cryoshon

i find the chance argument very compelling, but there's another factor which to my knowledge the OP researchers didn't investigate: ethics.

the richest people i know (with wealth in the 10M range) are the most amoral in their thoughts and actions, and it makes a big difference financially. note that i said amoral, not immoral; they aren't malicious, they simply don't care.

they don't refuse a business opportunity because the business would be explicitly unethical; they do it, and profit from it. the same is true if the business produces negative externalities. it simply doesn't matter to them because money is money as far as they care.

they don't craft their investing strategy with the goal of investing in companies that behave well; they chase the money regardless of the ethical problems that they may be directly incentivizing.

overall, this gives these people a much greater range of freedom when it comes to making large volumes of additional money. while i don't know for sure if being amoral helps people become rich in the first place, i assume that it does because having more options on the table is never a bad thing.

so, maybe the answer to the question of "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich" is "i refuse to act unethically to make money".

in my personal experience, i think this argument is pretty good. in 2010 or so, i realized that there was a then-latent market for TDCS / consumer nootropic brain stimulation systems, and considered making a company around producing and selling them to consumers.

however, at the time, i knew that brain stimulation hadn't been proven safe to use in the long term, and selling it to consumers would require working around the FDA's rules about medical devices to essentially evade their oversight. in short, i refused to start a company whose time had come because i knew that i'd probably be harming people as part of the core business. i would have been one of the first in the space, and while i don't think i would be rich today if i had done it, i know that it would have been a chance to get rich and certainly that there were some people who did get rich. and of course, there have been plenty of consumers who have been harmed by these products, often in unidentifiable or subtle ways.

so what's the moral of this story? having morals is expensive, and it sometimes precludes you from becoming rich even if you're lucky enough to be at the right time to take action.

this was my experience in college as well, but i didn't really put the pieces together until i had the same experiences in my professional life.

there were those who were competent, wanted to be hands-on, and who were clearly very motivated and interested in getting things done. they were the minority. the rest were... shall we say, not workhorses.

re: poisons, it isn't a bad analogy because you're referencing the dose-response curve.

many of our medicines are "poisons" in the sense that if you take them in a large enough dose, they will kill you. but a small dose can be therapeutic, in the right context.

likewise, a dose of reality-groundedness is a necessity to navigate life correctly. some people can tolerate the side effects of higher doses better than others, however.

keeping my realist comments to myself took me more than two decades to become competent at. it'll take me another two decades to master.

the trick is to understand that all people live in a marginal headspace where engagement with the nature of the world is heavily filtered and limited so that their psychology can continue to mostly function on a day to day basis. this is true whether you are a "realist" or "pessimist" or "optimist".

piercing the veil is uncomfortable and unwanted for most people, and it doesn't necessarily provide them with any value to have their comforting or familiar illusions destroyed. in a sense, it's rude if you pop their bubble. in other words, some people don't see the humor in dark humor because they are unfamiliar with darkness, and it scares them.

for me, graveyard humor is the best way to tolerate things. but it's important to know your audience.

>Perlow describes how she developed a solution to white-collar peonage at Boston Consulting Group. She called her strategy “PTO”: predictable time off. It didn’t seem like a big deal. Teams would pull together to arrange one weeknight off per member per week.

what a nightmare to read. i wish i could say i have never worked with any company so apocalyptically dysfunctional as to need a policy like this.

after 5PM on a weekday and for 100% of the weekend, the default expectation should be that 100% of teammates are not working and are unreachable, even if there is an "emergency". yes, even if it means you or the team is blocked from doing something because you need their input. yes, even if it is "just one tiny question". yes, that means that clients will get mad sometimes.

the team doesn't need to be pulling together to ensure that one person's time off on a weeknight is not interrupted. the team needs to be pulling together to tell management that work stops at 5, every night. then, they need to follow their own rule and be unreachable by 5:01 PM, as a group. this is a problem of labor against management, and the solution is for labor to organize aggressively and set ground rules rather than being picked to pieces by their own sense of industriousness and their desire to please authority by working longer than required.

