looseyesterday

Wow so many assumptions to disentangle here. Seems like someone reads too much reddit and the like. If said corp. and military interests really controlled America, things would look completely different.

I agree they exert a some influence on narrow areas, but control is too strong a word. World is too chaotic for any one entity to exert any degree of control on anything.

Japan has too many socio-political peculiarities for lessons to be translatable to other democracies. Especially when it comes to politics, its nearly a one party state with LDP having governed more than 50% of the time since the founding of the democracy.

The description could be better. Would love this tool with a GUI

I think we'll likely move to an oxbridge style verbal assessment methodology soon. The value of writing will be relatively lower when everyone can produce decent quality written output.

Not a surprise given their general method of action. Messing with seratonin pathways is always tricky.

The issue here I feel is that sometimes depression is a symptom that one needs to change something in their life. So I dont think we should try to blunt all suffering.

Financial stress is a likely cause here. I think the NHS guidance is to blame here as well, they give them out far too easily to avoid liability.

You're right people do self-medicate, but I guess better this than alcohol.

I think its easy to forget that sometimes people are just anxious by nature. OP doesnt say anything about his past, I am willing to bet he probably had Fomo on not having a side-gig before starting this company. He should treat anxiety as a separate issue, its far more common than people imagine, a small amount of it can be good, but when you find you cant relax then its an issue.

Interesting project though the ephemerality has big potential downsides. Alot of value from these communities comes from the long-tail historical data.

But this has its uses for sure.

You could write this article at the start of any sector rotation.

Yeah totally agree. I feel lots of people do this and feel better which is why ios now pretty much hides notifications by default from the lock screen.

They lack interactivity, update inconsistently (lets say if you're in battery saving mode) and most users across the platform haven' t been trained to use them

I think its harder to do then it seems. There is still a massive race for talent.

I am guessing battery and display are the biggest problems. When you try some AR app on an iPhone the battery starts dropping like a stone.

I think the answer to this is more technology not less. I personally use black and white display on my iPhone combined with freedom site blocker and all notifications switched off. This way I am in control of what I want to do.

That is a decent possibility. I can already see a combination of midjourney and chat gpt producing decent narratives. I can imagine personalised tv shows and narratives really taking over. If you lookup manga summaries on youtube, its very close to what can already be produced using these tools.

Totally agree, I often think of its writing style as a buzfeed coloumist on cocaine.

This is just a simplistic model of human behaviour. People assume that the guilty are making these choices independently and the prudent are doing the same. In each case wider societal factors are at play.

I was raised christian and was therefore deeply scared of drugs until age 21, luckily for me by the time I was mature enough to enjoy drugs at around 25 my brain had developed fully and I was able to try MDMA & LSD with positive life-altering consequences. Some of my friends who didnt have the same fear ended up trying hard drugs at far too early an age and became addicted. Not all of them, but at least those who had self-control issues and mild ADHD.

Things often come down to a genetical and circumstantial lottery, the more we do to minimise negative consequences of bad luck and level the playing field the more we will benefit from everyones talent collectively

The thing is there is already company intervention in all this. Supermarkets charge money for the best shelf space. Companies put items with high sugar / fat /salt content on easy to reach items because they are more addictive and lead to further purchases.

The consumers are not making an informed choice but are being heavily influenced to do something that is bad for them.

In many wester countries there's guidance on how much sugar / fat / salt and individual should have in a single serving. Companies get around this by wrapping two or three single servings into a larger item 'to share' e.g. sneakers are often split in two and the packaging says sharing pack.

I am guessing japan has more sensible regulations in this respect.

In the context of a Singaporean system what you spend matters, as it reduces your ability to gain benefits in the future. It will discourage people from getting scans and tests that are only of marginal benefit.

But the choices are not the American system vs NHS. The dutch do a good job of an insurance based system, Singapore is totally different still (though obviously not applicable as its a fairly small country.

A great counter example is Signapore where each individual has a mandatory savings account which can only be used for healthcare. However, catastrophic illnesses and insufficient funds are covered by the gov. Another element of the scheme is that the savings accounts can be used for family members. This incentives people to seek the cheapest care, and keep family members healthy. While the poor, retired etc are still taken care of.

The problem I have with the NHS is that I dont see what my care costs at any point. I dont think that leads to good decision making.

Yes living below your means is a key to happiness. Too many people end up pushing what they can afford without planning for tougher times.

I think one of the biggest positive impacts on me was my parents deciding to raise me until 16 in a developing country. They had a middle class income, but my country of origin they could afford to put me in the best schools and pay for plenty of out of school activity. That changed my mindset of what was possible. By the time I came back to Europe, I went to a free school, but performed much better than my peers, I believe mostly due to my own expectations for my future.

>Sure everyone is entitled to their vice, but should we provide healthcare to people that are consciously, actively destroying their own health? Should we treat lung cancer in smokers? Should we treat diseases in anti-vaccers?

I think you are right that some people do take it too far. But from what I've seen a lot of people who do end up chain smoking or overeating processed foods daily have other underlying health-conditions. For example with smoking a lot of ADHD sufferers who are undiagnosed might self medicate with nicotine as it is a stimulant. Some might also have working memory issues and struggle with self control.

Ultimately most individual choices have a societal aspect to them, a lot can be tackled by education, early diagnosis and choice architecture

Given broad awareness of this taking place I wonder just how effective it still is. Surely motivated bad actors are now making using of encryption and hiding their activity away.

Sadly I dont see many rich world governments discussing this serious or planning. If covid is any guide things will have to get worse / bad before they are addressed.

I grew up an equally-sized 2 bedroom in a city centre and its totally fine. Neighbours have kids in a similarly sized house and are not planning on moving. They are wealthy asians with apartments being standard in their part of the world. The American obsession with terraced housing is bad for the environment and highly inefficient.

Yes I agree. I love a good deep-fried chicken and chips as much as anyone. But it should be an occasional treat rather than the cheapest / easiest option to get. Eating healthy is expensive, so its not surprising that most people dont.

Tax could help a lot but so could choice architecture, putting fatty / sugary foods out of reach and healthy alternatives at eye level could help alot

I think regulatory thinking has failed to keep up with health issues. We need to treat excess sugar consumption like we do smoking. Its amazing to me how you can walk into a supermarket and be consistently advertised things that are bad for you, a 'sharing' pack of M&Ms 2-for-1. Want to buy a single ice cream? Too bad its actually cheaper to buy a pack of 4, and most singles are out of stock ....

Another issue not widely discussed is that 20% of patents are responsible for 80% of the cost. If you look at said 20% more often than not you'll find consistent failure to intervene early enough while the illness is easy to treat.

Not enough people critically question their day-to-day spending and life assumptions.

I find the easiest way to save money is to avoid competition. Everyone wants a 2 bedroom house within commuting distance of work. I bought a 1 bedroom flat within walking distance of work, converted the kitchen into a second bedroom (moved kitchen to living room), couldn't happier.

Yes Russia and China are where it didn't really work out. But the EU for example has been very successful in reducing conflict. But I would also argue there are many other quiet successes. We simply dont have a world in which the US after winning WW2 decided to turn inwards and instead of promoting globalisation just decided to leave things be.