If your situation is 100% totally hopeless, it's probably preferable to most people to take the clean shot than to try to escape and have a potentially much worse death.
There's also some bit of (ironically) survivor bias going on here: Most of the people sitting in front of the ditch didn't leave the country. They didn't join up with the resistance. They didn't try to escape 3 weeks prior. This isn't even getting into the Jungian "death drive" where, at a certain point, you'd rather just die than keep trying to struggle.
Some people make bad, illogical choices when the stakes are extremely low, and some do the same when it's life or death. The human mind is a wonder of inefficient perfection.
> This isn't even getting into the Jungian "death drive"
The death drive is Freudian, not Jungian. However, it might be very relevant here. Freud's conception of it would include passively accepting death. As you say, by the time the prisoner is about to be executed, they're often resigned to their fate, the death drive having overcome the id long ago. Contrast with massacres where the victims weren't expecting it (the Malmedy massacre of freshly captured troops comes to mind from the same era) and you see people trying to run away once it starts.
Lacan called himself Freudian, but I think his conception links the death drive with active desire, seeking a form of self-destructive pleasure by action. I recall from Écrits that he links it to masochism, for example, calling it an expression of transgressive jouissance.
My ex girlfriend was a doctor and we talked about this once. The gist of it that I got was that excessive early tests have a lot of risk factors that come along with them, because tests themselves being harmful (CT scans cause something like 5% of all cancers), and because false positives lead to unnecessary treatments, surgeries, medications, etc which can cause real harm. Basically, if the expected harm from the proactive testing is greater than the expected harm it would mitigate, you don't do it.
For sure; I'll believe that an AI can read and "understand" code, extract meaning and requirements from it, but it won't be the same as a human that knows requirements.
Then again, a human won't know all requirements either; over time, requirements are literally encoded.
In my experience, it's usually lack of awareness about modern security risks, and lack of familiarity with modern infrastructure paradigms. The latter really isn't a problem since these systems are usually standalone, but the former does become a problem - they often are from a time where this just wasn't something to consider. As a result, these legacy systems are often using default passwords, have tons of crazy stuff exposed to the network, and are comprised of custom code written specifically for the business purpose (so the documentation is only as good as what they made).
On the other hand, these guys generally write pretty neat, lean code that is quick, reliable, and directly responsive to the business. The really fun thing is watching the users fly through the keyboard-only screens, sometimes with muscle memory that is faster than the terminal emulator can update - they're literally working ahead of the screens.
Oh yes, I remember that when we swapped out a bunch of terminals at an airline.. The users complained it was all way too slow on the new Windows machines with MS SNA server in between... I was wondering what it was all about, as a young and very naive dropout from uni on his first IT job. When I came down, this dude was banging on his keyboard and after some time stopped, pointed at the screen and you could see it slowly catching up, screen by screen.. He showed me the directly connected version next. I learned something that day.
That's awesome. I set up Arch Linux a while ago, and despite working in Linux shops for more than a decade, let's just say I was very out of my element...
Reminds of me of a TUI Banking software that ran on Sun Solaris. It could keep up as fast as you can navigate - few months in and you could fly through the screens. Then it was "upgraded" to a web-based version and all of us were up in arms, it was like being downgraded to a tractor after experiencing a racecar.
As a support engineer at IBM we used a mainframe system called NRCPMA iirc... I think NR stood for Northern Region. Accessed via a terminal emulator, fully customizable with macros, fastest tool I ever worked with indeed, once you climbed the initial learning curve.
Reminds me of modern IDEs -- developers, both old and new, are too lazy to learn a complex IDE to speed up their work, even though it's their main tool for making money.
I don't think efficiency of navigating your IDE is a major factor in your productivity. If you like your setup, it's probably not going to matter a whole lot. The tool you make money with is your brain.
1. Navigating the code, e.g easily see all the callers, navigate up/down the call tree requires static code analysis. Super handy while reading someone's else code, which is like 90% on large projects.
2. Quick refactorings. Often times I see people discuss in lengths what would/could be instead of just go and try it out quickly, seeing all the pros and cons. Many times I proven myself wrong by trying it out and seeing pitfalls I didn't see earlier.
