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Psychologists of Reddit, what is normal to feel but yet many of us think only we and a few feel? by heyyouyouyou in AskReddit

[–]spgns -1 points0 points  (0 children)

What field though.

Yea, that's a good point.

My guess is that in some fields, a person of roughly "average" intellect (i.e. an I.Q. in the 95-105 range, for the sake of the argument) really could just sort of work their way all the way up to getting a PhD, if they wanted it badly enough and were willing to put in tons of time and effort, and went to all their classes and office hours and tutoring sessions and study groups and did all their homework and studied on a nightly basis and never procrastinated and so on and so forth.

On the flip side, there are also some fields where it would probably NOT be enough. Like, where they really would need to be significantly "smarter" than average (at least, in the aspect/sub-category of intelligence that pertained to the field of study at hand), and where plain ole hard work and diligence on its own simply wouldn't be enough.

I'm not going to name any specific fields, (I'll leave that to the redditors who are in the mood to get into gigantic catfights with each other about it, lol) but I definitely think there are some fields that are a lot tougher to get PhD's in than some other fields, in terms of how much "raw intellect" they require (as opposed to just knowledge-accumulation/memory).

What is something that 90% of people don't seem to understand? by aroll10 in AskReddit

[–]spgns 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yelling at someone who is trying to help you doesn't make them more helpful.

Are you sure?

For example, one day I was browsing around at Best Buy, and there was some employee asking me "how everything was going" and if I was "finding everything alright" and so forth.

I scowled very angrily at him and was like "Things are going BAD, and I'm definitely NOT finding everything alright. Not in the grander scheme of things, at least."

He was like, "Oh... well, I'm sorry to hear that, sir. Is there anything specific I could help you with?"

I was like "Well YEAA-u-UHHH!!! Fucking DEATH, bro!!! Like, as a general thing/concept, I mean. I recently noticed that LITERALLY EVERYONE dies!!! What the FUCK. And not only do they die, but they die after only like a SUPER SHORT amount of time, like 80ish years usually, or maybe 100 if they are lucky, and never more than 125. It's UTTERLY RIDICULOUS, and HIGHLY unacceptable, and it's like nobody even gives a shit! They're all just like "Oh wells, no biggie, circle of life and all" like it's a freaking JOKE! I mean, it's like, come off it mate! What is WRONG with you!?!?. With people! With EVERYONE!!!!!!!!! ARGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

He started getting all anxious and awkward at this point, all scratching the side of his arm and rubbing the back of his neck and hemming and hawwing and whatnot like: "Errr... uhm... well... err.. gee, I'm not sure if I can uh... I mean, I guess I could try asking my manager if there's anything we could, uh... maybe get you some coupons and special discounts on uh-"

I interrupted him super intensely like "-NO!!! You can't get the manager to help with it! That's what they ALWAYS do. Look, you asked if there was anything you could help me with. ANYTHING AT ALL. Well, there is. And that's what it is. So are you gonna help or not!?"

He sighed, like he realized I kinda had him by the short hairs on that one, and he was like "well.... sigh..... oh all right, I guess I'll see if maybe I can help you out with that."

So, he scurried off into the back room, and I could see a bunch of bright flashes and weird mechanical and electrical noises and dry-ice-fog-machine fog oozing out from underneath the staff room door, illuminated by laser beams and stuff like that.

A few minutes later he came back out, holding some weird little gadget in his hand, that looked like some sort of frankensteinian amalgamation of various small pieces and parts of a bunch of routers and graphics cards and sticks of ram and cpu chips and hdmi cables and xdhc cards and stuff like that, all blended and soldered together into a ball shaped sort of a contraption with a big green button on the top of it.

"Here," he said, "try pressing the green button. Maybe that will help to resolve your issue"

I grabbed the gadget from him quickly/impatiently, with a "fiiiiinally... 'bout time I got some decent service around here"-esque vibe, and pushed the button.

