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Twitter wins again. We keep reducing these complex multivariate social issues to simple cause-effect situations then beating one another up over what the simpl

Twitter wins again. We keep reducing these complex multivariate social issues to simple cause-effect situations then beating one another up over what the simple cause is. When we're doing definitions, the key phrase is "necessary and sufficient" In this case, being rich or poor is neither necessary nor sufficient since we have plenty of examples of things working out with either of these two things being missing. So really the discussion is much more like "Does condition X provide a 3 or a 4 percent boost?" But that's not as fun to argue about. We oversimplify life and public policy-making at our own peril.

esolyt 7y ago
> So really the discussion is much more like "Does condition X provide a 3 or a 4 percent boost?" I think it's more like whether it brings a 400% boost. It is definitely an important discussion to have. Whether Twitter is the place is another story.
- DanielBMarkham 7y ago
  I agree. Also note that moving from a 1% chance of success to a 4% chance of success _is_ a 400% boost. It also may be trivial. Moving from .1 to .4 works the same way. Both statements can be true at the same time. These things get tricky quickly. In a different medium, say forcing yourself to 100 characters instead of 280, we would have even more of a difficult time discussing it.
aestetix 7y ago
Yep. At this point, to encourage health and respectful public discourse, the first step is to delete your twitte account. And probably facebook too.
znpy 7y ago
> We keep reducing these complex multivariate social issues to simple cause-effect situations then beating one another up over what the simple cause is. Twitter is cancer and this is why i keep off it.
njepa 7y ago
It isn't like 3 or 4 percent though. Starting a startup ranges from a largely risk free career move to impossible. Most people today start at negative. Want to live in a decent sized city? That's at least $2k a month. An education? Might very well be $50k in debt. Job security? Need to put in the hours young. Otherwise there is a very real chances of getting evicted, not being able to find a decent job, not being able to keep your friends or start a family. Plenty of people who are successful today have their parents pay for university, their first apartment and/or a safety net. And that is just to have a normal career.
- bluGill 7y ago
  Cost to live in a decent sized city are much less than that in most cities. Sure Silicon Valley is going to be more. Also every city has rich areas that are more. However in most cities there are poor neighborhoods where rent is under $1000, and you can share that with a few roommates. If you tastes are to a stove that you don't need to light with a match, sidewalks that are even, and other nice things: that will cost you.
  - kragen 7y ago
    > in most cities there are poor neighborhoods where rent is under $1000 Average income is about US$11000 a year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28no... And most people make less money than that, because the distribution isn't symmetric. The fact that "rent under $1000" seems low to you indicates that you live in a bubble.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      I should have qualified that with US. You can rent a mud hut for few bucks in some remote backward village, but that is obviously not a lifestyle anyone reading this would wish.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  > An education? Might very well be $50k in debt. You can get a perfectly decent degree from your community college for very affordable prices. Likewise you may not be able to live in downtown manhattan, but you can probably live anywhere in a whole bunch of the square states on $1k a month.
o10449366 7y ago
Twitter is one of the worst social media sites, in my opinion, and it makes me concerned how much it's caught on with American politicians (no, I'm not just referring to Trump). It limits discourse and incentivizes "outrage culture" by design. I see more racist and outright intentionally false information content on Twitter than any other social media platform and its only gotten worse with time. They've shown very little to no initiative in preventing this. I get the impression that the only reason Twitter isn't as heavily scrutinized as Facebook is because their executives are simply more likable, which isn't a high bar to pass when you look at Mark Zuckerberg. I think the same applies to Google, too.
- zapita 7y ago
  I think the main reason Facebook is under more scrutiny than Twitter is that they are so much more influential, and therefore more dangerous. Between facebook.com, Instagram, and the tentacular reach of Facebook connect, they have the ability to track and influence vastly more people than Twitter. I agree that Google is not getting nearly enough attention. I think it because they’re better at PR, and have been developing a “respectable” image. Facebook has been much more blunt and careless in their communication, and now they’re paying the price. I do hope Google gets in more trouble, they have a lot to answer for. Youtube in particular has a disturbing history of propagating toxic content. Their ad division has been very eager to look the other way when their customers engaged in questionable methods. And they are in great part responsible for demolishing the traditional news business and replacing it with the “engagement” business model that fuels clickbait and outrage-inducing content.
sophacles 7y ago
Speaking of over-reduction, "Does condition X provide a 3 or 4 percent boost?" is pretty much an over reduction - it doesn't even acknowledge that most of these issues aren't even discussed in genuine way - The opposing "sides" are optimizing on different sets of variables. And of course the notions of 2 sides ignores the reality that there are several viewpoints optimizing several different sets of variables and the "left"/"right" distinction is just the result of some sort of really bad clustering algorithm. (Lets temporarily ignore the part where in actual reality, the various groups can't even agree what all the variables are, or how to measure the results).
devy 7y ago
> In this case, being rich or poor is neither necessary nor sufficient since we have plenty of examples of things working out with either of these two things being missing. You are totally missing the point Matthew Prince is trying to make, that is, you need to have a "safety net" before you can take risks. If one can't even get them fed and not worrying about what the next meal is and where to stay, all bets are off. If you don't agree with me, name one entrepreneur who has found a startup that exited successfully(IPO or Acquisition) by now and that the founder(s) were living below poverty line or on social welfare. Borrowing money from parents doesn't count as living below poverty does it? Having parents or friends or family to lean onto economically means there is a safety net there.
- alanfalcon 7y ago
  The lore goes that Airbnb was started because the founders couldn’t pay rent.
  - njepa 7y ago
    According to his talk at startup school this was because he quit his job and moved in with his college friend in San Francisco to start a company. His share of the rent was apparently $1150, so seems fairly likely that he could have made that if he wanted to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPLnfUPBXwA&t=115 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPLnfUPBXwA&t=115
- gist 7y ago
  > that is, you need to have a "safety net" before you can take risks. If one can't even get them fed and not worrying about what the next meal is and where to stay, all bets are off. To take the other side of this (not to entirely disagree with you) people have a different attitude toward risk and betting the ranch given the exact same safety net or lack of it. Someone with rich parents may not take the risk (for fear of 'I told you so' or being derided) and someone poor might be quite the gambler and think 'I really don't care if I fail and if I can't feed my family this is just right and the time is NOW!' > If you don't agree with me, name one entrepreneur who has found a startup that exited successfully(IPO or Acquisition) by now and that the founder(s) were living below poverty line or on social welfare. Very possible also that the people giving the funding are not aware of a safety net and therefore think the entrepreneur is less bankable because they actually fear for them failing since they know the chance of failure is quite high. So they pass thinking they are doing them a favor. This (per my above statement) would vary with the amount of a gambler the investor is and/or how much of a conscience they have.

