hejja

a lot of people see being "a founder" as a goal because it gives you complete agency in your work.

you could in theory define it as having a sole-proprietorship type lifestyle business.

it's poignant in this thread because many people have worked on "meaningless" projects within a company for years on end - and you don't have a choice.

this. even sans integrations, video conferencing is far too commoditized for zoom to be in a defensible position.

because basecamp has a cult following

thanks for the recc

Not to mention Harvard has a $40 billion endowment on top of that.

At the end of the day, it's a way to not pay taxes.

Stakeholders are still getting paid in different ways: high salaries and job security, "administrator" jobs that shouldn't exist.

In other words, it's socialism.

the best performers at school often become career academics -- a few research discoveries aside, you could say this is a pretty low-leverage position.

In other words, as you said, doing well in school means little outside of school.

So if you really wanted to come full circle on it, you could say it's actually good that people who aren't able to game a system, end up staying outside of that system.

harvard has the right to implement its own standards, to be sure.

but who is implementing this, exactly, and on what agenda?

it's "harvard" the institution, the non-profit business.

instead of having a clear motive: making money, we have to guess what "diverse and successful" means.

does a powerful institution in our society owe us an explanation for this? maybe not.

Statistically, Asians have higher than average SAT, ACT scores, this is not contested.

In 1996 California passed prop 209 which banned affirmative action on the state level. All top UC schools have become majority asian despite California being less than 20% asian.

Now considering Harvard, there was a federal case brought against it since asians scoring higher marks than peers were being rejected.

Harvard's defense was that they were scoring lower, on average on "personality" scores -- a qualitative measure on admissions.

By contrast, african americans were scoring highest on these personality scores.

Ultimately, the case was won by Harvard since the intent was not determined to be pernicious.

It's no question Harvard artificially diversifies its student body, but affirmative action does come at a cost.

that plus the industry pulling in a lot of smart people who could have spent their time elsewhere

I'm aware options are complicated, but is someone able to expand on how this is possible?

I guess if you short calls you have unlimited downside, no?

but it was my understanding that the entire point of options was to cap downside (don't exercise) and maintain upside

I don't know too much about Stockholm - although I loved Helsinki.

Do those have solid startup / tech communities in your experience? Any more details you can share?

thanks for your honest take.

in the vein of the others you posted, "psycho cybernetics" is another good one I'd group with that genre

this is a solid, structured course I recently took, but it is paid https://interviewespresso.com/p/python

felt like a generic article when I started reading, but turned out to be incredible. thanks so much for writing.

to answer this question we have to ask what smart even means.

if it means you can "figure stuff out at work" congrats, you can follow instructions in a structured, specialist environment.

to become legitimately "rich", however, in most cases you have to own part of a business.

and in the world of entrepreneurship, you have to be much more of a generalist, as there are 10 different factors (sales, product, timing, pricing) you must all get right.

I can virtually guarantee you the best person at math in the world is not rich, because they have gone full specialist to get to that point, and therefore cannot succeed outside of an extremely structured environment.

"Range, Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" by David Epstein is a great book on this topic.

agree with all of this, libertarianism all the way

words are never exact and therefore the message is always subjective.

censorship is bad.

this is the very problem with censorship. messages aren't exact so on some level you have to be subjective.

the very fact that twitter interpreted it as bigoted enough to sensor, and you didn't points a red arrow to why any censorship is bad.

they will acquire, or deploy capital to make a better clone. example a: instagram stories after snapchat declined an offer. the only competition its had in the last 10 years is chinese state funded tik tok

no. if you're doing it for selfish reasons or jumping on some moral bandwagon it's virtue signaling.

mlk existed when civil rights were not trendy as it now is, therefore he was surely glad free speech existed.

maybe the network effect on a billion-person scale? the fact that they are monopolies with billions at their disposal to acquire or crush any competition? I can keep going

nicely reasoned perspective.

language is important, we must take care of our words, certainly, but they can fail us too.

if there is 1 looter and 99 peaceful protestors, is it a peaceful protest or a riot?

no doubt this is delicate so it scares me when I hear that "if you're not vocalizing your support you're taking the side of the oppressor."

so this warfare is not just happening on the streets, it's polarizing everyone's ideologies to irreconcilable levels.

I really don't like any of this.

I really appreciate your response. It was thought provoking.

in fact it all makes sense.

but does rationality matter? in the context of society.. i think it has to. because what does its absence imply?

chaos?

blind idealism? aka radicalism...

if we are starting at "silence is violence" i am afraid to see where it ends