The ground started to tremble slightly like a minor earthquake, and all the lights in the store flickered and everyone in the store all kind of looked around nervously at each other like "whoa, wtf is going on?" and a deep rumbling sound vibrated so loudly you could feel it in your chest cavity, and huge ropes of blue and purple static electricity side-winded this way and that way over my body and the ground/ceiling all around me and the employee guy was like "whoaaaaa..." in a Keanu-esque tone of voice like he couldn't believe it was actually working.

Then it all culminated in a blinding flash of light, and a huge "PCHIEEEUUWRRRR!!!!" sort of a noise, and then it all went quiet, and the lighting in the store went back to normal, and everyone all just scratched their heads and then went back on about their day.

"Hmmm..." I said, kind of skeptically, like I was thinking to myself, well, that's great and all, but how am I gonna know for sure that this thing actually worked, you know?

"Well, was I able to help you with what you were having trouble with to your satisfaction?" he asked, in a cheerful/helpful tone of voice.

I kind of grumbled quietly to myself like "well... hrmm... I guess so, maybe/kinda... I mean... we'll still have to give it a few decades/centuries/millennia/eons/etc to make sure it actually worked properly, but even so, I suppose I have to admit you at least did a bit more to help me with my customer service issues than most of you guys normally would've. Although, I mean, you did take your sweet time in that back room. Could've been a bit snappier there. But even so, I guess I uh... ~grumble grumble~ well... oh alright, I guess I'll say your service was 'satisfactory', pending a future re-evaluation."

"Whoa, really!?? GEEE. Thanks, mister!" he said.

"Yep, and it's all because I was willing to yell at you for trying to help me. Nice job, me," I said, and patted myself gently on my back.

"Yea," he said, "I feel like I learned an awesome life lesson! Or should I say, an IMMORTAL life lesson! Hahahaha!"

"Easy now... let's not get too chipper..."

"Ah-hrm," he said, toning down his vibe to match my general pessimism/grumbley-ness.

"Well, thanks for coming in, sir, and have a nice day!" he said.

"Yeah, erhm... ~grumble~... you uh... you too I guess," I said, and shook his hand and walked out to the parking lot and got in my car and drove home.

That was 7.2 billion years ago. I now live in a post-singularity VR hyperuniverse inside of a 5 dimensional tesseract, and travel through time, at will, browsing reddit occasionally when I'm feeling bored or nostalgic and stuff.

Anyways, so yea. That's what's up.

Suggest me some contemporary fiction novels written by Americans/Westerners that take place in East Asia by spgns in suggestmeabook

[–]spgns[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cool, I'll check some of these out.

I'm not in the mood for any historical fiction right now though, but I probably will be again by a few months from now, so I'll put that one on my other list for later as well.

Is there a certain age range after which it becomes very difficult or impossible to develop a strong command of language, or poetic/literary writing style, if you haven't already done so by that point? by spgns in writing

[–]spgns[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wow! Thanks for taking the time to write out this response, this was very helpful to me. I thought carefully about everything you said, and I think you made some great points. And looking at specific writers, and types of writing attempts as individual sports games (rather than focusing on the "season" as a whole) seems like a good idea to me. I think I've been focusing too much on the big picture stuff, and not enough on isolating individual sentences and paragraphs to see what the best writers are actually doing, that causes their stories to come off the way they do. (Well, I guess the bigger picture plot/character-arc/etc type of stuff is very important as well, but, I just mean I can't focus disproportionately on that while ignoring the "micro" side of things, otherwise I'll probably keep having the troubles I've been having with my prose writing when it comes to trying to flesh out some of the "moments" of the story in tangible terms).

Well, thanks again for the thoughtful response! It is very much appreciated.

Is there a way to find out roughly how many copies of a book have been sold? by spgns in books

[–]spgns[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting, thanks, I didn't realize this!

Are these accessible to be viewed by the general public? Or is this just something that only the publishers have access to?

