internaut

Thiel and Schmidt have two very different worldviews, they had a debate on capital 'P' progress a few years ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsXFwy6gG_4

Many people find Thiel's argument hard to believe, especially if they are aspirational middle class types. This is because normal people have a chronocentric bias. Of all our biases, this one is probably the strongest of all.

If you find Thiel's position hard to believe, it is worth examining what our grandparents thought about the future.

"The Home of the Future in 1999" (from the 1960s)

https://youtu.be/0RRxqg4G-G4

I am at the point where I consider the optimistic narrative (ex-computation) utterly without supporting evidence. It is all PR and marketing.

Here is one example. Consider the discovery of DNA. Important scientifically. And all the resultant research into genetics since.

But tell me what relevance any of it has had to the average person? Have we new drugs? More effective treatments? Cheaper medicine?

This is a minor heresy among the 'educated' but to me the answer is clearly no.

Think about that for a minute or two. Either I am mad, or in half a century there has been no measurable effects. If the second is true then why do we believe CRISPR is going to revolutionize everything outside? The discovery of DNA itself, the Human Genome Project. The cheaper shotgun sequencing. These should have had enormous material effects on society. It does nothing!

Food prices should be much lower. They are static or increasing. Timber should be of higher quality. It is actually much lower than before. Any non-niche new building materials out of biotech. I am unable to identify any. New breeds of animals for livestock, pets, where are they? The farmers I know use a process mostly identical to their ancestors from several thousand years ago, only a little more streamlined thanks to more specific egg/sperm selection.

Yes you can give me niche applications and cool stuff in a lab somewhere, but I'm asking about people's offices, homes, on the streets.

The fact is that we've been talking about vat-grown meat and lab-grown replacement organs for 50 years, and they aren't here yet. Do we have to wait for another 50?

Not everybody's cup of tea to be sure.

> I don't see how speaking the truth and being polite could ever rule each other out.

Saying something negative or critical can be interpreted as being being impolite. It happens all the time.

There is a spectrum of civility and we're ascending that spectrum towards political correctness, not away from it.

How I know this is:

If you articulate your premise, don't use abusive language, but still are attacked for taking a bite out of something, then there is a bias.

This is natural. I have it. You have it. We all have it.

The social world is in constant conflict with reality. In fact it seems like some kind of game for people to increasingly be in denial of the extremely obvious so they can score points and be social climbers.

The result is a world where you have to have Straussian interpretations of everyday speech.

> In fact, HN is the one place where i've seen the phrase "I disagree" the most often. Not because people are so disagreeable, but because they openly, and politely, state their disagreement if there is any.

I disagree!

Well not quite. HN is better than most places where geeks gather to ponder thoughts. It is still heading in the wrong direction.

This is a testable proposition.

Make a list of five to ten statements, right now, that contravene majority held opinions. You don't have to agree with the statements and indeed you probably won't. Poll somebody to check if you're doing it right. Then post those statements on an active current thread on HN and see what happens.

You are likely to find that tone policing goes way beyond merely preventing spam and maintaining some kind of civility.

> . I really like the British and Australian format of a few dense episodes rather than 12 or 22 US episodes where it's 60% filler material.

Agreed. I bought both seasons on DVD and the original soundtrack for both seasons, then sent all my friends a copy of the DVD/Bluray for Christmas. I wish there was a better way to support projects you like though. In particular microtransactions on the Net are total fucking shit, it needs to be built-in to OS or Browser as a universal standard and simple.

> I heard they will make a US version.

I'm afraid not. That was David Fincher/HBO and it's not going ahead.

> But it's creeping into US with the Smile-or-die push everywhere.

Including Hacker News.

"Speak the truth to power!"

"Oh, and be polite."

...

Then it comes to the point you don't know if anybody agrees with you or not because they're being so coy.

> But academia is petty and political, and from what I'm reading, his odds don't look good.

Yes, he should recalibrate his ideas of why he wanted to work in academia.

