oakmac

The Teaching Company; sometimes I look forward to traffic.

This goal is definitely attainable; it depends on your fitness level.

I would have no problem doing 100 pushups every hour 8 times a day.

The finance guys may have been aware of it, but their actions were clearly not in line with this knowledge as evidence by the year 2008.

From the article you linked: "None of this implies, however, that the existence of outliers undermines modern portfolio theory or asset pricing theory."

In fact, that's exactly what it does. This is what happens when you build houses on top of sand.

Things of this nature cannot be predicted so far in advance.

This report is as useful as yesterday's racing form.

Black Swan theory isn't about denying science; it's about recognizing the limits of science.

Taleb's position (and argument in this paper) is that we need to recognize instances where we don't know the answer instead of making decisions based on assumptions that we do.

Houston

Something like this already exists for ultimate frisbee: http://pickupultimate.com

I use git on development machines and have an rsync script to push updates to the server.

You could start by providing your email address so people can contact you.

What do you do?

Your initial reply to me can be rephrased as "I wouldn't want to accomplish all the amazing things that Ghandi did because I wouldn't want to live in poverty my whole life." I hope you understand that his accomplishments outweigh his lifestyle and that if everyone were able to accomplish what he had in his lifetime the world would be a much better place.

I think what you are trying to say is "You don't need to live in poverty in order to accomplish great things." In which case, I agree with you, but I believe you should pick your words more carefully.

This will be my last reply; I don't want this thread to become a pissing contest.

The accomplishments of Ghandi far outweigh both his reasons for achieving them and the methods he used. Passing judgment on his lifestyle in spite of his feats would be like saying we should disregard the works of Darwin because they offend people. Ghandi didn't get his name in the history books because he lived like a pauper.

I have no desire to emulate Ghandi and I never stated that I did. I recognize when to respect the accomplishments of others.

Are you implying that you would not want to achieve the accomplishments of Gandhi in your lifetime if it meant living the lifestyle Gadhi lived?

If that is the case I would strongly suggest you reconsider your priorities.

Happiness and money are not correlated.

You are always 100% in control of your emotions: the choice to be happy is up to you regardless of what you're doing or what's happening to you. Money (or value) will come from following fundamental principles of success: diligence, hard work, honesty, etc. You often find the two together, but neither is required for the other.

For more information read Dan Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness" and Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning."

The Economist has redefined "scathing" with this article.

Realty's value as a profession is not completely without merit. Just because the true nature of the job has been obfuscated doesn't mean it should be eliminated.

The industry may have created that phrase in a conveniently ambiguous way; still, in English, positives are always better than negatives when giving a command. Consider the difference between "I don't eat junk food" and "I always eat healthy foods." The first contains the proposition that you have the capability of eating junk foods; the second does not.

Perhaps "Always Drive Safely" or "Always be Responsible" as the link text would be better?

I think you may have misunderstood my idea.

I'm not advocating one site with a meritocracy filter; have as many as you'd like. One for Math PhDs, Chemistry PhDs, just having a bachelor's degree, CEO's, car salesmen, etc. The barrier to entry filter just assures that the community members share experience or ability, not just interest. The extent to which you wanted to quantify their experience or ability is up to you.

I see TED as the ultimate meritocracy-based conference. TED's official website is pretty fluffy about who gets invited to speak, but the reality is that everyone who gets on stage has done something amazing. If you're some college freshmen with an amazing idea to change the world but you haven't implemented it, you're not going to get invited to TED. Great ideas are a dime a dozen; implementing a great idea is what's amazing.

When I referenced "those sorts of comments/attitudes would be voted down" I was not referring to your post. I was referring to the sort of post you mentioned: the "mutual masturbation" posts. I apologize for any confusion.

I would change the text: "If you do decide to drink, DO NOT Drive. Drink Safely." to simply "Always drink responsibly." and have that section of the text be a link to a new page with a paragraph about drinking and driving. You also might include some external links on that page (MADD, AA, etc).

It is more direct to use a command instead of a conditional and use a positive instead of a negative.

I can't know this for sure, but I would hope those sorts of comments/attitudes would be voted down.

A modification on the idea would be to only allow a site with people who have a net worth greater than a certain amount or who are in certain positions of responsibility or power (like CEOs of companies with a market cap greater than 10 million). You could extend this for any classification system: people with doctorate degrees, people with X many years of experience in Y field, etc.

Basically I would be interested to see what sort of news and discussions would evolve from a meritocracy-based community. Think of the benefit that comes from the TED speaker's community.

This is an excellent idea! Anything that lowers barriers to accessibility is a good thing.

In order to eliminate fraud of this kind you would have to change fundamental human emotions.

Why only 200-300 years? Either go for the gold (live forever) or accept your mortality.

Here are a few Linux-specific wants:

> an intuitive UI for configuring everything in xorg.conf

> an intuitive UI for everything involving mounting, fstab, mdadm (raid), network shares, etc

> improve the awk, cairo-bar interfaces to be on par with RocketDock

> a more intuitive PulseAudio interface that controls everything relating to sound (including OSS and older)

I would like to see a digg/reddit/HN site where in order to post, vote, or comment your IQ must be greater than 3 standard deviations from the mean (ie: Mensa).

Eliminating languages would be devastating to culture.

How about a software solution for translation that works perfectly?

Are you suggesting that you want to have your cake and eat it too?

Who's going to take the risk for the rewards you want?

step 1) please forget anything you read from Jim Cramer

step 2) read The Black Swan by Taleb

step 3) make an account at caps.fool.com

step 4) get your score above 80

step 5) never invest more than 2% of your capital in any investment

step 6) figure out how to profit from your capital given rule #5

step 7) if you've figured out rule #6 you're set for life

The most important book I ever read.

No serious chef would ever claim that sea salt has a discernible taste from regular salt; it's the texture that matters. I have certain dishes where I will only use sea salt and other dishes where it doesn't matter.

The iodine issue is true, although you would have to go out of your way to get iodine deficiency living in any 1st world country.