Overton's Baseball

Original: craschworks - comments

Via kalzumeus

For three years now I’ve been running a small software business in my spare time. It has been a very educational experience, especially in showing me that many things we think we know about software, programming, business, and the like are wrong. This is a bit of a shock, especially for well-worn chestnuts which have intuitive appeal, which we have come to invest with moral significance, and (most importantly, because we all think we’re smart) we’ve believe so self-evidently true as to make investigation a waste of time.

For example: I have come to the conclusion, over the last three years, that working hard is overrated. This is an idea I have been kicking around for a while, but it was thrown into sharp relief by a blog post entitled The Only Alternative Is To Work Harder, by a gentleman named Paras Chapra over at Wingify. Paras and I have corresponded over email a few times, so I say as one analytics junkie to another: the notion that working longer hours is correlated to better business results is a pernicious social pathology.

Yes, according to this article:

The MOST effective way to get a woman into bed is by running yourself down, say scientists
…
His wry, self- deprecating humour is as important as his floppy hair and English charm at ensuring he always wins the heart of his leading lady.

Now scientists have discovered the technique used by Hugh Grant’s film characters can bring the same romantic success offscreen.

Taking the mickey out of yourself works far better than clever jokes, which might be seen as boastful and put women off.

The findings were outlined by anthropologist Gil Greengross, who conducted a two-year study into the role of humour in seduction.

Sweet! Hey ladies! I’m poor! And I have a pot belly.

The report, ‘Dissing Oneself: The Sexual Attractiveness of Self-Dep-Humour’, which will be published next month in the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, also warns that the technique should not be attempted by those who are already unpopular.

It could make ‘low-status individuals’ appear ‘more pathetic’ than they did before.

Aw, crap….

Original: craschworks - comments

Patri recently posted a series of trollish posts, in which he expressed his desire to see people he liked have babies.

I too share Patri’s desire to see more friends reproduce. It makes me sad that the particular combination of genes and nurture that make up some of my favorite people will disappear when they die. I like and admire my friends, and I’d like to see more people like them in the world. Many traits have a strong genetic influence, so if they reproduce, there’s a high likelihood that the traits I like will be passed onto their children. And I think most of my friends would be good parents, and will provide their kids with a rich, supportive environment. So regardless of whether good genes or a good environment has the biggest influence on child development, their kids would enjoy both.

And I think that having kids will make most of them happier than they would’ve been otherwise. In 1976, Newsday asked a random sample of people, “If you had to do it over again, would you or would you not have children?” According to the survey, 5% of men and 9% of women (13% of those 65+) who did have kids regretted it. A 2003 Gallup poll found that two-thirds of those over 40 who didn’t have kids regretted it.

So I think having kids will not only make me happier, I think that most of them will be happier too.

On the other hand, unlike Patri, I don’t find it very difficult to imagine reasons for not parenting other than: a) self-loathing, b) hedonistic irresponsibility.

Kids are costly in terms of time and money. Moreover, they completely depend on you for food and shelter for 18 years (and often financially for several years after that). If you have a mission that doesn’t pay particularly well (such as say, sculpture), then you may not be willing to have a child, and risk not being able to provide. Sleeping in your car while you build your clientele may work for an artist–it’s not fair to subject such hardship to a child.

Many people had terrible parents as children. For example, a friend of mine didn’t think that she would survive childhood. Her biological father left the family and provided little support. Her biological mother was a drug and alcohol abuser. For the most part, she was raised by her grandparents, who were also alcoholics. She remembers wild, drunken rides in the back of her grandparents car, and fear that she wouldn’t make it home alive.

My friend is smart, funny, beautiful, and compassionate. Miraculously, she survived to adulthood without exhibiting many of the maladaptive traits of her parents. However, she doesn’t want to have children, preferring instead to devote her time to her work as a counselor. I don’t know if she fears that her kids would inherit the bad traits of her parents (as her sister and brother have), but it doesn’t seem irrational to me if she simply wants to avoid the risk. (Though I would still encourage her to have children.)

But let’s assume that someone simply doesn’t want to have kids because it would cramp their nightlife. The word “responsible” implies someone to whom one is responsible. But when it comes to how one spends one’s life, to whom are you responsible, other than yourself and the people with whom you voluntarily enter agreements?

And as for being hedonistic, what’s wrong with that? It seems to me a reasonable goal to extract as much pleasure out of life as possible. Now, I happen to think most people will find greater satisfaction in pursing a long term project, such as raising a child, than they will pursuing short term pleasures such as drinking and carousing. But that’s a difference of means, not ends–the end is still maximizing area under the lifetime hedonistic curve.

So, my thanks to those of you who’ve had kids. I think you’re making the world a better place. And to those who don’t plan to have kids, I hope you change your mind someday. :)

(And, for the record, I don’t have kids now, but plan to have them.)

Original: craschworks - comments

Via carrie.

Original: craschworks - comments

The Single Secret to Making 2009 Your Best Year Ever

…if you are only happy once you reach a goal, what about all the time you spend getting to the goal? That’s much more of your life than actually being at the goal. If you’re only happy when you’re at the destination, you’ll be unhappy most of the time.

What’s more, if you are stuck in that mindset, when you reach your destination, you won’t actually be happy — you’ll be looking toward your next destination.

Instead, remember: Stop waiting for happiness. Happiness is right here, right now.

How do you enjoy the journey? By appreciating life in its fullness, its wonderfulness. By not looking so much toward the future, but focusing on the present moment, right here, right now. By looking around you, and realizing that everything you need for happiness is already here!

Original: craschworks - comments

Wise words from boffo:

If you choose friends and/or lovers who are constantly spewing drama, pain, negativity, and sadness, then your life will be filled with drama, pain, negativity, and sadness. But if you avoid those people and instead choose friends/lovers who generate joy, fun, and affection, your life will be filled with joy, fun, and affection. That’s way better.

