biren34

10 ms·

31.
by biren34 5y ago
My reply to another similar comment: I think there must be some misunderstanding. My point is that everyone will have to deal with not being the best. For the vast majority of people being the best at anything is out of the question, regard
32.
by biren34 5y ago
While I enjoy a good nitpicking as much as the next guy, when talking about rank ordering, the use of average to denote median is valid. Median and mean only diverge when there's a long-tail scalar that skews the mean away from the med
33.
by biren34 5y ago
I think there must be some misunderstanding. My point is that everyone will have to deal with not being the best. For the vast majority of people being the best at anything is out of the question, regardless of effort or focus. Even if you
34.
by biren34 5y ago
Yeah, the fact is other people are often more talented, any maybe worse, even if other people aren't more talented, you just screw stuff up--often a lot. It's part of life and putting your head in the sand about is just weak. If y
35.
by biren34 5y ago
Here's what I would tell my kids: "Odds are, you ARE behind. In any given rank ordering, 50% are below average. 90% are NOT in the top 10% If you're lucky and work hard, you can be in the top 10%, 5% or even 1% of a few areas
36.
by biren34 5y ago
Shouldn't this question be asked in a larger context? Since the moon landing, pretty much every major government-led initiative has been less successful than the one before, as far as I can think of. (Admittedly this is my "genera
37.
by biren34 6y ago
There are two big forces driving this divergence. First, the last 50 years have seen a series of "one off" increases to global labor supply. Between Asia and former communist countries, American workers have been forced to compete
38.
by biren34 6y ago
Fair. My main point was that people don't want to talk about the main issue, but rather these details. The fact that natural hunger/satiation doesn't seem to work anymore certainly counts as a main issue (and you got some off
39.
by biren34 6y ago
The other replies to this comment are examples of what I was talking about. Do different foods have difference metabolic properties, including variations in accessible calories? Yes. Can we accurately measure calorie intake? Kind of. Even w
40.
by biren34 6y ago
I understand the desire to investigate stuff like this, but for 90%+ of people, every inquiry in to "most optimal way to not be debilitating unhealthy" is just a waste of time. If you're not in a special group (gout, hyperten
41.
by biren34 6y ago
In modern politics, you simply cannot defend your left flank
42.
by biren34 6y ago
The best resource I can think of offhand is the book "Overshoot" by William catton. It has a pretty strong political bent to it that I don't agreed with. But despite that, it frames up the problem of energy quite well.
43.
by biren34 6y ago
I'm sorry to say, but the idea that "we don't need energy" is both false and dangerous. The earth's carrying capacity before fossil fuels was far, far lower than the 7 billion current population, especially with cur
44.
by biren34 6y ago
Of the two I know, one is a general manager / executive type that surfs and used to be in a frat. The other is a sales guy / stoner type, who always seems to have been to every new bar and restaurant and already know the owners by
45.
by biren34 6y ago
I'd add that it really matters who know about your work. If a lot of people know you do good work, but they all have very similar skills sets, you get a lot less value than if only a few people with very different skill sets know about
46.
by biren34 6y ago
The idea of NFTs is odd to me. I get the idea of a digitally validated consumable (concert tickets, for example). I get the idea of owning a piece of digital art. But as far as I understand, a lot of NFT transactions are for digital "o
47.
by biren34 6y ago
I've taken a few different "retirement" periods in my life, each lasting about 1-2 years. The first one, I intended to write, but ended up playing World of Warcraft. The second one, I significantly improved my coding skills (
48.
by biren34 6y ago
If you like this kind of content, I'm really enjoying the latest season of the Tides of History podcast. He's focused on prehistory in quite a compelling way: https://wondery.com/shows/tides-of-history/
49.
by biren34 6y ago
I get that it's frustrating and pisses people off. But "not being able to afford things you really want" is not really an economic harm in any serious sense of the concept, especially when it comes to the kinds of things are
50.
by biren34 6y ago
It's odd to me that so many of this kind of thing takes a moral stance and uses comments like "making someone pay" for things like concert tickets or gaming consoles. I'm not for scalping, by any means, but to claim that
51.
by biren34 6y ago
It's easy to focus on how evil this makes Amazon look. If we take a step back, we can see our society is in the middle of grappling with some very large problems. More and more of our economy is based on things that have no or negligib
52.
by biren34 6y ago
If you live in the EU and work for Google, you probably actually work for Google's EU-based subsidiary. There's no US-based company involved in the relationship. It's confusing because the company treats all the subsidiaries
53.
by biren34 6y ago
An interesting thing I see here is that no one seems to be discussing the needs of the kids themselves in all this. It's all about races, politics, ideologies. However, one of the main positive motivations behind gifted/advanced e
54.
by biren34 6y ago
I'm squarely of the opposite opinion. There are 2 main concerns I think "only renewables" solutions miss: 1. Impact on land usage. The sheer amount of land required to provide 3-4x global use is impractical and has major envi
55.
by biren34 6y ago
42
56.
by biren34 6y ago
It may be true in some cases, but it's just a mental model--and all models are wrong. Some are useful. Worrying about things out of your control--once you've decided to move forward--is not useful. If you can't stop yourself
57.
by biren34 6y ago
I really like this way of thinking. For entrepreneurs, you could even go far as "all the work" being to subtract all the key risks/unknowns. It's not about building a product (i.e. writing code or designing/manufact
58.
by biren34 6y ago
That applies to all insiders, though. It's not specific to the employees.
59.
by biren34 6y ago
While I totally understand the frustration with taxes, vesting rules, etc. the entire problem, IMO, comes from the lack of liquidity in these shares. These are "realized" gains to the IRS, but unrealizable to the employee because
60.
by biren34 6y ago
I'll have to take a look. Thanks!

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