
Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley - tysone
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/fashion/jack-dorsey-influencer.html
======
wpietri
This is really a perfect title.

As somebody who grew up in Michigan not far from Battle Creek, I've always
been interested the history of wacky self-improvement regimes. (You may
remember "The Road to Wellville" as one look at that. [1]) E.g., the inventor
of Graham flour believed in all sorts of self-harshness: "Graham created a
theology and diet aimed at keeping individuals, families, and society pure and
healthy - drinking pure water and eating a vegetarian diet anchored by bread
made at home from flour coarsely ground at home so that it remained wholesome
and natural, containing no added spices or other 'stimulants' and a rigorous
lifestyle that included sleeping on hard beds and avoiding warm baths." [2]

I know these things are cyclical, so I expected it to come again. And as a
someone who's currently trying eTRF [3] I think there's real value in self-
experimentation. But it's really weird to see a full-blown health fad complex
turn up in the tech industry where we see ourselves as so very rational.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Wellville](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Wellville)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester_Graham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester_Graham)

[3]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29754952](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29754952)

~~~
komali2
Ah, Battle Creek! Also where the Kellogg brothers got up to their weirdness.

John Harvey Kellogg was involved in the weird dietary movements of the era as
well. Ran a sort of spa / psych hospital thing, recommended people eat super
plain food and chew each bite 45 times, that sort of thing. Tried to make
"pre-digested" food which led eventually to Corn Flakes.

Lots of weird health anecdotes out of there. Anything from one of the Kellogg
brothers leaving the table during a meal and coming back with a pail of his
own fresh shit, inviting others to smell it and describing it as "as if it
were a warm loaf of bread," to recommending circumcision in young adults as a
preventative measure to masturbation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg)

~~~
Kalium
It's not a coincidence that Graham and Kelloggs were both doing weird dietary
stuff in Battle Creek. The Seventh Day Adventist Church was - and to an extent
still is - a major presence in Battle Creek. They place a great deal of
emphasis on health in general and diet in particular. I believe all of those
men were Adventists.

~~~
moretai
Can an outsider move into a place like that or anywhere that is heavily
influenced by a cult like figure or mentality and avoid being forced into
their community/cult?

~~~
Kalium
Battle Creek? It's not Salt Lake City or Clearwater. The Adventists don't
comprise an overwhelming majority of the town by any means.

Whether you, an outsider, would _want_ to move to a mid-size dying industrial
town is also a question worth asking.

------
Notorious_BLT
I'm firmly of the opinion that a lot of wellness fads spring up fields like
tech because its a field where traditional religious views are rarer. People
latch on to these new belief systems that are like religion in most ways
beside name. They all have a set of rigid rules to follow and rituals to
perform, and they all have some type of self-denial or sacrifice as one of
their core values. Fasting, temperance, Whole30, gluten free, even modern
fitness culture all share elements of denying yourself things you enjoy or
putting yourself through unpleasant situations in search of some kind of
enlightenment or transcendence.

I often see the same people falling into fad after fad, first telling me how
EMFs are poison and will be looked at like cigarettes in a decade, and how
singing bowls realign my spirit, and trying to insist on the power of
visualization can cure chronic pain. I'm curious what it is that causes this.

~~~
abakker
this is kind of flippant, but I suspect that a big part of it is that
remaining rational and skeptical, and trying to be belief-free is exhausting.

Rituals - even things like having morning coffee or an after work walk are
things that I can say calm me down because they require little mental effort.
The more you aim for variety the more effort it takes.

Beliefs are like the mental equivalent to acclimating to consistent and
unvaried exercise. It stops requiring thought and no longer pushes you to
improve.

given the breadth of ideas we are always exposed to now, I'd say that these
semi-religious tendencies are defense mechanisms.

~~~
ajtulloch
This is very close to the argument Alain de Botton makes in
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_for_Atheists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_for_Atheists).

------
hammock
Is Jack Dorsey really "tech's biggest manfluencer"? He didn't invent [ed:
start a trend in pop culture] keto, cold showers, intermittent fasting, or
meditation. There have been (modern, trend-driven) communities around each of
these for 10+ years. And there are loads of people who ALL of these together,
just like Jack.

I wouldn't be surprised if Dorsey is only 2 degrees removed from Joe Rogan,
for example. And in between those 2 degrees there are A LOT of influencers.