It’s also a good idea to think about which category *you* fall into. If you’re constantly spewing drama, pain, negativity, and sadness, not only will you be compounding the drama, pain, negativity, and sadness in your life yourself, but you’ll also miss out on some wonderful friendships because the best people won’t be willing to hang out with someone like you.

I would add indifference to the list of things to avoid. I don’t think I have any friends who consistently bring negative emotion into my life. But in the past, I’ve sometimes pursued relationships too long, when it was clear that the person I liked didn’t feel the same way about me. The person did nothing bad, they just didn’t reciprocate. And sometimes I’ve neglected those who have been enthusiastic cheerleaders for me. It would be better to redirect my energies to nurturing my already healthy friendships, and to let the sickly ones quietly fade away.

To those to whom I have been a source of pain or negativity, my apologies. And to those I’ve neglected, I’ll try to be a better friend.

And to those who have been good friends to me: my thanks.

Original: craschworks - comments

Seven Steps for Overcoming Ego’s Hold on You

Extract from There is a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem

Dr. Wayne Dyer

Here are seven suggestions to help you transcend ingrained ideas of self-importance. All of these are designed to help prevent you from falsely identifying with the self-important ego.

1. Stop being offended.

The behavior of others isn’t a reason to be immobilized. That which offends you only weakens you. If you’re looking for occasions to be offended, you’ll find them at every turn. This is your ego at work convincing you that the world shouldn’t be the way it is. But you can become an appreciator of life and match up with the universal Spirit of Creation. You can’t reach the power of intention by being offended. By all means, act to eradicate the horrors of the world, which emanate from massive ego identification, but stay in peace. As A Course in Miracles reminds us: Peace is of God, you who are part of God are not at home except in his peace. Being is of God, you who are part of God are not at home except in his peace. Being offended creates the same destructive energy that offended you in the first place and leads to attack, counterattack, and war.

Original: craschworks - comments

The Grandmaster Experiment by Carlin Flora

Judit, Susan and Sophia grew up in a veritable chess cocoon spun by their father, Laszlo, the intellectual equivalent of Serena and Venus Williams’ autocratic tennis dad, Richard. Some people consider Laszlo’s role in shaping his daughters’ careers to be absolute; others call it a happy coincidence. Raw talent and a childhood with all the advantages account for success in many fields, and chess is no exception. But the paths Susan, Judit and Sophia took as adults illuminate many intangibles in the achievement equation. An aggressive streak, birth order, a chance encounter that leads to a marriage on the other side of the world—these factors and changes of fortune are just as critical in determining whether a person rises to the top of his or her game.

Forty years ago, Laszlo Polgar, a Hungarian psychologist, conducted an epistolary courtship with a Ukrainian foreign language teacher named Klara. His letters to her weren’t filled with reflections on her cherubic beauty or vows of eternal love. Instead, they detailed a pedagogical experiment he was bent on carrying out with his future progeny. After studying the biographies of hundreds of great intellectuals, he had identified a common theme—early and intensive specialization in a particular subject. Laszlo thought the public school system could be relied upon to produce mediocre minds. In contrast, he believed he could turn any healthy child into a prodigy. He had already published a book on the subject, Bring Up Genius!, and he needed a wife willing to jump on board.

Laszlo’s grandiose plan impressed Klara, and the two were soon married. In 1973, when she was barely 4 years old, Susan, their rather hyperactive firstborn, found a chess set while rummaging through a cabinet. Klara, who didn’t know a single rule of the ancient game, was delighted to find Susan quietly absorbed in the strange figurines and promised that Laszlo would teach her the game that evening.

Chess, the Polgars decided, was the perfect activity for their protogenius: It was an art, a science, and like competitive athletics, yielded objective results that could be measured over time. Never mind that less than 1 percent of top chess players were women. If innate talent was irrelevant to Laszlo’s theory, so, then, was a child’s gender. “My father is a visionary,” Susan says. “He always thinks big, and he thinks people can do a lot more than they actually do.”

Original: craschworks - comments

A Minute a Day Makes Good Feelings Grow

Fine, I thought. I’ve used one-minute timings with children for reading and math for nine years now. If it works for them, I’m willing to try anything no matter how crazy it sounds. I’ve been to the Lands of Crazy and Depression and, while it’s fuel for writing, I didn’t like it in either place. What’s the worst that could happen? It wouldn’t work. But it was worth a try for two weeks. Each morning for the next two weeks I wrote for one minute as many self-positives as I could, anything I could think, remember, had been previously told, whether or not I felt it during that minute.

Bingo! For the next two weeks, my good feelings ranged from seven a day to forty and the bad feelings dropped from a high of seven on the first day to a low of zero – staying between zero and two. The negative thoughts went from 75 the first day to three! Happy birthday, Robert! I shall stop looking for reasons to argue, stop trying to sabotage my marriage.

Original: craschworks - comments

The Checklist by Atul Gawande.

“…In December, 2006, the Keystone Initiative published its findings in a landmark article in The New England Journal of Medicine. Within the first three months of the project, the infection rate in Michigan’s I.C.U.s decreased by sixty-six per cent. The typical I.C.U.—including the ones at Sinai-Grace Hospital—cut its quarterly infection rate to zero. Michigan’s infection rates fell so low that its average I.C.U. outperformed ninety per cent of I.C.U.s nationwide. In the Keystone Initiative’s first eighteen months, the hospitals saved an estimated hundred and seventy-five million dollars in costs and more than fifteen hundred lives. The successes have been sustained for almost four years—all because of a stupid little checklist…” (emphasis added)

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