this is a very interesting comment here because it exposes how different the chinese and american polities really are.

america is not a unified bloc, internally. nor does it aspire to be. the differences between a city in massachusetts and a city in louisiana are greater than the differences between a city in massachusetts and a city in ontario -- and ontario's in a different country altogether. in other words, social and cultural distance between two regions in the US can be significantly higher than the cultural distance from one region in the US to another country. i do not think the same principle applies to china. for china, its neighbors are decidedly alien, so the cultural distance between regions within china seems very small in comparison, even if in reality it is substantial.

to return to the OP's example: if alabama tried to secede, i'd be fine with letting them go. heck, i'd be glad they even tried to leave, because it would make a credible threat to the federal government that other states would follow along and also secede if things didn't improve promptly.

i wouldn't wish them success though, because knowing that it's alabama, i would assume that their reasons for secession were incompatible with my vision for the country. in other words, if a state liek alabama really tried to secede, my position would be that they probably weren't going to be compatible with the best iteration of america anyway -- perhaps because they'd come off as a neo-confederate or something similarly regrettable.

but in principle, i don't think i would support efforts to stop them leaving or claiming more rights. i'd prefer apple to not handicap them to appease the federal government, even if i don't like the alabamans or their values very much. why?

because i understand that a restriction targeting them today will be used against me tomorrow. and i resent the idea that a private company can dictate what my hardware runs, especially retroactively.

i'm on board with a boycott of blizzard and also activision.

we can't continue with appeasement of a totalitarian state bent on controlling the discourse of the world if we want to claim that we are a democracy.

unless we're willing to lose money to stay true to our ideals, our ideals aren't real whatsoever.

if you don't own the land, you can't stop the owner from chopping down all the trees you planted and letting the CO2 exhaust into the air again. i guess you could try putting it into a contract, but it would de facto be unenforceable because you wouldn't know if the land owner was cutting down trees on their property anyway.

if CO2 is removed from the oceans and other CO2 sinks, won't that still leave us in the position of having less free CO2 to release into the atmosphere in the aftermath? i'm trying to understand multiple angles of this issue because i'm interested in making a company to plant trees as a service.

i'm currently looking into tree-planting as a climate change solution with the aim of making it into either a nonprofit or a for-profit organization, but my research so far has not been promising.

the trouble with planting trees is that it's difficult to turn into a virtuous economic loop without government intervention because the cost of land is so high. nobody wants to buy a tree that is planted somewhere else, and very few individuals or companies are interested in purchasing trees for the creation of a carbon offset certificate or personal carbon offset. in other words, people don't value carbon sequestration, they value things that sequestration can produce downstream, like air that isn't jam packed with CO2.

in a vacuum, you can plant one tree for 20 cents of effort -- assuming you own the land you're standing on. but in the real world, land is expensive, and it has both up-front purchase costs as well as ongoing land tax costs. and trees aren't exactly productive assets unless the government assigns an economic value to carbon sequestration via a carbon tax or something similar.

all of these concerns occur well before you can even start to approach the idea of scaling tree-planting to the point where it makes a dent in the climate crisis. for the idea to work economically, it needs a lot of subsidization, at least under the present conditions.

of course, this is where philanthropy could step in and make a massive difference. if a billionaire or two would set aside a few billions to purchase deforested lands and replant them, we could make major progress. but they won't, so that leaves us hunting for a market capitalist solution to a problem caused by collective ignorance of externalities during economic activity.

based on my research into phytoplanktons and cyanobacteria-based climate change mitigation for the purposes of commercialization, my take on this is that planting trees is probably a significantly easier approach in terms of the amount of effort involved on an ongoing basis.

in terms of efficacy, i'd say it depends on how productive your phyto/cyano farm is versus planting trees over a 10-year course per dollar. phyto/cyano farms will be super dense in terms of sequestration, capacity but you'll be investing hundreds of dollars per unit.

