I’m guessing it’s trickier because it’s harder to get biopsies of the brain mid treatment. It doesn’t help that it’s been treated as one disease and assuming a single cause for so long
3,974 karma · joined September 27, 2014
Is the theory now that Alzheimer's just actual brain rot, of which their are multiple causes, and that beta amyloid plaques are just detritus of a losing battle?
Okay, now this I'll agree on. Apartments are compromises.
> 0 to hyperbole
You might have confused a thought experiment with hyperbole. I'm not saying the hypothetical is reality. Compromises (your word) are by definition not the ideal. It would be strange to prefer the compromise, or to not be just a tiny bit 'sad' about having to make it.
> You're acting like a 12 year old.
Of course. You know when the ad hominems start you're definitely conversing with an grown-up.
Again, what you're reacting to is another thought experiment meant to tease out what your beliefs are.
> if you want the best facilities in any given area to be easily accessible
I also agree that density can make certain important amenities closer, like food stores, and medical facilities—also 20 flavors of cafes and microbreweries in walking distance. They also increase congestion making those amenities not as close as they seem, and gardens are harder to get to.
(And yes, lifts factor into this. They take time to reach you, to take you ground floor. They are also sometimes out-of-order, and this is tragic in a mid-rise where this happens often enough to be a problem and there's little redundancy. Limited passage is also a huge problem in an emergency situation, particularly for people with mobility issues. etc. etc.)
> The financial math for that only works with mid to high density.
But... to bring it back to the OP - we're talking housing cost. That is, regular people, buying somewhere to live, in a way that eventually unshackles them from paying for shelter.
Cities are overburdened. I've noticed a lot of SV and NY FAANG types get triggered by this, and blame the NIMBYs, but not without considering their own culpability. It's the 21st century, most of the overpaid service workers don't really need to meet face-to-face to get their business done, and they could disperse, and divest themselves from their spare properties.
The central thesis of the OP article is that housing cost is driven by income, and if you look at NY, which is basically SV + density in terms of high-paid service workers and skyscrapers, and TFA seems to be right.
I'll leave you the last word.
Turns out we're both mistaken. I don't care much for HN's monopoly money, my broader point is the righteous indignation around the point (which I thought uncontroversial) that the vast majority of people don't want to purchase apartments to live in for the rest of their lives.
> You attacked my initial generic comment with a purely personal and emotional personal perspective
Erm, no, you basically implied I was an idiot - the sarcastic "bastion of logic" comment - and then straight away moved onto a feigned interest in my welfare. When someone contradicts themselves this much, they aren't being sincere.
> I've lived my entire lifetime in apartments
And given only one chance to purchase a property, and given only the choice to live in the one house with a garden or live in the one apartment of equal quality/amenity/etc for the rest of your life, which would you choose? Honestly? And what do you think the vast majority of people would choose?
The only reason people around here are all mad about urban density is that their FAANG bosses compel them to come to the office. Take that out of the equation and then the housing affordability solves itself by dispersing the high income people into better housing, and leaving better options for everyone else. The overpriced hipster cafes will have to shut down, but I shed no tears for them.
> First of all, not having the energy to wait for an elevator (!!!) and walk across roads to get to a park sounds like depression. I hope that it was checked out.
HackerNews, the bastion of decorum. To use your unqualified depression diagnosis as a rhetorical device (let's be honest, this was not a sincere display of concern), is gobsmacking. And I'm sure you said this after pushing the downvote button with great moral conviction, surely because of concern for your fellow human being.
Anyway, it's incredibly presumptuous that you'd think I didn't visit the outside world regularly. But certainly, living in a shoebox can be a recipe for depression, which can cause people to withdraw from the world. You're no doubt aware of hikikomori, a mental illness, strangely enough, most prevalent in one of the most dense population centers in the world.
> In Europe the most frequent apartment buildings are mid rises, 4-6 stories high, which can make for incredible environments.
Are you writing the brochure? I know what low-rises are. And I'll agree they're better than skyscrapers. The european ones in particular have central staircases instead of fire escapes, which is great, because the lifts are usually ancient, broken, and cramped. You'll get decent light, because zoning restrictions keep building heights within limits. You still won't get decent air flow, but they are sometimes passively ventilated owing to the age of the building. This is of course nothing like the sad cheap crap that's built today in modern city. But dream on about the rustic Parisian apartment.
Have you at least lived an apartment lifestyle full-time for a few years, or is this just coming from your speculation of what it's like? If it's just speculation, please spare me.
I used to think this. Then I lived in an apartment for many years, and then I left. There's a big contingent of owner-occupiers in apartment buildings who don't stick around. It's just not a healthy way to live long term. I'm sure there are anecdotes from people who have stayed 5+ years full-time in an average apartment, and enjoyed it, and didn't yearn to be able to walk outside without being greeted by a (sometimes broken) elevator, or get a decent cross breeze of fresh air, or have access to sun all day long, but I'd wager they are the exception to the rule.
What's that rhetorical question even relate to? Will increasing housing supply somehow make everyone more wealthy? The OP article claims not, and that's because that stock is going to rent-seeking investors, not buyers.
