0:02 have I heard of carbon my response is
0:05 please stop bothering me about the Apple
0:15 about what is my opinion
0:19 about blubber blop Linux
0:22 drro so
0:26 guys the carbon question this is this is
0:28 triggering me
0:30 here not because of anything to do with
0:32 carbon at
0:35 all it is the following thing guys the
0:37 fact that multiple people have this question
0:40 question
0:42 is it's a product of the current
0:44 Internet environment that we have
0:47 built which is
0:49 about propagating
0:53 shallow news at very high speed and
0:55 things just sort
1:00 of you know go into and out of being vog
1:01 to talk
1:03 about what is the current thing this
1:05 week right and the thing that you should
1:08 realize is if you zoom out and see that
1:10 pattern ignore particular instances but
1:12 if you zoom out and look at that pattern
1:14 as a whole pattern and what comes from
1:18 it almost none of those things are very
1:19 important by
1:22 definition and therefore you know
1:24 because they only lasted a day or a
1:28 week therefore if this is a major source
1:30 of where you get your ideas from or what
1:32 you think about things or what you're
1:36 interested in you're preventing
1:39 yourself from having high quality
1:42 thoughts in a certain sense and this is
1:44 very serious to me I mean a little bit
1:47 of it's fine right but you know I'm here
1:49 on the twitch Channel and every time
1:51 there's a new thing people are asking me
1:54 about it so like in aggregate the twitch
1:58 chat brain is a brain that has a very
2:00 poor information diet as another way to
2:01 say it and that shouldn't be that
2:05 surprising but it is how it is right um
2:07 this will actually keep you from being a
2:10 really good programmer in the long term
2:12 because it's the wrong kind of thought
2:13 it is
2:16 not like we need people who are
2:18 competent who and who can solve hard
2:22 problems and building competence is not
2:24 a short attention span thing and solving
2:26 hard problems is not a short attention
2:30 span thing so
2:32 we're just really not handling ourselves
2:34 very well with where
2:38 we place our mental
2:41 attention and this could have very large
2:44 consequences in the short
2:48 term like even within the next year or
2:51 two so so it bothers me that's all I'm
2:54 saying all about the hot takes a 70
2:56 calories yeah but even like hot take
2:59 implies controversial right but like people
3:00 people
3:04 almost don't know or care
3:06 anymore that there's something to do
3:09 with your attention besides go on
3:13 Twitter and see or go on Hacker News or
3:15 Reddit and see what people are talking
3:16 about right this
3:19 second and the problem is done over
3:22 years that's going to damage your
3:25 brain not no exaggeration that's it may
3:27 have already damaged your
3:30 brain hopefully in a way that
3:34 recoverable but um damage absolutely and
3:36 I'm I'm speaking from experience from
3:40 both this phenomenon and previous ones
3:43 right so I was doing I do less Twitter
3:45 than a lot of people but I was doing a
3:46 fair amount of it and like it's just a
3:50 way you know if you're not feeling 100%
3:54 motivated and you want to just kind of
3:55 casually do some stuff while you work
3:57 today it's very easy to go on like
3:59 Twitter or whatever and read some stuff
4:01 and I was noticing that my attention
4:03 span was pretty short for a lot of
4:05 things it wasn't short for programming
4:06 still I was doing fine at programming
4:09 but I think that's because I built all
4:10 my programming
4:14 habits um but like I didn't want to read a
4:15 a
4:19 book right and in fact or I would claim
4:21 that I wanted to read a book and then
4:24 wouldn't read much for like a
4:26 year and
4:30 then you know like that has consequences
4:34 just on on your mental
4:37 development now that part I fixed um but
4:40 you know I grew up before the internet
4:43 so what happens to somebody who's like
4:46 10 year old 10 years old today right now
4:49 I did not grow up before television and
4:52 back during the television
4:56 days when people watch TV which I did a
5:00 lot there was this commonly thing like
5:02 oh don't watch too much television it'll
5:04 rot your brain right and we were kind of
5:09 sarcastic about it we said oh you know
5:11 whatever in retrospect that was totally
5:14 right it did rot all of our brains and
5:17 um I probably would actually be
5:19 measurably smarter today if I hadn't
5:21 spent so much time watching television
5:22 and I probably would have been able to
5:25 do more faster in life and I probably
5:27 would be a lot more competent at what I
5:31 do like in a major way not not in like a
5:33 barely noticeable way like in a major
5:35 way is very clear to me when I look at
5:37 how I spent all my time back then that
5:38 that's the
5:41 case being honest about these things is
5:44 important and so I don't see why you
5:46 know I think the
5:49 modern internet stuff is worse than
5:51 television was cuz at least if you're
