You do have a little fault here, but it’s marginal vs his lifetime choices, and his lack of understanding of his limits. There should be enough room for forgiveness in all of that.
I get it, I got friends and family that have completed suicide and it’s hard to not think about what I could have done differently.
I have gone to the gym multiple times per week for many many years so that I can remain a physically capable parent to my children, and not inflict upon them my premature disablement or death.
They fall into the same fuzzy area as chemical weapons imo. They have a non-standard form factor, sure, but they’re still primarily intended to harm people
The startup was a choice people made. The business plan was a choice. Executing the plan (or failing to execute it) was a choice. Accepting a job at a startup is a choice. Choosing to do an IPO is a choice.
The fact that they came across the start up in the first place had no element of luck?
The fact that they were born with the genetics to be smart enough to contribute to it was fully within their control?
The fact that they weren't killed in a car accident when they were 12 was due to their agency?
Success is mostly attributable to luck, and ignoring that is just an exercise in outsized ego & shows a sense of agency that borders on the absurd.
> Did they "come across" it in their mom's basement?
No, they came across it by being in the right place at the right time, supported by habits and behaviours that were mostly determined by their environment.
> You don't need to be a genius to be successful. Doing drugs and alcohol is also sure to reduce your smarts.
Some people are just not born with the brains to "make it". I know people who will never be able to contribute to a high growth field like ours who are excellent nurses, childcare workers and teachers. This, yet again, isn't decided by agency but by circumstance.
> You can blame your parents for your life up until 18. After that, it's up to you.
I'll remember that the next time a drunk driver tbones me.
> Baloney. Successful people 1) make their own luck 2) make it easy for luck to find them.
Our attitudes, talents and disposition are a sum of the actions we have taken, and experiences that have influenced us. Those actions are informed by our previous attitudes, talents and disposition. The experiences aren't in our control completely either. It's a feedback loop that we have minimal control over.
You can't honestly tell me that you'd come to the exact same conclusion that you are now if you hadn't had gone through what made you you. Just as I couldn't claim to come to my conclusion if I didn't have my experiences.
You're obviously successful mate. Just remember that even if some people can make it to your position, that doesn't mean everyone will. Most people do the best they can given the hand they're dealt, and that's okay. Enjoy your full house.
> You can't honestly tell me that you'd come to the exact same conclusion that you are now if you hadn't had gone through what made you you.
Yeah, I can. There is nothing particularly special about me or my background (lower middle class). I know lots of people with the same attitudes I have - all have survived failure and went on to success.
> I'll remember that the next time a drunk driver tbones me.
My dad told me he was once driving on a 2 lane country road, when a drunk passed him at high speed in a corvette. There was a stop light up ahead, and the drunk stopped at the light. My dad cautiously stopped about a quarter mile behind him. Good thing he did, because the drunk took off at full throttle in reverse.
More generally, there is a technique called "defensive driving", which is not merely following the traffic laws, but keeping an eye out for threats. I don't drive drunk, I don't get in a car with drunk drivers, I watch for erratic drivers and stay well clear, I wear my seat belt tight at all times (that one saved my life), and when I brake I check my rear view mirror, and have pulled off on the shoulder as the driver behind me hit the guy in front of me. I look both ways when crossing an intersection, even when I've got the green. I stay off the road on New Years Eve, and am generally on extra alert on the road after the bars close.
> It's a feedback loop that we have minimal control over.
You can change your thoughts and attitudes. They are under your control.
People aren't doing the best they can if they believe their lives are victims of chance rather than consequences of their choices.
I bet if I knew the details of your life, I could point out the choices you made that decided things for you.
> I know lots of people with the same attitudes I have - all have survived failure and went on to success.
Yes, however those attitudes aren't derived from the ether are they? They'd be informed by circumstance and background. You can "choose" to take an attitude towards something much like a rock "chooses" to fall when dropped. If your prior beliefs and experiences would have led you down the same rationalisation for that choice every time, is it actually a choice?
> re: defensive driving
Defensive driving covers both how to avoid bad situations and how to recover from them IIRC. The implication there being that defensive driving is risk mitigation, not elimination. You're still relying on factors outside of your control to keep yourself safe.
> You can change your thoughts and attitudes. They are under your control.
idk man, hormones are a bitch and genetics predisposing people to addiction and suicide say otherwise. You do the best you can, but looking at every situation and stating that everything is a consequence of choice is assuming that some people's faculties aren't compromised from the start. Things like CBT can help, but not everyone is self aware enough to understand that cognitive distortions exist let alone treat them.
> People aren't doing the best they can if they believe their lives are victims of chance rather than consequences of their choices.
I'm sure you would find dozens of people per successful person with the same mindset as you described, purely due to a knowledge or talent gap. They'd see the same choice, make the wrong one where we'd make the right one and then suffer for it. Feedback loop, little control.
> I bet if I knew the details of your life, I could point out the choices you made that decided things for you.
