Jd

Fine, but I think you generally have be familiar with the problem domain to devise the optimal solution. I am in a good position to change the diapers or punish my own child. Not quite so for someone else's, particularly if they are not in my own geographic vicinity.

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with contemporary doping scandals to offer programmatic advice on what can be done about them, except to say that in my view here too we are probably at the cusp of major shift in a massive historical trend. This trend I suspect will end with 'doping' being considered the norm not only among athletes but among the general population, and the chemicals used will be seen as an generally accepted life enhancement rather than an aberration -- much like vitamin supplements already are. What to do about it today, when doping is illegal, at least within the context of professional sports competitions? I don't know, especially since in this context it seems that the trend is a scientific one, perhaps mixed with a degradation in values (here I'm simply not informed enough to comment).

You want to "fix" the problem? It probably depends on the gravity of the specific offense and the pervasiveness of the offense. Pushing a few people harshly and publicly can send a statement that certain things are not acceptable, and curb abuses by others who are watching them. This is not a particularly bad tactic, but again it is context specific.

My own approach is always to fit the solution to the problem in such a way that the optimal outcome (i.e. reduction of abuses in the short and long-term) is achieved.

Thanks. I personally believe in right and wrong, but also in degrees of right and wrong. Doing the right thing in a situation where everyone else is doing the wrong thing is more difficult. Doing the right thing when everyone is doing the right thing is easy. Thus, you don't really know your values or the depth of your values until you are placed in a situation where it is difficult to carry them out.

Here, for "culpability" I mean simply that I believe that the power to actualize the values of each individual differs, and that those who are able to actualize their values even in very difficult situations is worth more and to be praised more than those who are unable to and go with the flow.

This is to say that simply saying you have certain values means nothing. You have to act on those values and, because acting on those values can be difficult, I have sympathy for those who fail to -- even as I praise those who do.

Not to remove blame where blame is due, but in both cases there are incentive and regulatory problems. If you give people problems whereby they feel that they cannot do well without cheating (i.e. when everyone else is cheating), then cheating becomes institutionalized. Thus, to be cheating in a class where 99% of the students are cheating is to be somewhat less culpable than to be among the students cheating when only 1% of the students are cheating.

That is to say, to have a situation when cheating becomes the norm implies a much larger institutional and cultural collapse in which the larger framework (and not simply the cheating individuals) demands investigation.

What are the larger trends here?

Well, the first might simply be the idea that greed is okay. In this case, we can witness the following transformation in American values fairly clearly.

Phase 1 (religious): Greed is bad, we do things for the sake of a heavenly kingdom only. We are only temporary stewards of the wealth we have.

Phase 2 (agnostic): Greed may be a necessary part of evolution and competition for limited resources, but we need to limit it and make it a long term sort of greed.

Phase 3 (hedonist): My identity is defined by how much money I have, and I don't care how I get it.

In other words, there is long-term value erosion. This is not to say that one's values necessarily have to be religious-Christian in derivation, but in the American context this was overwhelmingly the case and this erosion has basically given way to live in the moment materialism.

The practical consequences is that many people involved in business, and this is most clear in the financial sector which has no ostensible tie to any product whatsoever and attracts people who care only about money, not only seek money, but seek to destroy any barriers that keep them from getting as much money as possible. In the US this has meant saturation of elite universities (pulling an increasing proportion of the best and brightest into the financial sector), buying out of the major political parties, shutting out the minor political parties, and removing regulatory functions (i.e. the SEC). Additionally, there is the desire to weaken the electorate by importing cheap labor from other countries that will be liable to manipulation via mass media, decreasing the likelihood that any independent party will achieve critical mass.

Because this is a long-term institutional problem there is no obvious solution, except to continue with the values that have not entirely been eroded (i.e. honesty) and to encourage others who do their function (i.e. continue working in the public sector and enforcing existing regulation). Creating new services and teams of people that are doing a good job simply for the sake of doing a good job is never a bad idea either -- although it is always easy to get sucked into the mentality of "greed is good."

I think the general rule is people who don't do things well that well have to lie about these things. Like everywhere else, Silicon Valley has probably a greater number of people who don't do things well than people who do, so there are lots of people fibbing.