5:53 watching a shitty you know episode of
5:55 Airwolf or something I forget if that
5:58 was a half hour show or an hour
6:02 show but it it at least had
6:06 a a consistent narrative for the length
6:08 of its
6:12 runtime which is not something you get
6:14 from a lot of other
6:16 things do I think it affected my
6:18 intelligence yes I think I'm less smart
6:24 been probably it certainly affected my
6:28 ability to exercise my intelligence um
6:30 and therefore it took me a lot longer to
6:32 get where I would have otherwise been
6:39 sense there's not that much of a
6:42 difference between being smart and
6:45 knowing how to use your intelligence
6:46 Like You could argue for you know
6:48 whatever the Baseline biological
6:53 capacity is or whatever but
6:55 like it it became very clear to me at
6:57 some point that knowing how to use your
6:59 intelligence is a thing and if you don't
7:00 know how to use it you might as well not
7:03 have it it's probably hard to know how
7:05 much it rotted my brain no well but I
7:07 can look at how I spent my time back
7:10 then versus how I spend it
7:13 today and what the outcomes are twitch
7:15 audience member most interactions can
7:17 basically only be very superficial and
7:21 very simple yeah I mean it's true
7:23 but I mean let's let's take another one
7:26 of my pet peeve questions
7:28 the how do I get started programming
7:30 question right I hate that one as as
7:33 frequent viewers to this channel know
7:35 but it's still better because it's not
7:38 asking about gossip it's ostensively
7:41 asking about an actual skill that
7:43 somebody could practice and that has an
7:46 intrinsic benefit where like did you
7:48 hear about carbon or what did you think
7:53 about the M1 or whatever is just gossip
7:55 which has a function I mean the reason
7:59 human beings gossip is because gossip
8:04 has a a function but like there is such
8:05 a thing as way too much of that and
8:08 we're we're way down the way too
8:10 much you get the how to get started
8:12 question it can be overwhelming no I
8:15 don't think so I think anyone to be very
8:17 honest most people asking the how to get
8:20 started question are not programmers and
8:23 won't be it's like it's a self-filtering
8:24 question it's like if you're asking that
8:30 programmer that's another reason why it annoys
8:31 annoys
8:32 me even though you deleted all your
8:35 Social Media stuff four years ago when
8:36 you're demotivated it's so easy to find
8:37 a way to waste your day on use of stuff
8:39 like lurking on Twitch even YouTube
8:41 recommended videos are like one minute
8:45 Clips um yeah I mean I understand I
8:48 understand that mode right there is this
8:49 mode where you're not that
8:52 motivated and it's just very easy to get
8:54 the very
8:57 small feeling of reward of or
8:58 distraction or whatever from watching
9:01 these small videos and stuff for
9:04 sure um but then you feel worse after
9:06 that because then you spent the whole
9:08 [ __ ] day doing that 30 days in a row
9:13 or whatever so you know the trick there
9:15 there's two things right so one trick is
9:17 just to notice that pattern just see it
9:19 just keep seeing
9:21 it you don't even have to do anything
9:23 about it at first just keep seeing it
9:27 and then after enough seeing it um maybe
9:30 you eventually
9:34 can uh can know what to do like often if
9:36 you just keep observing the pattern
9:38 it'll naturally give you the ability to
9:40 break out of it because you'll just it
9:42 lets your subconscious wrestle with
9:43 what's going
9:50 though is to understand like okay you're
9:53 feeling demotivated or kind of bad or
9:55 kind of down right now so what like who cares
10:02 like is that really that big of a deal
10:04 and if it's not then why shouldn't you
10:05 just do whatever you would normally do
10:08 if you weren't feeling down that's
10:11 actually a very powerful mindset to have
10:14 right just whatever you're feeling is
10:19 just what you're feeling right now it
10:23 doesn't it doesn't have a lot more um
10:26 depth or consequence than
10:29 that and that's weird because we're in
10:30 the society that's often feeling
10:34 fetishist right like we have we have this
10:35 this
10:37 entire industry that wants you to go
10:40 talk about your feelings for $70 an hour
10:43 so of course they tell you that that's
10:46 how to solve your problems but uh you
10:47 know it's really
10:50 not the right way to solve them is just
10:51 to realize your feelings are just your
10:54 feelings and
10:57 um you know it's nice to have happy
10:59 feelings but by
11:02 definition we don't have Happy Feelings
11:06 all the time and so
11:09 just you know accepting that is actually very
11:10 very
11:12 powerful in engineering you call it
11:14 admiring the problem yeah yeah that's a
11:17 good way to say it it's not hard to put
11:18 the phone down but it's hard to stop
11:20 yourself from picking up instinctively
11:21 but you could increase the amount of
11:23 work required so for example you could
11:26 just power your phone
