peacetreefrog

It's "right-to-try" not "have-to-try". Articles like this make it sound like patients are powerless and have to take and pay for whatever treatments these companies offer.

Disagree. People evaluate almost literally every other single product they buy.

Agreed. I always think of the greek word "arete", which (as I understand it) means roughly achieving excellence and living up to your potential.

I'm currently at a big co (though not really a "tech" one, so can't speak to FAANG) and can relate to many of these. I can def see the attraction in taking less money in order to have a better shot at achieving excellence.

I think the key (and very appealing thing to me and a lot of people) is:

The results of work over the hours put in.

It also relates to the the idea of saying whether you're working or not. If you're producing great results, it shouldn't matter when/how/how much time it takes you to do it (provided maybe people can get ahold of you in an emergency). But I also seems like the key to this working is being willing to get rid of people that aren't meeting that high bar (whether weren't up to snuff or weren't because they weren't putting in enough time).

I think most organizations are unwilling/uncomfortable holding people to this high of standard on outputs, and so measure inputs (40 hours, at least not looking like you're slacking off) instead.

Charlie Munger tells a story about Fedex and how they needed to move all their packages around different planes every night in one central location. They had a team of workers to do it, but they were having trouble getting the work finished on time and keeping people motivated.

Eventually they decided -- instead of paying people by the hour -- to just pay them the same thing no matter how long it took (per shift), and let everyone go home when they were done. Lo and behold the night teams got their packages moved around much faster and and made just as much money and Fedex was able to deliver better and quicker everyone was happy.

I read it, and thought it was really good. I took a bunch of notes on it and wrote down some of my favorite principles. Here are two and the notes I took on them:

1. Think of yourself as a machine operating within a machine; and know you have ability to alter machines to produce better outcomes.

- distinguish between you as the designer of your machine, and you as a worker within your machine

- it's much more important that you are a good designer/manager of your life than a good worker in it

"To be successful, the "designer/manager you" has to be objective about what the "worker you" is really like, not believing in him more than he deserves, or putting him in jobs he shouldn't be in. Instead of having this strategic perspective, most people operate emotionally and in the moment; their lives are a series of undirected emotional experiences, going from one thing to the next."

2. reality exists at different levels; each gives valuable perspectives

- we're constantly seeing things at different levels and navigating between them

  - > i want meaningful work
  - >> i want to be a doctor
  - >>> i need to go to med school
  - >>>> i need to get good science grades
  - >>>>> i need to stay in tonight and study

- when line of reasoning is jumbled, it's often because speaker has gotten caught up in below the line details without connecting them back to major points

- only go below the line if it's necessary to illustrate something about a major points, and make sure you synthesize and tie things back

This is pretty cool. Some feedback:

1. Lock screen functionality would be good. It's sort of jarring to go back and forth between this (pleasant, mellow) and my normal lock screen (looks just like my normal phone).

2. It'd be nice to be able to resize the custom background images.

3. Not sure I like the distinction between "tools" and "apps", especially because I try to view all my apps as tools. It'd be nice to be able to add a custom tool (I wanted to add Audible for example) that would just be on the one page.

I've been using Elm a few months for a serious project and really like it. That said, I do get the impression there is some drama at the top (among the overlords) and the direction they want (or others want them) to take things.

I'm not even close to being an overlord or contributing anything to the language (just a consumer who has been very happy with how everything's been working so far) so the fact someone like me is even aware this is going on is mildly troubling. Other libraries I'm fairly familiar with (Pandas in Python, React etc) seem to tend towards quietly releasing without all the public drama among contributors.

Not sure whether it's because it's a smaller community or more of the help/documentation is on places like reddit or discourse (where the overlords argue - vs something like stack overflow), or whether everyone involved just needs thicker skin.

Either way, it's only a mild annoyance to me for now and I really like Elm overall. Would encourage anyone interested to check it out.

I did not downvote, but this seems like a tangent.

Do you own the house you live in?

I'm not talking about who sets the zoning laws, I'm talking about who makes decisions re: a particular property.

If you're into local control and people close to the ground making decisions, no one is closer and should know better than the literal property owner. If kicking zoning laws up to the state level helps empower property owners than it absolutely is giving more local control.

Again, how about the people who own the property should decide what happens with it?

The YIMBY movement is trying to move things down to the appropriate level.

How can you try to claim the moral high ground re: "someone else's" property while supporting zoning laws literally prevent people from doing what they would like with the property they own?

Best part:

1. We do not like to pay for content on a per-item basis. See Mental Transaction Costs. Similarly, we have only limited willingness to contribute to a patronage model.

2. We do not like to pay subscription fees for content.

3. We do not like having to wade through a lot of irrelevant, annoying advertisements.

4. We do not like the feeling that we are being tracked in order to be served fewer, targeted advertisements.

5. People and firms that supply content typically should be paid.

We cannot satisfy all five of these desires. We have to give up at least one of them. We have to compromise.

Getting downvoted here, but see the non-partisan IGM economic survey on this.

"The 9% cumulative increase in real US median household income since 1980 substantially understates how much better off people in the median American household are now economically, compared with 35 years ago."

