Convo between @tferriss & @naval on modern loneliness:

Naval: In India there's this concept of the extended family where you basically live with your tribe at all times, so when we were young, at our grandmother's place with my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my grandparents,

everyone was there, and it was a warm night so we went out to the backyard and put all these comforters and these little cots out and everyone would sleep in this giant pile with fifteen people underneath the stars...
it was amazing...so there's two things that were great about it: the noise level didn't bother you, if someone's foot was in your face it didn't bother you. When it's family and you're young it all just works and you feel very safe and very happy.
Another thing is that it reinforces how important the tribe is. Modern society gives us incredible flexibility in that we can get away from our crazy family members, we're not destined to die where we are born or to do what our parents did. So we have incredible freedom.
But coming with it is this tremendous loneliness that we try to cover up either through drugs, alcohol, partying, even trying to find a mission like putting people on mars. But the reality is that a lot of that loneliness comes from being disconnected from growing up in your
tribal environment so it's important that as you grow older to figure out how to build your tribe that is always around you. The more they're in your business the better. Like when I go to India in my grandparents house it’s impossible for anyone in there, in that house, to feel
depressed. There’s dogs barking, seven cousins in your business, there’s your aunts asking you if you've had enough to eat. Like everyone is always in your business. So depression requires some level of privacy or at least that's self-absorbed depression..
.there's an abject loneliness that all of us can feel that comes from being disconnected from our roots and our roots are very tribal
Ferris: "...when you have a bunch of people around you and you have other things to do that require you to be interacting with other entities and occupied its very hard to be self absorbed in a way that spirals downward"
Naval: ...it certainly is one way you can help not being depressed or lonely is when you constantly have other peoples' houses to go into or lives you can step into

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“We don’t negotiate salaries” is a negotiation tactic.

Always. No, your company is not an exception.

A tactic I don’t appreciate at all because of how unfairly it penalizes low-leverage, junior employees, and those loyal enough not to question it, but that’s negotiation for you after all. Weaponized information asymmetry.

Listen to Aditya


And by the way, you should never be worried that an offer would be withdrawn if you politely negotiate.

I have seen this happen *extremely* rarely, mostly to women, and anyway is a giant red flag. It suggests you probably didn’t want to work there.

You wish there was no negotiating so it would all be more fair? I feel you, but it’s not happening.

Instead, negotiate hard, use your privilege, and then go and share numbers with your underrepresented and underpaid colleagues. […]
"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".

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Funny, before the election I recall lefties muttering the caravan must have been a Trump setup because it made the open borders crowd look so bad. Why would the pro-migrant crowd engineer a crisis that played into Trump's hands? THIS is why. THESE are the "optics" they wanted.


This media manipulation effort was inspired by the success of the "kids in cages" freakout, a 100% Stalinist propaganda drive that required people to forget about Obama putting migrant children in cells. It worked, so now they want pics of Trump "gassing children on the border."

There's a heavy air of Pallywood around the whole thing as well. If the Palestinians can stage huge theatrical performances of victimhood with the willing cooperation of Western media, why shouldn't the migrant caravan organizers expect the same?

It's business as usual for Anarchy, Inc. - the worldwide shredding of national sovereignty to increase the power of transnational organizations and left-wing ideology. Many in the media are true believers. Others just cannot resist the narrative of "change" and "social justice."

The product sold by Anarchy, Inc. is victimhood. It always boils down to the same formula: once the existing order can be painted as oppressors and children as their victims, chaos wins and order loses. Look at the lefties shrieking in unison about "Trump gassing children" today.