Octesian @octesian@refactorcamp.org

I just received a work email that says (paraphrased), “We will be making a system change on Friday. Effective immediately, do things the current way until Friday.”

The part of the selfish gene that stuck with me the most was the chapter(s) on Evolutionarily Stable Strategies. Does a given cooperate/compete strategy lead to a stable population level. (Not necessarily taking over, just winning enough to be stable.) I recently remembered Seth Godin's answer to "How can you tell a shortcut from a hack?" and it made me think, "does it need to be evolutionarily stable to be a proper shortcut?" (shortcut v. hack answer at 19:39 https://www.akimbo.link/blog/s-3-e-14-waiting-for-godiva )

For whatever reason I’m reminded of this joke, “Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French cafe, revising his draft of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, “I’d like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream.” The waitress replies, “I’m sorry, Monsieur, but we’re out of cream. How about with no milk?”

He’s certainly got me in a “god of the gaps” trap but I’m not fully convinced that the last bit of free will isn’t there.

Sam Harris’ waking up app is free until the end of the year. His lesson on (the nonexistence of) free will has a good exercise that give me first hand experience that I don’t have as much free will as I thought. He whittled my concept down to: free will is picking off a menu that we can’t control with strong nudges on what to pick and if we’re not paying attention we follow the nudge by default.

Neat iPhone trick: if you share a webpage while in reader mode to the built-in Mail app it will clip the whole article into the email. I wish it did this when sharing to notes.

Is it considered bad form to boost your own reply so that it appears in your main timeline?

I work at a large organization and if I want my career to go anywhere I need to develop a broader view. Can anyone recommend some software to keep track of what’s going on in other departments? I imagine it would be like a business contact manager except for keeping “in touch” with projects instead of people. If you can even tell me what the name for this is, it would be helpful. (Ideally it would link with a people manager too)

Can one be a cynic on a case by case basis or is it strictly a worldview? If you suspect someone is acting in their own self interest at what level of confidence is it no longer cynical and merely fact.

I wonder if the politicians resigning in protest of partisanship realize the void will get filled with increased partisanship.

We have seven urinals at work and yet everyone seems to start at the second one ruining any possible pattern.

I saw an article today that referred to a hockey stick graph as having the blade on the x-axis and the handle on the y-axis. It my mind it’s always been the reverse. How can I understand anything if we can’t agree on fundamentals?

Similar question, If there’s no free will then what should I do (be compelled to do) about it?

I keep coming across posts, podcasts, etc. discussing if we’re living in a simulation. None of them discuss why this would matter. Assuming I’m in a simulation how should I change my behavior?