My own journey started with leangains (IF) leading into slow carb/keto,
Starting Strength, a tourist trip to Iceland, some rabbit hole about
xenoestrogens, another one about pesticides (actually that one goes back to
Ruth Winter), Joe Rogan, Rhonda Patrick, etc. Something about it lends itself
to forming strong opinions, but I know my journey is not very unique and many
of you reading can probably relate.

~~~
Jtsummers
An influencer doesn't invent, they promote. They adopt (or appear to adopt)
some item, practice, or philosophy and promote it to others (not necessarily
explicitly, perhaps just by juxtaposing it with themselves or other
artifacts).

~~~
elliekelly
> They adopt (or appear to adopt)

This is a really good point. I wonder how much of the nonsense extolled by
Dorsey & Paltrow is something they've tried more than once, if at all.

------
padobson
Some of this stuff definitely seems weird to me, but at the same time I think
the weird stuff is built on true stuff.

I'm definitely skeptical of people selling home designed cryochambers, but
cold stress seems to have real benefits[0], and I've found that a cold shower
or a cold jog (15-30 degrees F) seems to have the benefits described by the
adherents.

Similarly, I doubt I'll ever go on any sort of meditation retreat, but I
really enjoy using Headspace[1] and I find it helps me focus when I'm
otherwise scatterbrained.

Finally, intermittent fasting seems to get a lot of flack for being a veiled
eating disorder, but so far as I can tell, putting your body in ketosis
through calorie restriction is the only way to reduce body fat. You can cook
three low-calorie meals everyday, but that's time consuming and expensive and
terribly inconvenient for family meal planning. It's much easier to eat one
normal-sized meal and skip the extra meal planning, grocery shopping and
preparation required to eat healthy.

So have I drank the Kool-Aid on this stuff? Maybe. But at this point I'd need
more evidence to push me off of it, because the evidence that pushed me on to
it has been validated by my own results.

[0][https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/cold-stress-
hormesis](https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/cold-stress-hormesis)
[1][https://www.headspace.com/](https://www.headspace.com/)

~~~
X6S1x6Okd1st
I've been ending my showers with cold, basically washing off a lot of the
excess heat from the previously hot shower. It honestly feels pretty good &
def makes me happier about stepping out of the shower.

------
likeaj6
As someone working on making these health & wellness strategies and protocols
more data-driven and evidence based through more structured experiments (see
[https://mementolabs.io](https://mementolabs.io)), I'm very much pro on
pushing for more people trying these "fringe" strategies in a more informed
manner, so take my following thoughts with a grain of salt:

\- Many of our current, preexisting beliefs about food and nutrition are
proving to be extremely flawed and contrived, having essentially been pushed
by big-food to drive more consumption of sugar and carbs in our meals as
opposed to actually being research-based (just look at the USDA Food pyramid,
that puts carbs, almost all simple, as a staple). The emerging research around
restricted eating, fasting, and autophagy (research that won a Nobel Prize in
2016) is extremely promising albeit still developing.

\- There's real value to proper self-experimentation for helping you discover
and build better individual habits and determining what uniquely works for
improving your health and wellness, as well as challenge your thinking on your
existing beliefs, particularly around nutrition & dieting that tend to be
ingrained in you during development. [See gwern's self experiments for some
interesting ones]([https://gwern.net](https://gwern.net)).

\- IMO, the core issue at the root of this rise of the "cult-like influencer"
is a lack of accessible academic research (i.e the average person will opt to
read blogs over a long, hugely technical research paper) which creates more
and more noise and proliferation of misinformation and conflicting health
advice.

~~~
NerdyDrone
I think there's a lot of value of curating the best of "Biohacking" for
average people. Then also being data-driven in determining if those hacks are
actually improving your sleep, weight or productivity.

I also agree there are too many "gurus" out there, and not enough evidence-
based places like www.examine.com

------
finkin1
I personally find this to be a pretty ridiculous comparison. Paltrow runs a
massive organization that makes absurd claims about products she sells and she
profits significantly from making these unscientific claims.

Dorsey isn't doing any of this. All he does is have his personal way of living
in the world (not that I personally agree with a lot of the things he does).
He doesn't sell anything related to his silly behaviors. He doesn't profit
from any of his silly behaviors. He's just sharing how he personally lives in
the world with other people.

To me, this is VERY different than what Paltrow is doing and the comparison is
not a good one.