That said, there are some people in Silicon Valley who are doing a great job at what they do, and for them statistics, etc. are useful tools to show what they are doing well.

As a general rule, it is probably better to focus on the people who are doing things well and to attempt to imitate them, rather than the people telling you about their tech startup while they run a food truck.

From my experience (Brown), students often have on-campus jobs, take more classes than the norm in order to graduate early or edify themselves, and involve themselves in a variety of extracurricular activities with often intensive time requirements (i.e. sports). All of these contribute to stress. If you are out of town for a debate tournament and then have an exam on Monday morning when you get back, you feel a bit stretched.

A bit confused why downmodded for responding to a request for clarification with a clarification. If you don't like the original post, isn't downmodding that enough for you?

Simple version: If he thinks and thought the Groupon scenario is "absolutely disgusting" why did he advise, take a board position, and retain shares in an "absolutely disgusting" venture?

Options presented by me:

A) "absolutely disgusting" is an exaggeration

B) JF is a hypocrite

C) JF has changed his mind over time

The problem is that Jason uses superlatives and buzz words in this interview and elsewhere. Either they just are marketing fluff for his "sustainable" (i.e. buzz word-laden) business, or he actually believes them.

However, if he actually believes them, and if Groupon really is "absolutely disgusting," why would have he not only given advice but retained shares in in the company? Personally, I don't even give free advice to things I think are "absolutely disgusting" unless it is to clean up before talking to me, and I'm not sure why we should expect anything different from Jason.

Like I said, I'm open to the idea that Jason is simply exaggerating to set his "slow company" apart from the pack, but if I'm going to write a critique it is going to have to be with the words on the page, not my idea of what is going on in Jason's head.

edit: will accept a third possibility, that Jason's ideas have grown stronger as he has witnessed Groupon from the inside.

2nd edit: "invested" -> "retained shares in"

"To me that’s far more interesting than a tech company that’s hiring a bunch of people, just got their fourth round of financing for 12 million dollars, and they’re still losing money. That’s what everyone talks about as being exciting, but I think that’s an absolutely disgusting scenario when it comes to business."

Hilarious given that Jason Fried was on the board of directors of Groupon (his comments on this "disgusting scenario" here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2617160).

Ostensibly, but just how well are governments doing at regulating online casinos? Ok, add in easily accessible VPNs and stable currencies not tied to a regulatory body. The question is not can and will governments make these other currencies illegal, but can governments enforce any laws that they make?

I'm not sure that I want to share more complete thoughts on this subject, as it could easily be used to develop the next generation of money-sucking social games, but here's a partial response.

Casinos offer a variety of different games, which have different appeal to different types of their clientele. There are lottery type games, in which there is a faint hope of a extraordinary windfall, which appeal to people who want money without working for it (i.e. people in debt). There are games in which there is a large degree of control and which the winner emerges because of his/her psychological prowess which appeals to the serious gamer (i.e. professional poker players). And then there are the run of the mill ring-ding-ding games, which appeal both to the idea of winning money, the suspense of the spinning wheel, and various other attention keeping mechanisms.

Social games have the ability to emulate virtually all of these. Although ostensibly buy-in is limited to virtual money that can never be removed from the game, there is nothing stopping large markets to grow around virtual items that can be traded (as happened with Ultima, EQ, SL, Eve, etc.).

The clutch here is that the "fun" of the experience in both cases largely revolves around ideas of advancement, social enhancement of the idea of advancement, and (potentially) some real world tie-in.

Actually, in many respects the social game is far more advanced than the casino already, insofar as it offers the idea of advancement which is potentially not tied to money (i.e. leveling up), but which can also be tied to money if people want it to be.

The problem of this right now is the fact that virtual currency cannot be liberated, but as soon as that problem is solved the casino will be an obsolete institution, soon to be extinct.

I think mobile/social games are going to get much bigger for just this reason. Casino's have been playing the human psychology game of trading ring-ding-ding and related human excitement for centuries with astonishing success. Even though they've been seen as a menace to humanity, they've nonetheless been able to been able to use every trick in the book to expand their physical presence and market impact.

