nirnira

The important difference is that all of this acquisition is a result of tens of thousands of years of consistent natural selection. It's hard-wired because humans have needed these things, and children have needed them as fast as possible, for a long long time.

The things humans attempt to learn in modern times however (non-native languages, formal systems of logic, the ability to argue and reason in complex fashions, the ability to program complex systems) are completely evolutionarily unprecedented, and the result is clear: children are not able to acquire these behaviours effortlessly. They don't just rub off. Instead they (generally) require focussed, extensive supervision and tuition from humans that have already put in the hard work of mastering them.

So the relevance of neuroplasticity still seems small to me.

And now that I am older (mid-20s) and my brain is supposedly less plastic, but I have motivation, context and determination in abundance, I feel like I am really learning and developing for the first time in my life.

Edit: From the sounds of things, it's going to be very interesting:

Dan Melton, deputy chief technology officer at Granicus, a San Francisco-based startup that puts government data in the cloud, has hired two students with humanities backgrounds from App Academy. He said he looks for those students because they’re able to work better with other programmers and clients and understand the larger meaning of the work.

"We already have a lot of software whiz kids," Melton said. "We like to hire people who are interested in public affairs and civic engagement."

Sounds like it's going to be quite the culture change.

2) "Serfs" are medieval. And besides, this is an argument about free citizens, so the very concept is irrelevant.

3) The colleges were all independent, spontaneously organised by poor citizens. Anyway, apart from subsidised grain and generalised patronage the Roman ruling classes didn't design social welfare systems akin to anything we would recognise (and again, the comparison is difficult, because the patricians were generally using their own fortunes to win favour with the masses)

4) The colleges insured primarily against the possibility of funeral costs in the event of sudden death - the most important shock financial event the average poor Roman expected to face. There was no effective medical technology in Roman times, but Romans cared a lot about having a good funeral and being remembered.

5) The colleges weren't "available" to anyone unless they paid their way. If you wanted that protection, you paid your membership dues. So yes, if the destitute old free citizen had been prudent and consistently paid their dues before striking bad luck, they would be okay (well, they'd get their nice funeral, but you know what I mean.)

6) Maybe your millions of people making "less than the living wage" (however you define that) should take a leaf out of the book that seems popular to users of this site - looking for ways to improve the value of the services they offer?

7) What is so wrong with the idea of people directly petitioning others for funds to purchase healthcare? Heck, they don't even need to just petition the extremely wealthy. Powerful modern technology allows people to petition the entire world for funds (if they can convince people their cause is worthy.)[1] One of the benefits of living in a more advanced age than 50BC.

8) I feel like you are imagining me wrong. To be clear: I am young, broke, and largely unaccomplished. I have no significant assets beyond my intelligence and my ambition. I have no vested interest to protect. In fact, I am someone who stands to gain the most short-term from these sorts of welfare policies. Hell, I even work for "minimum wage" currently - another thing I would like to see abolished!

I simply want society to reward and encourage people who provide genuine value, and stop forcing productive citizens to subsidise unproductive citizens, without any accountability or metrics for the benefit of their investment, because a) I want to make my way up in the world honestly, by offering true value for trade, and b) because I am concerned about the economic damage caused by pervasive, dysfunctional contemporary policy.

If society got rid of all this terrible policy, the abundance of opportunities from the ensuing economic growth would do more to improve the fortunes of the assiduous in a few years than social welfare has accomplished in decades.

[1] www.kickstarter.com

So in essence you imply that the state must act as a coercive mechanism to override the personal interest of its productive citizens.

From where I stand it appears that you endorse tyranny. Can you explain otherwise?

Until the full dangers of death and failure operate as incentives, moderated only by the free choice of individuals to cooperate and render assistance, our economies will never grow to their full extent, and our prosperity will always remain limited. In the long term, any society that clings to these dysfunctional social policies will be outcompeted by societies that discard them. In the much longer term, if the planet as a whole is held back by these policies, we may expect to be outcompeted by other, more progressive alien civilisations.

There have been plenty of insurance systems developed throughout time whereby people can hedge their risks. Previously however insurance was informal and consensual - you signed up to a Roman college. You and everyone else in the society engaged in it of your own free choice. If your group couldn't manage its finances it went broke (or more accurately appealed to an aristocrat.)

Nowadays we live in such enlightened times that the elements of choice and freedom have largely been removed.

Social welfare weakens incentives for individuals to plan and live for the future. People should pay for their own lives with their own dollars, and if they are too foolish and imprudent to account for their old age, they should suffer the consequences of their own actions. They have no one to blame but themselves for not analysing the dangers.

Once people become aware that there are no second chances, behaviour will improve. It's a short-term pain for a major long-term benefit.