esolyt 7y ago

> So really the discussion is much more like "Does condition X provide a 3 or a 4 percent boost?" I think it's more like whether it brings a 400% boost. It is definitely an important discussion to have. Whether Twitter is the place is another story.

DanielBMarkham 7y ago
I agree. Also note that moving from a 1% chance of success to a 4% chance of success _is_ a 400% boost. It also may be trivial. Moving from .1 to .4 works the same way. Both statements can be true at the same time. These things get tricky quickly. In a different medium, say forcing yourself to 100 characters instead of 280, we would have even more of a difficult time discussing it.

aestetix 7y ago

Yep. At this point, to encourage health and respectful public discourse, the first step is to delete your twitte account. And probably facebook too.

znpy 7y ago

> We keep reducing these complex multivariate social issues to simple cause-effect situations then beating one another up over what the simple cause is. Twitter is cancer and this is why i keep off it.

njepa 7y ago

It isn't like 3 or 4 percent though. Starting a startup ranges from a largely risk free career move to impossible. Most people today start at negative. Want to live in a decent sized city? That's at least $2k a month. An education? Might very well be $50k in debt. Job security? Need to put in the hours young. Otherwise there is a very real chances of getting evicted, not being able to find a decent job, not being able to keep your friends or start a family. Plenty of people who are successful today have their parents pay for university, their first apartment and/or a safety net. And that is just to have a normal career.