------
_bxg1
All of these fads center around one fundamental trait: the sense of having
control over your life. It doesn't matter whether they work; they sell you on
the experience of "I'm successfully doing this hard thing to make myself
better".

And it just so happens that Silicon Valley is full of people who are addicted
to the sensation of improvement. Eating disorders stem from the same
psychological mechanism, just a different definition of "improvement".

~~~
michaelchisari
I also wonder how much of it is people desperately trying to undo the damages
of stress. What people might really need is shorter work weeks and more time
off (including time away from social media and other non-work related
stressors).

But that's not something out culture really allows for or encourages. So we
look to miracle cures so we can continue feeling productive.

~~~
GuiA
I’d put it even further than “just” attempting to undo the damages of stress.

The local community, where you’d buy your meat from your local butcher that
had been in your neighborhood for 15 years, vegetables from the farmers’
market where the produce is all from within a 50 miles radius, where you go to
church/temple/etc with the same faces every week, where the teachers and
doctors that took care of you now take care of your children, etc, is pretty
much dead.

What has replaced it? Amazon Prime, precarious contractor jobs, cheap
replaceable crap brought in by cargo ship, startups claiming that they are
just like “a family”. Of course this leaves a gap in people’s need for a sense
of place and community. Of course it’s the perfect opportunity for charlatans
who know how to tap into exactly that.

~~~
_bxg1
I don't really see how saunas, supplements, and fasting stand-in for "a sense
of place and community". Maybe meditation retreats, but not most of the things
mentioned in the article.

~~~
GuiA
You buy the supplements, get on the company’s mailing lists, go to the
lectures, join Facebook groups with people following the same thing to share
experiences, attend meetups, etc. Of course it’s a social, shared experience
first and foremost.

------
gvand
For some time I've searched a way to define him (that didn't include insults)
and this one is quite good.

Can't understand how people can follow this guy and his trivial/dumb advices.
To me, he is just like that person that can't stop blabbering about stuff that
has been around for decades but that he has just discovered or one of those
people that blindly follow every popular trend (see the ones listed in the
article) without even thinking if they really should.

------
joelrunyon
I'm curious how they compare "fasting" \- which people have been doing for
thousands of years and has traditions in nearly every major historical +
religious culture and cost nothing with "jade eggs."

Doesn't quite seem equivalent...

~~~
jerf
I've been doing some fasting lately, and what has deeply shocked me is
precisely that I'm _not_ "staggering about hungry for days". It's surprisingly
easy once you get over the initial hump. (Note: I'm not saying it's
necessarily easy in an absolute sense; I'm saying it's surprising how easy it
is. Based on my upbringing I would have guessed after hour 4 I'd be in
constant serious hunger, and it's not like that.)

I've come to understand that what I interpreted as "hunger" in the past was
basically a sugar craving. I don't know how long it would take real hunger to
get to that level, but even in a two-day fast I'd only gotten up to more-or-
less "I could eat, yeah"... still a long ways from the hunger I've had in the
past.

(Also, my interest in it has actually been coming from the scientific side,
rather than the traditional side or crazywhack theory or any sort of Puritan
impulse. I have an autoimmune disease, and there's been a lot of interesting
work on those and fasting lately.)

~~~
joelrunyon
For a lot of people - what they think is "hunger" is really just "boredom."
That - or a carb addiction.

Once you start reading about autophagy, fasting doesn't really seem _that_
crazy after all.

~~~
rhinoceraptor
It's almost as if pre-modernity humans didn't have infinite supplies of hyper-
palatable food available 24/7...

------
komali2
> “It’s such a strange service — who wants to be in the cold? You need to hear
> about it from someone you trust,” said Michael Garrett, the head of Reboot,
> a spa that offers cryotherapy around the Bay Area. (Cryotherapy is when you
> make yourself get cold.)

Love the author's snark.

>He said the cold therapy gives him a high, as blood rushes to his head and
chest, and he believes practitioners are addicted. “I’m addicted straight up,
it’s a high and I love it,” Mr. Garrett said.

I never understood paying for cryotherapy - can't the same be accomplished by
a cold shower? I definitely love a good cold shower occasionally, seems cold
enough to get the blood rush effect (recommended to me by my cardiologist for
this exact reason).

~~~
_bxg1
I think it's on a whole other level of cold. People have died from
cryotherapy. And of course, not-dying is part of the service (hopefully) being
provided.

