21st century work schedules

I anticipate a future where we redefine a work-week as the duration of a specific just-in-time gig, a weekend as the gap between gigs, vacations as opportunities presented by anticipation of long gaps but subject to sudden termination when new opportunities occur.  The day itself will have break times that will vary day to day and may arise with no advanced notice, leading us to arrange social encounters with near-strangers who happen to share something in common including the fact that they are free at the same time. 

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Audiences of Voices

My hypothesis is that men do have a tendency to prefer male voices for topics of high interest or importance, and that tendency is a consequence of the opportunity for a fruitful counterargument when we disagree.   I follow more male voices than female voices, because there are many more people I disagree with than I agree with.   I will listen to both sexes if I agree with them, but I will only follow men if there is a potential that I will disagree with them.    It is only with other men that I can have any chance of gaining anything through argument.

Testing the young-man’s hypothesis of self

My discussion here is why I criticize my 17 year old self for not being more confident about my self-assessment.   I don’t criticize my 13 year self who pretty much understood the same thing.   It is reasonable to the 13 year old to treat the assessment as a hypothesis to be tested.   The various tests attempted were all appropriate, if not not sufficient. 

To my self 40 years younger: you know

Had you had that confidence at the age of 17, I’m confident I would be in a very similar situation as I am right now but with a memory of a life lived differently.   I can’t tell if it would be happier or not, but I do know I would have had more time for doing what I love most: solitude, contemplation, and living simply.   I’m guessing I would be here similarly situated but with more stories that I would be eager to tell.   My lack of confidence in what I knew to be true denied me those stories of living an authentic life.

Culture of Spoilers

This appeal to our most admired authorities defines our spoiler-based culture.   We can save ourselves the time and energy of experiencing and interpreting a first reading of some topic by just getting the spoiler review from our preferred content provider.

Assigning names to personality traits

One of the advantages of machine intelligence over human intelligence is that machines are not driven toward poetry.   To me, poetry captures the scientific appreciation for the simplest explanations with the fewest number of terms.   Humans are innately poets by nature, and even the objectivity of science can not escape the human delight in well-crafted poetry, or human disdain for inelegance in descriptions.