Interesting, I've done something similar for headaches. I imagine the pain as a sort of toy in a claw machine and then try to extract the pain with the claw. Like you said it doesn't always work but surprised it has ever worked.

From this perspective, techniques such as Reiki are not that surprising, they may be methods of more effectively exploiting this mind-body connection: all of these techniques usually have in common some sort of visualization, and learning to associate certain colors/signs/symbols with desired effects. (Although the fact that it seems to have effects even when the practitioner differs from the recipient means there's probably more to it than just that.)

I let myself focus on pain as just a sensory signal, like pressure or a focused sense of touch.

By completely welcoming the pain signal as information I can often quiet the discomfort component.

I assume that since pain functions by being a signal to avoid, completely reversing the avoidance interferes with its normal function - in a good way. Would love to know how that was actually playing out in my circuits

Not spending time on HN.

but today is the weekend

You are almost 60 - you should be close to retirement. It would be way more impressive if you were 35.

That's not the point. Simply going through life without making dumb financial decisions (and a little bit of luck) will get you to the same end point with the benefit of having a decent quality of life. I'm happy. And more importantly, my wife of 40 years is happy.

Your H&M example isn't great. The reason you didn't wear it a lot isn't because of the quality, but because you bought a shirt you didn't like. Save your money and only buy clothing you like.

That's a very good point! You'll save a lot of money by being selective about what you buy.

I think I got suckered into the H&M marketing - it looked quite nice in store and it even felt nice the first time I wore it. But then I realized it only really went with one or two other things, and it didn't look quite as good after being dry-cleaned/washed, so it quickly lost most of its appeal.

> it didn't look quite as good after being dry-cleaned/washed

This is another reason to spend more money on clothes: quality materials look good as they age. I bought a Old Navy pullover which only lasted 2-3 washes before pilling like crazy.

Would you mind giving some examples of how not knowing about transcendental functions and conic sections would make someone have a hard time with life?

Example: understanding compound interest gets a lot easier if you understand exponential functions. Not understanding compound interest makes you more vulnerable to people who do.

Then perhaps you shouldn't have that picture in your profile at all and you won't run into that problem.

What problem?

The problem of people on Tinder swiping right to a photo he doesn't want them to swipe right on.

If you picked up Scala, I'm going to assume you're interested in functional programming. In which case you should check out the book Functional Programming in Scala. Describes a bit more advanced functional programming ideas using Scala

Big fan of sleeperbot, especially the weekly sleeper report. Had no clue it was developed using RN

You can write code with pencil and paper

Yes but it's a little harder to prove that the algorithm you've described works.

But almost nobody proves that programs they write on computers work either. When was the last time you proved a program correct?

They didn't mean "prove" as in mathematically "prove" than an algorithm works, they meant it in mechanical terms (does it compile, does it run, does it past test inputs, etc.).

That is not a proof by the CS standard though -- well, unless the job is defined as "write a program that processes these N test inputs known in advance", in which case a program that prints the expected hardcoded output in response to each of the expected inputs and otherwise returns an error would be a good implementation :)

I personally avoid using a word "proof" to mean anything other than a mathematical proof. It can be done with code, for sure, but as grandparent said, usually isn't.

I think you may be assuming that the purpose of a CS degree is to teach people how to write programs that work, while it's really not :)

And there is such a thing as a correct implementation of an algorithm. Running it does not exactly prove things either, and it might not necessarily work on actual hardware, but it does show that the person understands at least part of the material.

This is just an assumption, but maybe it is because your comment had no relevance to the topic at hand.