------
XaoDaoCaoCao
Fasting, cold showers, and meditation? Can't read the full article but
remember another article painting Dorsey as "extreme".

But to be honest, it's a reasonable reaction to stimuli that are unique to
human history. The 24 hour propoganda news cycle, density with increased
stressors, cognitive fragmentatiom due to the number of distractions, and an
absolutely horrible dietary culture that will lead us to squandering trillions
on treating entirely preventable diseases. Not merely monetarily but literally
reducing the cognitive potential of entire populations!

I don't see the quackery in adopting working strategies against these
challenges. Note, working strategies. Personally implementing the above 3
along with with weightlifting has been like feeling a cold mountain breeze
after living in a swamp.

Nietzsche's remarks, on how the priests of the world have ignored and
(gravely) trivialized the 3 things that give arise to daily moral/cognitive
judgement: Climate, Diet, and Habit, have been in my mind years after reading
them. And their validity seems to flower the more experience life throws.

~~~
andreilys
Absolutely. I think a lot of people are throwing the baby out with the
bathwater here.

The infrared bulbs may be gimmicky but the rest of his routine seems pretty
standard stuff that if more people adopted would lead to an increase in their
quality of life.

------
mc32
It’s sad how people cargo cult imitate the people who inspire them to such a
degree it becomes disconnected and degenerate. At least with Steve Jobs there
was a certain distance to the admiration. (They admired the accomplishments,
rather than his persona —maybe it helped that he was “mercurial” and gruff),
but with smooth talkers like Dorsey or Paltrow who look so wholesome, much
reason is thrown out the window. At least Paltrow is excusable because she’s
just taking advantage of a culture centered on “celebrity”. But the cargo
culting of Jack has little excuse.

~~~
wpietri
I'm sorry to say that Jobs had a lot of people throwing reason out the window
as well. Elizabeth Holmes is a great example of the cargo cult around his
style and management methods. And when he died, people literally built an
altar to him: [https://surjgish.com/2011/miscellaneous-fun/dia-de-los-
muert...](https://surjgish.com/2011/miscellaneous-fun/dia-de-los-muertos-san-
francisco-2011/)

~~~
kevinconaway
I don't believe those are "altars" in the sense that you're implying, as if
people are worshipping him.

They are ofrendas [0] which are part of the Day of the Dead celebrations. My
understanding is that they are usually reserved for loved ones but beloved
public figures are included as well.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ofrenda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ofrenda)

~~~
wpietri
They are also called "altares de muertos" in Spanish, and are generally called
altars in English. And yes, I think "worship" is not a bad way to describe how
people often treat celebrities, Jobs included. We call it "cult of
personality" for a reason, after all.

------
farquaad
Comparing Jack Dorsey to Gwyneth Paltrow is unfair because she made money by
recommending Goop products. Dorsey, on the other hand, is being open about his
lifestyle because people ask him about it.

~~~
elliekelly
I'm glad someone said this. As far as I know Dorsey just discusses his love of
pseudo-science while Paltrow actively shills it for profit.

~~~
andreilys
Curious which of Dorsey's practices you consider pseudo-science?

Both meditation and fasting have been practiced for thousands of years and
have plenty of scientific studies backing up their benefits.

------
pcbro141
Never understood the disdain for people for trying wacky sounding self-
improvement techniques. Just like I wouldn't make fun of the 17% of Americans
who take antidepressant pills to feel happier, I'm definitely not going to
make fun of people fasting or using sauna to feel happy.

~~~
rchaud
Antidepressants undergo clinical trials and are prescribed by medical
professionals. There is no glamour or publicity in that at all.

The comparison would be closer if you were talking about IG fitness
influencers selling 'fit tea' and 'all-day energy BBCAs'.

