As person with a similarly vicious voice, part of the answer lies in cognitive behavioral therapy techniques - information is the enemy of hyper-criticism (usually, anyway).
The voice of your own critical judgment can be vicious, but if you're on board with that you're not, nor are you somehow supposed to be, some kind of rational Messiah with all the perfections and answers, but rather regular person doing their best, subject to the usual problems and issues that beset humans all the time, it's much easier to remind the voice, almost as if going one voice deeper - giving the hyper critical voice it's OWN voice - that it's being harsh to a standard that virtually no one has ever or will ever meet, that there are reason you or other did things the way they did (even if those reasons include "we didn't have time to research any other way, and the resources that would've made it possible or trivial like it feels now came about after we finished this.").
Anyway - basic idea here is to give you voice a voice and whip back around and overflow into the regular critical space where criticism can be healthy instead of incessant and damaging. I hope it works for you! It works fairly well for me, but I'll admit freely that sometimes I do feel like such a massive twat that BOTH voice roll their eyes at me. XD
I love a good name, one that is spelled such that many/most native speakers of the language will pronounce it approximately correctly when they see it, and isn’t too difficult to spell, but also lets a person feel a baseline differentiation - to not be drone#6472567.
I am <banal name>#4235862, and I DO find that annoying. Often cannot even differentiate me from the many holders of my name by adding my last initial, or even my entire last name.
I have a depressingly banal name and have experienced pretty serious annoyance about it. I wouldn’t say depression, but when society already makes me feel like a faceless drone, being <banal name>#476 exacerbates the problem substantially.
Sometimes mental illness turns a person into the moral equivalent of a natural disaster. We don’t exactly blame natural disasters for arriving. They didn’t intend malice towards us. But we don’t therefore let them destroy our homes or kill us because there was no malicious intent behind the disaster. We batten down the hatches, make our homes storm and earthquake proof, we douse fires in water and build protective cellars.
Sometimes when mental illness turns a person into a malicious abuser, we have to protect ourselves regardless of whether we blame them fully for their actions or not. Nature turns the person into a disaster (sometimes, it’s not like EVERY case is like this), and when it does that, we’re justified in doing want it takes protect ourselves, to keep from being abused or harmed - not blaming them doesn’t mean we have to go out and stand in the storm, so to speak.
The issue is that an extremely sensitive negotiation (interviewing and hiring process) is utterly disrupted by their presence, so nobody is in a good position to legally challenge them. If almost ANY non compete is in place, the potential employer is highly likely to make the decision not to bother with the candidate. Proving that it was because of the noncompete is difficult (making it difficult to prove real damages).
They would almost certainly fall apart in court, but the systems they disrupt don’t survive long enough to move them into court.
There isn’t some function we can feed a different argument here to value agreeableness more highly though. I generally agree, but that more collaboration would be good isn’t so much the question - the question is HOW these tweaks can be done.
Man, so many memories. I was involved in a MUD called Dragonstone and had so much freaking fun, when I first entered college I had to stop cold turkey because every time I tried to announce that I had to quit to get my homework done, saying goodbye to treasured online associates made me so sad I couldn't follow through on leaving.
I also started one of my own, which gave me my first brush with people doxxing me (not as serious back then - I was more worried that one of them would figure out how to hack my computer - I was not a terribly sophisticated user of the internet back then - probably still am not today. XD)
I learned a bit about algorithms from our head coder, and we put our heads together to make an herbalism system that he should still be quite proud of, I think. Listing each room as a terrain type, a list of herbs that could grow in that terrain, and a random chance that the herbs would grow in any given room.
Man, what a strange time and exciting time that was! :)
On the other hand, I valiantly tried a number of variations of “learn C++ in a weekend” when I was a teenager, and finding most of them too difficult/annoying, presuming prior knowledge I didn’t have, I decided programming just wasn’t for me and focused on my violin playing. Now I’m neck-deep in bioinformatics and machine learning, enjoying more than almost anything else ever.
In other words, I’ll cop to thinking you’re weong about this, and that sometime in the future, you or someone else will return to a thread similar to this one, wishing that someone had flattened out and simplified at least some of the technical aspects of this stuff so that you could move forward without such massive frustration that you would give up even despite substantial (but not invicible) motivation.
Well, banning the practice is the first step towards doing exactly that. The whole world is a lot more understanding of the stance, "Sorry, we cannot go and rescue [person X]," when person X got in trouble because of illegal activity they were performing - and there are few more effective methods of making someone adopt the stance espoused by your proposed note, "I forbid you from rescuing me," than making the practice illegal.
So, essentially, I agree, I just think this is the proper way for Nepal to go about de-prioritizing this particular problem. :)
I'm finishing up at WGU in Software Dev but sure wouldn't mind switching to CS proper - I keep hearing this and "soon," but can't pinpoint the source of the rumors whatsoever - do you know where you heard / got the impression that CS was coming to WGU?
