crdb

I haven't watched it yet. It's months away, I think January release here. Other commenters say the plot has been substantially changed.

After watching Dr. Strange I read the first 5-6 comics, because I thought it was one of the few Marvel characters with some depth and interesting ideas, whose source material might be worth exploring. Alas, a goateed bad guy appears in dreams, wafting around, then getting beaten in a punch up with the hero because "magic", repeat ad infinitum. A far cry from the special interaction of Cumberbatch, Swinton and Mikkelson with a great script we saw in cinemas (I might be biased since this is the closest to a movie adaptation of Stross' Laundry Files ideas that we're likely to see in the near future).

A good writer and director can take any idea and turn it into something interesting, so I am looking forward to discovering the movie. My original comment was targeted at the story only.

> so it's up to us to define it and find it ourselves

That's the part I didn't get from the story. In fact, there was a strong sense of "the future is already written so you might as well not try to get out of it". Life is short so let's just drift along whatever little we have of it passively kind of thing.

I'll keep in mind Chiang's other stories (already bought them long ago) but to be honest there are many books ahead of it on the reading list.

spoilers below

The only positive interpretation I can think of the story is a fairly complex critique of the heroine (and through that human nature) as wanting the safety of knowledge even at great personal cost (25 more years of sadness than she was supposed to have). She did have a choice: she could have forgotten how to read the language and through this regained agency in her own life (or at least hope). This is an example of the cognitive bias of picking suboptimal options because we are familiar with them. She did not pick that choice, although you could argue that knowing she did not pick that choice, she did not pick that choice (return to nihilist square one, the only square).

Asimov's The End of Eternity deals much better with time travel and information about future timelines. IMHO.

I was going to say two recent great first contact novels (showing you can still, in our era, do first contact in an original and intelligent manner) are Cixin Liu's Three Body trilogy and Peter Watts' work. I also think many of Charlie Stross' novels fit in there. For example, what they find on the other side of the wormhole modem in Accelerando counts as a "first contact" of sorts... and it is definitely original.

Clearly we're on the same page. Any other recommendations?

I disliked the story for the same reason I dislike a lot of modern SF (and arts generally): it is nihilist and depressing.

The craftsmanship is good, although not great (the split structure feels a bit forced, for example). To use one's skill like this is... sad.

The grandmaster of depressing SF was PKD. Story of Your Life left me with the same feeling of hopelessness and sadness as Ubik, which itself demonstrates great craftsmanship.

Despite being raised atheist, I remember reading a novelised story of Jesus' life as a teenager where Joseph told a young Jesus that no cross was ever built well because great craftsmen refused to build instruments of death. I thought of this passage whilst reading Ubik and I think of it with Story of My Life.

I'll add to these two the otherwise pretty good Hyperion Cantos, for its ending, although I think the author did paint himself in a corner there. Some series are better left unfinished...

Obviously, the comparison is not perfect. For starters, Have Blue was done by Kelly Johnson's Lockheed (although technically under Ben Rich, himself no slouch); Rickover's nuclear navy was similarly led and with similar low budgets, met deadlines and exceeded expectations. So ROI for projects from that era will be much higher (and let's not mention the actual Kelly Johnson projects like the A-12...).

That being said I'm not sure the F-117 was that useful in actual combat, certainly it was used because it was there but did it change anything? It flew a large number of sorties in the first Gulf War but some say these could have been flown cheaper and just as well with conventional aircraft [1], and bombed a few targets in Yugoslavia (so far away from the kind of conflict it was designed for that TV crews were filming it taking off, live) until Zoltan Dani worked out how to shoot one down using equipment worth a fraction as much thus pointing out its edge was gone in less than two decades after launch.