3. Warnings: so many real bugs could've been prevented if developers had seen (or cared about) to IDE showing a warning. Many PR review suggestions are detectable by a proper IDE without wasting reviewer's time.
4. Hotkeys (what the parent comment was talking about) -- speeds up all of that, especially refactorings, freeing dev's brain for thinking of architecture and other problems.
I can go on an on. Sometimes it feels like 50%+ of AI usage for coding is to free up fingers, not knowing that they were already mostly free by using static analysis features/hotkeys.
In my experience mainframes at financial institutions are hidden behind IBM middleboxes that are specifically designed to obviate the infrastructure risks. It's a classic example of a company selling you both the problem and solution.
That's just an example of incremental improvement. Mainframes and midranges adapt with the times without losing what works. Modern midranges, for example, can run C, Python, bash, and web servers.
I would say these people were in a relationship with the mainframe, if that makes sense. And also having worked at IBM in the past where I sat adjacent to the mainframe support team for Business Services, I totally get it. Mainframes are awesome if you ask me, and in a sense we have been trying to reinvent a lot of its goodness with "commodity" x86 hardware.
From a technical-cultural perspective it was mostly sulkiness, and a complete and utter lack of embracing the paradigms of distributed computing. Also, like most internal clouds, there were plenty of issues as it was. Initially they just tried to replace mainframe application components 1:1 onto VMs in whatever way and whenever anything was <100% reliable they complained that our cloud was not able to do it. I had to explain in a very harsh way, under a lot of pressure (I believe not hitting the deadline of switching off the mainframes meant renewal for a year at 40 Mil.. or thereabouts) the realities of "cloud".
The developers I spoke with in that time though, were very much the opposite of the move fast breaking things crowd. Intelligent, but also narrow minded I would say.
Benchmarks in software have always been bullshit. AI benchmarks are just even more bullshit since they're trying to measure something significantly more subjective and nuanced than most.
Okay, but the therapy industry is also a total grift. So I guess the trick is to reinforce your external locus of control by blaming your trauma, so that you go to a pseudoscience practitioner who will fix the problems that were created for you? That way they've got a lifelong customer!
It seems strange that one of the steps is admitting you have no control over your addiction. I feel like the first step should be deciding that you do. But that kind of self assuredness doesn't really align well with whole surrendering to Jeebus thing.
> It seems strange that one of the steps is admitting you have no control over your addiction. I feel like the first step should be deciding that you do.
If you do, you wouldn't be addicted, now would you?
in AA they call those people "dry drunks" instead of "recovering alcoholics".
if you're in treatment or AA for alcoholism - just as a single example - you're recovering. If you're merely "not drinking" then you're not recovering, you're just "not drinking."
i don't even understand why this is an issue, there are a lot of people where a 12 step program helps them recover; there are in-patient and outpatient care facilities that also can facilitate recovery.
and yes, some small segment of the population can be a "dry drunk" for the rest of their lives, but thinking you can overcome addiction by yourself is one of the reasons that addiction is prevalent.
I'd rather listen to a literal board certified addiction medicine specialist than some rando on the internet that links an article about "a meth user for 20 years that just quit!" and an article that talks about how the prefrontal cortex somehow magically allows people to opt out of addiction in their mid-20s.
Several "hard" drugs interfere with the brain, especially if the drug use begins when the brain is still plastic. Another thing, why does Louisiana have more opioid prescriptions than citizens? I guess these "addicts" don't count.
Do you have some kind of angle, here? "complete BS" is a bit combative, for this forum.
I would suggest that an "addict" is someone who can't "just quit" because they "want to."
Really, everyone who overcomes addiction does it themselves. Friends (imaginary or not) and therapists can motivate but the actual work needs to be done by the person themselves.
