htss2013

The problem with the quarterly profit motive is that it's not voluntary for the US electorate.

If Americans could vote on their preferred time intervals to manage towards, they wouldn't pick quarterly. Quarterly screws the overwhelming majority of people who care about the future.But it's not up for discussion, debate or the political process.

It's similar to US foreign military aid. Nothing anyone says or does will change it. Whoever or whatever controls it is beyond the reach of the political process, at least the part that 99% of people can participate in.

People treat quarterly myopia like an emergent phenomenon, like it's some kind of maximum that the country naturally converged upon. Except there's nothing natural about it, and it only benefits a small number of unaccountable people.

Yes there's absolutely a sweet spot. The ratio of pay to stress was best like 5 years into my career. I'd absolutely go back to that level of pay and responsibility if I could.

The problem is if that's your sweet spot, people perceive that and try to push you up. It's like making it look easy to do super well is unacceptable and you must be repositioned until you struggle more.

Who benefits from lack of inventory vs conversion condos? I can't think of anyone but residential REITs and home builders. The average SFH owner in some neighborhood doesn't see new condos downtown as a threat.

But every other vested interest is aligned with the developer handouts. Eg, construction, government for more taxes, unions, office REITs that want less competition, big finance who want the CMBS problem to go away. Even the mortgage industry would profit more from selling tons of new condos vs fewer more expensive resales.

Oh you meant lots of money for the lawyers, not the people whose food was adulterated, because in every class action I've ever seem, the payout amounts per person are never enough to change anyone's life. But the lawyer taking 1/3 of the sum total does well.

That's a difference in kind, not degree. People find watching movies interesting, not making them. They're two completely different experiences.

I don't see how the final sentence follows, that hyper logical low emotional response people would not be tempted to explore drug use.

If you're going to be hyper logical about it, there are some drugs that give you rewards that outweigh the risks, at least if done in judicious way.

Eg, some stimulant drugs can give you an edge in any number of endeavors with very low risk. Other types of drugs can give you an edge if you need to endure physical pain. Even plain alcohol makes you less logical and less controlled and could give you an edge in the same way poker players benefit from using a "crazy man" strategy.

If absolutely nothing else, you'd think this type of person would at least experiment. If they can mitigate risk, which is very possible, then it makes perfect risk/reward sense to find out if any drugs could be useful tools you keep in your back pocket.

It's not whataboutism to point out that in the USA, the default mode of life is bad for your health.

I dont mean that in the "everything causes cancer" big unknown sense. I mean that in quantifiable sense that allows you to weigh net benefits.

Eg, prolonged stress is bad for your cardiovascular system and lowers life expectancy by quantifiable amounts. Lack of money causes prolonged stress. So if a stimulant is what allows you to be productive enough to have ample money, you're arguably better off, because of that and the multitude of other health benefits from having money.

"What are you excessively curious about — curious to a degree that would bore most other people? That's what you're looking for."

I'm trying to make sense of this question. Usually people think about boredom as a matter of kind, not degree. X subject is either boring or not to most people, to any degree, small or large.

Conceiving of boredom as a matter of degree is counter intuitive. Is this meant to be an insightful nuanced point or am I just high?

As long as you do a land acknowledgement first, I agree this policy would indeed be optimal.

It's not that simple. You have to look at net cost and benefit. There are plenty of stimulant free paths in life that also cause cardiovascular damage, lack of sleep and 50 other problems.

The issue with living in a society where money so closely correlates with health is that anything bad for your money tends to also be bad for health.

"These people tend to have a very low incidence of drug use because they are less capable of feeling thrills and fears."

Are you talking about dark triad style psychopaths? This is the only personality type I've ever known to be both risk seeking and averse to drug use. Every other risk seeker I've ever known applied the same risk seeking attitude to drug use.

I used to think the same and then read about a study that lab tested a bunch of brands. The most expensive ones were more likely to be adulterated. It makes sense in a way. They command the highest margin, ie, highest reward for adulteration.

That said this was in a common US grocery store. It may not apply to really high end artesenal type olive oil generally bought by people who it wouldn't be worth to adulterate.

Also, it's worth noting that there a lot of places along the supply chain where things can be adulterated, and the incentives aren't all the same for every actor along the chain.