11:28 off so that if you pick it up you have
11:30 to like wait through a boot of the phone
11:33 right and then you put a SIM password do
11:36 whatever you need to do to fix that you
11:37 think it's pretty normal to ask and not
11:39 a sign of the downfall of society okay
11:41 well here's the
11:43 thing here's the
11:45 thing look
11:49 around at any technology that is not
11:53 software even software is in Decline but
11:54 it's kind of invisible you can't see the
11:57 inside of a program look
12:00 at Construction
12:05 what amazing buildings were built lately
12:07 compared to what was built in the past
12:08 look at Transportation what
12:10 transportation systems were built lately
12:12 compared to what was built in the past
12:17 um look at engineering what new sources
12:20 of energy technology were invented
12:22 compared to what was invented in the past
12:24 past
12:28 um Material Science all this stuff um
12:30 sometimes like with Material Science you
12:32 may have limited knowledge of the field
12:33 but you know that's what your computer's
12:34 for you can look it
12:38 up um we kind of haven't been doing that
12:40 much for 30 or 40 years is what you
12:43 probably find with some notable outliers
12:46 right so one dude is responsible for
12:49 electric cars and [ __ ] rocket ships
12:53 okay um if that dude weren't
12:55 there you can imagine what the progress
12:57 of both of those fields would
13:04 it is very very obvious if you just look
13:07 all you have to do is just look we are
13:11 not building a lot of Hoover dams or
13:14 Golden Gate bridges or anything like
13:23 happened and it's it's
13:26 major we lost our ability to do certain
13:28 classes of things or lost the will to do
13:32 them and after enough not doing them the
13:33 ability goes away anyway because these
13:35 things are hard and you need to practice
13:36 them in order to know how to do them
13:38 dude we don't okay when was the last
13:40 time the USA actually won a war by the
13:43 way we spend more than any other Nation
13:46 on Earth on the military when was the
13:48 last time we actually succeeded
13:50 completely at a military
13:57 there
14:00 so here's what I'm saying
14:03 here's the thing is that has a
14:07 cause and the cause is what we or part
14:10 of the cause is what we as a culture
14:13 accept and decide is
14:19 okay and how we decide what to do right
14:22 and so when I say something like I don't
14:25 think it's a good idea to gossip about
14:27 new programming languages that nobody
14:30 knows anything about it's part of that
14:33 I'm saying this is part of who we are
14:36 now that is not
14:39 good like all these things that I
14:41 mentioned our inability to make progress
14:46 departments is not
14:50 orthogonal to how we decide to spend our
14:58 not and you have to fix what you can fix
15:00 right I'm not in charge of the federal
15:02 government I wouldn't know how to be in
15:04 charge of the federal government but you
15:06 have to fix what you can fix and so
15:07 that's where I'm coming
15:11 from also by the way so part of what's
15:13 feeding my distaste for the what do you
15:14 think about this new programming
15:17 language question is I know that people
15:20 have that about what I'm doing and I've
15:22 seen a little bit of it I try to stay
15:25 away from all of that but almost 100% of
15:27 the commentary is just
15:30 misinformed has a completely incorrect
15:32 idea of what I'm doing and why certainly
15:35 to the extent it's informed it tends to
15:37 be very old and out of date like
15:39 informed by those early videos which are
15:40 very very different compared to what the
15:43 language is today
15:47 um and agenda driven and but it's not a
15:48 mistake that this information is
15:51 inaccurate because people the the
15:53 utility for most people is not in
15:55 whether the information is true or false
15:57 the utility is in whether they can use
15:59 the information
16:02 as scoring for their team their
16:05 political team which for programmers is
16:06 often a programming language or
16:09 programming Paradigm thing um and or
16:11 just to boost their ego and so almost
16:12 all the information when people are
16:14 gossiping about what I do is complete
16:17 trash so
16:20 therefore there's no reason to expect
16:22 all the gossip about anything else not
16:24 to be complete trash as well that's what
16:28 I'm saying is like you're engaging in
16:29 swimming in
16:33 trash now there is such a thing as high
16:36 quality discussion about that sort of
16:38 thing but that would require you to go
16:40 program in this language for a year or
16:42 two and me to go program in this
16:43 language for a year or two and then we
16:52 conversation otherwise it's
16:55 pointless right isn't that how a lot of
16:56 information in news actually are you
16:58 mean the swimming in trash yes that's
17:00 part of my point
17:02 like even mainstream news is this thing
17:04 that I'm talking about now [Music]
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