12 step programs disagree, to grow a flower you water it and give it sunlight and good soil(the 12 steps version of this: reversing selfishness and getting out and helping others) but you don’t actually grow the plant, the DNA, photosynthesis, electromagnetism, soil chemistry…even quantum forces(AKA a power greater than yourself) are ultimately the core of what grows the plant. Therefor when one gets sober and becomes generally content and happy in life when previously they were suicidal, AA suggests that the core of the work was done by a higher power, even though the individual was indeed responsible for watering their flower.
Right, so this all makes sense so long as you don't take it literally, don't think about it too much, and don't pay attention to the words and the things they say. It should be understood more as dadaist sound poetry.
Seems like the first step should be understanding that you CAN have control over it, even if you don't currently; and that you have the agency and strength to do that without appeal to some higher power.
The admitting you have no control sounds fatalistic to me and robs you of agency/responsibility. Then you're reliant on some externality or higher power instead of finding it within yourself.
Even those who go for the higher power are ultimately doing it themselves, they've just kidded themselves something else is involved, and if that helps you find that you can have some control over it, then great, I guess?
I think this is arguing semantics at this point but a charitable interpretation could be that one does not have control over the addiction and must therefore abstain from taking a particular substance, the abstinence being within the sphere of control of the individual.
It's the difference between someone who can just drink a beer once in a while and an alcoholic that must abstain completly.
I have the same fight in my life... As an atheist I push back pretty hard against any intrusion of religion in my life and depend on myself for pretty much everything, and am also the provider for others. If I'd sit on my behind and pray for good things instead of taking actions, nothing would get done, so I skip the time consuming part of dedicating a part of my life, time, brain power to all these things and instead focus on tangible things anchored in reality.
With how my brain works, I find it insulting to be told to pray the weakness away figure of speech..
That all being said, our brains, as wonderfully capable and complex as they are, are also pretty stupid and simple in other ways. Willpower and inner strength are a trained skills and mental states combined with chemical states. If the goal is to free yourself from addiction, the means of getting there don't really matter as long as they work and don't cause direct harm to yourself or others. The placebo effect is real, so if one gets strength from believing that there's a "god" or "higher power" giving them a high 5 and believes in them, then go for it. Whether I believe thats a delusion or not is much less important than the person breaking their addiction. Its a whole other fight of its own. I do think there should be as much available support for people that isn't based on feeding you religion if thats not your thing, regardless of the fact that one can attend AA+12step and not be religious and get value out of it too.
I feel like having faith in a higher power is almost like a part of your brain never grew up, in the sense that you're allowing yourself to believe in magic, like a kid. When you were a kid, that made you excited, dreamy, which puts you in a certain state. If you believe and that allows you to put yourself in a mental state where you think the end result will work out positively, whether thats because you felt empowered, you found strength to persevere, or whether you think god's got his quantum digits up your ** and is going to partially puppet you, thus relieving you of some of the pressure, strain, and allows you to get to the same end point, then good for you...
If this was a discussion about whether religions and faith in higher powers should be the guiding philosophies for humans going forward, my answer would be capital F no.. But if we're talking about current crisis response/management and addiction support, you can't rewire everyone's brains before you can start helping them out..
Part of taking control is first admitting that you are not currently in control. Believing you are in control leads to the classic "I can stop anytime I want to" or "just one drink won't hurt". Recognizing that you can't control it is how you recognize that yes, that one drink will hurt.
^ the illusion/delusion of being in control. even when all evidence points to the opposite conclusion — that one more i had yesterday, and all the previous days, was never the last one.
when your in this shit it’s basically impossible to think your way out of it because most thoughts become “a drink will solve this” or some such. that right there is the core problem. the thinking process has become completely twisted and warped into “more is the solution”.
the powerlessness is over the compulsion, obsession and delusions in our own minds around <insert X here>.
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i appreciate HN is often a more technical / scientific / rational / whatever audience who can maybe sometimes value their own thinking as paramount (coding etc. takes a lot of thinking after all). that’s not a bad thing. it just means it’ll be quite an understandably large leap for some folks to understand what it’s like at the bottom of a bottle.
Yep that was a deal-breaker for me going to AA. I eventually just quit drinking on my own after a few years, but AA being the only option for addiction support groups in many places is a bummer.
