padobson

It's also worth mentioning that you've jumped from menial to skilled labor at this point. There's a big difference between hosing off a Prius for the owner's commute and detailing a McLaren for an auto show. The latter is far more satisfying work.

This seems intuitive, and also provably false.

Joe Rogan is currently running the most famous and successful podcast in the world, and those conversations routinely go over three hours.

Dan Carlin is on a lower tier, but still highly successful, and his podcasts are far more polished and produced and integrate huge amounts of research, and the runtimes are even longer than Rogan's.

Maybe written content doesn't afford the detail you're looking for, which kind of makes sense, because you can listen to a podcast while commuting, exercising, showering or doing various chores, but you can't read doing almost any of them. But I'd argue almost anything done in an article can be done in a podcast or audiobook, so maybe the current failure of long-form journalism is not realizing that the medium has moved on.

He should think more strategically about what he wants to learn and why.

The article seems to jump around between self learning, a la podcasts and audio books, and the pitfalls of formal education, with its emphasis on assembly line lectures and dismissal of interactions between students.

In high school, I wanted to make video games, so I did some research and asked my parents for a C++ book. I took the book to school with me and read it between classes or whenever there was downtime. I never made any notes or did any exercises. I never got close to learning anything like functional knowledge of C++.

Later in college, I had an internship where I was asked to program in python, even though I had no knowledge of python. "You'll pick it up quickly", I was told. And I did! I never opened a single book, nor even used Google. I just poked through the existing library of code they did, asked questions of the other programmers when I could, and within a week I was contributing code to that codebase. By the end of my internship I was writing programs that were performing vital business tasks.

I'll finish this comment by adding that journaling has been a huge help to me for retaining knowledge and unpacking deeper lessons from familiar material. The book I read most often is the Bible, but you'll never see my Bible without a journal next to it. The journal allows me to develop the ideas in my mind, and so I can track how my understanding has expanded over time, from the literal meaning of what I'm reading, expanding to the metaphorical and psychological and spiritual lessons that develop over repeated encounters.

In the 2021 NPORS, 4% of respondents describe themselves as atheists (up from 2% in 2011), and 5% describe themselves as agnostics (up from 3% a decade ago). One-in-five U.S. adults (20%) now describe their religion as “nothing in particular,”

In the same way the poll is curious about Protestant vs. Catholic, and Mainline vs Evangelical/Born Again, I'd sure like to know a little bit more about the "nothing in particular" group - especially when 13% of them are praying on a daily basis. Who are the two percent of people responding to this survey who have no religion and pray every day?

Is it none because they think religion is evil? Are they indifferent? Are they spiritual but think organized religion is unnecessary? Are they unaffiliated for intellectual reasons? Or have they never been exposed to religion at all and are mildly curious?

If they hadn't printed all that money, a lot of prices would have stayed flat - and perhaps a lot more folks would feel much richer right now.

The first people getting those borrowed dollars (government contractors, banks selling treasuries and MBS, old people on social security) will be okay.

Indeed, praise be to science.

It really is not a bad assumption.

More like a leap of faith.

There literally can not be a higher authority than it by definition.

How [onto]logical.

It is just that it is unethical to do so, so we refrain from it.

Amen, brother. We've got to repress those urges of curiosity to appease glorious science. Praise be to science! Amen.

Science is really good at transmitting information about deterministic processes, but is really bad at transmitting information about non-deterministic processes or even processes that are so complex that they appear non-deterministic e.g. human behavior.

I don't believe in reincarnation, but it's not hard at all for me to see how it can be used as a moral tool that helps people think long term. It's not a bad idea to use tools like this, especially since all attempts so far to design a "science of morality" have been bloody, catastrophic failures.

I disagree with the premise here. China doesn't need to agree that shooting nukes at San Fran is bad, they just need to agree that shooting nukes at San Fran is going to cost them Shanghai. That's more like markets and prices than it is appealing to a centralized hierarchy.