~~~
rhinoceraptor
I'm sure the fasting market is really going to take off soon, there's a
killing to be made selling absolutely nothing.

~~~
rchaud
The "fasting" is the "nothing". The "fasting prep" is where the money will be
made:

\- sleep optimization products (white noise machines, blackout curtains, lucid
dreaming BS guides)

\- fasting-friendly recipes and nutritional guides

\- branded water flasks

etc. etc.

I've seen college kids on IG sell "workout guides" which are basically a Word
doc they converted to PDF. They look like models, so polish and presentation
of the final product isn't nearly as important as the polish and presentation
the influencer put on themselves before going on camera.

------
rubicon33
Everyone is looking for a shortcut (even billionaires)

When it comes to health, there isn't one. The solutions aren't glamorous, or
easy, nor do they guarantee you'll live to 100.

In general, eat less. Whether it's 1 meal a day, or 20, the amount of food you
consume now is probably more than you need. When you do eat, eat more
vegetables. Eat less meat. Eat healthy fats, less saturated, and trans fats.

Exercise, sometimes vigorously (as age permits).

Sleep well.

That's it. Lemon salt water and infrared bulbs aren't going to move the
needle.

------
Jerry2
Last time I visited my parents I noticed that my mom had Gwyneth Paltrow's
cookbook on her shelf. She mentioned how pretentious and crazy it was. I
flipped through it and I couldn't identify most of the ingredients.

Yahoo News calculated it would cost you $300/day to feed your family from her
cookbook:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20130719034903/http://shine.yaho...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130719034903/http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-
food/gwyneth-paltrow%E2%80%99s-300-a-day-it%E2%80%99s-all-good-no--
it%E2%80%99s-not-meal-plan-211506395.html)

And speaking of Dorsey, this is another crazy article about him:

> _Why are Silicon Valley billionaires starving themselves?_

> _Dorsey recently appeared on the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast to explain
> his monkish lifestyle in more detail than the 240 character blasts he 's
> known for sending out to the less biologically enlightened universe. He says
> he eats only one meal a day in the week and doesn't let any foodstuff pass
> his lips at the weekend. He also starts every day with an ice bath. "Nothing
> has given me more mental confidence than being able to go straight from room
> temperature into the cold," he says._

[https://theweek.com/articles/835226/why-are-silicon-
valley-b...](https://theweek.com/articles/835226/why-are-silicon-valley-
billionaires-starving-themselves)

~~~
gipp
While I hate to defend any of paltrow's nonsense, the numbers in that article
are bullshit, unless you're using a full can of olive oil spray for an omelet
or 3 pounds of flour for a couple muffins.

------
tvanantwerp
I feel dumber for having read this article. The journalist is just pointing
their finger and shouting, "Hey everybody, look at this weirdo! He does things
we don't do--isn't that so WEIRD?!"

I lost interest in that kind of "information" after middle school.

------
gambler
This is a cheap hit piece and part of the ongoing NYTs campaign against social
media. I am saying this as someone who hates Twitter and thinks Dosey is
either a mega-hypocrite or a victim of his own brainwashing. (Talking about
his views on human communication here. I utterly don't care what kinds of
saunas he uses.)

And "manfluencer"? Really, this is New York Times now? Rhetorical question. Of
course it is.

------
duxup
This doesn't seem all that different than say typical celebrity culture
followers (Paltrow falls into that category) who adapt it to a sort of
lifestyle.

I find it a bit weird as I've not found any folks who I want to emulate what
they eat or emulate their lifestyle in general. Granted I'd like to be
healthier but that's a thing, not a person.

~~~
peteey
Are being healthy and not unhealthy the same thing? For example not smoking is
"not unhealthy" in the sense it does not hurt your lungs, but I would not
consider standing around not smoking as being healthy. Similarly drinking
water is not unhealthy compared to the harms of soda and dehydration.

The traditional form of healthy is avoiding harm; avoiding less than normal
health. Ice baths and fasting seem like an attempt to be above the baseline
normal healthy. Its an addition instead of avoiding a subtraction.

~~~
duxup
I'm not sure I understand, but I'm also not concerned with the definition of
what healthy or "not unhealthy" are either way as far as my comment goes.

------
0xfeba
Well, scratch Twitter off the list of places I'd work. What bizarre behaviour.

~~~
duxup
Humans are weird.

Steve Jobs had some weirdness / bad choices.

I still wouldn't mind working for them. It's not like you have to do those
things or are endorsing them by working there.

Weird folks come up with some good ideas sometimes.

I think of myself as very boring and normal, I'm not coming up with great
ideas...

~~~
Larrikin
So long as he isn't forcing his employees to follow that lifestyle, it seems
totally fine to me as well.

Now WeWork is a place I would never think about working. All catered lunches
are vegetarian only and they won't let you expense any meals unless you can
prove they were vegetarian. No thank you.