A very simple hypothesis as to why doctors can argue this effectively but teachers cannot is that teachers are not as powerful a lobbying group as doctors.
Doctors have effectively been able to defend their "turf," from hostile encroachment, while teachers have not, not because the situations do not contain substantial parallels, but rather because doctors are politically strong while teachers are politically weak.
There is substantial argument that our focus on standardized testing is literally ruining the advantages traditionally associated with a Western Education.
But then, perhaps I would be a "below-average" teacher, and my opinion might therefore similarly be discarded as worthless. We'll never know for certain, because I don't make a habit of boarding sinking ships - especially when I'm slated to receive blame for their sinking after boarding them. (And I did at one point very much want to enter the field of secondary school education.)
(Slight modification: I won't board a sinking ship and take blame for it's sinking after the fact without some substantial advantage, such as excellent remuneration, being offered as well - teaching offers no such advantage, except perhaps self-actualization, and I can neither eat nor sleep in that.)
Oh... oh my Gosh..... it's full of... he globally declared his LOOP INDEXING VARIABLES?!
I really appreciate him making that available, fantastic little cautionary tale, clearly from an enthusiastic and thoughtful learner of Java - glad he's made good progress since then, though, that's... I mean, dang it is REALLY bad, but it is also amazing as a sort of exercise in him just knowing what he wants to do and finding (bad) ways to make it happen. And that's admirable, even if it is also horrifying to see unfold. :D
But one main alternative to that value neutral statement and one major outcome of truly caring about the context of technology is literally Ludditism- like, if we figure out a way to make unlimited free energy with zero waste, do we REALLY want to restrict that because it'll bankrupt the coal industry? Does it become the inventor's responsibility to care for coal miners displaced by her/his new tech?
I am in the end for your argument - that is, I think you are generally correct that we need to consider the context, but I am at a loss as to how to regular that sentiment, because the 'care about context' sentiment gets to its absurd extremes REALLY FREAKISHLY FAST.
Example: I can say with some ease that Uber has gone rogue and is bad in it's context, but I am not joking or hyperbolizing about the previous suggestion about coal and free energy. What about radical lifespan increase? Rich people will start living 5x as long as poor people, making them functionally different SPECIES from us, especially in the context of humanity currently (they'd be like elves to our low men). Our alternates are reasonably scarce - we can push for regulation, but seeing as the regulators are captured by private interests at present, THAT has AT LEAST as much possibility to run amok and extend beyond those of us who push to begin it as our science/technology does!
So neo-feudal hellscape or no, I assert right back at you: technology and science are value neutral, or even automatically value positive by virtue of increasing knowledge, and this argument is detached from "we need to regulate the stupid crap Uber/whoever else is up to," that you're making. Fighting the argument you want to fight here merely leads into a rat's nest of impossible options. I say stand above that and regulate behavior before regulating technology, and where that is impossible, adapt to new reality and/or revolt, because getting lost in squirrel fantasy rat's nest of regulatory oversight on what technology is even allowed to HAPPEN isn't going to prevent that hellscape - it'll speed our descent into it.
The iPad IS more dangerous than the T.V. BECAUSE it is so much more engaging. Unless you have super-cable-satellite T.V. with more channels than you could possible ever watch - and sometime still even then - TV watching becomes boring, and people are drawn to do other things. iPad often does not do this - which makes is simultaneously less dangerous (because it is more engaging and therefore educational in some sense) and more dangerous (because the impetus to leave and go away can express itself by loading up a different app or even popping onto the app store for a new free one, or by going on the internet or even youtube with their incredible variety).
I still use and iPad with my little boy, but I always try to be using to together - we talk about what he sees and hears, we watch Daniel Tiger and I sing the songs and ask about specific things he sees on the screen, etc. I feel like this is a good compromise, even if it ruins the otherwise potent ability of the iPad to engage him so I can do other things - I'm willing to sacrifice the other things in most cases. :D (I am somewhat horrified at how simple it is for us both to just get absorbed in one thing or another and spend too much time NOT doing all those talking/playing/interacting things with stuff on the iPad, though! So simple, takes effort and energy to refuse to fall into that trap! :) )
This is incredibly beautiful. I don't like to think of things as unbeatable, but I prefer to think of them as quests that the hero can't be expected to complete presently. In video games it's not at all uncommon to encounter obstacles early in the game that require items or abilities from later in the game to overcome - if later in the game is 75 years from now, there's a lot of time you have to play without getting at whatever is behind that special-item-only breakable wall.