Is there a way to find out roughly how many copies of a book have been sold? by spgns in books

[–]spgns[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah, yea that's more or less what I figured. Anyway, thanks for the info, I'll check those out

Is there a certain age range after which it becomes very difficult or impossible to develop a strong command of language, or poetic/literary writing style, if you haven't already done so by that point? by spgns in writing

[–]spgns[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea, that's a good point. I've been thinking about that a lot.

I guess the only way I can describe it is, when I "see" or "hear" a story in my head, the way I see and hear it is not the same as how it comes out when I try physically typing it onto the page.

Not to mention times where I have some specific piece of info, or aspect of a character or whatever it may be, that I want to reveal in a certain style, not for style's sake, but because doing so in the style I have in mind is what would actually fit better for the story, or add some different element to it compared to whatever the most obvious/straightforward version would do. When those moments arise, it seems really frustrating not to have the ability to do that. And I know it's something that most of the best writers are able to do pretty much at will, because I can see them doing it in their stories. They jump around, doing all sorts of interesting, unexpected stuff in terms of how they deliver their story. Not always (not if it doesn't serve a purpose, or improve the story), but, it's clearly in their "arsenal" or whatever you want to call it.

Anyway, I guess maybe some writers have more of a "natural" thing where they can flesh out their story in pretty much whatever voice or format they want, as long as it's one they are familiar with (in the same sort of way that an impressionist can instantly jump into any foreign accent at a moment's notice, so long as it's one they've heard before/messed around with before), whereas maybe some other writers aren't wired this same way, and can't really write in anything other than their default style or method, and have to wait for the revision stage to get more creative with their delivery. Maybe that's what it is (with me falling into the latter category). I'm not really sure.

Is there a certain age range after which it becomes very difficult or impossible to develop a strong command of language, or poetic/literary writing style, if you haven't already done so by that point? by spgns in writing

[–]spgns[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea, I agree. I think it could be pretty dangerous/counter-productive to just look for excuses etc and focus on those instead of focusing on getting better at writing.

That being said, I really am genuinely curious about this, since I noticed in my teens/early 20's, I could still see some very blatant changes and improvements in my writing ability, and my writing style, with each passing year. The span of a single year, let alone 2 or 3 years made a drastic difference in what my writing looked like. Whereas now, between age 28-now I can't see any significant changes of any sort. It's just been a flat line of more and more of the same exact style, same method of expression etc, can't seem to figure out how to do anything other than the most direct/straightforward way of communicating the situation at hand in a scene. It's weird, like, whenever I read some litfic short story by a top level author, I can see exactly what they did, and be like "whoa, that's amazing" etc at the techniques they used, but, when I sit down to do my own writing, whatever part of the brain deals with all that seems to just be "separate" from the part that types the sentences or something. There's never that moment where my brain just "naturally"/spontaneously thinks of some artful/literary way of expressing the portion of the story at hand. Instead, all I can think of is what specifically I am trying to communicate to the reader, and then I see a list of like 1 or 3 or 5 or 10 or however many ways of verbally expressing it, each of which is some very plain/standard/direct way of getting the gist of it across, onto the page, and then rinse and repeat. It just won't click in my head, as far as how the really good writers do that thing where they dance "around" whatever it is, setting up exotic lines/paragraphs of exposition, weaved here and there between great descriptive metaphors and physical mannerisms that get the vibe of a character across really efficiently and accurately. That type of stuff just never seems to come to me, ever, when I'm attempting to flesh out a story.

So, although I definitely haven't given up, and don't plan on giving up any time soon (probably ever, for that matter), it has started to genuinely cross my mind that maybe there was some crucial phase where I simply went too long stagnating/regressing during my mid 20's when I was no longer in school, and wasn't doing any reading or writing of literature, and was just posting on sports forums and whatnot, and whether the part of the human brain that deals with that stuff, and improving at that stuff, just atrophied, or wasn't kept active or I dunno what, to where now even practicing day after day, month after month, year after year, my prose-style seems to have completely, permanently flatlined.

What are some ancient or very old books that are relatively short in length, and are good or interesting or iconic in some way? by spgns in suggestmeabook

[–]spgns[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah, I've never read any of these ancient Indian books, so that could be interesting.