bluGill 7y ago
Cost to live in a decent sized city are much less than that in most cities. Sure Silicon Valley is going to be more. Also every city has rich areas that are more. However in most cities there are poor neighborhoods where rent is under $1000, and you can share that with a few roommates. If you tastes are to a stove that you don't need to light with a match, sidewalks that are even, and other nice things: that will cost you.
- kragen 7y ago
  > in most cities there are poor neighborhoods where rent is under $1000 Average income is about US$11000 a year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28no... And most people make less money than that, because the distribution isn't symmetric. The fact that "rent under $1000" seems low to you indicates that you live in a bubble.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    I should have qualified that with US. You can rent a mud hut for few bucks in some remote backward village, but that is obviously not a lifestyle anyone reading this would wish.
vorpalhex 7y ago
> An education? Might very well be $50k in debt. You can get a perfectly decent degree from your community college for very affordable prices. Likewise you may not be able to live in downtown manhattan, but you can probably live anywhere in a whole bunch of the square states on $1k a month.

o10449366 7y ago

Twitter is one of the worst social media sites, in my opinion, and it makes me concerned how much it's caught on with American politicians (no, I'm not just referring to Trump). It limits discourse and incentivizes "outrage culture" by design. I see more racist and outright intentionally false information content on Twitter than any other social media platform and its only gotten worse with time. They've shown very little to no initiative in preventing this. I get the impression that the only reason Twitter isn't as heavily scrutinized as Facebook is because their executives are simply more likable, which isn't a high bar to pass when you look at Mark Zuckerberg. I think the same applies to Google, too.

zapita 7y ago
I think the main reason Facebook is under more scrutiny than Twitter is that they are so much more influential, and therefore more dangerous. Between facebook.com, Instagram, and the tentacular reach of Facebook connect, they have the ability to track and influence vastly more people than Twitter. I agree that Google is not getting nearly enough attention. I think it because they’re better at PR, and have been developing a “respectable” image. Facebook has been much more blunt and careless in their communication, and now they’re paying the price. I do hope Google gets in more trouble, they have a lot to answer for. Youtube in particular has a disturbing history of propagating toxic content. Their ad division has been very eager to look the other way when their customers engaged in questionable methods. And they are in great part responsible for demolishing the traditional news business and replacing it with the “engagement” business model that fuels clickbait and outrage-inducing content.

sophacles 7y ago

Speaking of over-reduction, "Does condition X provide a 3 or 4 percent boost?" is pretty much an over reduction - it doesn't even acknowledge that most of these issues aren't even discussed in genuine way - The opposing "sides" are optimizing on different sets of variables. And of course the notions of 2 sides ignores the reality that there are several viewpoints optimizing several different sets of variables and the "left"/"right" distinction is just the result of some sort of really bad clustering algorithm. (Lets temporarily ignore the part where in actual reality, the various groups can't even agree what all the variables are, or how to measure the results).

devy 7y ago

> In this case, being rich or poor is neither necessary nor sufficient since we have plenty of examples of things working out with either of these two things being missing. You are totally missing the point Matthew Prince is trying to make, that is, you need to have a "safety net" before you can take risks. If one can't even get them fed and not worrying about what the next meal is and where to stay, all bets are off. If you don't agree with me, name one entrepreneur who has found a startup that exited successfully(IPO or Acquisition) by now and that the founder(s) were living below poverty line or on social welfare. Borrowing money from parents doesn't count as living below poverty does it? Having parents or friends or family to lean onto economically means there is a safety net there.

alanfalcon 7y ago
The lore goes that Airbnb was started because the founders couldn’t pay rent.
- njepa 7y ago
  According to his talk at startup school this was because he quit his job and moved in with his college friend in San Francisco to start a company. His share of the rent was apparently $1150, so seems fairly likely that he could have made that if he wanted to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPLnfUPBXwA&t=115 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPLnfUPBXwA&t=115
gist 7y ago
> that is, you need to have a "safety net" before you can take risks. If one can't even get them fed and not worrying about what the next meal is and where to stay, all bets are off. To take the other side of this (not to entirely disagree with you) people have a different attitude toward risk and betting the ranch given the exact same safety net or lack of it. Someone with rich parents may not take the risk (for fear of 'I told you so' or being derided) and someone poor might be quite the gambler and think 'I really don't care if I fail and if I can't feed my family this is just right and the time is NOW!' > If you don't agree with me, name one entrepreneur who has found a startup that exited successfully(IPO or Acquisition) by now and that the founder(s) were living below poverty line or on social welfare. Very possible also that the people giving the funding are not aware of a safety net and therefore think the entrepreneur is less bankable because they actually fear for them failing since they know the chance of failure is quite high. So they pass thinking they are doing them a favor. This (per my above statement) would vary with the amount of a gambler the investor is and/or how much of a conscience they have.