mtgex

I don't feel I've acted like any of the things you're ascribing to me.

Corporations are not divorced from the people that run them, but the people that run them are divorced from the people they impact by their decisions.

Which countries are moving towards shorter workdays without government intervention?

Governments do frequently take advantage of their position. I do not dispute this.

We can prevent a constant churn of negative companies as well as tyrannical states. It's not an either or.

We have lots of restrictions on corporate behavior because markets do not solve human problems, they solve corporate problems.

The corporate response to long hours and low pay is to put up suicide nets. In the U.S. we have minimum wage, hourly restrictions, break, and overtime laws.

You can't trust the market to weed out bad players when the bad players are the ones with enough money to buy public perception and government influence. You have to force them to do the right thing through legislation.

Yeah I wasn't aware of it either before.

I mean, yeah kind of. But I don't think that's entirely accurate. Wikipedia says "Initial funding was provided by Kapor, Wozniak, and an anonymous benefactor."

It's not like he funneled his Lotus gains into the EFF. A foundation is also a money raising endeavor and there were likely many people who contributed a great deal in their early years (and now).

Your statement could just as easily be applied to Wozniak, as in "the money made from Apple (a game changing computer company) eventually went on the found the EFF". It's a fun fact, but not all that accurate.

Yeah, the article discusses this.

I'm not sure, the article doesn't mention any of that.

It actually tries (weakly) to claim the opposite, with statements like "Carlos and Wilber both had very similar white mobile phones" and "We are a little bit more ego-centric, bigger flirts."

Nothing about nurture playing a role though.

I am having a civil discourse and did not intend to cause a polarization.

You cannot discuss luck and success in life without discussing race.

In no way did I suggest that people should want to change their race.

Many people deny this, so I think it is an important part of the higher conversation and inherently productive to discuss.

People tend to think luck is heavily about positioning yourself to succeed.

I think that's true, but I also believe that the most important factors to putting you in those lucky positions are not in your control.

Someone who is not already born into a lucky position has to get even more lucky to succeed.

You telling me to simply stop talking about something that I believe is an important point to make is very strange.

Yes of course, but I don't believe that's what the commenter was talking about.

The comment said it is not a race or gender issue, which I disagree with.

No it's not mandatory at all, just incredibly advantageous. Much more so than physical attractiveness, although that helps a great deal in life as well.

But it is a race and gender issue. I'm not trying to divide people, just stating facts.

Attaining wealth is much easier if you're born into a specific race, thus your chances of being born wealthy are directly correlated with your chances of being white.

Attaining wealth is much easier if you're male. Among the many reasons are increased career opportunities in general, less chance of a stalled career because of child rearing, greater status in negotiations, etc.

All I'm saying is it is incredibly lucky to be born a white male in a society which so highly values them, and try as hard you might, you can't position yourself to get that advantage if you weren't born with it.

You can't position yourself to be born a white male, which I believe affords the greatest advantages, and opens the most opportunities of any personal attribute you can have.

Am I missing some detail here, or is this post getting downvoted solely because it's a faith based app?

I'm not a religious believer but surely a company has a right to build a meditation app targeting a huge segment of the population?

Yeah I can see that, although in that case you do need to prove to your agent what you were making before, and if they feel it's not worth their time they will be more likely to pass on working with you.

But that's a whole paradigm shift in thinking about agency, and they're perfectly happy with how things operate currently. They would have to spend a lot more time actually negotiating.

In the case of real estate, the idea that you absolutely need to work with an agent is so entrenched that it's very difficult to get anyone to consider the alternative outlook.

I think there may be varying degrees of willpower such that a barrier can help and avoidance is itself a barrier.

I created a Chrome plugin to block all Hacker News comments and just provide a list of the links because I found myself wasting too much time reading Hacker News comments but I still wanted to be up to date on the actual news part.

All it did was make me waste more time because I got into the unconscious habit of opening Hacker News in incognito mode to avoid the plugin.

I'm not a huge gamer really, but I've also found it difficult to turn off games once I get involved. I've spent many many hours / early mornings playing Hearthstone, which is engineered to be addictive.

I eventually cut free by destroying my collection in game and locking myself out by resetting my credentials to a random email and password. The cost of starting completely from scratch has kept me from returning.

