walterk

9 ms·

31.
by walterk 18y ago
He did? In what way? (Genuinely curious.) My understanding is that, despite some of his views being at odds with her own, Rand was happy to have him in her inner circle anyway.
32.
by walterk 18y ago
> If, as a society, everyone is a "Value Creator", will we still require a government? If everyone created value by Rand's standards, were highly rational and reasonable, did not destroy value, and were otherwise law-abiding (or simpl
33.
by walterk 18y ago
You mean the rounded box? It's just a div with a background.
34.
Towards Agile Government(ssa.vic.gov.au)
1 points by walterk 18y ago|0 comments
35.
by walterk 18y ago
Don't forget the philosopher who made burgers.
36.
by walterk 18y ago
I agree that we'll never be completely free of irrationality, or that rationality will be totally dominant. It takes self-restraint to keep our primitive substrate, as you put it, at bay, and that's impossible to do every time. But I nevert
37.
by walterk 18y ago
Also, collective action problems. I haven't yet seen a libertarian who can convincingly address them. Either they simply haven't taken them into account (which is the danger of relying too heavily on old texts like Smith, or even more recen
38.
by walterk 18y ago
Good point, although I think G2C tech can substantially improve communications between citizens and government leaders. This is assuming there's a strong initiative to adopt such tech across the board, and that it's competently designed. Th
39.
by walterk 18y ago
That's pretty fascinating. My own ideological path went from - Republican conservatism (raised in a Republican household) to - pseudo-communism (some crazy idea I had in high school without reading Marx) to - Objectivism (a friend gave me T
40.
by walterk 18y ago
There was a time in human history when it did not exist, period. There are no demonstrated limits as to how pervasive it can be. The ability to engage in charitable discourse is simply a skill that can be taught like any other. Parents coul
41.
by walterk 18y ago
Not sure what you mean by this? I wasn't advocating anarchism. I'm simply saying we need to think of (and implement) government as an agile entity, one that dynamically allocates resources as necessary rather than suffers from "institution
42.
by walterk 18y ago
Hence, we need to change up our notion of government as fixed institution to government as agile organization.
43.
by walterk 18y ago
Not if you want to live in a reason-based society. Exploitation as an effective maneuver is dependent on a society unpracticed and unconditioned in the use of reason. It may be a practical move in the short run, but invariably has terrible
44.
by walterk 18y ago
I actually think this sort of functionality should be present throughout all forms of online communication. If that happened, the same standards of discourse might leak into offline communication as well.
45.
by walterk 18y ago
> IMO saying X is correct when you are wrong should lead to ridicule lest others assume it's a reasonable argument. I think ridicule is a bad idea, because it invariably activates one's ego defense mechanisms. When that happens, your ch
46.
by walterk 18y ago
> I'd say about a quarter to a third of founders we fund have never-give-up morale. The rest are mostly in the middle group. What's the distribution of never-give-ups among YC startups? That is, do startups with a never-give-up tend to
47.
by walterk 18y ago
Yes, exactly. As a recent fortune cookie fortune put it: "The purpose of argument, should not be victory, but progress."
48.
by walterk 18y ago
> There's nothing like attacking something you are oblivious to. This is why, when it comes to rejecting a particular ideology, I believe you need to have adopted that ideology to the point that you genuinely grok it. If you can't rep
49.
by walterk 18y ago
I'm not interested in the abstract reasons why people give up ("ran out of funding", "founders broke up", "burnout", etc.). We know all those, definitely. What I'm interested in are the specifics. What specific decisions (and in what cont
50.
by walterk 18y ago
But surely an analysis of the reasons why they stopped working on it would prove interesting? I.e., what chain or confluence of events brought them to the breaking point, and what processes/practices could have prevented them from reachin
51.
by walterk 18y ago
He isn't confusing anything. You're just taking that sentence woefully out of context. It's pretty obvious from the rest of the post that he's just saying, "Don't look for all the reasons to not do something." He's not saying you shouldn't
52.
by walterk 18y ago
It's simply being used as a metaphor. Two words that get you to look at X from a particular angle. The function of metaphors has never been to imply complete equivalence, obviously. Rather, some aspects of the concept used as a metaphor are
53.
by walterk 18y ago
Really? I don't know what he's done aside from id and Armadillo, and he's obviously a mathematical genius, but I can't quite see Doom, Quake, etc. and their underlying technology as "prime mover" material. And I actually think it's kind of
54.
by walterk 18y ago
It's possible, but Objectivism's different from your average ideology in that who you take as your significant other must itself be determined by Objectivist ideals. (That's how Rand wrote it, at least.) In practice, there are probably Obje
55.
by walterk 18y ago
His wife, Anna Kang, definitely is (started Fountainhead Entertainment). That practically guarantees that Carmack is, because it's highly unlikely an Objectivist would marry a non-Objectivist. What baffles me is, how on earth do id and Foun
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by walterk 18y ago
Human environments have changed significantly faster than the genetics that determine our behavior. We're still predisposed to value immediate over delayed gratification, even though modern societies highly reward those who can delay it.
57.
by walterk 18y ago
What original arguments Gladwell makes are clearly speculative, but it's inherently sloppier to attempt to refute an argument whose reasoning you can only speculate about. Your arguments about Bill Gates and The Beatles are themselves flawe
58.
by walterk 18y ago
This is exactly right, and I had written a comment ripping into Godin's post for that reason. But then I checked Gladwell's book and he argues that 10,000 hours is the rule for "successful" people rather than the exception (that is, "succes
59.
by walterk 18y ago
> They're ugly and crap because of the extra cost. Crap, maybe, but not ugly. I find it hard to believe that the complicated ugly of US cars is less costly to manufacture than the clean lines of a VW. I think it's far more likely that t
60.
by walterk 18y ago
"The point of the spending isn't because infrastructure has a positive ROI its to artificially create jobs to cushion the people suffering from the current economic collapse." The reason why we're spending is to cushion ourselves from the

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