Chathamization

Waiting outside on a cold night for hours[1] is more than just "slightly inconvenient," particularly if you have kids and work.

Also, if people are only voting once every 2 years, then they're still opting not to vote in a lot of elections (elections where there vote has a lot more impact).

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/upshot/why-long-voting-li...

> The crucial moat that Facebook has is simply the massive nimber of registered users

How well does that moat work in practice? What was the rate of decline in other networks (such as Friendster and MySpace)? I've always gotten the impression that these shifts happen quite quickly.

> Why is gold so expensive? Around 90% of it is being hoarded, not used industrially. People think it's valuable, the supply is limited, therefore it is valuable. Same with cryptocurrencies.

I'd say it's quite different. Governments that hold gold often do it because they expect gold to keep its value, not because they are expecting the value to increase massively (I can't think of any government leaders advocating that their country buy a lot more gold to get rich quickly). People who hold cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, seem to say that enormous fluctuations in value (including massive decreases in value) are acceptable because eventually the value might skyrocket. The reason people hold gold and the reason most people hold cryptocurrencies seem to be the opposite of one another.

> People were buying tulips because it was a sign of wealth and taste and a beautiful rare object to display, just like art. People were speculating on those, just like art. But when people do so with Art and pay millions, nobody bats an eye.

There have actually been a lot of articles about various art bubbles. Here's one from 2016 about a possible contemporary American art bubble[1]; here's one from 2012 about a Chinese art bubble[2].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jan/17/art-mar...

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/the-chinese-art-bubble-is-pop...

Yep. I stopped using it when realized it was broadcasting comments I was making inside groups to everyone I was connected to. Even if they removed the feature, I wouldn't go back. The fact that they started doing it with absolutely no warning was a pretty good sign that I couldn't trust the company.

> The statement NPR made doesn't drastically change if "extended family"

I disagree. They're fact checking this statement that Trump made:

> Under the current, broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives.

In response they write:

> It’s true that an immigrant can sponsor extended family members for visas — but only after he or she becomes a U.S. citizen.

The vast majority of people reading the statement and response to it would be unaware that the only "extended family" they can sponsor are their siblings. If anything, it seems to confirm the false statement that "a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives," simply adding some caveats about the process being difficult and taking years.

Here[1]:

> A U.S. citizen can file a petition for the following relatives: • Husband or wife; • Children, married or unmarried A U.S. citizen who is at least 21 years or older may also petition for the following relatives: • Parents; • Brothers or sisters.

From my understanding (and from everything I can find on the USCIS site and all other immigration sites), a U.S. citizen can sponsor immediate family members. They can not sponsor extended family members (cousins, uncles, in-laws, etc.).

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/A1...

> Are there techniques that can be applied to help folks who lack high cognitive abilities to see and understand that they’re being manipulated?

Or to help ourselves see that? I think it would be a mistake if everyone who read this assumed it was simply a problem with the other side (“See, I told you they were all idiots”). Nate Silver has made a good case that the media's focus on the Comey letter non-story was one of the main factors for Clinton's loss, and it's hard to not see a connection between their refusal to look at their own reporting and their sudden focus on "fake news." Just this week I ran into an NPR fact checker claiming "It’s true that an immigrant can sponsor extended family members for visas"[1] (in context, talking about immigration visas), when that seems to not be the case at all[2].

It's true that shoddy journalism is different from intentional manipulation, but the line between the two is often blurred. You also have the same issue with both - even when people are presented by the facts, they won't reconsider their positions. I've run into this issue in the past - when you present the original source and show how it contradicts a news report, it's not uncommon to get the reply "that can't be true, or else the media would have said so."

[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/01/30/580378279/trumps-state-of-the... [2] https://www.uscis.gov/family/family-us-citizens

> Schools spend an average of a little more than 4 percent of their endowment funds annually.

---

> “Endowments aren’t generally used to lower tuition,” said Richard Vedder, an economist at Ohio University, testified before the House Ways and Means Committee last year. “Typically less than 20 cents of every dollar of endowment income is used for scholarships to lower fees for students. Making college more affordable is not the dominant use of endowment resources.”

---

> Critics note that a lot of endowment money goes toward glitzy student centers, athletic fields and pricey academic buildings.

From here: http://wfae.org/post/colleges-pressured-spend-more-endowment...

I wonder how much the push back against McDonald's is class based. It's not healthy, but the same can be said for a lot of the food we eat. A lot of fast casual burgers, which seem to hold a higher position in the public perception, have more calories. Of course, overall health is more complicated than just calories, but it's worth pointing out since that's one of the main complaints against McDonald's (including in the article you linked to). Cereal has declined in popularity, but it doesn't seem to have had quite the same negative stigma, even though a lot of it is simply processed flour and sugar (which was then marketed as being "part of this balanced breakfast"); neither do brands like Starbucks or Coke.

