Sagat

Criticizing Elon Musk on HN? Not a smart move, bro.

Am I a commie if I think Goldman Sachs is a bit creepy in itself?

Wise advice, but at the end of the day no one is really happy to make ant steps when a select few are capable of bending the world to their will like a cheap straw, for better or for worse.

Wow, this Lu guy is going to be the world's first trillionaire, at only 21 years old. Kudos to him for inventing the Internet.

Brit spelling is not the world's spelling. Do you think people learn English because of England's influence? Guess again.

'Murica has some good points but it's a pretty destructive and unsustainable culture. I'm also worried about the fact that they have no qualms about blowing up people with drones or sending people to shady prisons without trial. You might say that China and Russia are worse, but they have nowhere near the power and technical possibilities open to Murcans.

I took a look at the comments and people still seem to be blaming Europeans for the entirety of slavery, which is ironic considering that they were the first ones to abolish it.

I wish I had enough money to be able to have a measurable impact on the world.

It's going to take a long, long while.

Trying to remove tracks is precisely the wrong thing to do. You have to keep a trackable presence of some sort or you will look suspicious and receive extra scrutiny.

That's the point they are trying to make. No normal person can hope to lead a normal life whilst escaping tracking.

You are forgetting that morality is not absolute. It fluctuates over time.

It's possible that in the future, homophobia may become the norm again in developed countries. People in that era will look down on us as permissive degenerates, just like we look at 19th century people as intolerant bigots.

If you are that smart you don't need college. Just go at it on your own.

How can there be this much hubris in a single post?

Do you really think our generation is better than the 25,000 before it? Do you really think you are making the world a better place? We don't even know what the future will be like so we have no way of determining whether today's choices will be right for our descendants.

You don't even know what your kids will be like. How can you be sure you will support them?

The world will judge our generation once we have lived long lives and done much. Until then, it's incredibly arrogant to claim ourselves to be the best out of countless past lives.

I find such "artistic" projects to be contemptible. If you want to change society, you have to go through political, legal or commercial challenge, otherwise you will be ignored. There are already too many smug artist types who take up causes; your message will thus be drowned out.

I wonder when we will have the first dollar trillionaire. (Rockefeller doesn't count) It's likely that some people will own entire planets in the future.

Do I really need to? I think you can come to this conclusion on your own.

When you are born, there are already a ton a factors which will stay with you (well, mostly) till you die. Your health and innate intelligence will have a huge effect. Your carers and the early environment as well. As a biological creature, you can never be left untouched by your environment. You can never be truly free.

In fact, is there anything you can say is the sole result of your own person? That question is impossible to answer because the person you are has been molded by a ton of different experiences, both positive and negative and is not a static object.

The whole point of my post is that it's silly to to claim that some people have "deserved" their success or failure, or that you can do anything if you want it bad enough. The very fact that you are able to be deeply driven is the consequence of factors forever beyond your control.

I'm not saying you should give up and do nothing, just that we should have a more relaxed, forgiving and objective view of the moral and intrinsic value of individuals.

"I fear that people will take this article to heart without realizing that it wasn't Bill Gates background that allowed him to succeed, but it was his instinct and drive."

False. Both of things things enormously contributed to his success. There are tons of people with drive who never even got close to his achievements, and tons more with ideal situations who never created anything of value. Gates had an ideal mix of character and good fortune.

There's also the sad fact that personality derives a lot from upbringing and genetics, so you could say that the "instinct and drive" Gates had was also a facet of luck. In a way, most of what we are is roughly predetermined. Our character is a throw of the dice. We don't even know if free will exists at all. This is why I tend to laugh at libertarians who believe they owe nothing to anyone.

Face it, luck is perhaps 90% of any tremendous success. Just because Gladwell wrote about this doesn't mean it's not true. It's not a reason to diss Gates and his ilk and stay envious and bitter; it just means we should stop basing our self worth on whether we've changed the world or not, and stop adulating important figures or trying to derive lessons from their every move. Plenty of innately great people have failed and plenty of less than adequate people have succeeded immensely.

Ads make for some interesting doublethink.

One one hand, I hate the consumer oriented society that wastes resources on a ton of useless products; I despise the scummy advertisers who manipulate people into pursuing the wrong goals. On the other, I like having stuff and will happily buy things to put inside my home and on my person. I am totally dependent on the consumer ecosystem and I enjoy creature comforts.

That said, when I truly need something I will make a targeted search for it. It's really rare to see ads that actually interest me. So I am generally extremely hostile to the ad business. I hate everything about them, because they symbolize the uncomfortable truths and compromises our society rests upon. They are everywhere and mostly do nothing but sap your mental energy.

I'm not dismissing Eastern thought. On the contrary, I am dismissing a course which apparently makes a pleasant sounding mishmash of the entire output of an advanced civilization.

Wake up, sheeple!

Many people, but precisely not "competent, intelligent human beings with discretion". The very people who would make the TSA (or any other place) a better organization have the ability to navigate away from thankless, low paid occupations.

Why would a "competent, intelligent human being with discretion" choose such a crappy job in the first place?

That's not a feel-good aphorism. That's a principle that is at the core of religions and philosophies practiced by billions. It's not universally applied, but people are actively trying to teach it.

Why blame the people you know when you can blame a piece of software that can't fight back?

I doubt all (or even most) founders are passionate visionaries. If the product in question was a life changing invention, then yes, I am sure the founders would be more than happy to have their whole existence and sense of identity revolve around it.

Here we are talking about a URL shortener that made revenue from ads: hardly an original or inspiring project. The guy's stated goal is "to help social media influencers and publishers better monetize their online content." Not exactly dream material here.

Let's be honest here, being bought for a substantial sum and maybe getting a job was exactly what the founder was looking for.

thanks for the lel

Could you explain what the importance of emptiness is? It sounds mysterious and interesting.

Be honest. Are you actually going to use those diluted feel-good aphorisms to shape your life?

Wow, what's up with the ad hominem, bro?