visakanv

That is exactly the message of the post, hence "purchase fuzzies and utilons separately", and not "forgo all fuzzies for utilons"

I didn't remove anything that he said; I just presented his multiple lists of examples in a easier-to-read format. The original essay probably was formatted a particular way on the printed page, but it's turned into a tedious wall of text in the orwell.ru version.

I have a link to the predecessor in opening; so you can open both copies in separate tabs and compare them for yourself.

Relevant LessWrong article – Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately: http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_sepa...

> There is this very, very old puzzle/observation in economics about the lawyer who spends an hour volunteering at the soup kitchen, instead of working an extra hour and donating the money to hire someone...

> If the lawyer needs to work an hour at the soup kitchen to keep himself motivated and remind himself why he's doing what he's doing, that's fine. But he should also be donating some of the hours he worked at the office, because that is the power of professional specialization and it is how grownups really get things done. One might consider the check as buying the right to volunteer at the soup kitchen, or validating the time spent at the soup kitchen.

I think about this a lot.

I loved it so much that I once tried to do a 'modern update' of it, with headers and bullet points and so on. It's meant to be a supplement to the original essay, not a replacement: http://visakanv.com/blog/politics-and-the-english-language

^ This is always amusing to me, because people who get really successful do it by compounding earlier wins over decades. I'm reminded of @pmarca's advice for startup founders who want to meet VCs:

> The best way to develop contacts with VCs, in my opinion, is to work at a venture-backed startup, kick butt, get promoted, and network the whole way.

> If you can't get hired by a venture-backed startup right now, work at a well-regarded large tech company that employs a lot of people like Google or Apple, gain experience, and then go to work at a venture-backed startup, kick butt, get promoted, and network the whole way.

> And if you can't get hired by a well-regarded large tech company, go get a bachelor's or master's degree at a major research university from which well-regarded large tech companies regularly recruit, then work at a well-regarded large tech company that employs a lot of people like Google or Apple, gain experience, and then go to work at a venture-backed startup, kick butt, get promoted, and network the whole way.

> I sound like I'm joking, but I'm completely serious -- this is the path taken by many venture-backed entrepreneurs I know.

– http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part3.html

I wouldn't say there are any new insights per se; I'm maybe just more intimately acquainted with them. Ie when I first read it, most of the descriptions about things like how a paycheck influences your thinking/behavior were just intellectual ideas for me, but having had a mortgage + paycheck for 4 years I've come to personally witness how it's 'domesticated' me in a way, made me more fragile, however you want to describe it

Nassim Taleb's Antifragile. First read it when it came out in 2012, and I was still unmarried and unemployed. Interesting to re-read it now that I'm married and have been working for 4+ years.

> American think tanks have nothing to do with this as they come from industrialists, that did not even exist in Europe at the time of the Royal institutions.

That's exactly the point though, isn't it? That American think tanks are sources of industrial propaganda (for major oil companies in particular)?

Read the article, and you're right.

> we shouldn't judge a comment on whether we recognize their username, but rather on quality of content

Ah right, I think I see the nature of our disagreement / misunderstanding. I totally agree with you on the general principle that quality of content should be allowed to stand on its own.

However, I believe that there are things that are context-specific things that the men and women in the arena will face. And these are things that those of us in the stands, however thoughtful and discerning, will never be able to appreciate them, because we simply do not know. (For a great read about this, check out Daniel Ellsberg's message to Henry Kissinger, on the reality of having access to top secret information: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsber...)

So for example. It seems obvious to me that the top comment is sensible and correct. Snap's CTO or whoever else made that decision is surely very familiar with the costs of being dependent on something like Google. So if they decide to do it anyway, I'm of the opinion that they're quite likely to have done it because of concerns that I am not able to appreciate, because I am not in their context.

Of course, there's a non-zero chance that Snap is making stupid decisions. But I think it's far likelier that they're making decisions that SEEM stupid to a 3rd party, but make perfect sense once you appreciate their context.

I could be wrong about this, of course.

From the Mass Effect Wikia:

> Cerberus is a human-survivalist paramilitary group led by the enigmatic Illusive Man. Cerberus' core belief is that humans deserve a greater role in the galactic community, and that the Systems Alliance is too hamstrung by law and public opinion to stand up effectively to the other Citadel races. Cerberus supports the principle that any methods of advancing humanity's ascension are entirely justified, including illegal or dangerous experimentation, terrorist activities, sabotage and assassination. Cerberus operatives accept that these methods are brutal, but believe history will vindicate them. Nevertheless, both the Systems Alliance and the Citadel Council have declared Cerberus to be a terrorist organization and will prosecute identified Cerberus agents accordingly.

That doesn't mean anything, though. "Some people who do X also do Y" does not imply that "people who do Y are qualified to comment on X."

