You might as well ask, “Who is the president of America?” and then follow up with, “Ha ha got you! America is a continent, you meant USA.”
Aleksander
And he in turn might respond by asking how you feel about thinking like a dinosaur.
I recall a humorous one of the Lem’s Ijion Tichy stories (can’t find a link ATM), where on one of the planets under constant heavy meteorite bombardment the mandatory logging and cloning tech was used as a routine way to revive the victims, replacing fatalities with minor inconveniences.
It’s the Twenty-Third Voyage in Star Diaries.
Isn’t it a little bit self-contradictory, to propose that smart people have beaten the market by investing in Bitcoin, and at the same time, that smart people invest in index funds rather than trying to beat the market? Or in other words, are those who got rich off Bitcoin really different from those who picked some lucky stocks in 1997 and cashed out in time?
This seems related: http://squid314.livejournal.com/350090.html
Financial markets are positive-sum. If you just buy a bunch of stocks and hold onto them, on average you’ll outperform cash.
Most studies I’ve read find that actual productivity doesn’t go up much with the extra hours in the long run, especially for knowledge workers
Not as clear cut as people like to assert, see e.g.,
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/work-hour-skepticism.html
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/construction-peak-60hrwk.html
If you have data for knowledge workers specifically that paints a different picture I’d like to hear about it.
I’ve wondered why more people don’t train to be software engineers. According to wikipedia, 1 in 200 workers is a software engineer. A friend of mine who teaches programming classes estimates 5% of people could learn how to program. If he’s right, 9 out of 10 people who could be software engineers aren’t, and I’m guessing 8 of them make less in their current job than they would if they decided to switch.
One explanation is that most people would really hate the anti-social aspect of software engineering. We like to talk a lot about how it’s critical for that job to be a great communicator etc., but the reality is, most of the time you sit at your desk and not talk to anyone. It’s possible most people couldn’t stand it. Most jobs have a really big social factor in comparison, you talk to clients, students, patients, supervisors, etc.
I think he answered your question by providing an example on the spot.
One can turn any expense into a high number by applying some not-quite-realistic rate of return[1] over a long period of time. I remember reading a web comic which applied this procedure to an iPhone, with enough creativity you could probably make coffee at Starbucks into a million-dollar expense as well.
In some sense it is true, if you invest regularly and wait a long time you’ll likely accumulate considerable savings. But singling out one particular expense for that kind of treatment, without the context which you provided above, is exactly what Lumifer called it: blatant propaganda.
[1] E.g., William Bernstein “Five Pillars of Investing” cites 3.5% long-term real (ie after inflation) rate of return from stocks.
Yes, I understand that and I didn’t mean to criticize your argument, which is good, I meant to attack the original source which was trying to impress the audience with a large number without explaining where it really comes from (which you did explain). Sorry that I didn’t express this more clearly.
The cited value isn’t wildly off base, in the same sense it wouldn’t be wildly off base to say that if you work at McDonald’s and invest every penny you made, after 40 years you’ll be a millionaire. So car ownership is really expensive in the same sense in which McDonald’s pays really well.
Catholics accept the theory of evolution and have for a long time now.
While we’re on the subject, what words would you use to differentiate “proof” from “evidence” in Polish?
“Poszlaki”?
Only a small fraction of math has practical applications, the majority of math exists for no reason other than thinking about it is fun. Even things with applications had sometimes been invented before those applications were known. So in a sense most math is designed to be fun. Of course it’s not fun for everyone, just for a special class of people who are into this kind of thing. That makes it different from Angry Birds. But there are many games which are also only enjoyed by a specific audience, so maybe the difference is not that fundamental. A large part of the reason the average person doesn’t enjoy math is that unlike Angry Birds math requires some effort, which is the same reason the average person doesn’t enjoy League Of Evil III.
There are also people who claim that they feel God’s presence in their heart, you know.
While we are quoting Perelandra
“How far does it go? Would you still obey the Life-Force if you found it prompting you to murder me?”
“Yes.”
”Or to sell England to the Germans?”
“Yes.”
”Or to print lies as serious research in a scientific periodical?”
“Yes.”
”God help you!” said Ransom.
So while the original quotation talked about not thinking at all, your revised version urges that we think as little as possible. How does it qualify as a “rationality quote”?
I don’t disagree with any of that. Who knows, could be even one and the same experience which people raised in one culture interpret as God’s presence, and in another as enlightenment.
Here is an example which I discovered only recently and which for me is 10x the awesomeness of house cleaning.
I like to work on casual games as a hobby, I haven’t released many but it’s something I like to do. I am a software engineer and have no art skills. You can make a game with no art, or make a port of some game for which the art exists. It is limiting.
Enter the miracle of Elance. You can find good artists on that site, with experience making art and animations for games, and they’re very affordable. I think they charge less per hour than house cleaners in California. All of a sudden getting real art for your game is just an ordinary hobby-related expense, kind of like if I were into photography I’d spend money on lenses and Photoshop license fees.
(My experience was mostly with graphics artists, but that site is general-purpose, you can find people willing to do all sorts of work there, translation, programming, whatever.)