting should be to teach self reliance. Parents and our current scholastic environment are raising children that are so tightly coupled to the system that they are extremely brittle in the face of adversity, they fall apart. Their reference points are external. They have no compass. You might 'make it' by society's standards with no internal compass, but this 'making it' is incredibly deceptive. You've acquired a debt working against self realization and direction that is incredibly difficult, sometimes impossible, to pay. Countless broken homes and shattered lives result from the inevitable reckoning. Everyone will become accountable to the amount of responsibility they've taken for their life at some point, and it can be equally liberating and devastating.
I think you're vastly overstating the difference between the psychological stresses put upon affluent children versus those in middle class or poverty.
Everybody has to deal with living up to their parents' hopes and dreams, and we all manage somehow. Certainly there's plenty of room for improvement on all sides, but if you're looking for a special sympathy for the upper class, you'll not get it from me.
Thats the honest truth. Its hard when success at conservation and sustainability is directly at odds with nearly every other metric of success we as a species hold dear. Not to say we shouldn't try to make changes, and there's always hope. But its a bit like trying to stop a speeding train while being inside the train and leaning really hard against the wall.
Wow I haven't seen that character record sheet in 30 years. So mewhere I have a 10th level elf fighter with 18's for every trait (17 for charisma just to break it up.)
Translation for non-D&Ders - I was so nerdy I made my own characters for my own games I was DM for with completely invented characteristics rather than rolling dice for traits like the rules say
To me your talk was very authentic. I felt like I was having a beer with you and you were just laying out in an hour how you see things. It was super impactful and totally changed the way I think about a number of things. A big part of that was from realizing how deeply you've internalized and proven these concepts and strategies, and that came across through the delivery. It felt like an interaction, and an interaction can't be reduced to quotes or soundbytes.
The second row of cannons was added at the insistence of the king, the shipbuilder knew it would doom the ship. Also, I've yet to meet anyone who thought the Vasa sank because "Swedes were stupid."
Downvotes are probably there due to sarcasm and because you assert that it is all learning and discount mental illness in 2nd to last paragraph.
But I agree with your argument.
In my opinion the current strong social pressure to be a "founder" has led many people to attempt it who are unfit to handle the challenges it brings.
Its the way of nature. Attempting to lead and failing is painful and possibly fatal. If you're a lion you don't start a convention celebrating your and other beta lion's failure to unseat the alpha. You either get busy plotting your attempt, or ctfo.
What is anyone railing against anyway? Founders risk depression. Alpha chimps test extremely high for stress. If you play the game for the biggest rewards it will be brutal, full stop. If your potential upside is 50 zillion dollars, you have just run out of sympathy points with everyone but your own kind.
I certainly wasn't intending to trivialize the suffering that some founders go through as a result of their experiences.
The point I was trying to make is what's touted as "mental illness" may be better looked at as a normal human response to the highly unusual, and extremely stressful circumstances these people have chosen to place themselves in.
That is to say: to the extent that we might subscribe to the concept of a "pain signal", and that depression and anxiety are among the various kinds of pain signals our body creates for us -- the "signal" in this case is not that they're "broken", or that something is systemically or constitutionally wrong with them. But rather, an indication of the fact that they've embarked on a course that perhaps they shouldn't have, and threatening to become (or perhaps already has become) unmanageable for them.
Aside from sarcasm, which invites opposition, I think you've touched on a taboo subject. I think what you say is true. At the same time I'd wager that a disproportionate number of founders have bipolar 2 tendencies, which will provide fuel and context to depressive episodes. If both are true, it becomes very tricky to determine cause. It becomes easier to focus on those potential causes which are outside our control, that depression is something that happens "to" us. Of course this is often the case where there is a medical issue, but as you point out, it is also often a result of circumstances and our reaction to them. Or even more confusingly of course, both.
Getting back to the original comment and how it was received, at the beginning of your comment you make a claim that is going to be controversial. From that point on, any introduction of sarcasm will push anyone not allied with your view towards open hostility.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0788157930/ref=dbs_a_def_r...