For example: Elon Musk is a Twitter user. I too am a Twitter user. So's Kylie Jenner, Donald Trump, and random spambots. Using the same service does not mean they're equally qualified to speak with authority about the same things.

A person who's convinced that Zuckerberg is a selfish agent will choose to cynically interpret this as some sort of tax evasion, PR stunt, etc

"Mr. Zuckerberg, is it true that you screwed a bunch of Hawaiians out of their property?"

"That means I'm smart. When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by their huge tracts of land. You can do anything."

The rules were probably designed by and for a group of people with a specific culture and worldview, who didn't plan or design for wealthy entrants (even pre-Zuckerberg).

> if my ancestors worked hard to provide for their families and I, down the line, inherit some land or money I should feel bad about this? Why?

You don't have to feel BAD about it; just recognize it. People inherit vastly different conditions by sheer accident of birth.

I use one-tab.com; works fantastically for me. Not a huge stretch to say it changed my life.

Some fun facts: Zuck's favorite book(s) growing up was the Ender's Game series [1]. He learned Mandarin and spoke to Chinese audiences [2]. As such, I don't think he's setting himself up to be POTUS, that seems too small for him. (One of Zuck's role models is Bill Gates, and Bill clearly believes that folks like himself can do more for the world outside of Government than inside it.)

IMO, Mark's setting himself up to be Hegemon of Earth: http://enderverse.wikia.com/wiki/Hegemony

[1] http://favobooks.com/enterpreneurs/90-zuckerberg.html

[2] https://qz.com/532834/mark-zuckerbergs-20-minute-speech-in-c...

As Paul Graham said, "So if Apple's not going to make the next iPad, who is? None of the existing players. None of them are run by product visionaries, and empirically you can't seem to get those by hiring them. Empirically the way you get a product visionary as CEO is for him to found the company and not get fired. So the company that creates the next wave of hardware is probably going to have to be a startup." – http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html

I think about this a lot too, and the question I have is – has there ever been a visionary who made his way to the top of the corporate ladder of ANY company, however enlightened? Would love to hear about it.

> What Apple needed was another person like Steve, but unfortunately, by letting Steve select that person, they ended up with someone completely unlike Steve.

Paul Graham wrote about this back in 2012:

"I was talking recently to someone who knew Apple well, and I asked him if the people now running the company would be able to keep creating new things the way Apple had under Steve Jobs. His answer was simply "no." I already feared that would be the answer. I asked more to see how he'd qualify it. But he didn't qualify it at all. No, there will be no more great new stuff beyond whatever's currently in the pipeline. Apple's revenues may continue to rise for a long time, but as Microsoft shows, revenue is a lagging indicator in the technology business.

So if Apple's not going to make the next iPad, who is? None of the existing players. None of them are run by product visionaries, and empirically you can't seem to get those by hiring them. Empirically the way you get a product visionary as CEO is for him to found the company and not get fired. So the company that creates the next wave of hardware is probably going to have to be a startup.

I realize it sounds preposterously ambitious for a startup to try to become as big as Apple. But no more ambitious than it was for Apple to become as big as Apple, and they did it. Plus a startup taking on this problem now has an advantage the original Apple didn't: the example of Apple. Steve Jobs has shown us what's possible. That helps would-be successors both directly, as Roger Bannister did, by showing how much better you can do than people did before, and indirectly, as Augustus did, by lodging the idea in users' minds that a single person could unroll the future for them.

Now Steve is gone there's a vacuum we can all feel. If a new company led boldly into the future of hardware, users would follow. The CEO of that company, the "next Steve Jobs," might not measure up to Steve Jobs. But he wouldn't have to. He'd just have to do a better job than Samsung and HP and Nokia, and that seems pretty doable."

– http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html

> Apple came there, wanted to be first again

Interesting point. Got me thinking about how the iPod was not the first MP3 player, and how the iPhone was not the first smartphone. I believe the philosophy was "don't be the first; be the first to get it right."

It's a little disappointing that they haven't been so magical lately.

Does it use a middle-out algorithm?

This phenomenon is alluded to in the spoken bit at the closing of Jason Mraz's "Details In The Fabric", with "You're an island of reality in an ocean of diarrhoea".

Yup, that is what I meant

It's totally on-topic. It's a planning/execution gap.

> I say this in a general sense, not specifically to Uber. It comes down to trust.

Yeah, I suppose this is true. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I appreciate it.

> Saying that it's worth giving up all the improvements this can make to make that impossible through just this one venue is frankly ridiculous.

It certainly is; it's also something I've never said

> it costs a lot of money to do that

Well they _have_ raised $15,000,000,000 in cash: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/business/dealbook/why-uber...

> A group of talented, well compensated engineers are developing a machine to be offended on my behalf

and their leader openly states that he isn't well-placed to make the necessary trade-offs