As far as I understand it, Have Blue's main value was to pave the way for stealth research, its operational value being what happened to it in combat rather than the targets it took out.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117_Nighthawk#Opera... "On the first night they failed to hit 40% of the air-defense targets they were assigned, including the Air Defense Operations Center in Baghdad, and 8 such targets remained functional out of 10 that could be assessed. [...] many other aircraft hit targets in the downtown area, with minimal casualties when they attacked at night like the F-117"

CVN-80 is going into service in 2025... just saying.

> And the point of the ship is .. what? If you are a US taxpayer you should weep.

Same as any prototype or sufficiently advanced aircraft like the F-117, pave the way for future generations like the Beast of Kandahar, demonstrate or invalidate a series of bold ideas.

In particular, the number of innovations crammed in the Zumwalt makes it relatively cost-effective from a "things we had to try" point of view: new low RCS hull, new composite bridge, new launch system (VLS), new centralised control systems (TSCE). All of this stuff can now be iterated upon and integrated in newer ships. That the new gun system has "failed" in practice is itself a lesson probably worth the dollars spent on it.

Not to mention: look up the name of its first captain [1].

There's few institutions that can do R&D with a multi-decade horizon and the armed forces are one of them. Is there waste in the process, sure, the ghost of Admiral Rickover must be turning in his grave, but it is not totally wasted, unlike a certain aircraft that is somehow manufactured in a full 45 states (have the remaining ones managed to get a piece yet, I haven't followed).

[1] http://www.public.navy.mil/surfor/ddg1000/Pages/bio1.aspx - shame the USS Enterprise was inactivated in 2012.

This assumes journalists decide what gets into press. However, an editorial line is decided by the owners or other stakeholders (at the national level, it might be governments), a compliant editor is hired and made aware of the line, and the editor then selects which pieces get to go in.

My guess is either this process selects for journalists with the "right" views, or journalists themselves adapt their writing to keep their job (probably the latter).

Is there a video of this boat in real weather? That is, waves larger than the boat [1]. How does it cope without capsizing? Do its systems still work? Is propulsion retained if strong enough turbulence "breaks" the gas bubble around the floaters?

[1] e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dVkeh7wUm4 - the boat at the start is about the same size.

> Theoretically, with them you get a guarantee of food that is prepared with better safety standards. Whether this is practically true I have no idea.

Anecdotally, working in Maharashtra with Indians in an Indian company for a few months I was never ill. This was eating $1 "luxury" 8 course meals brought to me in the morning by a dabbawalla on his motorbike which - as with all my co-workers' food - stayed out in the searing heat for a few hours before lunch; I also eventually had him bring me dinner. I lived in the same company housing as everybody else. No idea how you'd find a dabbawalla though, I just took the stack of leaflets dropped at the office and tried them all until I found a good one.

Coming back for 2 weeks to Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bangalore staying at a famous and very nice 5 star hotel chain and eating only in their restaurants, I caught the worst bout of my life. Bit wary of hotel kitchens since then.

Obligatory follow-up: http://kunstler.com/writings/eyesore-of-the-month/

If you are a bit familiar with architecture, laughs guaranteed.

How to replicate: google "Baqend", click on their page (should be top result), press back button, press "back" arrow on browser.

Screenshot: http://imgur.com/a/mLXdc

Compare with: http://imgur.com/a/UnQOG

I checked out Baqend ("we" in the article) and the site prevents me from navigating back when I press "back" (I think by injecting itself as the previous page - I'm not really up to date on dark patterns).

This is the kind of behaviour that is an auto-no for me when buying B2B, not just by itself but because of what it signals about the company. I recommend you remove it.

On the article itself: you can do very fast pages off a relational DB. In one case, the round trip on a Postgres full text search for auto complete on millions of rows from multiple tables was so fast we had to add a 10ms delay - on a $5/month VM.

I worked for a few months in Maharashtra with an Indian FMCG/white goods manufacturer. We were trying to develop products for the "bottom of the pyramid" market - think families living in one room on $30-100 a month.