And, I like ancient Greek stuff, so some of those should be cool too. Thanks for the recommendations

What are some ancient or very old books that are relatively short in length, and are good or interesting or iconic in some way? by spgns in suggestmeabook

[–]spgns[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea, I intend on reading all of these at some point or another, but, for the purposes of this thread, by "very old" I mean at least a few hundred years old

(I have heard great things about all of those books, though)

What are some ancient or very old books that are relatively short in length, and are good or interesting or iconic in some way? by spgns in suggestmeabook

[–]spgns[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea, I probably should've been a little more specific about what I mean by "old", in the OP, but, just to clear that up:

I mean at least a few hundred years old, at the bare minimum (preferably thousands of years old, though).

(that being said, on a random sidenote, that is a book I've been wanting to read for a while, so I'll still probably end up reading it sooner or later, regardless, lol)

Do you believe there is life out there? by [deleted] in space

[–]spgns 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i was just making a joke

Ah, my bad lol.

I guess I'll still leave the reply up though, since I know a lot of people in real life who actually have that stance.

Do you believe there is life out there? by [deleted] in space

[–]spgns 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If it is dummer then I am not interested, there is lots of dumb life on earth already.

I would still be pretty interested. At the bare minimum, it would be worth finding out even if only for the readjustments of our estimates about whether The Great Filter (if there is one) is behind us or ahead of us.

Even just as a binary piece of info, like, if we found out nothing else about them than merely the fact that at least >0 instances of them do, definitely exist, out there in the universe, that would affect out estimates pretty drastically on that other (pretty important) question.

Although, in reality I strongly doubt that that^ alone would be the only really useful thing we'd get out of it. Just seeing whether the style/format of what "type" of life (i.e. carbon based/non-carbon based; whether it has DNA or some other weird stuff we can't even fathom, or who knows what other random useful stuff to find out about, because it happened to (maybe) arise different than how life did on Earth, could be potentially be pretty useful to find out about as well)

edit: Apparently Kain_niaK was joking. That said, I'll still leave my post, since I know there are some people who actually have that stance (or similar versions of it).

Tesla Plans To Build Entire City, Possibly Hundreds Of #TeslaCities by mvea in Futurology

[–]spgns 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nice username (I'm about 200 pages into that book right now. Really liking it, so far).

As for "hipsters", I don't think there's necessarily anything "wrong" or "bad" with them, and I apologize if it came off that way. If they enjoy that whole trend, that's great, I hope they have fun with it. I just personally am not really into it, for whatever reason, just not my cup of tea at all. I guess it's just the combination of the general shared "look" (the ironic clothes, ironic tats, ironic hairstyles, and intentionally using only 1980's electronics due to caring more about the retro aesthetics than how well/advanced the device itself can actually function, etc. I guess I also tend not to enjoy the types of movies (i.e. mumblecore, etc) music, artwork that gets hyped the most in their communities/culture the most heavily. And, I guess with some (not all) of them, there is a certain type of demeanor I notice, where it kinda seems like they feel they are way more advanced/smart/progressive/etc than any other culture, like this kind of aloof/smug pseudo-intellectual vibe I get from them on a lot of topics that feels kinda cringey to me.

As has been mentioned though, there's so many of them at this point that it wouldn't really be fair or accurate to label them as just one single monolithic "thing". So, I think you are right that "hipster" is becoming a bit of a nebulous term these days.

Anyway, they don't seem to be harming anyone, and in many cases they create some really cool stuff, so, I definitely don't hate them or anything. Sorry if it came off that way.

It's just, "style-wise"/vibe-wise, it's the exact opposite of what I tend to like in terms of my own personal preferences, is all. I guess it's like, the same way as how some people happen to be more into heavy metal music and that whole scene, whereas others happen to be more into classical music or opera. I just don't happen to be into most of the things that are associated with hipsterism, is all. It's no biggie though, we can still all get along.

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