Right. When I read this, I think it's a failure to embrace the tool, explore it, understand it, stress test it, and get creative with how to use it.
156 karma · joined June 14, 2011
They need to work on their messaging. "Human hands are a problem" is going to make enemies. Perhaps "relieve humans of menial chores" and "take over dangerous jobs" and "enable precision not possible with the human hand" etc.
In my practice, I'll try a Jedi mind trick, e.g. "Trying to [state larger goal] makes a lot of sense. An even more effective way to do that is to [state alternate, non-toxic technique]."
As an aside, I’m also Buddhist so if the kidney goes I’m going with it. This obsession with prolonging life is just a distraction from living it.
- During my morning fast if I'm hungry I'll mix two tablespoons of psyllium husk with water and drink it. Fiber helps you feel full and in this form doesn't break the fast https://www.ifbuddy.com/nutrition/does-fiber-break-a-fast/
- Psychologically I remind myself it's OK to feel hungry. I reframed feelings of hunger from a signal that I forgot to eat to a signal that in a few hours I'll need to eat, as if hunting and gathering will take a few hours so my body is telling me to start now :-)
"...what made the people with high vitamin D levels so healthy was not the vitamin itself. That was just a marker. Their vitamin D levels were high because they were getting plenty of exposure to the thing that was really responsible for their good health—that big orange ball shining down from above."
I thought it was awesome what these Argentinians were doing when I moan about the processing power of my oldish MacBook Pro. And I was impressed with the phrasing of the raps.
But of the two examples I clicked through, one focused on violence and the other objectified women. But the sample size of people they profiled was tiny. Maybe if they sought out a female music producer they'd find the Argentinian Grimes?
Most of us don't do that. Most of us make due with off the rack suits with some tailoring for 1/10th the price.
With programming we have an expectation of bespoke design, so anything less, even if it's much easier, seems lame.
A potentially useful reframing of the question is, "What are all the common use cases that could be solved sufficiently with significantly less effort using visual programming?"
That's what I hate about the Internet.
Besides LearnVest, there's PolicyGenius (https://www.policygenius.com) who does a good job evaluating your need for individual insurance products and then selling them. They don't do financial planning.
Investment managers such as Personal Capital and Vanguard offer access to advisors if you meet a minimum of assets under management, but the advice is mostly about investing.
SmartAsset and Nerdwallet are focused on content and calculators but have enough funding to move into planning in the future.
Any of the following companies could move into our space, although they all have channel conflicts: Robo investors (e.g. Betterment), Insurance (e.g. Prudential), Banks (e.g. Wells Fargo), Financial planners (e.g. Ameriprise), Investment managers (e.g. Vanguard), Advisor-facing software (e.g. eMoneyAdvisor)
The tension between commissions and neutral financial advice is an important issue. Sometimes advisors disclose their compensation but not always. In our case we could not only disclose that but also reveal the logic and math behind the recommendation. The rules aren't a secret; anyone can look them up in a book. The value we add is not having to look them up, and then reconciling all the different rules into an algorithm that takes all the variables into account.