> and with the unsaid implication in the OP that all religions basically teach the same thing

I read the entirety of 3m4r's posts in that thread and nowhere did I see any hint of such an implication

I should have been clearer, I was referring to the blogpost as "OP", not to 3m4r.

Sorry, my mistake then

As an interested reader and not participant in this discussion, thanks for taking the time. I found what you had to say above informative.

Thanks for letting me know that there was at least one other reader. It means a lot.

If you're at all interested in looking into the topic more deeply, I'd highly recommend this paper, showing just how deeply transmission west into the Hellenic world occurred, including bilingual koine Greek and Aramaic translations of Buddhist material:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345171245_When_the_...

There are possibly deeper, more controversial parallels--Naraka (Hell), punarjanman aka reincarnation (gennēthē anōthen or "born again"), Dhamma (Logos), the Triratna (the Trinity), dukkha/kamma (Khowba (חובא) -> opheilema/harmatia or debt/trespass), āpatti-paṭidesanā (confession), arhat (hagios or saints), etc. ad nauseam--but as you've seen, even provisionally entertaining these notions is beyond the ken for most in the West, whether academic, religious, or otherwise. Elsewhere in Buddhist thought there are also forms like Pure Land that end up resembling certain strains of later Christian forms, despite independent genesis.

But ultimately, whether my perspective is true or not, or whether the metaphysical claims between the traditions differ (they do, especially at this point in time), the right course of living isn't really that different broadly between the two traditions--focus on one's own conduct rather than others, do good for others in the world and not merely oneself, forgive others, and always keep in mind that there is a moral law in the universe that is inescapable in its consequences. If you struggle to do it yourself, find others pursuing the same goals, and you'll eventually find the way.

It's 1) the WSJ and 2) a really dubious headline

I don't find it surprising or disappointing that ppl aren't bothering to go read the article because of the two factors in conjunction above

3) article is paywalled. Yeah, I know they can be bypassed, but it's yet more friction, not worth it for a really dubious headline.

Yes, she's a bad writer.

It's a pity because the material she is covering, the fever of Elizabethan rhetorical inventiveness, including in the written form, is so rich & interesting.

She pulls out useful detail & quotes but then links it together with her own overwritten & eccentric prose.

> The (small business) owner. The small (business owner).

Your second formulation doesn't work. Words in parentheses should be able to be omitted without loss of grammaticality.

Instead,

The small (business) owner

would be a better contrasting formulation to the first one.

I don't like the two examples of parenthesis used in the title & subtitle of this piece, where they put wonderful and perfect in parentheses before a noun phrase.

Putting adjectives in parentheses before a noun (phrase) is, yes, a useful device but those adjectives should usually be words that give more (but not necessary) information, rather than purely subjective qualifiers such as the two that the author uses. I know they're probably being a bit tongue in cheek but it still grates a little that these were the two examples they led with.

Well, you’re getting more information about the author’s subjective opinion (which they may have deemed unnecessary to include in the main, non-parenthesised text).

The obvious rejoinder to this comment is don't self-post about your business on HN then, if you're going to ignore HN commentary as 'unrepresentative'

Yes, I've always disliked this saying. People have agency. They can always refuse to play the game (and that is precisely what many great people chose to do).

Refusing to play the game just means you lose the game. It isn't a third state, it's a resignation.

You can't resign from a position you never held or a game you never entered into

Oh you're in the game. Your choice is whether to win the game or lose the game. Also if you lose the game you die. It's like Jumanji. Pretending the tiger isn't real is not a viable option.

Life is not 1 game with 2 ends. And everyone dies.

1. There is no such thing as "Artificial Intelligence" (but yes, machine learning and LLMs are real and powerful things)

2. Calling LLMs 'AI' is part of the grifting hype that has been wildly prevalent in the US corporate space. It's very natural and also very good that there is now backlash to and scepticism around all of the hype that is has been generated over the last 5 or so years

> windows, office, Visual Basic

This is all (Microsoft) junk and so I wonder if you actually benefitted from this 'piracy'. And of course, it's well known that MS turned a blind eye to such 'piracy' in lesser developed countries, as they knew that they were gaining a future paying customer base.

I’m talking about late 90s/ early 2000s. Back then Microsoft was the state of the art when it comes to PCs. I remember using MS Frontpage to build websites back then and VBasic to build simple programs with UI and using MS Acess as a database. Of course I did benefit from it.

You're saying that using the most used operating system from the 90's, the 00's and the 2010's, as well as the number one producitivty desktop publishing software and visual basic would not benefit a user, especially when they had a near zero cost to understand the core concepts of end user computing?

Really?

You could make a case for using Windows in the 90s (and yeah, I did; the last version of Windows I used was NT in the 90s). After that your time was much better spent on learning and using Linux (downloadable for free).

Visual Basic is a whole steaming pile of crap and you would always have been better learning to use non-corporate, non-proprietary languages and development stacks than wasting your time on that. And calling Office "the number one productivity desktop publishing software" only shows that you have fully drunk the Kool-Aid. More 'office productivity' has probably been lost to Microsoft Word than any other text-processing software on the planet.