Rooting/installing ROMs is completely optional. It's just there if you want it, and it can be a lot of fun. You did buy a pocket computer after all - don't you want to see what it can do?

I use Swiftkey instead of Google's stock keyboard, and Firefox instead of Chrome. Both are quality apps which look great, have zero malware issues, and seriously enhance the quality of my smartphone experience. The improvement is way beyond what you can get on iOS, simply because Apple won't allow anyone to modify the core experience so deeply. And I haven't explored the offerings in full - I still use the stock caller and messaging client. I'm confident that high-quality alternatives are available.

I use simple stock widgets currently - Gmail and Google Calendar only. They look great, they're simple, and again they seriously improve my phone experience. Again, I haven't really explored widgets yet but I'm sure there are some seriously powerful, high-quality options available.

And the filesystem is only visible if you download an app for it specifically. Out of the box the file management is similar to iOS, just more powerful with the intents system. This isn't an example of Google not being able to make up their mind, they've just decided to allow people to explore that side of the system if they want.

Android is really a great system for people who like computers. All of the things which Apple decided people shouldn't be interested in doing with their pocket computers are available in some way on Android. It's very gratifying for curious people.

It's fair enough to say that all these options come with dangers. But they also come with potential! Great potential.

1) Generally much easier rooting/access to bootloader/custom ROM installation than iOS. 2) Install custom keyboards, home launchers, icon sets 3) Change default web browsers, caller, messaging apps to third-party alternatives 4) Full access to filesystem 5) Fully customisable homescreen widgets 6) Full sharing intents system 6) Generally more "computery" interface - downloads displayed in notifications pane for example.

And of course you have the advantage of a choice of a range of devices with much larger screens than an iPhone.

It's just a shame that the Android UX experience is so chaotic. A consequence of Google never really seeming to settle on a single UI vision beyond "different enough from iOS to avoid legal action."

I guess my counter-argument would be that network effects will be powerful for cryptocurrencies - so as for example Bitcoin grows more popular, the incentives for using it grow, the disincentives for using anything else grow smaller.

I'll admit that that's a fairly unimaginative hypothesis (Bitcoin > everything else)...

Honestly cryptocoins make my head hurt. I think it's very hard trying to imagine how things will unfold. I don't know how to think about them yet.

Inflation is an opaque tax - the connection between the funds the government can create with it and the impact on your wallet is obscure and difficult to pinpoint. So it's easy for governments to get away with it without people noticing or complaining.

Ergo, removing the control of the money supply from the hands of governments would be a good thing. Governments would have less opportunity to appropriate your wealth without you realising it. Accountability would increase.

Anyway, if coins are in competition to attract the most users (which they are) we should see people's natural preference emerge: trade in a fixed-supply curency or in a constant inflation currency. I certainly know which I would prefer, but let me ask you, if you had the choice between two coins identical in every aspect except coin A will never be debased (so the coin you buy today is worth as much or more tomorrow) and coin B will be perpetually debased (so the coin you buy today is worth less every following day) which would you rather buy into?

You see there's nothing natural or good about inflation, we've just grown inured to it thanks to the prevailing lies and obfuscation around its use by contemporary governments.

Bitcoin would help because it is a fixed-supply currency. If the world switches to it, no government anywhere will be able to practise inflation anymore.

Inflation is still practised by many governments throughout the world - many in a limited way, but many also with gusto.

Nobody signed a contract with these people promising to let them live there forever. They were rentors, and if they didn't understand that they could be asked to leave at any time by the true owners of the property, that's their fault. And if they were so concerned about their ability to continue living there indefinitely, maybe they should have worked harder to ensure their position? Maybe they should have striven to provide more economic value, so they could have purchased this apparently extremely important good?

These people have no excuse. They knew the rules. The rules were clear to everyone. They were happy as long as they got what they wanted. Now the situation no longer favours them, they want the rules to be changed - so that they get everything exactly how they want it.

Wow, how unbelievably arrogant. Spending his money however the fuck he wants? Paying people to render him services of their own free will? What an asshole. He must've forgot signing that social contract with angry poor radicals that once you hit $(whatever today's immoral amount of money is) you no longer have the right to spend it... oh wait.

Whatever. Give me a break. This article is really about the worst side of SF - not the successful businessmen, but the unsuccessful, jealous, negative, unproductive "radicals" whose politics boils down to "I hate everything that I don't understand, and I'm not going to bother to try and understand it because I hate it."

an arrogant and often tone-deaf industry

The only arrogant people here are these fucking losers who think they deserve to live in the one of the world's most expensive and desirable cities, and think they deserve to dictate how other people can and should behave, despite providing absolutely nothing of value to anyone.

Perkins is right. The closest parallel to the mindless, hate-drenched opprobrium of these people is Nazi Germany turning on the Jews (a similar group of successful, largely innocuous businesspeople.)