It is the flavour of the year political topics maintained by a small percentage of college students. It'll soon fade from those buzzwords and take on a new ideology. Due to the internet, it seems like much bigger of an issue than it really is.
>Sometimes you do have to put on headphones to cut down on the auditory distraction
That's exactly the problem. You are plugging inefficiencies that exist for no reason. Listening to music hampers my work because I focus too much on it. I just want a quiet room.
I really wish this for you: May you never be lonely enough in your life to consider something like this, but if you ever find yourself at such a point in your life, then at that point, the weird feeling you would feel when pondering the dilemma of someone who would pay for friendship, that feeling is called empathy.
I like to go with Larry David's advice with skipping the small talk and going straight to medium or large talk. I like to open with "so how's your marriage?" Just get right into it.
So, I've had people lay these kinds of questions on me. Or even during a job interview (!). And normally, I'm down for the deep shit at the drop of a hat. But the problem is when complete strangers ask me these questions. It's hard to gauge when a conversation about the last time I did MDMA (and why) is appropriate. Do I really want to talk about the nasty shit I did in Iraq with complete strangers, even though that's the most honest and direct answer to their hail mary of a question? Even something like "So how are you really doing?" can be challenging to answer to a stranger. I guess really I question your desire (or ability) to handle the answers.
It hugely depends on how it's asked. If you ask it in a really awkward dead pan kind of way it's going to fall flat. If you do it in an almost "indulge me" kind of banterish irony, most people get that and will string along for a bit. The funny ones will go along and end it with something like "wow, really took me for a ride there" and switch it back on you.
How does that work for you? I figure it's a good filter - 80% of people think you're a whackball and run away, 20% stay and have interesting conversations.
Do you really have to go for such a personal and emotionally charged topic to start "big talk"? Obviously anything actually important is likely to be somewhat less comfortable, but there are still degrees.
I think most people are going to be much more comfortable talking about art, philosophy or politics than about their personal life, particularly with a stranger.
I read a comment somewhere (I think it was here, or perhaps another site) that Snowden was to HN what the SCO case was to Slashdot back in the day. That is - times were happier until it seemed like politics took over.
I'm not trying to knock either site. What I'm trying to get at is that there's a certain amount of group-think (group-angst in this case?) and if you immerse yourself exclusively in that, you start taking on that view. This 'existential angst' (I really can't think of a better term, though I know this isn't wholly adequate for what I'm trying to describe) is contagious.
HN became my daily news source when I finally got tired of Slashdot's political bent. After Snowden, HN has taken on a somewhat similar flavor. Don't get me wrong - I agree with a lot of it. I also know that sometimes I just have to step away from it, for my own happiness.
It's not about willful ignorance - it's about picking your battles and guarding your own interpretation and mood against the thoughts and mood of the group.
It makes me sad as well that the average person has no idea or understanding of the importance of the battle going on behind the scenes about their own privacy. These power-mad governments are more concerned with spying on their own people and removing any chance of privacy than actually doing good for the people who voted them in.
It just makes me sad... There's so much good that could come from computers, but our own governments just want to use them to spy on people. :-(
Ignorance, in the sense of ignoring the world around, you is bliss. I sometimes envy those who can live in their own world and nothing seems to affect their happiness.
But more seriously, if you correlate happiness with ignorance and pass that off as something you don't have the power to change, that is a mistake. Happiness and your attitude towards things is something you can work on.
Intelligence, "smartness", and ignorance are all orthogonal.
Even very intelligent and very smart people can approach an issue with extreme bias and blatantly ignore (get it ;) news, facts, etc. that contradicts that bias.
I would argue that William Dembski[1] is both smart and intelligent, but I would also call him ignorant.
[Edit: my point being that people who choose to ignore the things that contradict their bias are happier as a result of their ignorance]
Apologies, I guess that was more of a reference appropriate for Reddit than HN.
> I too am very smart.
is a reference to the subreddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart which points out people describing themselves as very smart, often in ironic ways. I realize now that it may have looked like I was actually making a claim about my own intelligence; I was not.
"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides."
Ignorance is bliss. Personally I'd rather be informed, that way when I do have the power to exert a little influence (such as in the voting booth) I'm more likely to make a decision that will steer away from more mess. Even so that almost always feels like decisions between various grades of bad rather than something good.
After September 11, 2001, I stopped listening to the news for about 5 years. I was tired of hearing one horrible thing after another. While I wasn't living under a rock, the things I did hear about -- Blackwater, Abu Ghraib, "Mission Accomplished" --- did nothing to make me want to pay attention again. In retrospect, I think it's too complacent a stance, but I still think a daily dose of bad news is excessive. Which is why I read up on the presidential primaries at a weekly interval.
A casual Google search says that "happy" == "feeling or showing pleasure or contentment".
The more informed you are, the more problems you will see and the less content you will be with the state of things. Problems aren't particularly conducive to happiness.
That said, ignorance is not necessarily bliss. It is better to be informed and be able to protect oneself from possible problems than it is to continue to pretend everything is fine and fall victim to eventual problems.
