moosey

We can have the same discussions about the NIH and new drug development (since most drugs simply can't make money). The internet, chips, Google itself was started as a federally funded post-grad project.

Things move much faster when we devote shared resources into risk taking that cannot make money. It might sound like waste, but government spending, I surmise, is what creates great economies. This occurs because technological advancement, especially those that can't obviously be exploited for financial gain in the market, are the true drivers of our economy.

Either way, we will soon begin to see who is right. There are several countries now competing with the US who were far behind when we went to our current model of low taxation, high free market. It should be interesting to see if their centralized scientific/technological systems outdo us over time.

Reddit is the best place to find those, IMO.

I absolutely agree with this, and we can find data that supports this concept quite aggressively throughout US history, with one example being that racial integration in schools stopped when it came to northern cities. It was fine as long as we pretended it was a southern problem, but today the most racially segregated schools can be found in major urban centers.

Ultimately, most decisions are made emotionally, and in order to move human society to the next stage of ethical development, we will need to combine an ethical baseline of human welfare (Singer style reverse utilitarianism comes to mind) with the application of data and statistics. Unfortunately, thinking statistically is difficult, and the human mind is capable of rationalizing emotional decision making before the thought it complete.

Ultimately the problem of homelessness is easily solvable from some pure mathematical/economic standpoint, but fails for the same reason that supply/demand is not a law of human society: it all depends on rational actors, a unicorn-like construct.

It doesn't mean that we cannot apply data to our decision making, but it _does_ mean that we need to work our hardest to defend decisions based on high quality data, high quality data analysis, and well-replicated science. Housing first is an idea where all of the early analysis has been extremely promising, and the NIMBY-ism that surrounds it should be called out for what it is: emotional decision making that disregards data and science resulting in a lack of compassion for people. I will say it's unethical, but it's also completely and totally human.

First, it's cheaper than any of the alternatives. From the NEAH, a paragraph describing those savings:

> Finally, permanent supportive housing has been found to be cost efficient. Providing access to housing generally results in cost savings for communities because housed people are less likely to use emergency services, including hospitals, jails, and emergency shelter, than those who are homeless. One study found an average cost savings on emergency services of $31,545 per person housed in a Housing First program over the course of two years.xii Another study showed that a Housing First program could cost up to $23,000 less per consumer per year than a shelter program.

Next, it's just extremely effective. Being homeless over any period of time negatively affects mental well-being. The longer that you are homeless, the worse this gets, and the harder it is to get out. Housing first isn't just the cheapest solution, it actually solves the problem of homelessness directly and helps people to heal their mental state. You can find this information all over the place.

Ultimately, we should have rapid housing-first policies for everyone who ends up homeless, but that will require the American public to give up our normally punitive cultural attitudes so that the data can win, but we haven't done the best job ending other punitive systems despite their total failure, like the war on drugs.

Quote is from: http://endhomelessness.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/housin...

This is the actual state of the world. Most real world decisions aren't actually yes/no. It's probability analysis, which is a far more difficult yet more accurate model of decision making.

If you left for a long time, you'd come back to a friendless universe, sure, but only on the network. I guess that the ultimate goal of a network like this would be to get people off of it, which would be healthy for the individual, and bad for the company.

Oh well, there goes that idea.

Men capable of rethinking their relationship with women and what it means to be a male, rather than a man, I imagine will do fine in the coming social upheaval.

These things that you describe must happen will never be accomplished by private companies because they are all wealth destructive behaviors, and the organization that does is will not make profit off of these endeavors: nobody can afford to buy the stuff being described anymore, at least in the United States. I know that I certainly can't afford to change out all of my homes infrastructure in preparation for climate change, and almost everyone that lives around me is in a worse financial situation than I'm in.

The process will be completed by governments, not by private corporations. This is probably part of the reason that corporations and the extremely wealthy fight against the knowledge of climate change in the public sphere: it will eliminate their 'monarchic' power structures and replace them with the highly effective centralized power structures that we had pre-Reagan.

