Q&A With Grey: Just Because Edition

Hello Internet.

When's the next Q&A with Grey?

• Discord21337
  Right now!

What opinion have you held for a time and then changed radically?

• desvirtuado
  Well, as mentioned the first time I talked about changing your mind, this is always hard to discuss because the specifics are often quite personal. But the biggest non-personal thing I've changed my opinion on is breakfast. I used to believe breakfast was absolutely vital - not just believe it - I had evidence that skipping, nay even delaying breakfast ruined everything. But as I've tried to get healthier, slowly and inconsistently, I've experimented with various things and the one that shocked me the most is breakfast is bulls**t. After an admittedly rough adjustment period, my body no longer needed breakfast, and it's hard to describe just how much of a huge quality-of-life improvement this has been. Simplifying my normal morning routine and making early travel days easier. While I'll still eat breakfast sometimes, particularly on vacations, because it's clearly the best of the three (seven) meals, it's no longer the necessary part of life I thought it was.

What do you want people to remember you for 500 years from now?

• Coolie2
  I don't want to be remembered, I want to be alive.

What is the most frivolous item you own?

• ClenchtheHenchBench
  Man, that is a good question that had me looking up exactly what "frivolous" means: not having purpose or value. So, a thing I own which has neither purpose nor value. I'm not really sure anything I own fits that description, but I'll keep looking for you.

If you have an idea in the shower without phone or notebook present, what do you do?

• Hoepla
  (Shower sounds) Hey Siri! Hey Siri! (Siri pings) Make a note; must not forget million - nay, billion dollar idea. (Siri pings) Nice weather coming up for Paradise, Nevada, United States. (Grey groans)

What do you think of jazz?

• Maxim_Potashov
  Jazz is the opposite of everything I like in music. I want music to have patterns and repetition. Patterns and repetition. This is why I also don't like live music. I view music as a brain manipulation tool, and to that end, jazz is anti-useful to me.

Do you speak Dutch?

• Riobhain
  (In Dutch) I don't speak Dutch, my mother is Dutch, but she never spoke Dutch with me. (In Dutch) I grew up speaking just one language.

If you had control of a super-intelligence to which you could only give one command, and it would execute it to the best approximation of what you intended, what would your one command be?

• DeepFriedJif
  Min-max happiness and suffering.

Oh wait! What's one thing that you're not satisfied with your life right now, and how do you plan to solve it?

• Living-stoneInAfrica
  I've gotten into time tracking pretty deeply. I used to just track my work hours, but I began to record how every hour of every day is spent. And, let me tell you, no matter how well you think you spend your time, and no matter how well you do spend your time, tracking all of your time is an unflinching look into a mirror, eternally uncomfortable. So, I'm not thrilled with the way my pie chart for last year looks. It was a year of chaos. But, it's not possible to improve without knowing where you're starting, and one of the ways I'm working to make this better is simply to have the data about how I spend my time more visible in more places. I've just begun in the most baby steps way possible, but so far, making life more visible seems like a good feedback loop.

How are you doing?

• MrEngineeringGuy
  Good, thanks. You?

If you had to enroll at a university tomorrow and had to choose one field of study, which would you choose?

• rubinowitz
  I'd like to say I'd take a programming course but I'm pretty sure I couldn't pass at the university level. Constants and functions and loops, oh my, are fun and clear, but once it gets to pointers, it's a level too far. So if I needed to pass, I'd probably sign up for economics. I dropped out of that Master's course as mentioned in a previous Q&A because it wasn't the right fit in my life at that time, but I'd be happy to give it a go again.

Of all the classes you've ever taken at Uni, what was your hardest? What did you hate the most? Why?

• Negative-One-Twelfth
  Well, the physics classes in my later years were the hardest and were probably the hardest intellectual thing I've ever done or will do. But that's the boring-er question. More interesting question is which class I hated the most. That was a required humanities reading class. It was one of those classes where the professor had free rein to just select a bunch of books they liked and force students to read them and write essays agreeing with the professor or disagreeing in a way the professor agreed with. God, did I hate it. I really think it's the kind of class that professors make mandatory because they like to teach it and it makes them look smart and it's easy and not because it's remotely good for the students involved. Anyway, it had to be done and I had a pretty good idea in advance I would hate it, so at my college, there was an option to compress an entire academic year of these classes into one intense summer. So I stayed at college over what was vacation for most people to finish this class as fast as possible. I've always been pretty good at reading a lot using an on-off schedule when I need to, and it served me well here. I think I read something like 30 stupid or boring or flowery or pompous books over that summer. Anyway, it works so well it was a strategy I used every summer, compressing as many dumb mandatory classes into as short a time as possible. If your school gives that as an option, I highly recommend it so you have more time during the rest of the year to focus on more important things.

Raisins in chocolate chip cookies?

• interesting-o
  Gross.

What noise do you wake up to?

• architecty
  None. I used to use music to wake up to because this (wake-up alarm sounds) is the world's most unpleasant sound. But doing so trains yourself to dislike whatever song you use and have it randomly cause you a sense of drowning anxiety when you hear it in a different context. I used to use a Sigur Rós song during my teaching years to wake me up, and I still can't hear the opening few seconds without feeling like I'm drowning, a decade later. Of course, the sound may be none but I currently use my Apple Watch to wake me up with a vibration. And I know I'm in a good routine when I wake up naturally before it goes off.

If you could have one superpower (excluding the power to have all powers), what would it be?

• jackmedrek
  Invulnerability. With an exit option.

Can you wear silly ties for the rest of the video?

• Nesogra
  No, I spent years plotting and scheming how to escape the world of ties. I will not go back to it now.

You are given the opportunity to permanently, and irreversibly, change one fundamental law of physics. What would it be and why?

• Blarghenshnarf
  On the panel of fundamental laws and constants, I've draped a very big "do not touch" sign.

How do I get over a crippling Factorio addiction?

• Ggecho_Swe_
  You tell me, man. I'm over a thousand hours deep.

Do you feel that "Humans need not apply" needs ... updating? Has anything changed since its creation that would change your message?

• DarkJohnson
  Not really anything I would change. I do enjoy that the debate around autos has switched from "They'll never happen" to "Why aren't they here now?", which is an interesting question. At least in this moment, it feels like progress and self-driving cars is a bit of an s-curve, so maybe I was over-optimistic about the rapid approach of commercially-available autos, but I still think they're coming, and if I can't buy or rent an auto within ten years of the publication of that video, I'll be surprised and disappointed.

What is love?

• theheroinwaiting
  What is love? Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more.