Today if you want to get ahead you need a patron and some people who know enough to bounce ideas off them.

I think it increasingly the case that universities are the worst place to send a real intellectual. Some of the most useless people in the world are respected here.

I've been to one, I'll say what I think. I think most university people are posers. Completely unfit. Institutionalized.

Then they are requested to perform. And they cannot. They like are those plants specialized to perform only in a certain Alpine microclimate.

Result: psychological sickness and poor pay. Employers don't know what to do with these people. And society insists on manufacturing more of them. It's a sick system, and it is best to get out while you're still honest.

> the key to getting stuff done in a hierarchical organization is tact. I think he was a poor politician

> Rocking the boat publicly (as this post clearly shows he is OK with) is not the mark of good political skills.

You're not wrong.

However shouldn't we be asking ourselves why we are requiring such skills?

The truth is that being a good politician has an inverse relationship with being a geek.

Peter Thiel has been pointing this out for many years. He asks, do we really have scientists anymore? Or are they really bureaucrats and politicians pretending to be scientists?

I am convinced it is the latter. I think we have whole universities filled with cargo cult science.

This relates neatly with some awkward facts about the modern education system.

For all the extraordinary efforts and feats of intellectual prowess it is also extraordinary how little they practically achieve. The number of breakthroughs has dramatically declined. Once you get past the PR bullshit and backslapping there is very little actually happening in many places in the 'innovation economy'.

Take nanotech. I am not aware of any advances that make their appearance in a consumer's home. I can think only of a handful of niche applications like expensive hydrophobic coatings. If the advances were occurring in the factories we should be seeing more refined low cost goods on a massive scale. Is that actually happening? I don't know that it is. We've been promised a lot and been waiting for long time.

Take biotech. Nothing. Just nothing. I think the last biotechnology I interacted with was a yogurt. Can anybody name a single biotech invention or innovation that actually exists in people's houses? In the 50s and 60s we had the Green Revolution, that counts. However the price of food has been rising considerably for several years now. There is certainly no food product that I consume that has become much cheaper.

The discovery of DNA is at least half a century ago. Despite much fanfare about CRISPR, why should we be sure that this time biologists are bringing home the bacon? Is anybody willing to bet that in ten years time there will be GM cool pets, much cheaper food, much cheaper quality wood for building from GM trees? I would not take that bet.

What about energy? Willing to bet your energy bills get much lower in the future?

tldr; Maybe a whole lot of people are totally full of shit. The basic metric of progress is that things get cheaper, but they're not, so it isn't happening. If you're not willing to bet that prices decrease then maybe your confidence in the future of invention/innovation is misplaced.

> Indeed! I kinda meant "just slap them together and to hell with the consequences"

I think he proceeded with that plan, I looked up some other photos of that build. He nailed some tarp with the containers into a kind of gable roof. I try to be as positive and constructive as possible with people's projects but sometimes it is very clear there exists a species of person who never had the thought "huh, maybe I should google that" or "this must have been done before, I wonder what best practice is". I suppose there's something to be said for being fearless.

> The idea of buying land a little way out of town and constructing my own dwelling using reclaimed materials crossed my mind a lot.

I've said before that you can theoretically reclaim an entire house if you have enough time and employ your own labour. That is commendable, especially if you're stuck with few opportunities to work for money, but it is not the easiest path. You'll need a place to store large items secure from thieves and rain/sun.

> When it's been -4 degrees every morning for a week in the middle of winter going to work with cold steel is finger-snapping. I wonder how they make it through the winters. Probably crawl up inside their refrigerator where it's warmer.

I've been soaked to the skin with water in winter so I know how that feels. They'll just spend a fortune on electricity. In their place I might have buried the containers to alleviate the temperature change. There is also a nice new/old technology called PCM - phase change material which would allow you to average out the temperature shifts from night to day by storing thermal energy like a battery. It releases heat from the walls when the temp drops and basically acts as artificial thin thermal mass. I think it's an Ozzie company too that does it.