Regardless of this, now that I am an adult, I find that I would love to spend my time learning. It's a primary value. I have children, and have to focus on their upbringing as well, which is a massive drain on the time that I can bring to bear on learning new things - and I mean taking classes to advance my understanding of mathematics, not learning a new programming language.

When I think about being wealthy, I actually think about spending my time going to classes, doing research, and advancing human knowledge. I know others who would use their time for leisure, and probably a dozen other possibilities.

In the end, I simply don't value money beyond giving me the basic necessities of life. I find my time outside of work is best used focusing on studies like what I described (I mean, they are all free now, for the most part). I find that people who are focused on wealth, unless it is inherited, put most of their time in gaining new wealth. I just don't see anything revolutionary in gaining more power, which is what wealth is to me. True revolution comes from technological development, which is typically done by the public sector. Sadly, work there is poorly rewarded by the private sector (companies making billions on the internet don't donate money back to DARPA for more research, or for that matter GPS, chip technologies, etc.).

I just think it's a difference in values. Getting to where I wish I could be at this point of my life would come at too much cost to my family, so now I find myself working for profit for the rest of my life. Not so bad, of course... I have some time for the leisure that allows me to expand my knowledge, and maybe catch up enough to understand the incredible things that are happening in the space of scientific advancement.

But then again, the same logic could be applied to advertising/marketing... well, at least some of it, perhaps most.

Either we cover the US political systems, it's treatment of refugees and immigrants, and the ridiculous denial of science and human welfare... or we don't and we leave other countries alone. I am as appalled as anyone by what is happening here, but why would this article be allowed, and not others that point out, rightfully, that this is due to actions by the current POTUS (probably for personal gain, too).

Confessing that human welfare is a political decision makes me sick, but look around.

All of these groups in Western societies have been, and often still are, dominated by men. Looking at how things are changing, with women slowly gaining power in the workplace, I'm finding a lot of men are behaving differently than I remember 30 years ago. Whether or not this is due to gaining empathy, or due to fear of punitive measures, I don't know, but for me personally I feel it is the former.

Many people use these things because their concept of well being differs from yours, and not every in an individualistic way (like antivaxx). There are a number of benefits to nicotine and if it can be taken safely then all the better.

It's come to the point where I seriously toy with handing off most of my decision making process to statistics. Mathematics has derived an algorithm for a lot of real world decision making that is superior to what the vast majority of humans can do, and I'm not sure which group I'm in: the ones that make really poor emotional decisions (although "luck" and emotions are tied together, according to more research I've read; luck might just be a way of thinking), or if I'm able to make well informed decisions based on data.

The second line would allow companies to pay people to permit them to collect information. I imagine that because of the first statement, a company that is charging for the service cannot take advantage of this statement.

I would recommend, even though these awful events are occurring, to read books that encourage positive action (Enlightenment Now) and books that encourage understanding of other people and their viewpoints, even if you find them to be unacceptably obtuse at times: there are many layers of abstraction that people live on, and sometimes you are just at a different one.

Advocate against pollution, and the causes that give rise to it. It will help to bring change, it isn't hopeless.

I mean, I know that humanity will survive climate change, I have every hope & belief, but the earlier that we work on it, both individually and collectively, the better off we'll be. This whole thing about "individual health" is just more tragedy of the commons, especially when the quality of health of the food is so similar - both will get you equally obese.

If we are talking about health and human welfare, there exists a lot of lower hanging fruit than concern about the miniscule differences between beyond meat and that which comes from cattle, but the ecological arguments that can be made are undeniable - impossible and beyond blow beef out of the water.

Working at the same company is not a shared set of values, at least not the way that companies are structured today and how workers are seen by those companies. As such, I don't think that these living spaces can build the tribal and communal opportunities that make a shared living space workable, and make people willing to improve that shared space. As corporations become larger, and with consideration to the fact that they might start to consider these kinds of shared values and try to build based on those, it might be possible, but it's probably also illegal for a corporation to do such a thing.