Every youth in the villages was trying to get to the cities. Their parents often couldn't read or even speak Hindi (let alone English), only their local dialect. So the kids were the ones getting the information for parents (like the price of goods in shops), sometimes translating, etc. as they were the first generation to be able to do so.

With a bit of schooling, they could get a factory or even a white collar job and happily left behind their subsistence living.

I think the "happiness" part was summed up with an interview my team had with a local woman. More than half her family, husband and all siblings included, were dead, usually before the age of 30, from causes ranging from disease to snakes to crossing the road without hearing the car.

Now I speak neither Hindi nor Marathi or whatever the local dialect was, and even connecting with and understanding my middle class Indian colleagues was difficult so maybe I saw what I wanted to see. Nevertheless I got the impression that the way people cope with such a harsh life is through a form of shell shock. They withdraw and just get on with surviving. I looked at the folks living next to their swimming pool sized field from which their entire life depended. I had a tough time seeing happiness. Nature, like the universe, is a cold and harsh place that doesn't care about you. The worst part is perhaps the lack of hope, of direction: tomorrow will always be like today, until the snake, disease or car gets you. At least the children have a bit of hope now, and through them the parents.

I left with renewed appreciation for what we have. Even today, I remember the intense happiness from seeing the smooth, clean tarmac at LHR. It surprised me somewhat how Brits could be so grumpy when they have it so good...

I'll leave the story about Tibetan yak farmers playing Android games whilst herding the beasts on horseback for another day.

The section on referrals was very interesting. Effectively, she states that cold emails are fine, since on balance many referrals are low quality.

Investors reading this: do you think cold emails and referrals are equivalent in terms of deal origination, or do you stick to referrals only? Please also mention your geography.

The article makes the case for the world descriptions and concepts introduced in SF being an inspiration to real world entrepreneurs, such as Stephenson inspiring the PayPal co-founders and a series of portal companies.

But science fiction has a greater impact in being one of the few forms in 20th century arts that dared to present an optimistic view of the future and of values that led to a better world, be it Picard's exemplary leadership in Star Trek TNG, or Heinlein's "normal person finding their courage and values has an impact" novels.

Apocalypse Now or Brazil may be "great" movies but they are incredibly depressing. "Resign yourself to the brokenness of the world, people. The state/realpolitik will crush you." "No", says Asimov, "your actions matter and have an impact. Courage and reason are great qualities, go build the world you want." How many other mainstream movies, books or artworks have this message, outside of science fiction?

> It's all about people who've seen how absurdly rich you can get

Yes and no. As is often bandied about, the expected value of a career in startups is lower than in many other fields, and yet people do stay after seeing through the myth.

A large part of it, at least that I've observed, is the energy, speed of execution, rapid change, the excitement and adventure of the startup world. You willingly give up expected value in exchange for a more interesting life. The stress is part of the fun, the person it moulds you into is something that becomes part of your identity. If the personal risk wasn't real, it wouldn't be fun. The man in the arena etc.

> It is irrelevant to the original theme of the post, but it is quite relevant to the subthread that started with two quotes from and about Rand, and you coming to criticise the poster of the second quote.

My belonging to the Ayn Rand tribe is irrelevant to the quality of my arguments, in the same way as your distaste for her work does not stop you from seeing the value in the original quote.

> "your tone was bad" "your tone made me think that you are a pro-Rand person (concerned with objectivity, overuse of logical fallacies, defensive of Rand, etc)"

Everything in the brackets strikes me as "bad" except "concerned with objectivity" (shouldn't we all be?) although in that case I think you meant to say Objectivism. If the tone, as opposed to the arguments, implies bad things, then the tone is bad.

This is a bit more complicated if the tone is merely a signal which might indicate belonging to a bad tribe, as opposed to the tone being objectively bad, because then we get on to deciding which tribe is good or bad. Personally, I have no inclination for going down that path for previously mentioned reasons.

I try hard not to judge people based on the signals they emit, except when I do not have the time to form a proper judgement, and I always hear what they have to say, as it is a way to learn something new (sometimes).