Since the net connection at the embassy got cut, how do we know anything Wikileaks has said since is really from Julian?

He can't have signed anything and we haven't seen him physically. We have no evidence.

I see no reason to take anything on faith. I don't think it is likely he is dead but I'm not overburdened with trust either.

> self-correcting as sophisticated investors would notice the pricing errors

What was it Keynes said about rationality and being solvent?

Yes. Watch out for sea people. Possible fish-frog hybrids belonging to the Esoteric Order of Dagon.

Beware of the Sea People.

For more real horror stories read "The Collapse of Complex Civilizations" The Ik is the shortest example of what can only be called Lovecraftian History.

What makes this material scary is that it might not be the past.

I think there is a chance the conspiracy theory is true.

My confidence of that is steadily growing from a low number, say 15%, but it is growing.

If he doesn't appear in public by the election date then he is either manipulating the public or he is already dead.

Circumstantial happenings increase my suspicions.

1. Internet Cutting. 2. Deadman's Hand. 3. Armed Police nearby. 4. Nearest Airport closed down b/c 'chemical spill'. 5. Internet outrages across major new media news sites.

This may be all unrelated but the optics look shady.

Probability is still low because it's not in HRC interests to have a scandal right now but weirder shit has gone down before.

Apart from the interesting taboos of race and sex, there is another interesting thing I've wanted to talk about.

I don't believe the left and right are recent inventions, I think it is biological. Both the left and right have their own taboos. Those taboos spring immediately into existence when a topic such as sex or race is brought up. You automatically see both sides lining up against each other.

This is very interesting!

We should be asking why do the left and right exist? Why is it so powerful and pervasive across all cultures and times?

My intuition tells me it is some sort of regulation mechanism, but I've never seen this subject discussed before.

There's a similar subject here with IAQ or indoor air quality. The experts have been saying it's far more serious than the effects of second hand smoke.

Truth: indoor air quality is for shit, and has always been shit, and it is slowly killing us by contributing to stroke, heart disease, cancers and respiratory disease.

People look at the smog in China and are shocked at the state of the air, as they ought to be.

However most people spend most of their time indoors. The concentration of pollutants in proximity to you is what is dangerous.

Indoor air quality in the average home is so bad that it easily exceeds the threshold at which health inspectors would shut down a restaurant.

If you want to live longer there is a few simple things you can do. If you have money, get an actual effective vent for your cooking area and obtain a HRV. If you don't have money acquire a selection of plants and put them into your kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Then ensure you open a window (using a directed fan if possible) when cooking.

If anybody wants more information I'll look up the videos on IAQ and NASA study confirming what I've been saying.

There's more strapping with earthquake straps I imagine.

I was talking to a lady /u/sixup on reddit about her (excellent) Tiny House in Vancouver. She was thinking of getting these blocks of rubber inter-dispersed with thin plates of steel. This would go under her house and hold it upright. Earthquakes wouldn't do anything to such a house, and it's not expensive. So if you're worried about that and can lift your house, I'd do it.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing. No word on the materials but that does seem quite reasonable. I'm not sure why I don't see more people buying these then.

I'm guessing getting a Lot in a good zip code, and then having to match housing requirements from local zoning or the HOA is what drives prices. Rival goods basically.

For me Season 1 was perfection, Season 2 was close to perfection but a little rushed towards the end, and then I wished that they have developed a Season 3 (with a red/blue schema)

Don't you wish you found out what happened with W.W?

The characters were terrific, especially J.H.

The storyline was the very best. There was so much world left to explore and and I wish we'd seen a Utopia derivative/side story from David Fincher's version of it. I think it would have been a perfect fit for the director of Fight Club and still a tall ask for him to live up to.

Like the author of that imdb review I felt it was very real for some reason despite the decor.