Our food waste and costs have dropped dramatically, but we did have to make a 'sacrifice' of choice. Each week, the food that is produced for consumption in the house is decided not by us, but by what is produced and distributed by the farm. Due to this process, we might have lost choice, but we have gained, surprisingly, variety.

To expand on this idea: I think that the prevalence of choice in our supermarkets (example: fresh fruit in the middle of winter, wtf?) is massively inefficient, and should be reconsidered. Of course, when human society decides to get its collective act together and fight climate change, the point is moot. The entire 'choice regime' is dependent on high density fuels, and energy density will make these choices for us if/when carbon based fuels are made more expensive.

The problem isn't that scientists went to him for his wealth, but that he had wealth after the first set of convictions. This should be our focus.

For better or worse, secular understandings and political understandings don't always jive. Now that political attitudes have changed, it seems obvious that early adopters will struggle, as their affordability is often based on those same subsidies. This is the only frame of reference in my mind that is terribly important when it comes to the success or failure of many of the properties that Musk runs. The fact that he's kept them going in the current political and social environments is really a credit, I think.

He's not building fossil fuel based vehicles. He's not building coal plants. He's keeping the space race alive. The general dislike of this guy seems personal. There are far larger financial crimes to go after, but Musk made himself a target. Damn, I wouldn't doubt that he does some of it on purpose.

When individualism leads us down a path of bad decision making (building electric cars rather than the far superior collective path of building up mass transit), I'm always reminded of a scene from the Cixin Liu "Rememberance of Earth's Past" books, where an individualist decision is made that ultimately dooms the people of the solar system, and the person who would have been the true hero of the story only gets to tell that decision maker that they are a child before he is sent off to prison.

This is essentially our battle against climate change right now: technologists trying to make enough toys to keep the rabble of toddlers happy so that we can actually fix the problem.

To suggest that the practices of facebook in general - likes, the activity feed, and various experiments that facebook has in its history - is not itself an attempt by a coordinated group to manipulate people, is itself disingenuous at best. In order to correct this to honesty, they would have to clarify that they don't care for external groups - other than those who pay for advertising services - to be permitted to manipulate people.

This take down of a few pages being followed by 15k people and its subsequent information release is itself a manipulation, to make it appear as if facebook is doing something about the glaring problems that I personally think it represents. It seems to me that in the halls of power today, there are few good actors, and this tiny morsel doesn't make facebook one of them, and does nothing about the manipulators on their platforms that are beyond their ability to take down, despite self-serving dishonesty from so many groups.

In other words, what a skillfully crafted news release from facebook, give that marketer a raise.

The archaeology community has been dealing with this for years, and supplied this interesting read.

The art market, though, I assume is mostly money laundering.

As I've dealt with various issues throughout my life, I've had identity crises where I've had to deal with similar introspection due to being a male, which comes with a number of ... social benefits (I feel gross saying it). while I'm mostly white, the dark skin color that I had as a child set me apart, and I think prepared me for the introspection that I had to go through.

Was there a specific book or experience that aided you? I'm always hunting down challenges to what I perceive as natural, normal or inevitable.

This is not how our society works or thinks, though. There is a strong current of punitive accountability. From a financial perspective, someone might argue that this makes sense: someone who causes harm to many others shouldn't be allowed to remain rich. However, implementing such a system means that organizations within will defend themselves vociferously.

This is why many businesses are starting to use low or no accountability systems to make sure that root cause analysis and mistakes are brought to the forefront after issues. I'm not suggesting that such a system would be easy to implement on a much larger level, especially with our level of inequality in the US, but perhaps the solution is just not to be so damn punitive, and perhaps the other aspects of issue remediation wouldn't be so damn bad. Perhaps there wouldn't be lawyers informing business owners that they can't apologize, because that is opening the doors to being completely destroyed by accountability.