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If they can build a peaceful relationship with Taiwan without military involvement where both countries can continue to prosper we really will have a new super power

Ah, if only.

Those damn intransigent Taiwanese!

It’s almost as if they don’t want to join the PRC.

…like most other independent nations.


The last 15 years has significantly changed peoples' opinions on that matter.

I’m gonna need to see some immigration statistics on influx of foreigners into the PRC to believe that claim.


Might have more to do with language than anything else TBH

Ok, but what is China's immigration policy like?

They could be importing young people from nearby India, yet they're not. Why?


I mean, theres still a language barrier there no? I dont know much about their immigration policies though.

A few weeks ago my friend Aadil and I were at Whole Foods buying a birthday cake for a friend. We wanted to write something clever on the cake but couldn’t really think of anything. We stood around thinking for a few minutes before Aadil said "Let's just say a bunch of bad ideas out loud so we can get to the good ones." And it worked!

It's a well known creative / brainstorming trick that the best way to have a lot of good ideas is to have a lot of ideas.

Focus on genesis decoupled from critique, then critique later.


Love the interviews Dwarkesh sponsored with Sarah Paine from the Naval War College.

Also, somewhat spitefully, find it funny that he has multiple roommates.


I'm assuming he's in some sort of high-end communal housing, a trend that began emerging in SF ~15 years back ... ie. where multi-millionaire startup founders and the like choose it on purpose for the synergistic benefits.

Those ones were a bit on the nose, no?

Not sure what you mean, but I’d never heard of Sarah Paine before that. I thought she gave a very concise yet nuanced view of the modern world order in her lectures for Dwarkesh.

How so? I enjoyed them, keeping in mind that the lecturer was a professor at a US naval war college.

Would you like to know MORE?

You are pattern matching to something that doesn't really fit, I think.

it's usually coding something more precise in a sort of plausible deniability.

Yep. I'm a director now. This is exactly how it is. A big part of being effective in this role is understanding how direct you can be in a given scenario.

A senior manager on reviewing a proposal asks them to synergize with existing efforts: Your work is redundant you're wasting your time.

Option 1 is how I'd say it to a peer whose org is duplicating effort. You can give your advice, but at the end of the day: not my circus, not my clowns.

Option 2 is a more-direct way of how I'd say it to someone in my own org. I'd rephrase to: "Someone else is already doing this; focus your efforts on something more impactful."


Mickens is a rare combination of bright, engaging, and absolutely hysterical.

I hope I get to meet him someday.


Same. No idea how that could ever happen but it would make my year. Mickens is a treasure.


They're good advise, but can be hard to execute on for most people.

OP gave the thread a very good and valid suggestion. Treating this as a societal problem - for "society" to solve - is lazy thinking.

If you want something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done.


"you just have to put yourself out there" is lazy thinking, you are ignoring all the underlying psychological and physilogical factors preventing people from doing it.

Making the society more welcoming works. It worked wonders for me. I moved from a country where things like meetup events are not common and groups are less welcoming to strangers. Having moved to UK, meetup events allowed me to go out and socialise because I could sign up without speaking to anyone, and go there and participate in the activity, without the pressure to socialise, it was an optional benefit. These settings allowed me to socialise with strangers that I could never do before.


I know in the US we value individualism responsibility. But the reality is many things are encouraged / discouraged, made easier / harder collectively.

Of course if you never go out of your house, you're not going to have many social interactions. But your environment and the culture you live in makes a difference too. You can quit smoking yourself clearly, but the collective push to discourage smoking has done a lot to reduce the overall use of cigarettes.



It's only dumb if it doesn't work.

If it works... well, congratulations. You now have an edge that no one else knows about.


I think there’s a lot of people out there who don’t want to believe written communication skills like these are as important as raw technical skill.


I recall when I entered college. The first thing was mandatory, required, english classes.

The logic was, if you cannot communicate, you cannot explain why your job, or what you're doing is important. If it has value. If you have value. You cannot hope to explain requirements to others. Or explain the logic or reasons, the "why" of a technical path.

You're likely correct that a lot of people think this unimportant. To them I'd say, they're severely limiting their career, if they don't think communicating is important.


That's really interesting to me. I consider writing to be a "raw technical skill." Programming and writing are inextricably linked. The lexicon of software borrows heavily from writing: language, syntax, grammar, statement, and expression. Even the way we critique code heavily overlaps with how an editor critiques writing: consistent, readable, elegant, concise or verbose, and follows a style guide.


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