I agree. Building science technology has been great but I wish the botany biotech people would get on with making hardwoods that grow in a year with hundreds of rings (artificial wintering). Maybe this is off topic but I have seen no serious innovation from biotech. GM food is mostly banned in Europe, but even outside of food we should be seeing great strides in raw material production to a higher standard and I'm just not seeing it.

I feel that most people building today optimize for the cheapest per sq ft, but if you are a builder owner and are a geek, you can really buy some amazing materials and employ some clever methods like advanced framing. You can construct a house with an energy bill of $100 a year if you want.

I think the future is in building smaller and smarter.

> Changes in land use regulation are going to cost you a lot more than material changes.

That's a fact. However I'm going for a tiny/small house in the countryside so I'll just dodge that bullet.

If you are not concerned with the difficulty of running plumbing/electric, you still have thermal bridging through steel at 400 times the conductivity of wood. The people who use steel framing often thermally isolate thin strips of metal, not the entire wall. The insulation job the guy says he hasn't done yet, he's going to find out he'll need to insert a cavity air gap. If he chooses to stick it with a gap as external sheathing to save space he'll still need to contend with condensation on this very conductive surface. If he goes for passive house level air tightness and internal smart vapour barrier he could be fine but somehow I think he's just winging it which means water vapour will condense inside his house and not be able to dry out. Hello mildew and everything he owns will rot. You can build with shipping containers, but you've got to really know what you're doing.

tldr; A guy spent 50k+ to put his house inside a heatsink. This looks environmentally friendly but with the probable dehumidifier requirements it is probably much worse than regular building.

If you enjoyed Black Mirror you have to watch Utopia by Channel 4 in the UK. It's remarkable. Don't search for a synopsis online. It's a sci-fi conspiracy thriller like none you'll have ever seen before.

This is an imdb review that echoed my sentiments:

"First of, I made an account at IMDb solely so that I could submit this review.

Utopia is exceptional. It is a masterpiece. It gets 10\10 from me.

I won't explain what Utopia is about because I don't want to give any possible hint of what is to come, so I'll describe it by comparing it to other things.

Buy the DVD or download the show and your life will get.... stranger. Its rather unsettling how Utopia gets under your skin.

There are a few television shows that share some similarity to Utopia.

For example, if you enjoyed Fringe, the X-Files, then you'll be quite at home with Utopia's paranoid wanderings.

So then you cross the weirdness of Fringe and the paranoia of the X-Files with the violence of Kill Bill and the action\suspense of the Jason Bourne series.

Now cross that already bizarre hybrid with a series of scientific TED Talks given by Joesph Mengale, yes, the Nazi who chopped countless pairs of twins to pieces for the greater good.

I'm not sure which is more bizarre. That description or that incredibly, it works.

However Utopia is much, much darker than any of those. It is the darkest TV series I have ever seen. It also as others have said, feels very real.

A note of warning. When I said Utopia was dark, I was not joking. If you suffer from excessive anxiety or you're squeamish, then do not watch Utopia. Because this TV show is nothing like you've ever seen before, it will affect you. You will be thinking about the themes in it long after you've watched it.

The violence in Utopia isn't actually that strong at all, most of it occurs off the screen. But the intense atmosphere of paranoia which accompanies it makes it brutally real.

On the other hand since the governments of the world have apparently taken a leaf out of Utopia's manuscript lately with regard to surveillance, Utopia could well seem prophetic in a few years time. This really is a TV series for 21st century of flying killer robots and universal surveillance.

The Sopranos changed the way I thought about television. I thought television was for lightweights until I watched The Sopranos. It was like thinking books were mostly about erotica and then coming across Shakespeare and entering a world full of subtle complexities on a bunch of levels.

Utopia is nothing like The Sopranos. But the way it'll change how you view television is very similar.

Just one last thing. There is an American show called "Person of Interest" or something like that which has similar themes. Watch this instead.

In a word: this is intense. "

It also has one of the strangest soundtracks you'll ever hear. Listen to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2f6MfEzhvo

Warning: Do not watch if you are especially prone to paranoia, depression or anxiety.

