DmitriLebedev

The article starts with "I hate wasting time passively watching that TV stuff", then makes a weak point admitting that wasting time on editing or reading Wikipedia is useful. Then it ends pointing in the opposite direction: "But let professionals do their job and let's just consume what there's on the market".

> I personally found Russian culture and way of perceiving the world too depressive.

Examples?

Good social development statistics doesn't mean the people are happy with their lives. As I see, the article takes the results for granted without any doubt and then speculates and searches for the reasons. I'd at least search for the polls that ask if the people are optimistic/pessimistic, consider themselves happy/unhappy.

Though, I believe, standing far from the noisy Europe, maybe far from the consumption rush, they may feel calm, happy and optimistic. That's great.

> "The study was lent some credibility by the finding that the Russians were the most unhappy."

Yes, if you assume the myth that life in Russia very unpleasant, the study gets credibility. On the other hand, in the year the study was made, other studies showed Russian population to be the most optimistic in the history, thanks to fast economic growth and, I think, to breaking the pessimistic soviet mentality.

I say what I think. I don't think saying "doesn't seem to exist, but many people believe" may harm any kid.

If a kid asks me of sexual stuff, i'll think twice, because what I say can be transmitted to parents in a different shape.

Let me ask: will you answer "ask your parents" in the same situations? About the religion - do you consciously try to avoid confronting a kid with your beliefs (that may be different)? (just want to figure out)

Can anyone explain what's meant by "o" and "u" word? Googled, but found no explanation.

Never heard "Ask your parents" in my life. I guess it's only in American culture.

Art Lebedev isn't a startup and has nothing to do with skilled programming. He's good at courtshiping rich companies instead.

1) Many of them are training for contests, not for real-life tasks 2) They could make startups, but there is a huge bureaucracy. 3) Many have bad habbits (in wide sense) and passive approach to life and pessimism which are trained in early age. This goes back to soviet times when these life perceptions rooted themselves.

That's what I thought of too.

The contract, I suppose, was a standard one from a laws/contacts database. So don't worry much about the layer father.

It might be that father has told the son what is best to do (to buy all the rights for the copyrighted material), and the son trusted father's authority.

I don't know if in your country a vocal contract has any power. Right now you can prove that this material is under your copyright, but he can't prove that he payed you for _all the rights_. So in my legislation system you'd still have 100% of control over the situation.

In childhood, in early years of school, I perceived teachers as evil and good. In the last years of school we used to label them as "normal" and "crazy" (or "idiots", if one preferred).

My grades were exceptionally high with "good" teachers and low with "evil" throughout all the school. Only recently I liberted myself to start seeing that as a good sign.

I guess, "good" or "normal" teachers in our perception were those who procrastinated from teaching these lessons.

Ugric and turkic languages in the part of Russia, that is shown, are minorities as well. At best, part of locals are bilingua.

The article sounds doubtful: the smart guys gathered and invented something, but, as I understand (having jumped paragraphs to save time), they only patented their ideas, neither evaluating, nor testing any of them. This may lead to making a set of useless patents that nobody will ever try to use.

Imagine that instead of YC there were a "think tank", a gathering of people who would invent websites or startups and then just document the ideas. This can be much more entertaining and may seem a deeper thought than advising on and evaluating the "materialized" projects. But how many projects, that sound nice, will ever be done, and how successful can they be?

It even doesn't take a conspiracy to start a propaganda. Successful companies support PR, advertizing and, for example, style magazines, which improves their business, and other businesses see that and copy that.

The argument, that politicians have elitist views on the society, is also relevant. It doesn't mean that they conspire, it's just how they see the world.

I'm wondering what kind of utility function is needed to make such a strange MU function...

As far as dents on the car are concerned, let me write what conventional microeconomy says. Here is the function to estimate the choices.

U = sum(F(x(t))/(1+r)^t) by t from 1 to infinity (or life expectation), where F(x) is a momentary utility function, r is "perceptual" discounting rate (sorry, don't know the English term), which means that F(x) next year is 1+r times less nice than having it now.

If you don't repair the car, x(t) will be constant, let's say X. If you do, first period it is x(0) = Y < X, but since t=1 x(t) = Z > X.

The problem is that F(Y) has more weight than F(Z)'s. The more r is, the greater the difference and more probable the first choice will win. The problem of poor people is that (1) their r is much more than that of middle class, and they don't value the future, (2) their F(x) (perception of what is good) is different.

The example in the article is flawed. I find it easy to care of big problems rather than perfecting a single small one. I wear clean clothes every day, but find it hard to care of a single small spot or a few grease or dust on my trouses or shoes. BUT if they become noteable dirty or very dirty and I'm in the office and still have to work half a day, I'd rather clean then, or go home and change, not give up. Easier to solve many problems than to be a perfectionist. Completely the opposite of what Karelis observes.

IMO, it is fair that the book was ignored.

The guy completely ignores the time and risk factors, namely being short-term-payoff-oriented and long-term-payoff-oriented. This is a subject of microeconomics (not 101, of course - it's a lot of maths, integrals and derivative functions).

Poor people do not save extra money exactly because of being short-term oriented. Drugs, entertainment and having early sex also deal with short-term payoff. Short-term payoff orientation also makes a person more risk-tolerant, which is a common attribute of criminals.

All the given examples are easily explainable with a utility function that takes into account risk perception and time discounting (long- or short-term orientation) and current posessions.

Committing a crime or not is a choice between risky and not risky opportunities. This deals with risk perception. Few posessions make the low-risk choice even less valuable. Fixing or not fixing dents on a car fit into choice between long-term and short-term payoff.

Writing this I suspected that the author hasn't worked with advanced microeconomics' maths. Indeed, Karelis is a philosopher. I haven't seen the book, but by his words ("Econ 101 is to blame") suspect that he doesn't know any more complicated economics. That's the reason he finds it wrong.

Nice to hear of a work on a smart AI.

I've had the same ideas, that the situation with AI or any scientific tools in the gaming mainstream is unsatisfactory. I had to deal a lot with AI air traffic control in MSFS2004 and it was noteable that they abandoned it's development as soon as it was able to do all the chain of basic operations from taxiing and takeoff to approach and vacating the runway. The real-life ATC are always sloving an optimisation problem, which is the most crucial at approach. Of course, AI ATC doesn't care to optimize anything and may make a poor a/c go around forever.

One problem with AI is that it can't be estimated quickly by game reviewers. It takes much time to notice it's patterns, probably it takes to complete all the missions up to the end. As a result, AI quality doesn't affect game's grades much enough to care about it.

Another thing is that many game developers are good at algorythms and programming, but not (if at all) at game theory, and social math theories (like evolutionary dynamics), and optimal control.