> Because that's not Google's job, that's the job of the local, State and Federal Government of the United States.

And to an even larger extent it's up to the citizens of the U.S. Most don't care enough to support/reward such efforts at the ballot booth, so the politicians aren't motivated, and things don't get done.

> incorporating whatever was the state of the art at that time

State of the art or flavor of the month? For instance, the features from functional programming that C++ and Java recently (in the last decade) added weren't anything new. When functional programming started to become more popular was when their features started showing up in C++ and Java.

If people are concerned that your language is already to large than adding elements from other programming paradigms because they're suddenly what's hot doesn't seem like a great idea. It feels like some languages are chasing the crowd, which can lead to a messy language ("OOP is all the rage now? Our language is all about OOP! Oh, functional is all the rage now? Well, we just nailed on some functional features!").

I'm not sure you can say that definitively based on that article. From the article:

> By looking at crime rates within the two complexes and in Manhattan’s 13th Precinct, which encircles them, two researchers said that their statistical calculations showed no persuasive evidence that the installation of cameras reduced the crime rate in Peter Cooper Village from 2002 to 2006. However, there was stronger evidence for a drop in minor crime at Stuyvesant Town.

They're look at whether or not the crime rate within two complexes in Manhattan have gone down after cameras were installed. In on they didn't seem to, and in the other it seems that they might have. This doesn't seem that surprising; it seems it would be far more likely that a criminal would commit a crime in the same city than it is that they would commit a crime in the same building.

> in order to make a 10000x return requires a strong belief that Bitcoin will actually go that high. Because to reach 10000x you have to resist the strong temptation to cash out at 10x, 100x and 1000x.

Indeed. The article gives no rational explanation for why someone shouldn't have sold at $11,600, or why they shouldn't hold on and wait for $1,160,000. Saying "If you bought at the start of the bubble and sold at the peak you would have made a ton of money" is pretty meaningless, especially when the reasons for buying at the beginning weren't great ("If Bitcoin becomes the new global monetary system"/Bitcoin "eventually replacing a decent size fiat currency").

You could have a system for pulling money out (as a comment mentions), but that involves a different understanding of Bitcoin and also involves earning less money than the article mentions.

Yeah. The prediction of $10,000 was predicated on:

> I estimate that bitcoin has somewhere between 0 and 0.1% chance of eventually replacing a decent size fiat currency, which would put the value of a bitcoin at anywhere upwards of $10,000 a bitcoin.

Likewise the other prediction mentioned:

> If Bitcoin becomes the new global monetary system

Let's see the results of the people who are holding on with that expectation (and some still are). That $116,000 isn't there until after you move money out of Bitcoin.

But maybe you put money in knowing that it's a speculative bubble, and are willing to pull that $116,000 out now? Sure, but bubbles are irrational. If you had people advocating a schedule for pulling your money out of Bitcoin (the first comment mentions one), than that makes sense, though the amount you would be holding would be a lot less than $116,000. Without that schedule you're left with trying to time a bubble, which is the issue with every bubble. The article doesn't give any indication of why people should sell now, and they shouldn't have sold at $11,600, or why they shouldn't try to hold on until $1,160,000.

If you look at productivity growth[1], the current rate of automation is actually slower than in most of the prior decades.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm

Google's Youtube is incredibly pernicious. Every time you visit to watch a specific video, they bombard you with the videos that they've decided are the most likely to distract you. They even have autoplay on by default so you can get sucked in to a video you didn't decide to watch before you realize it.

We also have no reason to believe that we'd be able to detect other civilizations, even if there were millions out there. They might well be using other means of communication. Even if they were using the very thing we were looking for, it's still likely we would miss them - even if they were right next door to us. From SETI's FAQ[1]:

> If an extraterrestrial civilization has a SETI project similar to our own, could they detect signals from Earth?

> In general, no. Most earthly transmissions are too weak to be found by equipment similar to ours at the distance of even the nearest star. But there are some important exceptions. High-powered radars and the Arecibo broadcast of 1974 (which lasted for only three minutes) could be detected at distances of tens to hundreds of light-years with a setup similar to our best SETI experiments.

It always seemed odd to me that people call this a paradox.

[1] https://www.seti.org/faq#obs1

It would be interesting if someone started a HN News discussion forum where people could continue the conversations that start here. That would at least help alleviate the problem of feeling pressure to respond to stories and comments rapidly, even if the other issues involved in online discussions (like the "Person A/Person B" one) remain.

In general I wish there was more attention paid to the way different platforms shape our conversations, and more interest in exploring alternative platforms.

> The other main reason is that I have a high threshold for considering my participation is worthy of other people's attention.

This is one of the problems with online conversations in general. Person A makes a lot of low effort comments without putting much thought into it and without bothering to check the accuracy of what they're writing. Person B thinks about whether or not they have anything to add to the conversation, spends time thinking about other people's comments, checks any claims they make to see if they're accurate, rewrites their comment so that it flows better, etc. Person A is going to end up making many, many more comments than Person B. The conversation will look more and more like Person A's posts, even when those people are in the minority.