In particular anybody who reclaims a shipping container has not done the math. It's an idea that sounds good or affordable but it takes a lot of money and expertise to make that work properly even if the container was free. It would make considerably more sense to acquire a large cardboard box.

> You could buy what that $47k got you, today, for quite a bit less

Demonstrate this please. Without materials substitutions. Genuinely interested in the answers.

The cost of raw materials is very high as far as I know.

You can't get good hardwood, copper and so on without paying top dollar. Same goes for slate, trim.

I know that because I am actually attempting to build a tiny house in a traditional style for a little higher than 50k.

This would be a very valid comparison because it is;

1. Ignores cost of land. 2. Labour is free. 3. Doesn't ignore mod-cons.

I think the real difference is a normal person could have afforded the older house with a legal status!

I agree, I think that is literally the case.

The part of the human brain that deals with 'unified logic' or whatever you want to call it, is visibly absent because it is not there. It was never employed to make those decisions, I think we should be asking broader questions about why not because I believe it to be a societal issue and not a recreational one.

This aside it is worth noting that in days of old they had 'style handbooks' (because they built idiot things in the old days too) to guide them in keeping overall symmetry. I don't think that solves for everything but it would have prevented the worst atrocities.

Just like an anti-patterns or patterns book really.

> What's crazy is the price: $47,085.20 in todays dollars.

You're not crazy. Houses really were more affordable for your grandparents. The same with mine.

Today for I or you to purchase the same thing would cost many multiples. At lowest I'd say 150k, but most likely 350 and in what the middle class today euphemistically call a "good school distinct" it would be about over a million dollars.

So many educated people in 'modern days' have beliefs about the present and past which are in complete opposition to the facts.

> Something very bad happened in architecture around world war 2.

Thank you for noticing. The answer is literally a conspiracy against traditional building. I won't 'go on'. I'll demonstrate with images.

Here I'll insert a former comment I made related to this subject.

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3641/3546348607_d60d612554_z.j...

The first thought that struck me when I saw it was "that is a visual expression of Orwellian thought".

Deep down a majority of people prefer to live in houses that look like this:

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/2e/40/a4/2e40a4bf4e33...

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/74/71/2747107_896ab24...

Do you remember the Shire in the Lord of the Rings? That is a synopsis of what people feel when they think of 'home'. Honest, humble but well crafted dwellings affordable by the average hobbit. As master Bilbo is keen to tell us:

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."

Brutalism is quite obviously something that came out of Minas Morghul.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/enbLZaUyr3s/maxresdefault.jpg

It is an architectural anti-thesis.

Mr Wtbob on HN made the most apropos remark that:

There is little more care for the inhabitants inside than there is for the ants, the ivy, the birds, the earthworms which could live on & around a homier structure. A Brutalist building spares no more thought for its inhabitants than does an abbatoir for those who enter its confines: they are a necessary nuisance, but mustn't be permitted to intrude upon the happiness of the architect anymore than absolutely required.

Brutalism is a kind of totalitarianism of architecture, a demand that those who build, those who inhabit and those who maintain must constantly bend their wills to the will of the Great Man (the architect), bend without love, without understanding, without hope, without fear, without joy, just mute, abject obedience to a cold and uncaring plan.

No thanks. Give me ivy, give me bricks, give me marble, give me dirt and grass and trees; give me men and women and children; give me sheep and dogs and horses; give me colours and light and ornament; give me emotion and delight; give me, in short, life.

It's clear to internaut and probably wtbob, that so called modern architecture is actually an attempt to erase the past, which is all the more amazing because all the users want traditional architecture to be built.

When all the end users want one thing, and most of the designers are wanting another thing we have to seriously ask what is doing on.

Of course it's not just architecture, it's in the art world too and the music world.

Nothing remarkable has come out of those for many decades now. The public is unable to name a 'masterwork' from those fields of endeavor.