from shortly after our first civil war until relatively recently, we could say to ourselves and say that our hodgepodge of cultures were not mutually exclusive. coexistence with these other cultures was a benign fact of life, something that added a bit of color to the american panorama. while contacts between these cultures were not always comfortable for everyone, at a minimum the presupposition of good will and the realized expectations for a favorable standard of living smoothed over any faultlines without much effort.

over time, however, the centrifugal forces holding america's cultures began to weaken. economic growth stagnated, and economic gains became concentrated. at the same time, social issues that may have enjoyed "agree to disagree" status became matters of moral imperative as a result of political stratagems seeking to generate firmer voting blocs. eventually, our cultures had little to distract themselves from the fact that coexistence meant the perpetuation of major injustices by their own standards.

and so, we arrive at the present. our divisions are not reconcilable, nor is coexistence an option moving forward because coexistence requires subjugation of each culture's primary socioeconomic and moral directives. i would prefer a peaceful separation of the two major blocs in the US because that would allow each of the blocs to realize their desires without being held back by the other half. even if there is a major set of reforms which can precipitate revitalization of the american spirit, reconciliation will probably be impossible.

we can't "electric van" our way out of the climate crisis because it makes too little of a dent over too long of a timescale. bezos' plan is far too weak to even be worth media coverage.

mediocre quarter-measure plans like this one will keep us moving at full steam towards catastrophe. if bezos wanted to put a dent in climate change genuinely, he'd take the path of least resistance: subsidize a meaty discount on goods that emit the least CO2 during their production and use as measured by a third party authority. this would create a virtuous economic cycle of manufacturers competing for lower emissions.

instead, he's found a way to accomplish little other than self-enrichment while appearing to make an effort. well, bravo. bezos is well on the way to being the richest man on an uninhabitable rock of a planet.

why? what is the point of this? how does this benefit the country?

climate change aside, i cannot imagine how someone could argue in favor of dirtier air when we already had a solution in place which addressed the issue somewhat. and yet, that's where we are. this change will make the air dirtier and cause cancer rates to rise.

and for what?

this is exactly why i view surveillance and advertising as attacks on my personal autonomy. advertisers will use anything and everything against me, whether or not i ever consented to anyone knowing or using any of my information.

if i'm surveilled, anything i do can be monetized and that monetization directly and seriously harms me and exposes me to risk that i did not opt into. if an advertiser knows that i am mentally ill on the basis of my search queries or other data which they illegitimately procure without my consent and against my active objections, they can target me for exploitation with an arsenal of dirty psychological tricks designed to get me to buy their products. if i am like most people, in the long run, they will win because i will buy at least one product which they have forced onto me.

in other words, if i am forced against my will to view a targeted advertisements, it is an inexcusable and unprovoked attack on my right to refrain from economic activity that i do not wish to undertake. it is an attempt at coercion using weaponized persuasion. it is not an attempt in good faith to improve my life or to help me.

this remains true whether that advertisement targets an area where people are explicitly exceptionally vulnerable, such as in the case of mental health, or something more mundane, like my love of fast cars and nice wine. however, in the case of mental health, it may be such that the act of targeting someone with a relevant advertisement genuinely makes their condition worse. so, as we all knew all along, these advertisements are actively, maliciously, and viciously harming people for the sake of a few clicks.

the bottom line here is that advertisers and advertiser-enablers are long overdue for their comeuppance. i'd support a ban on targeted advertisements, but that won't happen legislatively. GDPR and similar laws are a start, but they don't go nearly far enough to punish transgressors. i'd be more satisfied with criminal liability for advertisements exploiting protected classes of PII, but we'll see how things evolve.

