I might use “prosaic”, “flowery”, or “confusing” in the same way, even though strictly speaking those words are describing the writing and not the writer.

The premise is wrong (or at least not obviously right) IMO, so I have a hard time taking any of the rest of it seriously. Could the best essay not be the most emotionally moving? The best when heard aloud? The most convincing call to action? The most accurate? The highest grossing? Driving the most engagement? What about the topic (any topic) that you could tell the /most interesting surprise/ about?

If Paul Graham didn’t run this company he certainly would not make it to the front page for his lazy philosophy.

My hometown of Minneapolis lost 30% (!!) of its population between 1950 and 1980. The only major difference now is that rich people are losing money instead of making more of it.

Obviously people of different cultures are slightly genetically different, otherwise how could you be racist against strangers! In the case of the professor who learned she was not ethnically indigenous, people didn’t want her out just because she, individually, was pretending to be native. It’s because there is an entire industry and extensive history of non-native people smothering native culture, telling native people through movies, books, etc. of what their own culture is or what it means, and of native arts and symbols being used by white people to make a quick buck. She /symbolized/ a sore point for the community and furthermore she was not open about it. The whole situation was unfortunate, but the author seems more interested in her case to prove his own point than in the concerns of the community he is poorly explaining about.

The funny thing is that being quickly opinionated is highly valued in tech, so my maladaptive behavior (in part) got me accolades and promotions. I actually think this tendency to have a hot take on everything immediately is a large portion of why engineers rub non-engineers the wrong way

“Once your ‘personality type’ has been found, it feels like you know something definitive about who you are. You only answered some small number of questions about small segments of your life, but the quiz authoritatively asserts it has seen you to the core. In this way the quiz turns ‘when X happens I do Y’ statements into ‘I am X kind of person so I always do Y’ statements. This is probably bad.”

Not to mention the thousands of people who currently make a respectable living driving people around.

But maybe I’m just one of those extroverts who doesn’t mind being around people.

In 1850 you might have a few more kids, thinking they could farm more and through hard labor your family could break even on resources. Your family of 8 all shares a single bedroom and you only send the smartest kid to high school (begrudgingly).

In 2024 people are putting off children because they won’t be able to afford a nanny, because the price of globally-sourced instantly-available groceries are too high, or because they are feeling their life already has enough richness and direction. If I cared for my children in the way we used to during population explosion they would be taken by CPS.

The inflection point where our global population levels out will be Interesting Times, but I’m optimistic for the long term sustainable culture that may result.