BenchRouter

> I think that life extension is dangerous and wrong and therefore people dedicating their lives to it today are unethical people.

> I haven't shut down any argument by saying this

You're being naive if you think that saying this doesn't end any hope of a reasonable discussion.

> It's a facts based argument and I'm the only one in this discussion so far that is actually using facts.

Your facts-based argument is that people in Detroit would move to Canada if the immigration policy was relaxed? I see no facts at all around that assertion, which is the one I was calling simplistic.

> What does bordering have to do with Canada's regressive immigration policies that prevent low skilled, low education persons from immigrating into the country?

You said (paraphrasing):

>> Why are there no hispanic people in Canada, relative to the US

I said:

>> Because it's not bordered by Mexico

(And, by the way, Mexico is the #1 source of immigrants for the US).

> The US isn't bordered by Pakistan, India, Vietnam, China, Philippines, or El Salvador. Six of the top 10 immigration countries for the US.

Out of those 6 countries, one would qualify as contributing to the Hispanic or Black population in the US (the groups we were discussing).

Out of the top 10, none are from countries in Africa or the Caribbean (which we might also consider to be a "black" population).

So we can agree then, that the US's diversity w.r.t. black people has nothing to do with immigration?

> See: population growth over time in Nevada, Arizona, California, Florida, Texas, etc. Silicon Valley exists precisely because the US works that way.

Those are also states that have heavy immigrant populations because they're attractive for skilled workers or close to natural entry points. You'll have to cite a source stating that the growth in those populations is from internal movement.

The US as a whole is fairly close to replacement rate births, so we would actually expect populations to remain stable.

> why do you believe this?

Because why say it otherwise? Facebook could've easily left all of that out and just said "Introducing messenger for kids! We're making sure it's carefully curated and safe for your children" etc. etc.

People would've speculated that it was being used for ads, sure, but it wouldn't have caused a major outrage. I'd bet significant sums of money that most (not all, obviously) parents don't really care about their children being advertised to or used for market research - I mean hell, TV was doing that way before FB was a thing. Most parents probably worry about more obvious things w.r.t. children chatting online: Bullying, talking to strangers, etc.

Saying "we're not scraping childrens' messages" and then turning around and doing exactly that would be such a monumental PR disaster if it ever came out. I don't think FB is quite that stupid. They're clearly focused on the long-term.

Another possibility is that they're actually just legally barred from scraping messages sent by children, and this is them putting a PR spin on "we're complying with the law!"

So basically, I just don't see a lot of benefit to promising not to scrape messages if they really want to do that.

> which is why Canada has so few hispanic and black people, and why it's nearly 80% white.

Er, or it's not bordered by Mexico and doesn't have nearly the extensive history with African slavery that the US does?

> Why don't more poor black people immigrate into Canada from cities like Detroit, Chicago or New York?

I'm not trying to argue one way or another for Canada's immigration system (I know very little about it), but this is a very simplistic argument.

Why don't all the ex-coal miners in WV simply move to where the jobs are?

Picking up and relocating your life is way, way more involved than you're making it sound.

> It's simple, they're not allowed to.

This is also the case in the US, hence the widespread fears about illegal immigrants.

If life was significantly better in Canada, one would expect far more illegal immigration.

I actually agree with you that this is "drug dealer" tactics but for totally different reasons. I think this is a classic "the first hit is free" move.

It's a long-term play. I believe FB when they say they won't show ads to kids, or use their chats for ad scraping. What they really want is for those kids to become so familiar and dependent on the system (FB), that they naturally transition to being active FB users as adults.

It's not a secret that FB has a perceived "uncool with kids" problem - hence the rise of things like Snapchat. If you hook them when they're really young, though, then FB just becomes an unquestioned part of life.

As far as the tool itself, i dunno - I mean messenger tools have been a fact of life for quite some time now. AIM, ICQ, etc. I don't think FB messenger is particularly different other than the fact that it's attached to, well, FB.

I mean, I'm not sure what your price range is but this is literally the top result on Craigslist right now:

https://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/abo/d/fantastic-1-bdr-apt...

Granted it's Craigslist so who knows how legit it is, but if you're willing to share with roommates/etc. I don't feel like it's super hard to find a great apartment if you're willing to live further out.

Ehhh not expensive if you go out to, say, Brownsville. Brooklyn is much, much more than just Williamsburg and Park Slope.

> The problem is the rent control apartments in NYC skew the data and does make it apple to apple

Last time I checked, rent controlled apartments make up ~1% of housing units in the city, and that number decreases all the time (because the supply of rent controlled apartments is constantly decreasing). So, I think I'd need to see a citation that rent control has any serious effects on NYC housing prices.

I'm not saying that 1% couldn't have larger effects, but given the small amount of rent-controlled units I think the burden of proof is on you here.

> Rural NY to Rural TX, I will bet anytime that Rural TX is cheaper especially in the Rio Grande Valley and West Texas.