> A better comparison might be: would you rather live in a 4,000 sqft mcmansion in Santa Clarita or a modest 1200 sqft 3 bed 2 bath condo in Santa Monica?
Long Island vs condo in Manhattan wasn't really on even footing either.
I've lived in an apartment for a few years, and those were issues for me. The stumbling block of having to wait for an elevator and walk across roads to get to a park was enough to stop me from going. It's not the same as simply walking outside the door. Other apartment buildings blocked out natural light, even onto the park, and I had just a view to one side of the building. All this in a city that had terrible weather to begin with.
Doesn't everyone want to touch grass or have decent access to fresh air and sunlight? I guess if we could hypothetically build really cheap apartments deep underground, it would be sad if people didn't want to live there?
I can see how this relates to housing affordability.
Would you rather live in the projects than a mansion in Bel Air?
Specifically because the paper is about house price, not rental price. For most people, the issue of achievable secure home ownership is different to rental affordability.
> multi-family housing units
Not really the kind of place that most people want to buy to live in for the remainder of their lives (unless starved of options).
Once again, I'm engaging with a hypothetical. Indeed this is how it would play out in reality.
FTA (for anyone's benefit):
> In London, the realization that this was not a temporary crisis coincided with the coming to power of a party with a deep ideological commitment to free trade. The Liberals, under Lord John Russell, were determined that what they saw as an illegitimate intervention in the free market should not be repeated. They moved away from importing corn and created instead an immense program of public works to employ starving people—for them, as for the Conservatives, it was axiomatic that the moral fibre of the Irish could not be improved by giving them something for nothing. Wages were designed to be lower than the already meagre earnings of manual workers so that the labor market would not be upset.
> The result was the grotesque spectacle of people increasingly debilitated by starvation and disease doing hard physical labor for wages that were not sufficient to keep their families alive. Meanwhile, many of the same people were evicted from their houses as landowners used the crisis to clear off these human encumbrances and free their fields for more profitable pasturage. Exposure joined hunger and sickness to complete the task of mass killing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conolly%27s_Folly
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2017/10/irelands-famine-follie...
Blindboy did an interesting podcast on this:
Once again, I'm well out of my depth to be able to speculate here. But ostensibly globalization hasn't worked for the working class of America, and that has led to the current state of affairs.
This is an oversimplification, they can change incentives, and sometimes increase investment.
> lead to less activity
I do agree money will be divested from the US as they become more and more expensive to deal with (leading to "less activity"), and like I said this will rechannel the economy between the rest of the world. The trade-off is that the US becomes a manufacturer and exporter again (leading to "replaced activity"), some manufacturing capability is duplicated (leading to "more activity" though redundant/less productive), and the currency devalues.
But I'll admit I'm well out of my depth here, and I'm being booed off the stage. All the same, I don't think I'm wrong here. Protectionism isn't new, and lots of countries do it, it's just novel that the world's largest economy and bastion of free trade is doing it to such an extreme.
> And certainly no reason to make erratic changes at large scale, focusing on allies and neighbors first
Those people who benefited from globalization, and who didn't care about the working class, are exactly who brought us to this moment. And I have a huge shrug to those who are loath to accept that. If only it was attended to sooner by a more sensible administration.
This will all happen. But as I said, this is a trade-off. Devalue the currency, incentivize local production, increase exports, revive the working class – that's the long term goal.
> but reduce the standard of living Americans are used to.
Whose standard of living though? It's well and good if you're in a comfy desk job with health care and a pension. The discontent that led to Trump's rise is real, and it's routinely overlooked when considering how to counter him. Of the everyday people, those who have stable jobs and purpose aren't voting for Trump. (Of the wealthy, it's probably a lot more cynical who voted for Trump)
I'm not in favor of the policy, the manner in which it's being applied, or the people that are doing it, but reversing off-shoring is a consequence of using protectionist policies – be it tariffs, or subsidies.
High-skill work, and pencil-pushing desk jobs don't cover 100% of the population, and has lead to a lot of unproductive busy-work in the cities. The offshoring of blue-collar work bred the discontent that led to Trump. Trump fancies himself the new William McKinley and is using the cudgel of tariffs to re-onshore manufacturing. This is a process he started in his first administration, that was retained by Biden, and now he's doubling down and doing exactly what he promised he would – and somehow his voters are surprised?
Worse still, those service economy jobs keeping the coastal cities alive (both low skill and high skill) are on the verge of being replaced by AI – whether that's one year or 20, I don't know—though I'm wagering the latter. Physical labor is going to become more valuable as robotics is still way behind in technological development. I don't have a crystal ball, but I'd wager that–at least counterfactually—the US will have more jobs by enacting protectionist policy.
> Worst case is that American Juche turns out to be just like North Korean Juche.
Do you really in your heart of hearts think this is going to happen? I'm pretty sure the subjugation of the American people by the government would be feasible, let alone easy.
I don't think the tariffs are being managed intelligently, but they will have the intended effect of moving manufacturing back to the US, even if, in the short term, it's going to inflate prices, and yes, put a lot of businesses in peril.