So could I, but only because I made the bad choices based on the available information and influences in the first place. It's a feedback loop.
I mean, I eat dinner every night now so it's not like I'm not successful.
> however those attitudes aren't derived from the ether are they?
People choose their attitudes. I changed several of mine that were unhelpful.
> hormones are a bitch and genetics predisposing people to addiction and suicide say otherwise
I never said making choices was easy.
> I made the bad choices based on the available information and influences in the first place
It's always someone else's fault? The Marines have no tolerance for excuses. One takes responsibility. I'm not a Marine, but I admire them. I've had the privilege of working with some, and enjoyed their "no excuses" attitude and behavior. I'm not surprised the Marines are winners.
> it's not like I'm not successful
You also get to choose what success means for you.
> People choose their attitudes. I changed several of mine that were unhelpful.
The literal idea that people can change is one you have to learn on either reflection or outside influence. You do realise that, right? If that idea isn't in your vocabulary, it just isn't an option.
>> hormones are a bitch and genetics predisposing people to addiction and suicide say otherwise
> I never said making choices was easy.
When in that position, the most "logical" choice is usually a hit or a noose. It feels like you ignored the point about reasoning capacity being compromised in the first place due to whatever reason. Alternatively - I met a street preacher who was convinced god wanted him to do things he didn't want to (homelessness, etc..). Did he meaningfully have a choice, or does this fall under the "no excuses" doctrine too?
>> I made the bad choices based on the available information and influences in the first place
> It's always someone else's fault?
I'm not asserting fault here. I'm just talking about state diagrams.
Are you implying that people can make choices without knowing they exist? You only learn about possibilities and consequences from either external influence or experience. The mere idea of "no excuses" expects people to grow from their _previous experience_. You know, taking feedback from previous experience and having it inform future ones. Coming to reasonable conclusions based on that experience. It's a feedback loop.
> You also get to choose what success means for you.
I mean, besides my issue with the whole choose thing yeah, expectations for success moderate what you consider successful.
I think there's a lot to be said about the restrictions you put on a system when it comes to design.
I like Outer Wilds! It's fun, I'm currently playing through it. However, Celeste is the more mechanically interesting game when you combine the intentionally limited movement and the forgiving nature of its levels. My 9yo is currently trying to work her way through it, yet gives up on harder Mario levels. Celeste made hard, 2D platforming accessible.
Sometimes a simple "pattern interrupt" can break the cycle. If you've a habit of opening the page whenever you hop on your phone, that extra effort may be enough to push back against the potential incentive
Anecdotally, a lot of digital addictions come down to ease of access vs dopamine hit. As soon as your access method is "futz with a hosts file" or "ask your wife to unlock the blocker" (I was pretty bad), it becomes easier to break the cycle.
More people need to utilise their tendency toward lazyness, I swear
I don't think it's corruption so much as the public sector getting harvested for parts via privatisation and outsourcing to contractors.
The usual cycle goes like this:
- "We need to decrease costs in public organisation A because $reason"
- "Hey look, public org has growing wait times and growing infrastructure issues. We should reduce their budget because they're not doing their job!"
Rinse & repeat until you're left with Centrelink's current state. They don't have enough money to make the changes needed to clean up legacy systems AND process the work loads they have now AND maintain the current systems, so a choice is made by people in a sinking ship. Around 2014 the amount spent on "admin" was gutted by half with the election of the Liberal party (small govt party in AU), with funding only recovering to the previous levels during 2017.
edit: formatting (bullet point lists and newlines are hard)
I don't believe this was the problem in this case. As mentioned, they were blowing $billions on individual IT projects, and hiring vendor specialist consultants at $4-$5K per day in many cases. Similarly, their kit was over-specced to a ludicrous degree.
I asked their DBA team to deploy a ~100 MB "system configuration" database and they gave me four dedicated(!) physical quad-socket servers in a 2+2 HA configuration. The active server showed 1% load, the three replica servers rounded the load down to 0% in Task Manager.
All that for that one tiny database!
Their excuse was that this was their "standard pattern", and that everyone gets the same spec, irrespective of need.
In any private org, you would be walked out the door if you spent nearly half a million dollars on kit+licensing for something like that because you were too lazy to have more than one option for database hosting.
PS: There was a huge database team. You can't tell me it was a staff capacity issue either. This particular product had it's own sub-team dedicated to it.
I'm wondering if the consulting company I used to work for is behind this. Hardware sales were behind many decisions, because that's where the sales team made commissions.
> Around 2014 the amount spent on "admin" was gutted by half with the election of the Liberal party (small govt party in AU)
Inaccurate if not misleading. The Liberal party are firm believers that private companies do everything better than Government. Pretty much the UK conservative party in function and form
Yeah, the pattern has been a massive increase in spend in consultancies (especially the big 4) for things that the public service used to do itself. I believe it's over a billion dollars per year to the big 4 now, from tens of millions p/a back then.
I get it, I got friends and family that have completed suicide and it’s hard to not think about what I could have done differently.