Why? I think you have a very different picture in mind of what rural NY looks like. There are a ton of extremely poor towns and cities up near Rochester and Buffalo. Lots and lots of rust belt remnants in the western part of the state that haven't recovered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt#/media/File:Total_mf...

Maybe it's $50 for a 1 bedroom in west Texas vs. $60 for a 1 bedroom on the outskirts of Hammond NY, but I don't think that's a very meaningful difference.

Yeah, I mean it's easy to forget about places in NY with low costs of living like Binghamton.

Even in the city, it's easy to forget that most people don't live in Manhattan/the expensive parts of Queens and Brooklyn. A sizable minority, sure, but not most.

I'm not sure I buy that attorneys are significantly better educated, especially in some more traditional firms (e.g. MS) where a masters isn't unusual. It's only an additional year of schooling on top of that.

Fair point on the licensing though. Maybe that's what most commonly separates blue collar from white collar these days - licensing? Trying to think of other professions I would compare software development to, and they all require licenses (traditional engineering, for example).

> Maybe I'm just getting jaded but I'd say yes. Outside the big 4 and a few other niches, most developers seem to just be gluing together whichever pre-made web frameworks and libraries happen to currently be in vogue. Patience with the endless yak-shaving needed to get anything to work rather than any particular technical brilliance is the primary requirement for career longevity.

Yeah, I'm starting to get that impression as well.

To be fair, though, I think many US physicians would tell you a similar thing (being brilliant isn't nearly as important as how adept you are at navigating the healthcare/insurance system).

> My guess is that the popularity of these professions is that they are all relatively low-qualified ones suitable to people working while studying or "filling gaps" before getting a "good job" in IT.

Yeah, I mean I don't doubt that's why they show up frequently. It's more like: In a discussion about attorney/physician burnout, I don't often see people say "well you think being an attorney is hard? Try construction..."

The discussion in that case would be something more like, "if you don't like being an attorney go be an accountant" - something like that, if that makes any sense.

> It could be, but I doubt that there are many people that after having invested in an education in either law or medicine and actually had a suitable job in those professions left them to become a full-time programmer, particularly an employed full-time programmer.

I see what you're saying, but my point was more like: Shouldn't we be comparing software development to those professions? As in, "software development is incredibly easy compared to being an attorney"?

> Since every other guy here seems to be well in the hundred of thousands US$/year or more, I would say, if this is the case, "exceptionally well paid plumbers/electricians".

I thought that was becoming more and more common in those professions (electricians especially seem to be well compensated)?

Yeah, and I think that's the interesting divide to me: I did receive a formal education, and even a Master's, in CS.

Despite that, there's very little difference between myself and another developer who has no formal education at all.

I guess I always thought of myself as a white-collar worker because of that, and this whole discussion is making me re-evaluate that. Not that the distinction is super important obviously, or that I think of myself as "better than", but I always thought of my peers as attorneys and people in finance, not construction workers.

> Most people have way more taxing jobs than IT. I've been in construction for 3 years, and that work is no joke.

There's some discussion of this above, but I think it's interesting that the alternative to software development is seemingly always construction, or delivering food, or being a waiter.

Wouldn't the more apt comparison be something like law? Or medicine?

Or has software development truly reached blue-collar status and we're essentially plumbers/electricians?

I'm not accusing you of anything specifically, just using your comment to ponder.

Er, those are both insanely large industries with untold amounts of money flowing through them (well, radio not so much but in its heyday).

If FB is an industry on the level of TV or radio, then it's almost certainly not overvalued.

> It is seriously gross that a tax reform bill that is by basically all accounts enormously, even proudly regressive is being sold to tech nerds with a marginal improvement in stock options accounting.

As with all things, worth remembering who's writing this: Fred Wilson is an extremely wealthy venture capitalist. He stands to benefit a great deal from provisions like the repeal of the estate tax.

Here's what's confusing me: Why would this make any sense, at all?

From the government's point of view, they were trying to maximize tax revenue, right? And theoretically that occurs when the security price is at a (local) maximum, which would also likely be when employees choose to exercise.

Or is the idea here that they can tax options at the short-term rate as opposed to the long-term rate?

And even then, does that really make up for the substantial difference in market price (and thus taxes)? The "market price" (whatever that means here) of an early-stage startup's options has to be significantly lower than a post-IPO company.

It's also worth noting that you can smoke heroin, which probably requires a significantly lower mental barrier to cross.

And once you're in the throes of addiction from smoking it, I'm guessing injection seems less and less objectionable.

> Historically it was just cut with OTCs or detritus, which was a problem that could be solved in most cases by simply doing more.

Well, until you get a more pure batch and you try to do the same amount you do with the dilute batch.

I'd argue that's more the point of the internet in general, these days. It's extremely hard to remove something from the internet.

We as rational humans though, can apply context to such situations and realize that teenagers often say insanely stupid things that they later wish they hadn't (and usually didn't mean).

Sure, but I don't see how that relates to my intended point that things we say as teenagers probably shouldn't be held against us indefinitely.