However, there are huge limitations to casinos: they are limited by regulation; they are limited to physical infrastructure; they have limited space that the customer has to come to.

Quite obviously, none of this exists for the online world. This is the incredible success story of Zynga. They've managed to build a giant online casino and call it a game, and get the execs of Google and Facebook licking their heels.

This is a market sector that will not simply expand. It will explode.

Granted. My own personal take is that you need to be very aware of the substrate (which includes genetics, ethnicity, religion, geography, available resources, etc.) and have a vision that is greater than the substrate. The problem with American empire at the present moment, in my very strongly held opinion, is that we are denying the impact of the substrate and launching into "economic-magic" which is very detached from value of any kind -- with the strong risk of impaling not only our own traditional strengths (goodbye American car companies) but the rest of the world economy with it.

Along these lines, I wish the Chinese all the best for producing things things well that we care about and buy -- this is esp. true of Taiwan, which has retained some measure of traditional positive values that are not entirely materialistic, and I have some optimism that the not longer particularly Communist part can develop in a not especially materialistic direction.

As for America, I think we need a miracle.

Are there statistics that indicate the situation is improving? I'm not in Cali anymore but have Asian american male friends who like Caucasian women that would be interested in this.

"A China that leads the world will not offer the chance to be Chinese, because it is impossible to become Chinese. "

Of course. The British led the world and did not offer (at the time) anyone the chance to be British either. In fact, they actively discouraged interbreeding. It is a dogma of the modern Occident that it is stronger to be multi-ethnic, and that national identity should be open to anyone. History shows us, however, that that is hardly a necessity for world empire.

Full disclosure: I was once in love with a Chinese woman from an elite family, who I am fairly certain loved me but rejected me because I did not belong to the appropriate stock (with influence from her family). Lesson learned: if love is strong, kinship bonds are often stronger.

In that case, what do you mean by "the inside" ? Presumably you have some sort of privileged access to information, including that which is currently under NDA. If you aren't receiving funding from the organization, what exactly is your relationship?

You could call it that, but given that the US track record so far is closer to Halliburton (i.e. the aforementioned Enron case) and not Sweden, it seems more appropriate to refer to what has actually happened rather than what people wish would happen.

I would argue that the problematic conflation exists in the original program, insofar as the 20 under 20 program is often described as a potential replacement for higher ed. As far as I see things, there are a whole bunch of extra factors which are much more extensive than your three categories and which require a much more rigorous analysis.

For example, how do we foster innovation in specific subjects? For instance, we presumably know that with respect to atomic physics, this requires highly knowledgable people who have spent a lifetime studying very abstract subject matter, and this is most likely to be facilitated by institutions not governed by a profit motive. This is not quite as clear for innovation with respect to alternative energy, which may require any of the following: developing new types of energy, developing the technology which employs the new type of energy, or bringing an existing technology to market. The skillsets required for all of these areas are different, as is the institutional setting in which they will foster. If you take a very brilliant person who could ostensibly be working on harnessing new potential energy from the atom and put him in a program focused on entrepreneurship this would be a total mis-utilization of talent and, consequently, a huge step backwards. This is to say that business and entrepreneurship are only a solution for a certain set of problems and these are not the only problems.

Also, certain subject areas require super-specialization. So you need to start early and stay focused. The means for doing this will probably depend on what the subject area is. Is "higher ed" the solution for a would-be master electrician? No, probably some combination of vocational school and apprenticeship is. Likewise for a pianist. You go to a specialized school for a specialized subject.

Standard higher ed is an easy whipping boy insofar as it is often the default solution for many people who don't know what they want to do with their lives, many of whom don't actually end up taking advantage of the resources available to them and learning all that much. In a certain sense this might be a fault of the institutions themselves, including massive inflation in costs, multiplication of institutions, and failure to actually teach anything of value. However, the fact remains that for certain cases, there are no obvious better options than higher ed.