5 billion is peanuts to google. if the fine is low enough that it can be written off as a cost of business, it's too low. effective fines devastate profit margins rather than merely crimping them.

another bad sign for the economy. the people with insider knowledge are trying to bail from the market ASAP to lock in their gains from the long run of economic growth.

i worked in an HIV research lab for three years. we were trying to find a vaccine.

in the lab, many of the things we did might have been considered "gain of function" research because we were artificially creating viral particles which had properties which we either assumed were already in the wild (but we had no sample of) or directly scientifically fruitful to explain some facet of the disease. the chances are good that the viruses we made would be somewhat more dangerous to a person than a wild type virus, but really we did not care about that beyond the confines of the cell culture dish.

to be honest, the added threat of the viruses we made was never something on our mind because with a virus like HIV, the risk of a containment breach and exposure that goes beyond one person is very very low. after all, HIV isn't airborne, and if you notice you've been exposed, you can get treated quickly and not contract the disease. for the sake of reference, to work with HIV, you need biosafety level 2+ facilities.

for something like influenza, however, i cannot possibly imagine working in conditions more permissive than biosafety level 3, even before performing gain of function research. maybe a construct which could lend some additional peace of mind would be to force gain of function research with highly infectious and easily aerosolizable diseases to use a higher biosafety level than default. it'd make the research go much slower and be far more expensive, but it's an additional barrier to the public being exposed -- which is already very unlikely.

>And while fires in Brazil have increased, there is no evidence that Amazon forest fires have.

i see. let's read on.

>What increased by 7% in 2019 are the fires of dry scrub and trees cut down for cattle ranching as a strategy to gain ownership of land.

so it appears that fires in the Amazon have indeed increased as a result of intentional deforestation efforts using fire. this undermines the author's prior statement.

>Against the picture painted of an Amazon forest on the verge of disappearing, a full 80% remains standing.

put differently, we've lost 20% of it. we should be battling as fiercely as possible to prevent any further losses and doing whatever we can to reseed the areas which can be recovered.

i'm not a fan of this kind of "debunkery" because it's counterproductive and doesn't debunk much of anything. this crisis is real, whether or not the media has cared about it in prior years. our planet is dying because of our actions. the details are less relevant than the big picture.

finally, i suggest that you look at the titles of the author's other published articles. he appears to be repeatedly arguing heavily in favor for nuclear power while often trying to undermine the prospect of renewable energy sources. i am pro-nuclear power, and agree that many renewables are imperfect. but consider that he has an agenda of some sort which makes him vastly less trustworthy regarding these matters of climate change, because his agenda is in favor of a specific industry (nuclear power) rather than the planet.

if it's the Blitz, don't be the guy who shows up to tea time and tries to talk about the weather.

it isn't that tea time is the place for political battles. it's that when bombs are falling, there is little else which feels worth discussing.

it's way too late.

the time for this was back in 2011, when the populist politics were first rearing their head on a national scale. now, it reads like a belated non-apology for past maliciousness. and it won't save them from the rising tide.

this frightens me far more than the yield curve inverting. the information-distributing capacity of the fed's website is built for routine loads, but the fact that it is down suggests that everyone is scrambling.

my take is that we've harvested the easy pickings which were accessible as a result of formalized and professionalized scientific research and engineering processes. now, we're entering the era of formalized and professionalized data-driven processes.

the advances delivered by this latest technological movement aren't going to take us from gazing at birds to being able to construct a plane. they're going to take us from inefficiency to efficiency, and from ignorance about deep, broad, and complex phenomena to descriptive knowledge. if we're lucky, it'll take us to knowledge about causation in some areas too, but this technological revolution isn't about causes so much as about coping with effects.

it's the subtle stuff that reshapes the world invisibly and in ways that are difficult to comprehend without a wide view. for instance, in science, data-driven research via genome-wide association studies (GWAS) etc can lead to more efficient allocation of diagnostic resources in healthcare, meaning that people with certain characteristics can on average be healthier as a result.

in the US, science has become a political act because science is inextricably linked to improving human welfare.

frequently, the prescription to improve human welfare is for other humans to take certain actions, or to refrain from certain actions. and so, by performing its fundamental mission, science makes enemies by constantly proposing alternatives to the status quo. these alternatives are frequently unwelcome by certain types of people to say the least.