If you want to say "Zuckerberg is selfish because he refuses to affect Facebook's bottom line to stop harassment" that's fine with me, and I won't disagree with you.

If you're saying "Zuckerberg stole someone's lunch money when he was 12 therefore he's a sociopath" I dunno, that's less convincing to me.

Wasn't he like 19 when he said this?

I sure as hell said some edgy stuff like this when I was 19.

> It's like comparing a mature company or even industry to one in its early days, when there is chaos, shifting goals day to day, and massive uncertainty.

Sort of. The civil rights movement had a pretty clear goal from the start: Ending segregation. Brown v. Board of Education is often seen as the official "start" of the civil rights movement.

I get your point that reality is often much messier than history would dictate, but "end segregation" is a fairly clear and relatively realistic goal compared to "end wealth inequality."

> Just off the top of my head, the civil rights movement had many conflicting groups and goals; there were the hippies, communists who tried to co-opt the movement, black nationalists who had other goals, violent left-wing radicals, labor, and many more each with their own perspective and agenda.

While that's true, by the time those groups rolled around in the early 60s the civil rights movement had been in full swing for several years (and in fact the black power movement really started because of criticism of the civil rights movement).

Also, if anything this just speaks to the unity and focus of the civil rights movement: Despite these distractions, they had a clear goal that detractors couldn't derail. OWS doesn't seem to have that same focus.

> I don't know that the Occupy movement started less organized than successful movements; my impression is that the question is whether the movement does get organized later

I sincerely disagree. You're greatly downplaying the organization of, well, organizations like the NAACP during the 50s and 60s. The Montgomery bus boycott happened very early on (in 1955) and:

1) Had a clear goal (end desegregation on buses)

2) Had an appreciable negative effect on the oppressors (lost bus revenue)

3) Was extremely well-participated in

4) Lasted quite awhile (> 1 year), reflecting the perseverance of the protestors

The Zuccotti park encampments had, in comparison, none of those things (no clear goal, no negative effects, low participation, and lasted two months).

> let's not talk about the civil rights movement in past tense

You're arguing semantics, in America the "Civil Rights Movement" is pretty well understood to refer to the movement that took place in the 50s and 60s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Civil_Rights_...

That's a goal that could, quite literally, take multiple generations given how supreme court appointments work.

Very few movements have so much momentum that they can bide their time for 30 years.

Not to mention that the American Civil Rights Movement had relatively clear goals and a pretty singular focus: Ending explicit state-approved discrimination against black people.

The goals and focus of OWS weren't very clear (to me at least): Was it about ending corporate influence in politics? Was it about seeking consequences for what happened in 2008? Was it about wealth inequality? It kinda seemed to be about all of the above. How can you really rally anyone if it's not really clear what they're getting together for, other than some vague sense of being wronged?

Also, whereas the civil rights movement had measurable goals (repealing Jim Crow laws, for instance), it's hard to imagine how you measure "success" when your goal is something vague like removing corporate influence in politics.

> If you believe redundancy is irrelevant, we have different opinions on how people perceive communication.

I'm starting to gather as such, and so continuing down this road is probably unproductive.

I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree.

> But to _your perception_, it's politeness

That's not at all why Allen's comment is polite, and this is very much what I mean by "kindness requires no effort."

It's polite because it isn't actively negative towards the other person. That's all it takes. Redundancy is irrelevant.

Allen could've easily written:

> What you wrote makes no fucking sense and it's dumb as hell.

Which is both redundant and impolite.

> If you were my employee that needs softer language, I put in the redundancies.

Just to be redundant myself, redundancy is only loosely correlated with politeness. There are plenty of examples of terse, polite speech (and the inverse as well). You don't need to do this, and I would argue it's a hallmark of your particular writing style more than anything else.

> Instead of asking people to be kind (which often means comply to my system of values) we should ask people not to be judgemental and be open minded, which is something that can be learned by everybody

You're arguing semantics here; in almost all cases that is what kindness means in these contexts.

It seems as though you just don't like Allen's writing style. You haven't really pointed out anything unnecessarily polite, and his comment would've been just as polite with all of the edits you're suggesting.

I don't think redundancy or prelude are necessarily the mark of politeness. It's usually just a mark of writing style. For example, you said:

> To your particular example, I personally don't like the

But "personally" is redundant - of course it's your personal opinion. You just used it to emphasize that you don't like Allen's writing style, correct?

Ah, my apologies!

> Allen is placing the "blame" on himself rather than the other party.

FWIW I don't see this as placing blame on himself, at all: I see it as Allen just stating a fact. Allen is confused and seeking clarification. Confusion can happen for all sorts of reasons with varying parties or circumstances being the cause.

Allen might similarly say "I'm confused" upon reading the time cube website, but Allen's not to blame for that.

I agree with you though that largely politeness comes from being internally focused ("I don't understand, I don't agree, I didn't know") as opposed to externally focused ("You did something confusing, You did something wrong, You didn't tell me"). One instance where it pays to be selfish, I suppose!