When asked to agree-disagree, 60% of economists (70% when you weight by confidence) agree with this.

http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/us-median-income

No, a lot depends on how you look at the data. See these two videos for a good overview:

https://www.policyed.org/numbers-game

What evidence do you have that portion of the pie is getting smaller for most people? I do not believe this at all. It's especially not true on a global scale, where globalization has improved the lives and wealth of millions in China and India.

Ran across this Charlie Munger quote a few months ago that stuck with me about the problem with larger companies and bureaucracy:

"...if you worked for AT&T in my day, it was a great bureaucracy. And in a bureaucracy, you think the work is done when it goes out of your in-basket into somebody else's in-basket. But, of course, it isn't. It's not done until AT&T delivers what it's supposed to deliver. So you get big, fat, dumb, unmotivated bureaucracies.

I think that's part of it. There's a natural human tendency to want to feel like you're accomplishing things, and in large bureaucracies it's easier to feel accomplished without actually getting the things done that need to get done.

Also from Munger:

"They also tend to become somewhat corrupt. In other words, if I've got a department and you've got a department and we kind of share power running this thing, there's sort of an unwritten rule: “If you won't bother me, I won't bother you and we're both happy.” So you get layers of management and associated costs that nobody needs. Then, while people are justifying all these layers, it takes forever to get anything done. They're too slow to make decisions and nimbler people run circles around them."

The counter/antidote also seems like it could be a good business idea. Seems like there'd be value in helping people navigate social media in a healthier, less depressing ways.

Seems to me more common on Twitter, moreso as a way of shortcuts to figuring out who (most followers) and what (most retweets/favorites) to pay attention to.

It sort of makes sense there, but it still would seem lame to me for the average person to publicly admit to caring about FB, Instagram, and Hacker News likes and engagement (obviously everyone does at least a little privately). I'm not hip though. Is this still the case or not?

There are a lot of "hacks" in this thread (put your phone in grayscale, put variable reward apps in a folder, turn off fingerprint sensor) but in my experience the mindset is by far the most important part.

What's worked for me (and the article talks about this too) is viewing my phone as a tool with a limited set of functionality. For me, that functionality is: calls, texts, Google maps, Spotify, Audible, podcasts, Uber, and a camera.

That's it, no email (technically have the ability to send an email if i need to, but no notifications and no checking) and no random internet browsing and twitter etc consumption. There are some blocking apps that might help with this, but the biggest thing is the attitude. Twitter in line at the grocery store is no longer what my phone is for. Not that reading tabloid headlines is any better, but the main point is stretching out your focus muscles, getting rid of the urge to immediately grab your phone anytime there's a lull or hint of boredom in your life.

Overall, it's nice. Almost like being back in the 90's pre smart phone but also with a super powerful computer that can play any song you want/give you directions to anywhere you need to go.

True, but apparently that value was less than the cost to provide it.

Toys R Us is a pretty basic economic transaction. They sold toys, and the people buying them get the value. We're not dealing with public goods or externalities or any other type of market failure where this type of value might be tricky to pick up.

So, you (and the author of this article) are complaining both about the people lending money losing out, and also complaining that Bain et al spent too much money paying the loans back?

Who is going to read the book he recommends at the end -- 9 Minutes, 20 Seconds? A well-written in depth look at a 29 person plane crash and the people involved? Sounds terrifying.

You could argue that viewing legislation like this as a sort of magic wand, "just pass a law that says nothing bad can happen to you if you don't check email outside of work and that'll fix everything" is even cuter, more out of touch.

Government workers being excluded from this bill is classic. Reminds me of the unions in LA who pushing a $15 per hour minimum wage, then wanted to be exempt when it got passed.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/12/los-angeles-...

What do you mean the companies making the rules? Do you mean laws or rules like "you have to check your email after 5 pm"?

Well, it is a model.

I think it's helpful in seeing where people are coming from on different issues. And note, it's not like all three axis are "valid" or "right" or have equal weight for every given issue.

For example, I think most people today (regardless of party or political affiliation) would tend to view the issue of segregation and Jim Crow laws in terms of the oppressed vs oppressor axis, which makes sense.

Yes perhaps. I think the civilization vs barbarism axis is the one most most up in the air on this issue. Some conservatives might view the always plugged/everyone on their phone in culture as harmful and might be in favor of something like this. I know many religious Jewish people keep Shabbot, where they don't use tech for 25 hours.

But I also think you could make the argument that the oppressed-oppressor axis is coming through a bit in the "force us to work around the clock" part of your comment.

This is a great issue to view through the lens of economist Arnold Kling's "3 axis model" (1) which says people tend to view issues through three separate lenses: oppressed vs oppressor (liberals), freedom vs coercion (libertarians) and civilization vs barbarism (conservatives).

It's pretty clear those in favor of the law view companies's as oppressing and exploiting their workers by making them read email after work to get ahead.

Those against would say it's a question of freedom. Companies are free to make outside of 9-5 email part of the job description, and get rid of people who don't measure up. Workers are free to find jobs where that's not expected.

Not sure the civ-barb axis really fits in that well here, but conservatives might view hard work and long hours as good traits we don't want to discourage, much less outlaw.

https://www.amazon.com/Three-Languages-Politics-Arnold-Kling...

Ok, what would you like to bet?