There are some places that suffer more from this than others, but I think it affects just about every online conversation to some extent. It would be interesting to see what effect posting limits would have.

Timing plays a role into this too. If you're interested in getting into a discussion on a submission, you need to check the site frequently because after a few hours the discussion is going to be dead. Likewise, you need to make the comment fairly quickly instead of waiting a day or two to chime in. And after making a comment, there's pressure to check frequently to see if you got replies - again, if you wait for too long nobody is going to notice your reply back to them.

With the old web forums you could wait a day or two to respond or a day or two to check for replies. But the timing dynamic here (and on many other sites) encourages much more frequent checks and much more rapid-fire conversations.

Durian is another food that tends to have a sharp dichotomy of reactions. Some people (myself included) find the smell fairly pleasant, if a bit atypical. Others seem to find it extremely offensive (to the point where most Southeast Asian hotels ban you from bringing it into your hotel room).

Even 2.5 years later. The worst part of that all is that you then have to waste time contacting the hospital to make sure it's a legitimate bill, contacting the insurance company - which by then might well be your former insurance company - to make sure they paid their fair share, etc.

GOG only started selling newer games in 2012, and even then it started only selling a few. Before that, it was a place to buy old games (hence the original name, Good Old Games). I think GOG's success was because for its first few years, it was selling games that simply weren't available on Steam or anywhere else at the time. When it did finally go up against Steam, it already had a decently large customer base, and was able to set itself up well a a DRM-free Steam alternative.

Many of the people who I've seen make the claim that Bitcoin is a "reliable store of value" or digital gold then go on to talk about how its undervalued, an investment, one of the few things that can give you these kinds of returns, etc. There doesn't seem to be much reflection on a how using currency, storing something in a reliable store of value, investing in assets, and speculating on asset prices are all very different behaviors. It's also telling that when the economic issues of bitcoin are pointed out, the response is often that people don't understand the technical side or that they need to read the white paper. It would be like if someone said they don't think many consumers would like the iPhone X and the response was "you really shouldn't comment unless you know the details about how the iPhone X is manufactured."

In places that allow ballot initiatives you can target specific issues. That's how marijuana legalization has been happening. There are places where majority of the people support it, but they vote in politicians who don't bother to legalize it, so activists take the issue directly to the voters.

Even still, though, it's a small number of people who bother collecting the signatures and informing people about the initiative. The vast majority of people are extremely disengaged and won't bother working on changing things.

> So - the demonstrations following some police shootings aside, is there any significant push in the US to drive the police towards less lethal encounters with the public it is to serve and protect?

Keep in mind that most people in the U.S. care about issues like this in an abstract way. They think that improvements should be made, but when, say, the time comes to vote they won't bother taking 10 minutes to see where their representatives stand on this issue and vote accordingly. If you ask people who they voted for the day after a primary, most will have a hard time even recalling the names in the downballot races, let alone what the positions were. The people who do tend to vote for these positions tend to be extremely focused on particular policies - they only care if the politician supports or opposes some obscure regulation that benefits them personally.

So in the end you really are talking about a very small number of activists and groups that are trying to bring about change, and they're fighting against entrenched groups opposed to said change - or more often than not, just general political inertia (why rock the boat if most voters don't care?).

There has been traction in the effort to get more body cameras, though, so there have been some improvements. But there doesn't yet seem to be enough people who care and act accordingly to bring about the big changes that are needed.

Productivity growth has actually been relatively low recently[1]. There doesn't seem to be a trend towards acceleration.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm

If you only care about the raw IQ score, then time will eventually take care of this. IQ points have risen by about 3 points per decade[1], but the scores keep being readjusted downward so what used to be a high score is now a medium score.

[1] http://theweek.com/articles/481988/are-americans-smarter-tha...

There seems to be a ton of excitement about Bitcoin now, not because of what it can do, but almost entirely because of speculation. Almost none of the general public interest in Bitcoin stems from an interest in what Bitcoin is; the vast majority of people simply see it as a get rich quick asset. And the reason why people are only interested in it for speculative reasons is because it doesn't seem to have any particular benefit for most people.

And if this is a speculative bubble the way it looks like it is, it will end like other speculative bubbles. A few people will get absurdly rich, not because they added any value to the system, but because they were able to time the market. Their money will come from the many others who will lose a lot because they tried to do the same thing but were too late.

Beyond that, there seems to be a small group of people who are interested in it because they see it as an alternative to fiat currency. But strong opposition to fiat currency seems to be one of those odd economic beliefs that some people get, similar to the people who think that our society would be great if we just got rid of money and had a barter system. Outside of fringe beliefs, fiat currency is generally seen as a useful tool.