I still disagree with your implying that I am merely "laundry listing" big words as opposed to making points using them to rapidly communicate relevant concepts, but at this point I do not think we will reach agreement so I will agree to disagree and move on to the next thread.

In the particular case of MailChimp, their main competitor (AFAIK), Campaign Monitor, decided to raise VC funding after about a decade of slow grind a la MailChimp.

They hired a CEO with experience in 5 other VC funded startups (and with burning cash) and moved into the most amazing penthouse, the last two floors of a giant tower in the heart of Sydney with a 360 degree view on the harbour and ocean and city, and a great kitchen with full time chefs, and of course a marble-covered lift lobby.

In other words we have an A/B test.

First, thank you for the long reply. I know the effort and time involved in typing those out and I really appreciate your taking it.

> On the contrary, the problem with a natural language is that is imprecise, vague and ambiguous.

These are attributes of natural language, but I do not see how their existence invalidates my argument. Natural language is ambiguous because words are like variables that can take different values depending on the situation. Any advanced society necessarily requires the shared context and for the other side to make assumptions about what is not said in order to communicate at the very high bandwidth required to deal with the complexity of life.

For example, imagine two buddies meeting at the bar after a hard day of work. One of them sips his beer then says "man... that was a long, long day." He does not literally mean that the day contained more work hours than usual. He is bonding by expressing a hint of shared feelings (that they are satisfied with a hard day's work and can begin relaxing) to his colleague with whom he just shared an experience. I just provided you with context with the early part of the story: bar, long day, beer... which allows you to understand what he says.

And this is why I need to make assumptions in order to further understanding and discussion:

> it's so easy to allow assumptions to creep into one's interpretation of it

> I don't know if the poster is an objectivist

It does not matter if you know or not. Every word posted on a public forum is an attempt at convincing somebody of something, a means of spreading a message or communicating a feeling (as in the case above - although these comments are relatively rare on HN). A brief one liner has to be very well chosen in order to be effective, as it assumes a good read on people's mindsets, the context, and their background in order to have the intended effect. My comment was that the way your comment read was an attack on more than the book.

> "Appeal to emotion" is a logical fallacy

The way I understand it, appeal to emotion is a family of fallacies used to advance arguments without taking a reasoned path, with a subconscious or conscious goal to do so.

> Not every form of discourse is an argument. Mine certainly wasn't and I suspect John's wasn't either.

This is where we disagree. Anything you post here will be read by others and might influence their thinking. Whether or not you want to, you send a message with your comments. Whether or not you meant to have an impact, your words will have that impact. "I didn't mean to hurt X" is not an excuse for inconsiderateness.

> Rather, it means that I don't think I'm good enough at arguing to produce any net worth by engaging in the discussion of a comment like yours.

A different opinion is ALWAYS welcome. The only way to learn is to put oneself in the other's point of view and see if there is something to it...

> out of a highly emotional motivation

What would you guess is my motivation? Most highly emotional "motivation" of irrational arguments is linked to belonging to a tribe and having to accept its arguments in order to further the power of its voice (as members acting in concert predictably are exponentially more powerful as a result). My understanding is that you believe/d that I belong to the "Objectivist" tribe. As I mentioned elsewhere, I have no interest in debating ownership or not to a tribe; I think such arguments are automatic ways to engage discussion onto emotional ground and away from what you might call "fact".

For example, you might debate the idea of taxing pollution. You can argue about it from the point of view of Tragedy of the Commons in economics and trying to establish some kind of net welfare equation, or you can argue against it by saying "you pinko commie" and for it by saying "you fascist tax evader from the 1%". The latter form of argumentation is extremely noxious to civilisation, which is why I oppose it.