[https://www.fastcompany.com/90202356/wework-is-a-
vegetarian-...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90202356/wework-is-a-vegetarian-
now)

~~~
duxup
Humm yeah that's a bit different from WeWork there...

------
crsv
I really did enjoy this framing of Jack Dorsey as a foil for Elon Musk (I mean
I didn't think of this prior to the article, but it was an entertaining
comparison). I think for the spectacle of it all, Elon really does need some
sort of rival that's not the SEC, but a man with a face and a name and a
personality and to paint it as Jack Dorsey is just wonderfully entertaining as
an idea, despite being from a practical standpoint pretty irrelevant.

------
martythemaniak
Hacker News is rapidly becoming the National Enquirer for Silicon Valley.

""" Hacker News Guidelines

What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.
That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a
sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual
curiosity. """

I guess our collective intellectual curiosity now amounts to shitting on
Dorsey's pretty unremarkable diet.

------
iheartpotatoes
If I was worth almost $100,000,000,000 dollars I'd be batshit insane and think
the world revolved around me, too.

------
bshoemaker
Reminds me of Tom Brady's TB12 idiocy

------
markhalonen
I think this is a story submitted by a PR firm on behalf of HVMN.
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)
changed how I view the "news"...

------
rchaud
Where does Tim Ferriss fit into this culture? Wasn't he a SV god at one point
for his 4hr work week and workout books?

~~~
crsv
Tim hasn't made enough money or amassed enough power to be on the NYT scale of
comparison. He's similar in terms of insanity but more niche in his influence.
Similar to Joe Rogan (though less entertaining by an order of magnitude, at
least imho).

------
luord
> manfluencer

Was unsure if the article would have any substance after that and, indeed, no
substance.

------
jeanlucas
Okay, that headline made me laugh out loud.

------
jonny_eh
Shows that engineers in Silicon Valley aren't any more skeptical than
Hollywood. We may consider ourselves smarter, but we're just as susceptible to
bullshit as anyone.

~~~
mieseratte
I'd had an engineer recently fracture his foot running in a race.

He took a day off, went to a doctor and was told he need to wear a boot, stay
off his foot for a while, etc. He proceeds to come into the office, proudly
informing everyone how he knows better than the doctor, and that he only needs
to rub peppermint oil and wear a compression sock. All while hobbling around
the office, clearly in pain. Everyone pleaded with him to heed to the doctor's
advice, and I even showed him how I have a messed up arm from a childhood
incident that improperly healed and tried explaining the necessity of heeding
basic medical guidance.

Didn't matter, this engineer "just knows" better than a doctor.

This is a weird world.

~~~
gojomo
This sounds like a delusional person who happens to be an 'engineer', rather
than someone who who is 1st & foremost, or archetypally, an engineer.

~~~
CharlesColeman
Its so common for engineers to have excessive confidence in their opinions
about subjects far beyond their areas of competence that there's a term for
it: _engineer 's disease_ (or engineer's syndrome).

~~~
sbov
This is true for the general population though. The only reason why the term
exists is because other engineers expect it not to apply to engineers. Really
the concept says more about us and our expectations of educated engineers
rather than the engineers with bad opinions.

You could even go so far as to say those wielding the term also fall under the
term: outside of your expertise, you're assuming engineers shouldn't have bad
opinions. There's evidence abound that this is wrong - engineers can have bad
opinions just like the general population. Yet some still insist on calling it
out as "special" despite presenting no studies showing they're more likely to
have these bad opinions.

~~~
CharlesColeman
> This is true for the general population though.

Not really. Engineer's disease is specific to engineers, because at its core
is the _implicit_ belief that engineering (and science/math) is the ur-
discipline whose mindset and techniques are universally applicable to all
problems. That often comes with the attitude that other mindsets and
techniques are inferior (e.g. those from the humanities in particular) and/or
that engineers are more competent and can easily master needed parts of other
disciplines when they choose (and thus the practitioners of those disciplines
have little authority).

------
atemerev
Drugs are hell of a thing.

------
moretai
He’s rich stop talking about him

------
stcredzero
_As Twitter’s head, he spends his days navigating issues around free speech
for white supremacists, online abuse and the spread of terrorist propaganda_

The phrasing seems designed to imply that Free Speech is only for bad people
and terrorist propaganda.

The reason why Free Speech is a fundamental human right, is that it keeps
powerful people and authorities from squashing dissent. We can't just have
"Free Speech, so long as we like it and the speaker," precisely because biased
parties can then smear their opponents to squash their speech. (Witness the
behavior of the SPLC of recent years. Witness the false smearing of Ben
Shapiro as a "white supremacist.")

This does mean that we need to let bad people speak as well. No one can be
allowed to arbitrate Free Speech. Not only the government, but also powerful
people, press conglomerates, and private organizations.

This is precisely why the ACLU in the 20th century often defended the right of
(the same) bad people to speak. Because what must be defended is the right of
_everyone_ to speak.