speaking from experience, the anti-scientists aren't going to be convinced by anything a scientist says because science is alien, frightening, and, from their perspective, deeply tainted by corruption and abuse of authority to promote political agendas. for now, the right wing has the biggest and most deserved anti-science reputation. however, i can very easily imagine a future in which the left wing reacts in an identically ignorant way to some growing body of evidence.

so, how can scientists restate their value to a society which ignores, rejects, condemns, or doesn't understand their message? as terrible as it sounds, making a real and easily understandable major breakthrough that positively impacts human life would sure help -- but of course, science doesn't work like that, and most of the low-hanging fruit has been exploited already.

aside from that, i think one part of the answer is to keep a close oversight on science journalism such that it represents scientific progress with less hyperbole and with more context and more third-party/peer review input.

>Who will double check a doctor’s orders?

last i checked, insurance companies do not do this to any extent that is beneficial to the patient. in fact, my experience with this is that the insurance companies get in the way of the doctor doing their job and the patient getting the care they need close to 100% of the time. they only check to make sure the doctor isn't trying to use medical resources which are "too" expensive or similar.

i would be fine with getting the government to do it -- provided that the insurance companies were forced out of business in the process. at this point, i don't see a future where american life expectancy improves with insurance companies still existing in any form.

provide big bounties for drug development. from the government.

we're gonna pay for the drugs either way, so we may as well create our own incentive structures to ensure that it's done right.

where are you seeing the rumors, if i may ask? i'm not interested in propagating mistruths, but i'm interested in digging deeper.

if you've ever been to a middle school or a high school as a student, you know that these surveillance systems are probably already being used to crush innocent dissent.

imagine how many times you made a snide remark about a teacher or a principal to your peers in confidence. now, the target of your jeer will know that you're talking shit -- and, much like if they were to overhear trash talk about them in the hallways, they won't tolerate it. and so a bunch of harmless children will be caught in the surveillance net, and punished for normal behavior.

even worse, down the line you can be certain that state actors will gain access to the data sets produced by surveillance. then, in these kids' dossiers, they'll be marked as having anti-authoritarian tendencies as a result of their childhood discussions which were snooped on. throw in a social credit system, and someone may have a childhood remark following them for life.

>Each of our ministries now has a team that is charged to say if we detect that there is a disinformation campaign going on, but before it reaches the masses, they're in charge to make within 60 minutes an equally or more convincing narrative.

a very interesting approach that seems to be working for taiwan. i think that European countries may be able to implement something similar with good results. of course, it relies on the government ministries being uniformly oriented against disinformation -- something that we in the US cannot manage, as many elements in our government benefit from certain kinds of disinformation.

notably, for all its merits, the taiwanese system still positions the government in an information vetting capacity, which may lead some to think that it is merely another system of propaganda or quasi-censorship. i don't have enough context to tell whether this is the case or not, but at the core the entire taiwanese plan relies on the ministries as being able to tell the difference between disinformation and facts. in other words, it's fundamentally a critical-thinking based system.

the issues shouldn't be related.

the point of UBI is to maintain liquidity of goods and a baseline level of demand for goods amidst a financial environment of increasingly extreme economic inequality which would otherwise cause sharp contractions in demand as a result of the public's lack of money.

if public services expand, each UBI dollar goes that much further. expanding public services alongside UBI creates a virtuous cycle in which a larger portion of each UBI dollar can be spent on non-essential goods, stimulating demand and subsequently funneling more money into the tax fund.

if public services contract, each UBI dollar has less purchasing power because a larger portion of its value is earmarked to purchase substitutes for essential public services. for instance, if your municipality slashes its water purification services, you'd need to purchase more bottled water than before, so you'd have less spending money because you'd still be paying the same amount of taxes yet you'd be forced to take on an additional expense as a result of the cuts. this situation completely undermines the economy as a whole because the cost of private sector substitutes will rise with every additional service cut until they are unaffordable, at which point demand will finish crashing and be incapable of recovery.