One of my semi-secrets is that my family's struggles with Depression led me to study Neuroscience in college after almost completing a degree in German Literature. I am literally the only one of 5 siblings and my mother not to be on depression medication for at least some period of my life - I like to joke that I vampire-drained the happiness out of them and caught ADHD in doing so. I don't share that joke with them. My father is not the sort of person who would admit to depression ever, and I therefore don't know his feelings on the subject.
In other words, I quit my other program to search for the silver bullet. I knew from the start that the silver bullet is as great a fantasy as the werewolf itself, but I mourn so much for those who experience little to no improvement from our current medicines - these are the weapons I would arm people with as they fight their inner demons, no guarantee of success, but no small boon in their battle, either! Yet some people's demons clearly experience as much effect from my offered armaments as they would from a giant tickling feather - and it is to their especial detriment, because others, even doctors, seldom have understanding of their particular demon's resistance to their usual solid steel.
Someday, that holy mystery your dad recited about the brain will be as much as thing of the past as geocentrism, or so I tell myself, and so I hope, but for now, all I can do is keep fighting, I hope you're able to continue your fight with at least moderate success, as well. Of note, in my judgment, which I know is not worth much - what a laugh after all, a stranger's judgment on the internet - it seems to me that despite everything, you are doing a bang up job fighting your battle, and I hope it continues to go so well, with as few lost months and hopeless weeks or years as possible, and also, it seems to me that your Dad must have done a reasonably good job fighting his battles, as well, and I hope I am neither offensive nor cruel in saying so. It's just, it's always so difficult to judge someone, your mention about Bruce's friend who murdered his parents is quite excellent, because that question troubles and comforts many minds: Not only do I wish I were so much more, but what exactly would I be if I were so much less than I am? A murderer or serial killers? A bomber? An abusive spouse and parent? With great faith that we're not living up to our potential, staring down in the opposite direction of our potential can be harrowing but in its way, darkly comforting, even if its a sort of stupid comfort (at least, in my head and heart, I can't really claim it as a resounding accolade that "At least I wasn't a school shooter!" - yet sometimes, I just have to sit back and say it in my mind, and be thankful that I haven't gone to that extreme. It seems to me that your werewolf did a reasonable job of not eating you or your mom, even if he still wounded you with his claws over the course of his life, and I guess I wanted to offer his memory that praise).
Forgive my rambling diatribe, still lots of reflection to do on your piece, I hope you have a wonderful day. :)
"It didn’t cure his depression, any more than you can cure a werewolf by ripping out his fangs."
I don't have the same issues as the author's father, but I've often thought of almost exactly this analogy when treating my own issues. The idea sometimes is to make the condition tolerable, and at least for me, that would be the first order of business upon learning I was a werewolf: to remove my ability to harm others while wolf-ified. This is a tremendous article, I love it and I'm going to save it and maybe read it with my dad - not because my dad is like your dad, OP, but more because a few of your experiences line up really well with a few of ours. I'll read it with my wife too, because the story of how you remember your dad when you were young - I want to be that kind of Dad to my son. So, so, so much. Except without the later issues and whatnot. I do wonder just how possible it is, but I intend to give it a shot! :)
It's altogether possible that you're correct, but I'd say that most of the responsibility lies in this: if you look at pondwater with your naked eye, you can see cloudy pond water. If you look with a carefully made glass bead, you can see bacteria and protists, and thereby make a TREMENDOUS discovery: unicellular organisms. But if you want to get even CLOSER and understand more about what parts make up the organisms and other things at greater magnification levels, you're going to need a bigger, better microscope, and that will cost more money, require more care and understanding to correctly operate, and be able to scan less total area at a time.
In other words, much of the problem we face in the current scientific age is due to the fact that our instruments are now electron microscopes and Hadron Colliders, instead of carefully made glass beads and simple mirrors.
It's similar to problem faced in software of managing increasing complexity. No silver bullets known of yet for all those problems, just chronic application of powerful minds to the problem. :)
The voice of your own critical judgment can be vicious, but if you're on board with that you're not, nor are you somehow supposed to be, some kind of rational Messiah with all the perfections and answers, but rather regular person doing their best, subject to the usual problems and issues that beset humans all the time, it's much easier to remind the voice, almost as if going one voice deeper - giving the hyper critical voice it's OWN voice - that it's being harsh to a standard that virtually no one has ever or will ever meet, that there are reason you or other did things the way they did (even if those reasons include "we didn't have time to research any other way, and the resources that would've made it possible or trivial like it feels now came about after we finished this.").
Anyway - basic idea here is to give you voice a voice and whip back around and overflow into the regular critical space where criticism can be healthy instead of incessant and damaging. I hope it works for you! It works fairly well for me, but I'll admit freely that sometimes I do feel like such a massive twat that BOTH voice roll their eyes at me. XD