Sometimes a change is as good as a rest.

If you want to use your sense of wonder again, it might be good to seek out something completely new to you. Learn about something new, develop a new skill, or go to some place that you haven't been before. Then spend some time being quiet and observing or practicing.

Or spend some time in person with people who are enthusiastic about things you are not enthusiastic about, and get curious about why they like it, and listen to what they say.

I'm pretty sure you still have a sense of wonder in there, waiting to be used. It may be something that grows with practice though.

Also, remember that familarity is not the same thing as comprehension! You may very well be familiar with more interesting things about the world than you were before, but that does not me an that you understand them! And Less Wrong is certainly not a comprehensive compendium of all the interesting things in the world. For example, a topic that is rarely discussed on Less Wrong is Fluid Dynamics, which is something that awakes my sense of wonder. Here's a link to a blog about fluid dynamics: http://fuckyeahfluiddynamics.tumblr.com

I'm not sure whether to think up some strategies to help you find joy in the things you used to enjoy, or if what would help is spending time on completely new things, and making bigger changes in your life. Or some mixture, like remixing your past and present to make your future.

If there are still some minor things that you do find joy in, do those more often. Sometimes it is as simple as noticing what you like doing, what makes you feel even a smidgen happier, and doing it more.

I'm a bit confused as to how reading the Sequences could make it harder to find joy and excitement in minor things, or make you feel like you know everything. What happened, if you don't mind sharing?

Something that might help is writing things down. For example, if you had a notebook where you wrote down things that you had figured out, every time you came to a conclusion, and any details that might help you remember why you came to that conclusion. Then, whenever you encounter a problem you can read over the notes in the notebook from a variety of topics, and see if any of them match. Also, if you keep it updated frequently then when you go to write something down that would be another opportunity to review the notebook and see if anything matches something else that's bothering you.

Or if physically writing things in a notebook isn't something you want to do, sending yourself an email could work in a similar way.

In general, I've found that writing things down helps with remembering things.

"What do you think is the biggest problem here?" is a different question than "What do you think I could have successfully started to address in one conversation?"

If he kills himself, he hurts only himself. If he's violent toward other people, he can end up doing a lot more damage than that. He mentioned that one incident, but given his casual attitude toward it, there are probably more. It wouldn't surprise me if he was beating his girlfriend. Domestic assault (I call it domestic because it was against someone he lived with, even though housemate is not as usual a target as partner or child) is a huge huge huge warning flag. He had a bad day, and trouble sleeping, and suddenly someone else has to deal with the consequences of having a broken nose for the rest of their lives. The consequences for each of them are disproportionate, asymmetric. If he has another bad day, what next?

His girlfriend's life might be in danger.

First of all, I think the concept of TheProblem is flawed. I don't think there is necessarily just one problem that is "the bottom of the problem" whatever you mean by that.

You presented a conversation, and asked us to read between the lines. So, I did. If I was actually attempting to figure out what was going wrong, if I was going to take action about it, I'd need way more information than this one conversation. I wouldn't describe anything I said as conclusions. My procedure for concluding these is "I didn't conclude them."

What specifically do you want to know about my thought process or procedure? I already put clues in what I've written. For example, some of the reasons I think he may be a sociopath is the combination of not finding pleasure in life, feeling no remorse, and not showing any thought for the effects of his actions on other people in his responses. I already said that. Also, sociopaths are about 4% of the population. It's plausible. Given that, and given some pattern recognition from having come across some people who turned out to be sociopaths, and given what I've read in the several books I've read about them, I would at least keep it as a possibility in mind while dealing with this person. It's also a question "Is this person a sociopath or not?" that affects how you may want to behave going forward and what is likely to work or not.

I can only bring my own knowledge and experiences to this, and there may be stuff I'm missing because I don't have experiences with it, or stuff that is a projection of what I've encountered, and not applicable in this situation.

I don't understand what you are asking me, or what specifically you want to know. I can go into more detail, but it's tough to know which details you are interested in or asking for.

I just looked at the Cambridge prices for overseas students and it made me feel poor. Might as well seen a 500,000 ILS debt in my bank account.

You might be able to get financial aid or scholarships, so I wouldn't rule out an expensive university right away. If you apply and get accepted, which admittedly itself costs some money, then you could have some talks with the financial aid people. And their first answer may not be the final answer, or there may be alternative sources of funding, so you may have to repeat yourself and keep talking to them for a while before you together figure out something that could work. Some universities claim to have the attitude that they don't want anyone to not be able to attend because of financial reasons, but in practice it is hit and miss to get them to live up to it, and easy to get into debt. It may depend on the individual person you are talking to. If one person isn't helping much, a different person in the same department may help more. Sometimes people unfamiliar with the system get discouraged by the first thing someone in financial aid says to them and walk away, instead of advocating for themselves more, or exploring the problem from a slightly different angle.

You may also want to look into universities that have a co-operative education program that involves paid work in between sessions of study. This won't completely pay for the costs of education, but it can help a lot.

Yes, there are differences.

I talked to a person who was hiring for tech jobs in Silicon Valley, and he said that the Ivy League schools in the United States get a much better quality of training than other United States schools in the fields of engineering and computer science. For example, the Ivy League schools would have 3 hour exams where you have to show how you arrived at an answer as well as the answer. Most of the other schools had 1 hour multiple choice exams.

The situation is different in other countries. In Canada, unlike in the US, engineering is a regulated profession. That means certain types of designs have to be approved by a Professional Engineer. There are rules about how to become a professional engineer. One path to becoming one involves graduating from an accredited program at a university. So every engineering program at a university is monitored by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board. No matter which university you go to in Canada, you'll get the 3 hour non-multiple choice exams, and very good training.