~~~
CM30
Agreed.

Unfortunately, it seems freedom of speech has become one of those things a
disturbing number of people only seem to see the negative side of. In a
certain sense, it's in the same quagmire as capitalism, IP laws, and to some
extent privacy; easy to see the negatives and abuses in, but also something
that helps or protects everyone else too.

------
AimForTheBushes
Can't read the article without making an account but the first paragraph is a
real zinger.

>Young men are staggering around, hungry for days. They are throwing
themselves into ice baths and cryotherapy pods. There are not enough beds at
the silent vegan meditation centers to accommodate them. They need more near-
infrared bulbs.

~~~
CharlesColeman
The NYT paywall is far more porous than the WSJ one (you might just need to
browse incognito), but here's a bypass anyway:
[http://archive.is/HOP4M](http://archive.is/HOP4M)

~~~
username223
> The NYT paywall is far more porous than the WSJ one (you might just need to
> browse incognito)

They started doing something recently that occasionally throws up a popover in
incognito mode, so that might not help. I haven't bothered to look into how it
works, but clearing cookies or disabling JavaScript still seems to reliably
get around the paywall.

I really should subscribe, though, since they do a lot of good reporting, and
it would be great if more online publications became less dependent upon ads.

------
nimbius
As someone with a firmly blue-collar perspective on the world, these weird
sacred cows of the city that people elevate to the status of guru are as
mysterious for me as they are asinine.

I read up on Gwyneth Paltrow after reading the article, and checked her
website where I found idiotic products that made my heart stop with some of
their claims. When my heart finally started again I cursed god for letting me
live to see things like $300 leather sandals, a $75 candle to "clear my
energy" and a $70 crystal drinking straw that radiates heart
opening...whatever the hell that means.

Now theres a guy telling people how to eat in Silicon Valley, and I cant help
but remember how this ended last time. Steve Jobs was essentially a station of
the cross at the holy church of silicon valley who could do no wrong, speak no
evil, and walked a path of enlightenment akin to a god of knowledge...

until he died from trying to cure a common cancer with fruit cups and
meditation, instead of medical science. Thats the part we dont seem to talk
about very much, and I feel like it would do wonders to scale the wind back
from the sails of these quacks. Being directly attributed to the cause of
death for a diet related disorder would give these self-proclaimed lords of
the human body a chance to reconsider their podcast --or at least hire a
lawyer-- before they click upload.

~~~
tomcam
Hang on. I am the last thing from a Jack Dorsey fan. However, I see nowhere in
his somewhat grotesque tweets where he tells me what I should do. As near as I
can tell, he is simply telling us what he is doing.

~~~
d136o
That's part of how this all works, if you wield influence it's not necessarily
by way of telling people exactly what they should do, rather you convey your
vision and others work to make it happen.

And I think that this can yield very effective teams, but it can also result
in cult like herd behavior. Two sides of one coin?

~~~
smacktoward

       The Master doesn't talk, he acts.
       When his work is done,
       the people say, "Amazing:
       we did it, all by ourselves!"
    

\-- _Tao Te Ching_ , Chapter 17, Stephen Mitchell translation
([http://taoteching.org.uk/index.php?c=17&a=Stephen+Mitchell](http://taoteching.org.uk/index.php?c=17&a=Stephen+Mitchell))

------
golemotron
Calling Elon Musk hyper-masculine is just funny. Masculine is enough.

I suppose it's like how "right" because "far-right."

------
cnahr
While Dorsey is rather extreme, his lifestyle is a lot healthier than the
average American’s or most everyone’s in the developed world. Eating junk food
around the clock is really bad for you. Note that Dorsey isn’t fat and
diabetic like so many people these days.

~~~
rosser
"Not as bad as", aka The Fallacy of Relative Privation, is a "red herring"
fallacy.

It is a distraction, a diversion, and, in so many words, whataboutism.

~~~
hshshshshss
yes its veganism that is the extreme part of this...

