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ikirillon 2012 vs. 1984: Young adults really do have it harder today

While that's definitely a blunder, if you look at the right figures (in the article: inflation-adjusted median income of $48,500 then and $60,000 now, and inflation-adjusted average house price of $154,587 then and $369,677 now), the average house price went from 3.2 times the median income to 6.2.

That's a lot, his point still stands, and there's no need to call him an idiot.

I think even if you ignore the question of whether the economy is fair, it should at least be quite clear that the younger generation will be poorer than the previous one.

ikirillon A High Frequency Trader's Apology, Pt 2

Flash Crashes are not a phenomenon caused by algorithms.

The SEC/CFTC report on the 2010 Flash Crash describes how it happened. Quote:

One key lesson is that under stressed market conditions, the automated execution of a large sell order can trigger extreme price movements, especially if the automated execution algorithm does not take prices into account. Moreover, the interaction between automated execution programs and algorithmic trading strategies can quickly erode liquidity and result in disorderly markets.

http://www.sec.gov/news/studies/2010/marketevents-report.pdf

ikirillon The Shy Connector

I agree. In general, I find the task of "introduce yourself to a specific person" or "make a specific case for something" much much easier than "talk to people about nothing in particular", if only because there is always a specific goal that I keep in mind while talking. So long as I deliver a presentation well and impart all the main ideas, it's going well. I find that small talk is impossible to handle like that because it's too random and there is no specific easy-to-see criterion of success or failure. Others simply paying attention could indeed mean politeness rather than interest.

Staying quiet, I feel, has the unfortunate side effect of making me seem asocial, and I am not quite sure that it is a viable thing to do in a social situation.

ikirillon The Zuckerberg Tax

The author does explicitly state that his proposal is only about publicly-traded stocks, so your first point is moot.

Secondly, regarding your second point, some company or person would be holding those publicly-traded shares, which means that they will be paying tax under this proposal.

ikirillon Fearless Youth: Prozac Extinguishes Anxiety by Rejuvenating the Brain

So the idea is to use Prozac to make it easier for therapy to reprogram a brain's responses to social situations that induce anxiety. I'd be curious to know what this says, if anything, about the kinds of problems that have less to do with fear/anxiety than something else, like autistic spectrum disorders. Would using antidepressants to help rewire a brain be effective then? It's a very cool idea regardless.

ikirillon Google+ passes 62 million users. Adding 625,000 new users per day.

I'm afraid I don't follow. Could you elaborate on how that means they became evil?

ikirillon Suicide

To tvtropes I also want to add comedy and music. Humour is a mild painkiller, interestingly enough: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=laughing-ma...

ikirillon Nature Special: The Autism Enigma

I think it's interesting how the focus of the Nature articles is on elucidating the process by which autism develops and affects people, and not on whatever coping mechanisms there are for people on ASD or their relatives. I don't think it is a bad thing, just a particular focus of their research.

On the one hand, it is immensely important to understand the biological basis of autism. But on the other, they say autism is not understood nearly well enough now, and there are many people on autism spectrum and their relatives/friends who need reasonable advice now, grounded in proper scientific research. Advice for high-functioning ASD people/relatives would presumably talk about developing social skills, coping behaviours, and whatever else is needed for them to function well in the wider society. Identifying the biological basis of ASD seems to be a long-term research programme with little payoff in the immediate future.

It's not that I think it's wrong to focus on the biology of it, it's just that they seem to completely skip the psychology aspect of ASD that is probably just as important.

ikirillon Technical Writing Tips

It advises using Strunk and White. I think it would be helpful to point out that S&W need not be considered all that authoritative: http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/2549... The people behind Language Log often have something to say about writing advice.

ikirillon Paul Dirac: The unsung genius

One of the finer points of that book is that it is a biography of Dirac's life, not just a description of his insights into physics. His personal life was unhappy and makes for rather depressing reading. When Feynman was described as a second Dirac, only this time human, it is difficult to appreciate fully just how fundamentally different the personalities of the two geniuses were.

Between studying electrical engineering and going to Cambridge he also earned a degree in mathematics, if I recall correctly. He was not given a sufficiently large scholarship the first time he was accepted to Cambridge, and so he had to wait.

ikirillon What If We Paid Off The Debt? The Secret Government Report

That is not a good measure of debt. Government debt is only meaningful as a fraction of GDP (large countries have more debt than small ones, e.g.). So in this case you want this graph: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=2TG which is (Gross Federal Debt)/(Gross GDP), and was clearly decreasing.

The distinction between gross and public-held debt is also not very useful. The difference between them is government debt held by parts of the government, which is money that the government owes to itself. Public-held debt was decreasing even more: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=2TI

ikirillon Warren Buffett: Stop coddling the super rich

The richest pay the largest proportion of taxes because they earn so much. In the article, 400 hundred people make $90 billion, and it takes 3 million people working at $30,000 a year to collectively earn as much.