> Regardless of the context of HN "and its sophisticated audience and level of discussion", sometimes a cigar is just a cigar; sometimes a person might state the equivalent of "I think 'Atlas Shrugged' is crap and adults who wholeheartedly buy into it should know better" and it might not be a slippery slope to a dystopian future where all rational argument has been replaced by Trump/Clinton debates; sometimes a person's sense of humor is impolite to a certain audience and the best reply is more along the lines of "Dude, don't be a jerk" rather than "The test results say you are a horrible person; we weren't even testing for that." ;)

http://reactionimage.org/img/gallery/9325080020.jpg

> one can suggest a book

Yes, one can. My complaint here was that it was not relevant to what was being discussed. It's similar to a discussion on the latest Postgres being hijacked by yet another languages war.

> In life, as opposed to pure math, we often need, and do, judgement calls based on incomplete data, calls that don't actually follow with 100% logical certainty, but are nevertheless quite clear from the general context

Agreed.

> 100% correctness is for the inhabitants of Vulcan.

Disagree. You make the best decision based on the incomplete data available, and your own value system. That decision is by definition "correct". There are always costs to any path.

> to my eyes you totally look like a pro-Rand person

This is irrelevant to the discussion, except as an ad hominem. Ad hominems are justified in a very small number of cases where directly relevant to the situation. Learning that an investor has a history of playing hardball with his portfolio companies is relevant when examining his term sheet. Dismissing entire arguments due to them not being branded right is not.

I am not trying to defend myself from belonging to a certain tribe or not, as it would not add to the discussion and would probably detract from it by taking it further down the road to the Trump/Clinton debates' tone. I am attempting to clarify arguments, values, premises and ideas for myself and others. You may assume it is propaganda: my own ideas, that I am trying to convince others of.

> because of the overall tone of the responses

What is the appropriate tone for responding? I believe I was sufficiently polite and civil, and fair in presenting my position. Please help me improve my communication style by pointing out how this was not the case.

> "oh, I discovered this blunt tool on the internet, let's hammer every conversation into a inquiry for objective truth"

It predates the internet. Technically I was first exposed to these ideas in Critical Thinking classes in high school, although self-study of logic and various books and life experience helped pad out most of it.

I would just add that the complexity of objective truth, and its lack of total discoverability (due to personal subjectivity, etc.) does not imply its inexistence, or the inadvisability of seeking to get closer to it. My philosophy chops are not developed enough to discuss this one much further though.

No. My premise is that of "rational" argument (and I know the word is loaded in the context of Ayn Rand), that of seeking a better understanding of the world.

My position is that emotional manipulation leads to a worse understanding of the world and decrease net welfare by encouraging people to be less rational. As such arguments that abuse emotion are not desirable (perhaps "appropriate" is the wrong word: any argument is appropriate on HN so long as it is civil, according to moderation and history).

To go deeper into the subject would require a discussion of whether the end justifies the means, which I'm not willing to spend considerable time and mental effort on right now (otherwise I'd have commented on the article at the top of this page already).

> Because you criticized the parent poster exactly for making such an assumption (whether he made it or not)...

I go on quite at length as to why I believe that he did. Feel free to disagree with me, so long as you explain why.

> Thankfully, that was not an ad hominem. It was a quote against a particular BOOK.

I've explained in detail why I disagree with you on this.

I see you have engaged into the discussion further, for which I thank you as this is a lot of fun (and I mean this genuinely, in a "thank you for taking the time and effort to engage into a discussion with me" way). Although this is the top comment reply right now, I'll continue the conversation on the other thread.

> So, kind of like Ayn Rand, which had a known history of blind following entourage?

Do I need to expand on why this, in this context, is ad hominem coupled with an inappropriate use of the association fallacy?

FWIW I happen to agree with your statement to an extent (that there exists a bit of a cult, and that it resembles blind following), but disagree with its relevance to this line of discussion, or the assumption I half get the impression of that all people who reference Ayn Rand are blind followers.

I personally know hundreds of people who have taken value from Ayn Rand's writings without agreeing with her on everything. Note that I am not sure whether that is what you are implying, but I'm addressing the possibility that it is.

