Relaxed at Home, Shaved, Drove and Reminisced

9:57 PM

I'm flying out of Puerto Rico in a few days. I should do a better job of preparing. Today I didn't do all that much, in the morning I walked outside, I watched random videos throughout the day, shaved in the evening, and then at night time I drove towards where my first ex-gf Aloe lives or used to live. I've not kept up with what she's been up to, so she may have moved or not since then. I didn't remember the whole route to her place, actually I probably do but just didn't feel like going all the way, I got pretty close and then went back home.

The drive there was very reminiscent. Puerto Rico is a tiny island on the map, but it's massive when you're actually here. It's extremely massive. It's like an hour's drive to her place, and she lives in a very nearby city. There's hundreds of roads and intersections that I pass by on the way to her place, each intersection and road going their own separate way to somewhere else. It's so massive here. This place is so massive. It's seriously surprising how big and massive this tiny island is.

It's been around four years since I last drove to Aloe's place, and even though the route is an hour's drive, nothing has changed at all on the drive there. All the buildings are the same, all the roads look the same, everything looks the same. There were no new buildings, no new developments, it was all the same.

Meanwhile in Virginia, every time I visit, there's a lot of new developments I find that weren't there the last time. Sure, in my parent's local area, nothing much has changed. In the nearby city where I used to work though, there's tons of new buildings.

My old office building in Virginia was practically the tallest building in the town center, or one of the tallest in town center, back in the day when I used to work there. Now it's surrounded by several much taller buildings. You can't even see it anymore unless you get much closer to it, whereas back then you could be several streets and blocks away, maybe even miles away or even further than that, and you could see still it, but now it's surrounded by other much taller buildings.

Anyway, on the drive to Aloe's place, I listened to an old podcast episode from 2015. It was the Developer's On Fire podcast with Dave Rael, episode 30 with David Heinemeier Hansson. I listened to this podcast episode around 10 years ago. I don't think I listened to this episode when it directly came out, or maybe I did. From what I recall, I listened to this episode in 2016, but I don't know how or why I would have since this came out in 2015. It's the only episode I've listened to on this entire Developer's On Fire podcast, I think I randomly searched for developer, found this podcast, and downloaded this episode as it was one of the latest. That's the most likely answer.

I think this was also the time when I purchased the book A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine. I gave it out as a Christmas present this same year in 2015 I think, or maybe it was the next year. Anyway, I didn't even read this book until 2018 or 2019 or so. Then the book was life changing. It really helped me through tough times.

Just because a podcast episode is old, from 10 years ago, doesn't mean it's outdated. Yeah they talk about technologies that aren't even used much anymore like Slack or don't even exist anymore like HipChat, but the psychology around this episode is still relevant. DHH (David Heinemeier Hansson) doesn't even talk much about programming in this episode, he mostly talks about philosophy, psychology, and business, and it's all relevant even to this day.

Everyone as a whole is dumber today than 10 years ago. I saw a post today showing a chart and study that showed that, as a population, we basically peaked in intelligence in 2012, and have been on a decline since then. I don't remember exactly what terms the post used, like cognitive reasoning or math ability or whatever to search for it again. I don't remember how they tested it, I don't think it was just SAT scores as it was applied to the whole population, but anyway, we have been declining. It's not just students that are dumber now, but adults as well.

When I do a search online for "are we getting smarter" or "are we getting dumber", both search phrases basically lead to the same articles, showing we are getting dumber. Technology helped us become dumber, doomscrolling helped out too. Now AI doing our thinking for us, is making us dumber still. Intelligence is valued pretty lowly in our society though, if we are just talking about income and economics.

You don't have to be smart at all to make any money, one of the smartest people today, Chris Langan, is poor. He worked jobs as a bouncer and a rancher, these don't pay very much, and he's like 70+ today, with no accomplishments to name. People graduating right from college today and get a job make more than he has ever made probably. So our society does not value intelligence, and I think more and more people will focus on looks over intelligence, moving forward.

Anyway, I think a lot of the best books, podcasts, audiobooks, etc. will be ones published prior to 2020. Everything else since then has been a rehash of past ideas, and nothing new or as great. You can't discern whether or not something was created by AI either. So if you want great content to listen to, I recommend podcasts and audiobooks from prior to 2020.

Anyway, I'm getting sleepy. I'd write more but I'm about to pass out. That was my day today.