Some people have willpower. Some people need to consciously avoid things that they find unhealthy for themselves.

This suffers from the same issue with using a real estate agent to buy / sell a house.

Agents are not financially incentivized to get you the best offer. They are financially incentivized for you to accept any offer, period.

The extra commission on negotiating a higher offer does not justify the time and energy. Additionally, it increases the chances that either party will terminate the negotiation outright.

Agents are not working for you, they are working on closing a deal and in fact the agent and the company they're selling you to have the exact same incentives. Get you in as quickly and as cheaply as possible.

Negotiation is more about soft skills, charisma, information obfuscation, and outright lying than it is about fighting to get what you "deserve."

Yeah, the article addresses this question pretty clearly.

Even things that "feel" obvious to us should be studied. We shouldn't just take it for fact that an emotional support animal is a valid method of coping with depression or anxiety.

Especially when there are alternatives which have gone through and continue to be subjected to rigorous scientific study.

If an animal helps you cope with these things, yes by all means go for it. But you can't state that it is a valid alternative to things like medication or therapy if you've never tried them. This person may well be depriving him/herself of an even healthier life which, incidentally makes their pet's life healthier and happier as a result.

As lukas099 has said, the book does not take the view that you're saying it takes.

Cherry picking quotes out of the context of an entire book can get you to any conclusion you want to come to, especially if you don't know the rest of the contents of the book.

I encourage you to read the book before taking a side that you read an article about.

A few thoughts on this:

The title of the article made me think it's a concept phone, as in not real and unlikely to be produced. I almost didn't click on the article because if that's the case I don't really care.

It looks just like the Galaxy S8, which is a great phone with a great camera that's much more affordable.

It's crazy how many words I see in life (Sirocco) that I know the meaning of specifically because of a lifetime of playing Magic: the Gathering.

But all of that is discussed at length in the book we're talking about. To pick out the word "selfish" and say that that's the gene model displays to me that you haven't read the book.

It's difficult to defend a book's premise from someone who hasn't read it and just wants to debate the meaning of the title.

lukas099 is arguing one of the central points of the book, that altruistic behavior is inherently selfish on a genetic level.

You seem to be arguing completely based on the title of the book, which itself makes clear that the title is provocative but not entirely accurate, which makes me think you have not read it.

While that's true, the context of the statement makes it clear that's not what's being discussed at all.

No, I'm not a trusting fool. I don't know how you came to that conclusion.

I think you're arguing for the opposite of what you're saying. Con artists rely completely on our subconscious judgement, rather than rational thinking, and second guessing it is often the key to realizing you're a mark.

Not trusting your gut instincts, but rather taking the time to think things through rationally and come up with a basis for your judgements is what I am arguing for.

I didn't suggest that trusting your gut means you're not aware you can be biased.

I completely disagree. I think our "gut" is infinitely biased. No one is immune. If you believe you do not have racial, ethnic, and gender biases you are wrong.

And, if you read the article, everyone's gut reaction was that this man was an unassuming, down to earth, great guy, and they got along with him very well at first. The article makes clear that their gut reaction failed them.

It seems they've deleted the video and rereleased an identical version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=233RzfqYExI

My cynical side says it's specifically to divert attention away from this comment.

I agree, but I think the most irresponsible part is the texting while driving.

Edit:

The video was deleted and an identical video reposted to their YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=233RzfqYExI

I think that's a poor interpretation.

Yes, putting the two words "fake" and "news" together into a Google search happened prior to pizzagate. But the term "fake news" as it's understood now came about as a result of the propaganda that was spread during the election and only recently became part of our lexicon, lexicon meaning common usage.

Fake news was not part of our lexicon well before pizzagate.

Pizzagate refers to one instance of fake news, but fake news cannot be used in place of the phrase. I would say the term may have been pushed in place of "propaganda" since media outlets wanted to distance themselves from the tactics, but pizzagate cannot be used to refer to any fake news in general.

Had there been no pizzagate we would still be discussing fake news, as it is only one of a multitude of examples.

I don't understand the argument you're making with the Google trends link.

What I see is that a term which entered the common lexicon specifically to describe things such as Pizzagate is correlated with searches for the thing it describes.

Is there some other point you're trying to make?