Didn't see your post there, sorry.

I agree, but I try to lead with my strongest case that can't be denied objectively. The concern about implementing 'actual useful shit' e.g. not flinging birds at pigs, is very much at the forefront of my mind but it's a harder case to argue even if it would be more meaningful, esp. to the uninitiated.

> So if it's me calling for a boycott of a bunch of people richer than me, is that OK? All the YC partners, part- or full-time, are richer than me.

Not advocating it of course, but you are within your rights to do so. It is not illegal or immoral. A boycott is very different to an employer punishing employees with firings for their political views.

That said; I also believe (not talking legal, this is my opinion) employers are within their rights to hire whoever they wish. Particularly they are not obligated to hire people who they believe will disrupt their company. It is best practice to separate politics from business, and still be aware that humans are political animals at the same time, I hope that makes sense.

Ellen Pao is unlikely to hire a libertarian, technocommerialist or neoreactionary but that is okay. However she cannot advocate against them by blackmailing other people, that would be stepping over the line. It would be wrong were Peter Thiel to lean on companies to fire Democrats and hippies, though he is highly suspicious about hippies.

> However, I can predict with some certainty that someday somebody's going to do something you don't like, you're going to make an argument that crosses the line you yourself drew, and that I'm going to be really amused when someone gives you the lecture you're giving other people right now, because ultimately the harshest thing I can do to someone like you is hope you someday get to live in a world that holds the values you've espoused.

Maybe. I cannot know future-me. However I do know I'm content for Communists to exist and they represent the furthest political position from mine.

My position is that exit (voting with feet) is preferable to voice (voting/media), so that if we have lots of variety intellectually and people are free to move from one position to another it shall produce more productive outcomes. That means that even groups of people I heavily dislike would have room to spread their wings.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with our political ideas but since they will be located in an independent Seastead or SEZ (similar to the factions in the Diamond Age) the fallout from awful policies won't affect me personally. At most interventions would only occur if people were being prevented from leaving. I think this would produce interesting results and a faster political evolution than the world witnesses today. After all I'm sure you'll agree, it is highly likely we both have strongly held priors that are false, but cannot know it until it is demonstrated. With competition and natural selection we can be more scientific about politics.

That's what it is.

It is creepy to be hyperaware of male socialization but then to be ok with women only gyms and yoga classes.

Most young men aren't interested in Church or the GAA (sporting organization) today, which leaves basically the pub, not a healthy environment in some cases, as the remaining place a male could make new friends.

Here I'll suggest something controversial (on HN) but obvious. I don't believe men have the same kind of friendships most women do. This is because for many woman in society they have a stronger connection to their family.

Friendships for men are something more, they require them in order to build cooperative things like companies.

The fact is that the majority of risky enterprises are created and led by men. I don't need to put in caveats as legally required in California /s, it is so and has been so for millennia.

Several famous entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley have said that the best people to start a company with, are people you have known for a long time beforehand. That can only mean a friend or close associate.

My question would be: Why on earth are we surprised at a decline in new business creation when the basic link that makes it work, friendship, has been under strain for decades?!

> I call bullshit. Everyone here knows it was a referendum, not an election,

I meant referendum.

> and everyone here knows where they're supposed to vote

I didn't receive the card in the post that enables you to know which polling station to go to so I had to visit the nearest ones by process of elimination.

> regarding the homosexuality scare, it's the right and conservatives you have to thank for, not the left.

I am fully aware that the right, specifically the Christian right has persecuted homosexuals in the past.

However today it is primarily the left that are manufacturing moral panics.

> happy is a place where the mythical Greek creatures dwell, and where they have enough good sense to shut down questionable establishments

It was nothing more than a woodworking cooperative, not a cabal of sinister intrigue against the sisterhood.

Watch Utopia.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/utopia

I judge it better than Black Mirror. Don't google any information about it because it will sound stupid, just watch it outright.