In any case, I think higher ed should be looked at as a set of tools rather than a solution to a specific problem, least of all the question "what should I do with the next four years of my life?" If you look at it that way, you might find that the tools that are available for you, including potentially interacting with a number of bright and diverse people and broadening your experience in various unexpected ways will be beneficial in many ways.

Case in point: I was chatting with a professor at Harvard yesterday who studied French and German before focusing on Arabic, and he was lamenting the fact that he had not had the chance to study more Sanskrit (he did study a bit) or Urdu or get his Persian up to snuff, all of which he though would have deepened his understanding and approach to life, which have some relationship to his scholarship. Of course, all of these things take time, and usually they take some form of institutional support, but as far as I see it they can be valuable if they expose you to certain ways of thinking about the world that you might not experience otherwise.

For that reason, I think you are right about entrepreneurship as a possible thing to do alongside your studies or even to replace your studies, but it very much depends on the person and where they are trying to go with their life. There are a lot of very hard problems that cannot be solved in the context of a startup and indicating to the youth that this is the best option may deprive them of valuable life experience.

As for the specific question of age, I agree that there is no set time to do anything in life. There are, however, natural patterns, insofar as people are not usually ready to leave the home and exist on their own until sometime in their late teens. What they do at that point probably should depend on their talent and proclivities. In that sense, I do think that Thiel's initiative may be right for some people. It is, nonetheless, billed as a solution for all sorts of problems for which it is not (much like the gazillion online education initiatives).

Agreed.

I think Thiel was probably creating a program with a knowledge of the PR the initiative would generate without much thought to long-term outcomes. Obv. he is a smart guy with plugins to higher-ed, and clearly someone who believes in the positive possibilities of innovation. In that sense, he is someone I would like to collaborate with.

That said, he may have shot himself in a foot here in picking people who were good from a short-term PR perspective yet will blow up and look like idiots in the long run. I heard of Dale Stephens before, but didn't take him seriously until Thiel sponsored him. Then I subscribed to his Facebook and blog email feed. What a joke. The whole thing is tailored for a bunch of angsty underachievers and provides zero positive value.

In this sense, I think Thiel has also done himself a disservice by pandering too much ultra-libertarian tech crowd which wants to see everything privatized -- the ultimate goal is a "Halliburtinization" of the US, where all governmental and public functions are provided at speculatively higher efficiency by the private sector.

Obviously, as the Halliburton saga in Iraq illustrates, this is very rarely the actual outcome. Enrons and their ilk create private monopolies on markets and spike the price to their own benefit.

This sort of short-sighted approach to higher ed is just a symptom of a similarly flawed way of thinking about the world that emphasizes profit (a short-term metric that is rarely the most important), instead of the other values which can be fostered within the context of higher ed. In this sense, I think the East coast Ivy League establishment often does a better job than Stanford in emphasizing some of these other elements -- for example, the library at Stanford positively sucks and it is very difficult to find the books necessary for anyone who reads widely (Cal is a bit better, but in general Californians seem not to read very much).

In any case, I think Thiel needs to step up his game a bit. Initiatives are needed to make better, more well-rounded people, rather than more little entrepreneurs who want a quick buck at age 20. In his book on Stanford educational system, he appropriately references Caliban and the need to "chain the beast" so-to-speak, but it seems that he hasn't taken his own lessons to heart.

I think the "Pos" side should be discounted as it is obviously Thiel centered PR from an employee. I think the "Neg" side should be the default, since one should not presume value until value is demonstrated. That we are still in a sense "early stage" indicates that we don't have a full picture yet and so shouldn't presume that we do.

I have mixed feelings about the program in general. Entrepreneurship programs maybe useful for promoting excited entrepreneurs, but by no means are an adequate replacement for researchers or higher ed in general. In many of these cases, the entire premise is hogwash. Technical innovation comes from depth in a subject area, and you actually have to study something before you can innovate in the context of it.

This is most obvious in the case of the Uncollege movement -- the person and movement are exceedingly shallow and provide nothing of value except as a publicist for other trends in online education. I'd hate to think that his applies across the board, but suspect that it is more true than not.

