Ironically, based on what I know Psychiatry is perhaps the biggest Existential Angst Factory in existance.
Neurology would fit that bill much better. Or physics, if we want to be play reductionists and I know the temptation is huge :D.
Someone_from_the_other_side
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On the up side, if life is meaningless and a happiness pill without any grave side effects (unfortunately not true for present day anti depressants) becomes available, there is absolutely no reason not to take it.
And before that, it probably implies you can do whatever makes you feel best, provided you have proper discounting in place.
Much like above posters, I can’t see how you could dispute “Something thinks therefore something is”. Since the “I” is not specified in the original text (but it’s nearing 10 years that I read a translation of it so take this with a grain of salt) I would say the substitution makes sense. At the very least, it is the meaning that everyone I ever discussed with was using. (I believe the “I” was merely a self referential concept, maybe like “this” in some OOP languages refers to the specific instance of the object in question).
As for the thermodynamics in Matrix, I faintly recall something about a fusion reactor working somewhere, but that may have been to power Zion, not the Matrix. I agree it is a colossal blunder in the whole series (and anyway, it would have been better if Reloaded and Revolutions were never made, Reloaded especially was unforgivably bad).
This rings true with my experiences in one of the top management consulting firms (both on consultant and client side). The higher up you get, the smarter the people in general become, many of the top brass actually are interested in the big picture much more than the immediate balance sheet (in some cases so much that it becomes hard gathering the hard data you would need now). Many are ready to challenge conventional wisdom or drop their agenda for a while if you present them with a genuinely unconventional idea.
Middle management is somewhat split, there are stubborn short sighted people who likely are stuck on whatever level they are and then occasionally there’s the—generally younger than average- very bright guy who’s on his way up, eager to learn and share.