What exactly are you referring to about suing for a lot of money if an adulterant is found?

Is there a specific law that specifies damages? Because if not, it probably falls into the same civil framework as everything else where the amount of money sought has to be proven as proportional to damages. Unless it severely sickened you, it'd be difficult to quantifiably prove the damage that sawdust caused you.

It would be expensive but so would a banking and general financial crisis caused by empty office buildings and CMBS turning into toilet paper. The government will pay for it either way and the currency will be inflated either way. God forbid the money be used for housing instead of never ending wars.

BTC has been around since 2008. Today in 2023 BTC is like $27k. Does the longevity, ubiquity, price and liquidity of BTC fit the pattern of a useless get rich quick scheme? Has any such scheme existed this long, despite so much scrutiny and hostility, based on hype and confidence alone?

If no useless speculation scheme has ever thrived as long and as much as BTC, and it keeps on going, at what point do you have to ask if your opinion just doesn't fit with reality?

The shady exchanges and shitcoins muddy the waters but have fundamentally nothing to do with BTC and a handful of other top cryptos.

Oh look, some smart people came up with a model whose output disagrees with other smart people's models, and because such models and their modelers are never rigorously tested for predictive ability relative to each other in a way that manifests a clear hierarchy, these models are mostly tools of faith based reinforcement rather than methods of empirical analysis.

Not domestically. If the dollar had been gaining strength, the price of everything domestically would be getting cheaper.

No that is the children's version. CPI cannot go down without housing going down. Housing will not go down unless we have a massive rise in foreclosures. It's not about consumers reaching the point where they cannot consume. It's about making them homeless.

This sounds cruel but it is the only counterweight to runaway housing costs, if we are going to live in a world where housing is an investment and we restrict new supply severely.

If you believe this it implies you have gone full malthusian, because the innovation engine that made Google possible could also disappear Google, but without that engine we are all screwed.

If EU rules are too draconian, neither OpenAI nor their competitors has anything to gain from the EU. The only bluff to call would be if OpenAI were pretending they're too draconian when they're really not. I'll believe that bluff when EU compliant competitors popup who are on par with openAI. Thus far it hasn't happened.

You mean 80% of Shell shareholders vote to not let Shell burn.

These questions are useless unless they concede there are vastly different effects for different people.

For every 1 kid who was miserable and depressed at home, there are X kids utterly relieved they could escape the prison like environment of school.

For every adult suffering from isolation of WFH, there are X who had the most productive happiest times of their life.

For every 1 who got laid off and experienced misery, X realized they were so much happier staying home and tending to family.

Introverts finally had the world shaped to their personality for a brief moment.

But I guess all that matters in the end are gross averages.

Do the high profits come from the hardware or from rent seeking behavior in the app store and elsewhere?

You're saying there is general prejudice against non Spanish speakers in Miami? I could understand this in certain industries that heavily interface with Spanish speakers, but just in general? Really?!

What is the root problem that you think motivates Russia?

You're right that it's a logical conclusion given what's actually happening, but your examples aren't the reasons why people are starting to realize this.

Eg, a mystery entity blew up the nord stream 2 pipeline and caused so much methane to be released, that years worth of past and future carbon progress have been erased.

When people see that no one important cares about that because Russia is naughty, and people are still going on about your neighborhood design, what else is there to conclude?

Why would you assume the market efficiently adjusts for things like fines? Have you seen the stock market lately? There is at best a loose correlation between business reality and stock prices.

Why would there be a 1 to 1 relationship between the price of stocks and reality, when most investing is blind passive investing that ignores reality by design?

On a side note, putting people on antibiotics for years seems like a great way to turn your body into a gain of function experiment.

This is one of those causation vs correlation 101 things. Who lives within 2 miles of their workplace? Typically either young active people, rich people, or single types who would prefer a small place with a city lifestyle.

Who has the longest commutes? Poor people, older people with children who need bigger places, or people who for whatever reason don't like being near the hustle and bustle of the cities.

Big surprise, lots of confounding variables in these two very different self selected groups. Turns out older/poorer people with lots of obligations tend to have sleep problems.

What would happen with 100m that wouldn't happen with 10m? Seems like all of the same processes, traps and threats would exist for both, or at least 90% overlap.