Then demonstrate how they are wrong, with examples.

"Don't listen to this man's arguments, he's in fallacy fallacy territory."

Examples?

But I did not appeal to authority. I gave an example of both the Trump and Clinton campaigns using manipulation to illustrate my point. Why do you disagree?

Whilst I appreciate the recommendation, I do not understand its relevance in the context of this thread.

What I am reading in your comment is an implication:

- that by attacking the use of a quote to ridicule those who have read Ayn Rand and attempt to present her ideas, I am myself promoting Ayn Rand's ideas,

- and that the other ideas of Ayn Rand's (beyond those illustrated by the metaphors used in Atlas Shrugged that lead to this quote, which is very specifically about government use of bad laws for manipulation) are relevant to this discussion.

This would lead for a need for a response to Ayn Rand's body of ideas as relates to "economic and common-sense grounds" (which I assume is not related to the quote by the grandparent), as opposed to specifically the original post or the direction I have put the thread in.

Is this the correct interpretation?

If so, I disagree that Ayn Rand's entire body of ideas is relevant to the discussion of the specific case put forward by her metaphor and narrative in the context of this quote and discussion.

An example of this kind of association fallacy: Heinlein promoted incest in his later novels (e.g. Lazarus Long's relationship with his mother post time travel). Incest has negative connotations in modern society. It would be possible to use an appeal to emotion: "Heinlein promotes incest! You like Heinlein, so I can't listen to your argument, since you promote incest." It would, however, be manipulation to do so. A similar line of argument is used to attack certain religions today (I've even seen some French politicians try to paint Muslims as barbarians by pointing out a few incidents of goats slaughtered ritually in the bath tubs of social housing projects).

Every writer, every body of work has flaws. The beauty of discussing ideas is to hash out a better set of values and ideas to better model and understand the world we live in. There are even valid uses of appeal to emotion, when emotion is used to transmit higher information content than can be done via contextual awareness and shared culture, or to transmit complex ideas quickly. You could even argue that's a large reason for the existence of art (much of which is paid propaganda, other propaganda of the artist's ideas spread using appeal to emotion).

To use a writer's flaws to censor their work out of discussion is a subtler, more powerful version of Orwell's 1984 book censorship. I hold that all books should be discussed, even the "unpalatable" ones.

Why, again, attack the man instead of the argument? It's especially grating when the entire thread is about ad hominems.

Saying that Scott Adams has been known to be irrational is at best tangential to the example he gives to qualify whether the Trump and Clinton campaigns are using emotional manipulation, especially ad hominem attacks, to achieve their respective goals.

It's an appeal to emotion built upon an ad hominem: you use your attack on Scott Adams' ability to reason coupled with an association fallacy [1] to attack me in order to invalidate my line of argument.

Specifically: Scott Adams is irrational; you presented an example by Scott Adams; you therefore agree with an irrational man; this makes you irrational; your arguments are therefore irrational; let's not bother debating your irrational arguments.

I might be wrong, so attack the flaws in my reasoning, not me or the author or my examples.

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

> considering that the quote was the entirety of the post, I don't see how you can then claim that responding with a second quote discrediting the first is in some way responding to the person and not the argument

The first quote laid out a case using a narrative as a metaphor. It explicitly states its position, and as such is an appropriate use of a quote.

The second quote is entirely composed of appeals to emotion and its sole purpose is to ridicule the author of the first quote as well as any readers who might agree with it. As such it is not an appropriate response.

An appropriate response would have first established the premise of the first quote, then argued for or against it.

> "mid-20th century" "21st century"

The age of an idea has no bearing on its quality. To an extent, humanity refines and builds on ideas over time but the basis of Western civilisation dates from Antiquity. To take your specific date range, this post is typed on a browser, operating system, machine, and global network that all date from ideas from the mid 20th century which themselves build on a few centuries of reasoning.