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obfuscateon Every time an engineer joins Google, a startup dies

"A BMW plus a phat apartment in a high rise is difficult to turn down for something that appears, for all intents and purposes, to have about a 1 in 1000 (at best) shot of success."

What's a good place to find actual statistics on success rate and financial return for startups?

obfuscateon Vowel Sounds Influence Consumers’ Perception of Prices

In many experiments like this, people are asked to give an estimate immediately and without mentally calculating.

obfuscateon Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing

The problem with saying 'there is no extraterrestrial life because we haven't observed it and it would probably be here by now' is that there is always the first wave of lifeforms who would come to the same conclusion.

True, but that a form of reasoning inevitably gives a wrong conclusion under rare circumstances is only a weak argument against it.

-Based on our experience, it takes ~4bn years for life to evolve in a planetary system.

I don't think we have a strong reason to believe that there's something special about that length of time. Not much change happened on Earth for most of that time, suggesting dependence either on stochastic evolution of a few things like photosynthesis (so 4bn probably isn't much more likely than 3bn) or on something like increasing solar output crossing a threshold (it's doubtful such a threshold would be crossed at ≥ 4bn years at every location). That aside, even a few tens of millions of years is plenty of time for life to cover a galaxy.

obfuscateon Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing

If we as humans or post-humans figure out how to balance our need for resources (by not having to mine space) I think that could change things dramatically.

More sustainable civilization in the universe is still better than less. (cf. Bostrom's "Astronomical Waste": http://www.nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste.html)

obfuscateon Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing

Do floor tiles occur naturally?

Even if we can't intercept their communications, we should be able to see their works. The universe looks far too natural to contain much technologically advanced intelligence.

obfuscateon Ask HN: The best way to put technical skills to the greater good?

Then substitute "invested" for "donated". Or, hell, "invested in figuring out how best to help developing countries" (like http://www.givewell.net/). The stereotypical ways to help people do tend to suck (lending the original quote much of its plausibility), but there are other options.