One of the best observations about why people in urban areas are more liberal, and rural areas are more conservative, has to do with the idea that when you are around more people, you need more rules to guide how to interact with one another.

This might be true, but if you look at the state of LA, San Fran, Chicago's South Side, Detroit and Baltimore, it's tough to say all those extra rules have kept them stable and prosperous. I'm not saying the answer is necessarily "tear it all down and go DeFi", but it's pretty clear that on a long enough timeline, the regulation fails to punish the bad actors and actually restricts the good actors from fixing problems independently.

The author of the article skips over the question entirely, maybe he's addressed it elsewhere, but if the crypto skeptics continue to ignore one of its primary value propositions, I have to assume either ignorance or bad faith.

Hey! Wait! "The existential urge to mate" is kind of a big deal! Should we be hand waving away that entire bedrock motivation of human nature?

Social institutions designed for turning children into adults i.e. family units, day cares, public schools, youth sports, universities, studio apartments in big cities (a kind of halfway house between childhood and adulthood) have been continually stretching out adolescence, and this article takes that long adolescence for granted. But it's fraught with all kinds of outcomes that will sabotage the very financial independence the article is advocating for.

That pesky urge to mate starts to hit hard around 11-13 years of age. So we're resigning young adults to unfulfilling, casual sexual relationships until they get established and they can truly explore their sexuality, including making new humans of their own, in their mid-thirties. That's 20+ years of avoiding unwanted pregnancy, venereal disease, various kinds of sexual violence (from harassment to assault), and a host of psychological issues that can crop up in that casual environment.

And, oh, BTW! Bad outcomes in sexual relationships are the ones most likely to inhibit financial success [0].

So all of those "loner" self help articles about getting rich young and retiring early simply do not apply to the vast majority of the population.

What we should be helping young adults to do is become competent early (as the author suggests), but also to find a competent mate early as well. Then you can increase your household income, continue living in that studio apartment, and sidestep the most dangerous obstacles to financial independence before they ever have a chance to strike.

[0]https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three-simple-rules-poor-t...

Whenever I think about planets, I think about a big rock you can land on, but if Jupiter and Saturn are made entirely of gas, landing on them is a non-sequitur, correct?

Do most planets start out as gas giants? Does the effect of gravity over epochs compress them into rocky planets? How should we think about them in terms of our solar system? In how we explore? In how we colonize?

They started each game from the interactive experience and then fleshed out the details from there. Think running and jumping in Mario - they spent months getting the gravity and speed right, the button presses, all before the first thoughts to art, level design or story.

It was very iterative. They'd start with a concept and then tweak and tweak and tweak until it was as fun as they could get it.

Another good example is the development story of Super Mario Kart[1], which was supposed to be the sequel to F-Zero[2], but they invented/discovered new gameplay elements that fit better with the Mario brand and they took the game in that direction.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_Analysi... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Kart [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-Zero_(video_game)

Edit: for those struggling with the irony, my comment is pro-questions and pro-heresy. Let's not attack people for asking questions

What we all need is not another fad diet or fasting strategy or super food, but rather a process that looks like a flowchart so an individual can achieve certain goals. I'd be shocked if we ever found a one-size-fits-all diet, but there should be some kind of process to design a good diet specific to an individual, using feedback from measurements like weight, blood sugar, vitamin levels, energy levels and mood.

Want to lose weight? Try fasting for a month. Then stop and try calorie restriction for a month. Was one easier? Did one help you lose more weight? Make adjustments to the more effective one and keep going.

Want to have more energy? Pick a group of healthy foods eat only them for a week. Then, pick a separate group and do that for a week. Journal every day so you can make comparisons about how you feel and how much energy you have.

Wondering what foods are making you feel tired/sick? Pick a handful of vegetables and eat them for a week, then slowly add in the usual suspects that might be sapping your energy. When you find the food that's slowing you down, cut it out of your diet permanently.

Want to save money on groceries? Find the foods that are working best for you and swap out cheaper alternatives or buy in bulk.

I have no idea what the process should look like, these are just possible examples, but a process is what I want.