What is "a bunch" ? 30% ? I still don't think it makes sense to refer to them as dropouts unless over 50% were enrolled in a college at the time of application and left a higher-degree program in order to do the program.

tl;dr:

Neg: Exhaustive review of individuals showing that nothing of value (except riding on existing trends) can be shown from any applicant, except potentially in the case of the Solar Energy startup, in which money was used to hire PhDs with actual domain knowledge.

Pos: Saying that everything great is under NDA and that the solar energy stuff is cool, that the youngin' in question has impressed PhDs enough that they want to work for him. No real info, expecting you to trust that good stuff is in the works.

I believe the title is wrong. Virtually none of the applicants were "dropouts," although some were accepted to prestigious colleges and decided not to go. The program was envisioned as an alternative to college, and most applicants were pre-entry.

Fascinating. What were the "few trustworthy references" you found? I've never heard anything like your experience before, and the anecdotal evidence I've heard regarding fasting is largely gathered from spiritual traditions (i.e. Yoga, Christian, etc.).

We have a weird situation in the US right now in that lots of information is available via the alternative press, etc., but none of it seems to matter during election time, in which the major parties and major media vehicles seem to be the only important aspects in pushing past the 50% mark, which is the defining feature of our democracy.

Thankfully we have the ability to operate presses fairly freely, but these little presses don't seem to matter all that much when it comes to fending off the thieves. I'm not quite sure what the solution is, but I suspect it involves a large number of people working together to build a system that is better than the current one.

There are various tiers in the intelligence of criminals.

Tier 1: Get caught. Go to jail.

Tier 2: Get caught. "Fix" the legal progress in your favor. Don't go to jail.

Tier 3: Bribe the people doing the enforcement. Don't get caught, because there is no one to catch you.

Tier 4: Bribe the people doing the law writing. Don't get caught, because you aren't doing anything "wrong" (technically speaking).

Tier 5: Buy out the mass media, so that no one thinks there is anything wrong about what you are doing any more. The clueless voter who lives from the juices of the media mogul is the tier 5 criminal's best friend.

IMO, most of the global financial system is somewhere between tier 4 and 5, with a bit of 3 (recruiting away the SEC regulators to big iBanks). Thankfully we still have a relatively free press in the US, so even if there is some lockdown there is a lot of ability to get alternative information.

"giving Heidemann more than one second to land the winning touch"

This seems the crucial point, and without having it specified it is hard to tell if this is a very serious oversight or very minor aspect. If Heidemann had 1.01 seconds instead of 1.0 to land a hit, this would be very minor. Whereas if Heidemann had a full minute of extra time, this would be major.

I'm not doing any extra research since this isn't too important to me -- but some crucial context is very clearly missing here.

Personally I'm glad this made HN simply because it is an interesting story and I virtually never check the mainstream media. To me, the failures in the mainstream media, including focusing on kitch or faddish things that are of no particular interest to me, are always informative in the sense that I think they can help people building the next generation of news/media platforms -- empowering users to get the information that is relevant and valuable to them.

In this sense, I think this is extremely relevant, simply because I think we all know that the old newspaper model is dead, but nothing obvious has risen to replace it (besides news aggregators, either as semi-free or targeted Bloomberg-esque services).

This is, also, fairly obviously, one of those problems that has the problem of scale immediately rather than post facto, so it is interesting to explore those aspects of the problem -- insofar as there are a lot of places already reaching out to a niche audience, but nothing that obviously brings them together.

Given what you've said here, I highly suspect you do long-term fasting within some sort of "yogic" context. I personally suspect that many of the potentially negative outcomes of dietary depravation are mitigated when in a positive environment (i.e. lots of nature / with good energies) complemented with certain types of yogic practices. There is also a long tradition of long "fasts" within Chinese qigong traditions, and the supposition is usually that a body attuned via various practices can feed off of the environmental energies (e.g. the sun, the mountain) without needing nutrients of other sorts. The technical aspect of some of these things is a bit beyond me, both because it is 'esoteric' and doesn't fit into any model of Western science that I know of (with the potential exception of Paracelsusians).

Along these lines, I'm curious what sort of environment you or the other people you know do their long fasts in (i.e. if there is a checklist of sorts).