vitaminj

22 ms·

151.
Drawings from an artist on LSD(cowboybooks.com.au)
19 points by vitaminj 19y ago|8 comments
152.
by vitaminj 19y ago
Engineers and doctors are driven to abide a code of ethics because they don't want to kill people. If there was software which was safety critical (maybe NASA code), then I'm sure that the developers would have the same kind of ethics. I'm
153.
by vitaminj 19y ago
75% in taxes? Get a grip man... taxes are quite high, but definitely not that high. Check out this report by the tax foundation, which breaks down federal and state taxes by the average household: http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr151.p
154.
by vitaminj 19y ago
Actually in classical macro theory, lower interest rates (which amounts to the Fed increasing the money supply) leads to greater investment due to cheaper credit, leading to higher output growth in the short run and subsequently lower unemp
155.
by vitaminj 19y ago
Do it. Dude, you're 23, have skills, qualifications and are presumably smart. If things don't pan out, you've got the rest of your life to sort yourself out (just don't take on too much debt!). Now if you were nearing retirement, had no mon
156.
by vitaminj 19y ago
Whether or not they make it as an industrial power, at least the Saudis are investing for the future instead of squandering their petrodollars like some other resource rich countries, eg. Chavez's rampant spending in Venezuela.
157.
by vitaminj 19y ago
Investments are captured in the current account (which includes the trade balance, factor payments and transfer payments plus a fudge factor for illegal and unaccountable capital flows). The current account deficit, not the trade deficit, i
158.
by vitaminj 19y ago
Yeah I agree, though my point wasn't so much about the bubble than about the crash. The crash was precipitated by a critical mass of foreclosures, which was attributed mainly to sub-prime borrowers. A softer landing could have been achieved
159.
by vitaminj 19y ago
The unregulated market had a big part to play in causing the current sub-prime mess in the first place. Check out the BBC's explanation of how the sub-prime lending model worked: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7073131.stm?src=rss In
160.
by vitaminj 19y ago
Yeah that was half his scheme, which is unbounded as you say. The other half of the strategy, which the quote was about, was related to purchasing credit-default swaps, which are derivatives like options. The losses on CDS contracts are bou
161.
by vitaminj 19y ago
I'm not certain that Paulson could have afforded the losses if the market kept booming, so you're likely right about the six months earlier or later. However in principle, this is exactly how Nassim Taleb (the Black Swan author) made his mo
162.
by vitaminj 19y ago
True in general, but when he bought them, they were priced very low. Even after he bought millions (presumably) of the swaps, other investors thought he was an idiot and didn't follow suit, so the price of the swaps probably didn't go up mu
163.
by vitaminj 19y ago
There's an argument that in the strict sense, everyone is rational because they are all maximising some utility - it just isn't clear what that utility is, eg. money, sex, power, the satisfaction of having a well ironed shirt, it could be a
164.
by vitaminj 19y ago
So would laws advocating eugenics, euthanasia of old people and cripples, sterilization of dumbasses, etc. Doesn't mean they're good ideas.
165.
by vitaminj 19y ago
For whatever reason, people (including me) find abstraction far more noble than details... which is why this kind of rhetoric is so widely employed. How Obama turns out remains to be seen, but it's undeniable that he can sure play an audien
166.
by vitaminj 19y ago
I think that sometime in the future (<50 years perhaps?), advancements in cosmetic surgery will come to a level of sophistication and low cost where practically everyone in rich countries can look anyway they want. Like second life. Pe
167.
by vitaminj 19y ago
Yes agree completely. I've long been in favour of bringing back the apprenticeship system for professionals (in conjunction with tertiary education) - well at least for engineering. In Australia, we used to have this - as an engineering cad
168.
by vitaminj 19y ago
Digg, like reddit now, suffered from a bout of tyranny of the masses. Hard to come back from there.
169.
by vitaminj 19y ago
This hypothetical "fixed amount" of money idea is a bit disingenuous in my opinion, especially since the methods for funding the proposed solutions are very different. The way governments are tackling climate change is primarily through reg
170.
by vitaminj 19y ago
I'd say the self-selection bias would be a big factor. Most of the dumbass and lazy Asians probably stayed at home. Those first generation asian-american kids would likely have had the value of hard work forcefully instilled in them as well
171.
by vitaminj 19y ago
In any case, he's not even arguing about intelligence per se. Rather, he's supporting James Flynn's argument that IQ tests are flimsy instruments for measuring intelligence. Flynn's argument is that kids from societies/households which requ
172.
by vitaminj 19y ago
I would contend that the subset of people who would actually read literature were it not for the internet is minuscule. I'm sure that in the absence of the internet, most people would find equally inane things to do rather than read literat
173.
by vitaminj 19y ago
Self-learning has its own problems, some that have caught me out on more occasions than I care to admit. I graduated with an EE degree six years ago, but over the years found myself more and more interested in economics. I read textbooks,
174.
by vitaminj 19y ago
It's true that one of the shady aspects of economics is the tendency to lump anything thats not observable in the model into an exogenous catch-all "intangible factors" variable. But fair play to economists, they have been banging on about