All due respect, but this is lunacy. The way the guy reacted then hung up is unconscionable. The WHO is clearly corrupted by China's money.
And the US is still connected to Taiwan and provides them military support. And we have a $250M 'de facto' embassy there.
Honestly, I'm so shocked and dismayed by your comment, that I think I want to stop participating on Hacker News. Your perspective is relativism ad infinitum. This is the thing I fight most against.
This isn't a community for hackers & painters anymore. Eternal Relativism is impossible to win against.
Another way to say this, how does lying tell the truth? I don't understand corporations that decide to lie like this.
I noticed Facebook Messenger does this fun thing where you can open it, start to read a message and then it says "BAM--YOU MUST UPDATE". The fact they intentionally designed it this way makes me want to delete Messenger forever.
My disdain for Pinterest is at unrecoverable levels because of this and the fact they display interesting photos without any details or source listed even if logged in. I often wonder the difference between people that become antagonistic for being forced to signup vs people that are persuaded.
Low interest rates certainly lead to non-optimal housing development. I completely support massive government funding of energy, nuclear, technology and research.
But I don't support the NY Fed and the bank CEOs controlling the open markets, setting the interest rates and flooding dumb "elite" investors with cheap money so they can build bad systems. Having 1 of 12 FRBs dominate the monetary system is a flawed idea, especially when that 1 is Wall Street. Financial engineering is dangerous and antithetical to real research, development and progress.
That's an argument. But it seems to me still a far cry from arguing that cheap capital leads to less innovation--in effect, that dumb money drives out the smart.
This is well known in the Austrian School. It's not that cheap money drives out good ideas, but it dilutes them, because cheap money allows bad ideas to persist - there is no Schumpeterian creative destruction.
The corollary is that average productivity declines, because inefficient zombie companies are still encouraged to walk the earth, which is exactly what we have seen since the GFC triggered money printing and artificially low interest rates. Of course, non-Austrian economists are perplexed, and create many spurious explanations, which is an ironic example of the ineffectiveness of (economic) research.
[The US legal system is a separate issue of rent seeking by an entrenched lobby, which creates and preserves laws and legal frameworks that reward litigation. US healthcare is another anomalous parasitic example. Other countries do not have these problems to the same extent, but they often have other types of rent seeking, bureaucracy, inefficiency and corruption to compensate.]
The world is bad UX which I tend to think is a conspiracy.
For example, the Postmates driver app functions like it was programmed (automated) in a parallel dimension by toddlers in a thousand year future using an analog of Visual Basic. Then ported to iOS and ran via 480 API requests that transverse space, time and logic.
It’s so extra in its absurdism that I’d rather believe in sinister intent than systemic stupidity.
The delivery address is the smallest possible font hidden behind screens. The endless dinging etc makes no sense. I feel like people designing apps have never actually used them. Or maybe it’s all designed to make one so frustrated as to question the nature of reality.
Yep, this is why you should call BS when tech companies claim to make product decisions based on data or customer feedback. Their north star is revenue and as long as that's trending up (because of the secular trend of creators needing better monetization), who cares about UX /s.
Yet an FBI agent can literally encourage the first ISIS attack in the US and it’s covered on 60 Minutes but no one bats an eye. We’re left just to assume this is the only time it’s happened. While the 3rd terrorist arrested months later assumed the FBI agent died in the attack — which is how involved he was.
Anderson Cooper: After the trial, you discovered that the government knew a lot more about the Garland attack than they had let on?
Dan Maynard: That's right. Yeah. After the trial we found out that they had had an undercover agent who had been texting with Simpson, less than three weeks before the attack, to him "Tear up Texas." Which to me was an encouragement to Simpson.
Perhaps this could be justified but at least tip off the fellow agents and law enforcement there that there's two men with machine guns approaching. Instead, the FBI agent watched them exit their vehicle, then he fled the scene, was pulled over and almost shot due to how he was dressed. They put a mask over his head and he disappeared. Luckily no one died.
You’re right, there are more people outside walking in areas than need to be. Walking in areas where there would be less people or none. People sitting on sidewalks, grass areas etc.
TV news says our city streets are empty — but there’s actually babies, old people, lots of people exercising etc etc everywhere. Farmers markets with huge crowds. Non-essential construction workers all over.
Yet there are a lot of people outside because they have no choice. They are working or surviving. And then yesterday at the grocery store, there are people working there without gloves and without masks. And they’re jovial, walking around carefree.
I seen people preparing food and drinks without gloves and touching lids etc.
I don’t think wealthy people walking around is particularly bad but I understand your sentiment. The worse problem is we just have stupid people everywhere and sadly many are in our government, agencies and so-called elite. And some are critical workers.
In general, it’s a great question: why does it take such extreme overhead to run a digital company that’s like Craigslist with better pictures. I understand it’s more than that but it’s still a valid philosophical question to ask it there’s a way to run it with say 1,200 employees? Or maybe there’s not.
It’s analogous to the size of government and this trend of doing less with more.
Craigslist has 50 employees. I know there’s a ton of counter arguments to minimize my point but surely there’s a third way between 50 and 12,000.
Craigslist is only the listing part. Airbnb does listings, but it also does booking management, cancellations, payments and refunds, host support, etc as well.
Plus Airbnb has reps all over the world helping hosts. If they had ten staff (photographers, sales, etc) in every city that has more than a million population that'd account for more than 5000 people alone.
Not sure how much "helping" of hosts Airbnb does, at least when it's really needed. They quick and thick with platitudes but thin on support when push comes to shove as they almost always side with guests.