I'd say you're half right, here. The Fed prints money spends $80 billion a month on treasuries and $40 billion a month on mortgage backed securities, so if you're a government contractor or you have a lot of real estate assets, you're effectively robbing everyone else's savings and devaluing their wages.

But there is something to be learned from continuing to read after off-putting hooks, including that the author might have something genuine to say beyond just looping in people that agree with them with inflammatory hooks.

Relevant: https://xkcd.com/1053/

This is a pretty big stretch, considering what it costs the public to provide and the results it achieves for that price.

Thomas Sowell's[0] latest book has a fair amount of evidence to the contrary.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_Schools_and_Their_Enem...

And even here, you find that the Dutch also instituted the first real central bank[0], which laissez faire folks would tell you lead to panics and recessions.

Tulipmania[1] happened about twenty years later, but I'm open to believing that was a coincidence.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Amsterdam

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

Housing is only the kind of attractive investment vehicle you describe in an environment where the price is artificially inflated by constrained supply from zoning and other regulations.

I promise you, if the price wasn't rising so rapidly and reliably, investors would find other places to park their capital.

Build housing to meet demand and the investors will go elsewhere.

In my experience, headaches from cutting out carbs are almost always because your body is retaining less water and you're running low on water/electrolytes. Add some salt, zinc, magnesium and potassium to your diet.

When I do extended fasts (1-5 days), I'll literally grind up cal-mag-zinc pills, add salt, and dilute them in warm water and drink them. It tastes awful, and there's products out there that work better, but it feels great once your body absorbs it.

Meth is dirt cheap, widely available in Los Angeles, and it induces psychosis. Isn't it obvious that's the issue?

As a long time volunteer and giver to drug rehab programs, I'm very sympathetic to this argument, but I still agree with OP.

People don't really like drugs. That kind of addiction is usually closely connected to something else in their life going wrong. If the only happiness you can find in your life is in a pill or a pipe, then that's where you will go until it destroys you.

This is where OP's "on the margins" argument comes back. If housing is more affordable, you'll have fewer miserable people and fewer people on drugs. If you transform public schools from prisons/daycares into institutions that actually feed and empower the curiosity of children, they'll have less a reason to buy drugs from each other. If you make it easier for people to start businesses and follow their dreams, they'll have a purpose that feeds them instead of a chemical.

You can't eliminate the drug problem this way, but it can be improved on the margins simply by giving more people an easier path to happiness.

That's how I'd recommend viewing non-profit work in advance of retirement. Is there a non-profit you're spending effort on now? Spend more effort there. If not, it's probably a good idea to examine your values and find some organizations that advance them and start helping out.

I couldn't be more pro-Billionaire Astronauts, but at the same time there is danger in them spending their money and influence on things that may not work.

If they had gone out and bought more cars, yachts, and real estate, that's money that goes into mature industries with efficient supply chains that support the livelihoods of many people.

You can look at a billion dollar yacht and say, "What a waste", but the shipwrights, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and welders who built the yacht, not to mention the crew that steers, maintains, and cleans it probably don't think it was a waste, nor do the people who work in the industries that provide the materials for it.

You should ask for your market salary plus equity. The market salary removes the risk of opportunity cost, and the equity protects against the risk that the company could shut down in a year.

Any company that isn't willing to invest in its core product with market salaries had better have a very well thought out reason for doing so, and I haven't encountered that reason yet.

That said, the thread is useful for evaluating a startup from an investor or an early employee (who is also an investor)POV.

I'd need much more before I sent a resume.

This is a brilliant sentiment and can be tide to multitudes of other items. The more that can be voluntarily decoupled from the employer-employee relationship, the more should be.

Ecclesiastes talks so much about the rhythms of life and the benefits of gaining knowledge and then using knowledge, the benefits of working hard and celebrating accomplishment. When I look at our various economic cycles, especially periods of innovation followed by periods of consolidation in tech, I can see a lot to draw from Ecclesiastes. I'll be pondering it more!