For this reason, the person at the tech company liked to hire Canadians, since they have the good training, but not the entitled attitude of the Ivy League graduates. But he considered Ivy League graduates. He wouldn't even consider the non-Ivy League ones, unless they showed some other way that they actually have the skills and training, since they didn't get it at school.

Another difference between Harvard, MIT, etc. and the typical Canadian university is that Harvard and MIT have huge endowment funds and many wealthy alumni and donors, so they have access to a lot more resources than most universities. Like about 1000x more money. The MIT endowment fund reached $13.5 billion in 2015.

I also know someone who went to Harvard for a Masters degree in political science, and she said that after getting a degree from Harvard, she was taken a lot more seriously. People listened to what she said, and deferred to her, in a way that they didn't before she could say that she went to Harvard. So it seems to make a difference in public policy and government work.

Another difference between universities can be their intellectual property policy. The University of Waterloo, in Canada, has the most respectful intellectual property policy that I know of, among universities. Simply, if you do research or work there, it's yours, and you can use it in a startup company if you wish. Many students and professors do this. The University of Waterloo is well known for many technology spinoff companies. I know of one prof who doesn't even publish journal articles any more, he just documents his work with patents, and then uses them in his startup. This is seen as adding prestige to the institution, unlike in some other universities, where there's a bit more disdain for commercialization. The co-op program at the University of Waterloo also means that students get real-world experience and bring that back to the classroom, and is another reason for the more positive attitude to collaboration with industry.

The University of Waterloo's intellectual property policy is even more respectful and individualistic than the one at Stanford, which is also a university known for its spinoffs.

Oxford has more name recognition in North America than Cambridge. Within the UK, they are seen as mostly equivalent, to the point that "Oxford and/or Cambridge" is often shortened to "Oxbridge". It is easier to get work in government in the UK with an Oxbridge education.

Also, the people you meet at university are more likely to end up in powerful positions if you go to one of the big name universities. So the alumni network becomes more valuable.

It depends on what you want to study and what you want to do afterward. There are some fields where it wouldn't matter much.

Graduate education is a different matter. With some exceptions, like my friend who went to Harvard for political science that I mentioned above, it doesn't really matter much what school or department you go to for graduate school. The most important things will be 1) What did you do? and 2) Who did you work with? The rest is almost irrelevant. Finding a good supervisor who you can get along with, and who will help your career, is the priority when choosing graduate school.

I'm most familiar with Canada, and a bit with the US and the UK. I don't know the situation in other countries.

The city you live in may have more impact on you than which particular company you start at.

Banks and consulting companies may pay you more than a company focused on a software product, but the work is generally unsatisfying for software developers. Avoid those, unless high pay is more important to you than happiness. Though if you are choosing between them, banks are better than consulting companies. If you can find a company that has some understanding of how to treat software developers well so that they can do good work, and that makes money by research and developing their software, rather than by something else (eg. mergers and acquisitions to acquire customers) then you'll likely be happier.

As to topic it depends what you mean by topic. If you mean is it ok to make software that you're not particularly interested in using yourself, then I'd say the answer is yes. If you mean, you don't enjoy using the languages and technologies involved in the job, then I'd say the answer is no. For example, if you want to make software for chicken farmers, even though you may not be making software for chicken farmers the rest of your life, using the software language that you like working with, in a company that treats you well, I think that's ok. The next company you work for may not care how much you know about chicken farming, but may care that you have 3 years of experience using C++ (or whatever language.)

Getting involved in an open source project, or doing side projects, is another way to build up your reputation.

Before taking a job at a company talk to some people who have worked there. If you have connections on Linked In, for example, use them to find someone to talk to. Get a sense of what they like about working there. It's harder to ask about what they don't like, since people have to be careful how they answer such questions, although some will be forthcoming.

There are various ethical issues involved in creating software. It is good to be aware of them, and to think about them when considering whether to take a job. Many people around you will not think about them, so it's up to you to think it through and bring your ethics to your work.

Creating complex software is mostly about people. It's probably more important to like the people you are working with than to like the project you are working on, though that matters too. There are some work environments that can be toxic...avoid those and/or work to make them less toxic.

In fact, you may want to treat the job search as looking for a person to work with, more than looking for a particular company or task.

Regarding negotiating for a salary, these blog posts made me think.

Patrick McKenzie, a person who runs a software company in Japan, has written about salary negotiations in this blog post. http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

Mark Suster who has been both an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist, has written several posts abount negotiation. There's a list of them here. http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/negotiations/

The one that stuck in my mind the most was the post titled "Never negotiate piecemeal" http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2012/03/10/never-negotiate-piecemeal-heres-why/

Also, regarding job interviews, if you're not used to them you might think that the questions that they ask you are the ones that they want an answer to. Not so! Most job interview questions have some sort of hidden purpose to them. If you take them literally, you might miss the point.

For example, "Why should you get the job, instead of another candidate?" means something more like "Tell me something that I can tell my boss to cover my ass about why I gave you the job." "Tell me how you see yourself in 5 years" has multiple purposes. Read up on interview questions and why people ask them and what they are actually asking.

You might know this already, but iterative design is better than the waterfall method of software development, since it allows people to catch problems early in the design stages. Nevertheless, many companies still use the waterfall method, or pay lip service to "agile" but don't actually do it well.

Writing software for nuclear reactors or medical devices is qualitatively different than writing software for lower stakes purposes that can have more bugs in the software.

I probably have more advice, if you have more specific questions. It's hard to know what to tell you, since I don't know much about what your concerns are, or where you're starting from.