I'm a superhost with only 5 listings one has over 100 reviews with 4.98 average rating. So far Airbnb has remotely adjudicated 2 guest disputes (on my 4 years of operations) that cost me $5k. Not trivial.
That's subjective though. The guests who raised the disputes presumably think Airbnb did a great job.
Dispute resolution is essentially marketing. When a host tells people they lost a dispute most people don't care because they're not going to be in that position. Most people can't afford to buy property to let on Airbnb. Even it they are in a position to buy and let a property, so long as Airbnb have more supply than demand then they're happy - they're getting every booking they can. Having another host in an area that already has hosts doesn't add much to their business. (If you were the only host in the area then you'd be much more likely to win disputes.)
When a guest tells people they lost then everyone can imagine being in that position, and might stop wanting to use Airbnb. That has a measurable impact on Airbnb's revenue.
The key thing to remember with any company that runs both sides of a marketplace is that they care about themselves more than either party in a dispute. I have no idea about the numbers, but if Airbnb side with hosts more than 10% of the time I'd be absolutely amazed. In popular areas it's probably less than 5%.
I agree completely with all you say, particularly the incentives to favor guest outcomes. There is a rising tide of hosts scarred by Airbnb here in Bali. The market is (was) ripe for alternatives.
Regardless if he’s wrong, what he’s saying sounds interesting even to a physics PhD I’d imagine.
The scientific community doesn’t know why there’s 3 generations of particles, heck I’ve barely heard anyone in my life even mention the fact. It’s a curious thing and his theory was at least infinitely better than 99% of the content on the Internet.
I don’t really understand what he said (and a paper won’t help me) but it made me think in different ways.
He conceded he may be wrong, that he may be crazy, but he also has a PhD in mathematical physics. A charlatan typically declares he is right, often by divine right or unreasonable skill level. Eric’s just exploring ideas from his perspective.
I think hyper-criticizing him is more dangerous for intellectual thought than him inspiring millions of potential minds with fantastical descriptions that may be wrong. Some of what he’s saying is undoubtedly true.
Well, let me assume you're a software engineer. Suppose that one day you heard of some smooth talker who was going around pushing their vision of an AI-powered cloud blockchain as a service, or whatever. And everything they were saying just seemed empty: they would deliver the same polished, mindblowing speech about how this would revolutionize the world and topple all other software companies, but they hadn't written a single line of code, or even a whitepaper. And yet they were eloquent enough to end up with an audience of millions and billions in funding, exceeding the sum total of everybody doing real work in the area. And every time you tried to tell anybody about the real work you were actually doing, they would ask "but what do you think about the block cloudchain thing?"
That's what the situation is like for actual physicists. There's people who do the actual work, there's people who are famous for claiming to have done great things, and there's very little overlap between these two sets.
(Also, there's an "imprinting" effect here. For example, in the scientific community, we talk all the time about why there are only 3 generations. It's one of many, many mysteries that everybody is always aware of. You might have heard it from Weinstein first, but people really have spent enormous effort investigating the question. And a flashy self-promoter tends to erase those people.)
Ok but he’s held very intellectual conversations with physicists so I can only infer he has a basic fundamental knowledge — despite the ego and fantastical colorful language.
And I heard about the 3 generations when I was a freshman in HS in AP physics and I wrote a sci-fi story on it. Obviously it’s a widely known problem, I assumed people would understand me.
I’m defending the public sphere, promoting thoughtful ideas and intellectual adventures. Most people still don’t know who Elon Musk is yet it seems like they would. I want the average person to know the great open questions in physics.
Other professionals, hackers and those with PhDs in mathematical physics can contribute something novel and true to the future of understanding physics. No one owns mystery or the right to explore it.
Even if it’s just an artist or mathematician inspiring a physicist to understand an idea that could lead to something unrelated but true. Or public support to increase scientific funding.
I also work with a physicist who probably would criticize my perspective here. He has analyzed and critiqued pseudoscientific claims for national security reasons. So my experience here isn’t non-existent.
And I’m not a software engineer. I was a hacker. I like to reverse engineer things and understand the world through first principles...
> what he’s saying sounds interesting even to a physics PhD I’d imagine
Why would you imagine that?
> The scientific community doesn’t know why there’s 3 generations of particles, heck I’ve barely heard anyone in my life even mention the fact.
Your random encounters with information are not a good guide here. The generatation issue is often described as one of the main open problems in particle physics.
Physicists want to forbid people from exploring ‘philosophies of sciences’ in public? You can only discuss official ideas codified by peer review?
And of course it’s one of the main open problems. Obviously people in the community discuss it and it’s widely known. I meant in general, all the people talking sports, politics, business, finance, technology and reality TV, you know 99% of human communication, never ever discuss any ideas interesting in physics. Maybe because the authoritarians motivate normal people to avoid it thus only charlatans and a few science popularizers drive public awareness.
And I meant some of the math and physics he’s describing are true. I’m not saying his theories are true but not all his perspectives on them are unfounded. He’s had highly intellectual conversations with physicists on his podcast. Including Penrose. And Lisi, whom he strongly criticized.
My point is, he doesn’t need a license to talk and the criticism towards new ideas is wrong. Plus we need more cool ideas in the public sphere, right or wrong.
And the US is still connected to Taiwan and provides them military support. And we have a $250M 'de facto' embassy there.
Honestly, I'm so shocked and dismayed by your comment, that I think I want to stop participating on Hacker News. Your perspective is relativism ad infinitum. This is the thing I fight most against.
This isn't a community for hackers & painters anymore. Eternal Relativism is impossible to win against.