michael_b

• michael_bMar 9, 2015, 12:30 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: imuli’s comment on: Plane crashes

  Close. If the accident is completely unexplained, as it often is immediately following an accident, shouldn’t the risk be substantially higher immediately following the accident and then rapidly decay back to baseline as more information becomes available?

Plane crashes

• michael_bMar 2, 2015, 9:18 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Adam Zerner’s comment on: Sav­ing for the long term

  Permit me to ramble a bit.

  So, I think I have a bias against startups for getting rich. I think it might be reasonable.

  I’ll relate my personal experience as well as the experiences of three close friends. Around eight years ago, four of us each joined different startups. I quit mine about 3 ¹⁄₂ years in. They’ve remained at theirs. What’s the current status?

  me: I’ve learned that my equity in my startup, which I took at a substantial discount to my salary, is now worth low six figures.

  friend 1: his startup has almost been acquired but the deal sunk in due dilligence. Not in danger of going out of business but not exactly striking gold either. At least not yet.

  friend 2: recently had his startup acquired and he received a low six figure bonus on the condition he stay another two years to ease the transition. It seems like he was cut out of the upside somehow.

  friend 3: nothing close to an exit in sight; the company isn’t failing, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to strike gold either. It’s slowly growing.

  The low six figures of equity I (now) have might be seen as a positive, but 8 years on and I still can’t sell it, and I had to take low pay and do a ton of work to get it. This is better than most startups, but still not a success.

  In the meantime after I quit my startup I joined an established company and made a high-normal salary + bonuses and am way ahead of the rest of my friends on net worth (we all basically started at zero).

  Two of my friends are only finally now making normal job salaries, but they’re basically burned out at their respective companies and can’t bring themselves to quit because they signed deals where their equity evaporates if they walk away. This is probably the largest danger to joining a startup: what if it drags on forever, and it seems like you could get your payday if you keep hanging on for six more months and this goes on for years and years? Do you think you could just walk away? I think this is loss aversion bias at work.

  Should people work at startups? Absolutely: the experience is outstanding. You will learn a lot, the energy is amazing, and there are seldom better opportunities to feel that you’re making a real difference in the world (at least for awhile). Should people work at startups to get rich? I couldn’t recommend it. It’s probably going to fail, but worse, it might nearly fail and stumble along for years never amounting to anything but tricking you into riding it for longer than you should. Even worse still, it might succeed and you might not have been ninja enough about your contract to ensure you get a fair deal.

  I’m glad I worked at one startup, but I definitely couldn’t have stomached working for, say, 5 startups in a row. The emotional rollercoaster of just one startup was enough.

• michael_bFeb 24, 2015, 3:34 PM

  10 points

  on: Sav­ing for the long term

  (4) I work a normal-ish job, have a normal retirement plan, and save enough to retire at a normal age.

  The point I want to make in this article is that 1, 2, 3 seem way more likely than 4. Which makes me think that long-term saving might not actually be such a good idea.

  Are you sure? Take a look at http://​​firecalc.com/​​

  You plug in your nest egg size and expected cost of living and it will trial it against historical market performance. That is, if you retired the day before the Great Depression and similar events, would your portfolio keep you alive long enough?

  It’s clear if you plan to live a reasonably frugal lifestyle working a normal job you can save up a substantial nest-egg in 10-20 years to float you indefinitely if you’re only a little bit lucky, probably requiring a lot less luck than hoping you strike gold on a startup.

• michael_bFeb 22, 2015, 6:43 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: eternal_neophyte’s comment on: De­con­struct­ing the rid­dle of ex­pe­rience vs. memory

  Alright, let’s say I agree that in the space of all possible activities there exist some pleasurable activities that have zero future utility.

  Couldn’t we die at any minute? Given this, shouldn’t we always do the pleasurable thing so long as there’s no negative utility and no opportunity cost because there’s a small chance it’ll be the last thing we do?

  Doesn’t choosing the beautiful vacation that evaporates when it’s over have the benefit that if we die in the middle of it, life was just that much more pleasant?

  I guess I don’t understand why someone would choose not to take the vacation.

• michael_bFeb 22, 2015, 3:11 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: eternal_neophyte’s comment on: De­con­struct­ing the rid­dle of ex­pe­rience vs. memory

  Understood. In that case, I disagree on this point.

  most of us choose to indulge in pleasures that have no future utility (and in some cases have negative future utility) all the time. We eat junk food, watch TV, waste time watching cat videos. Things that would not obviously be missed if they could not be got.

  Are you sure there’s no future utility? Doesn’t resisting these useless but pleasurable activities deplete the ego? Doesn’t depleted ego lead to bad decision-making?

  This is not to say that every time a parole judges eat a brownie it’s because they’re trying to protect their ability to make sound decisions, merely that I don’t agree that it’s the same as taking a vacation that totally evaporates when it’s over.

• michael_bFeb 20, 2015, 10:01 AM

  3 points

  in reply to: eternal_neophyte’s comment on: De­con­struct­ing the rid­dle of ex­pe­rience vs. memory

  If I were Kahneman and I had posed that riddle, I would object that the entire point of the thought experiment is to consider the activity as being of no future utility whatsoever.

  Sorry, I don’t follow you. If you were Kahneman you would have posed the riddle differently? Or are you saying that I’m unfairly describing it?

• michael_bFeb 20, 2015, 10:00 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: DanielLC’s comment on: De­con­struct­ing the rid­dle of ex­pe­rience vs. memory

  So,

  1. you can have an amazingly beautiful night that you don’t remember the next day

  2. you can have a memory implanted that you had an amazingly beautiful night that never actually happened

  which do you choose?

  I like this because 1 has the benefit of being closer to the actual human experience.

• michael_bFeb 20, 2015, 9:56 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: De­con­struct­ing the rid­dle of ex­pe­rience vs. memory

  Yes? What are the consequences of not letting the fork happen?

• michael_bFeb 20, 2015, 9:52 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: De­con­struct­ing the rid­dle of ex­pe­rience vs. memory

  Not if everything is reset back to the way it was!

  He doesn’t say that though. Perhaps he meant to imply that. Let’s suppose he did, what does the experiencing vs remembering self model say about that?

  You would start building memories. As you build them you’re servicing the experiencing self, and over the course of the vacation your remembering self can recall the things you did earlier in the vacation. Finally the vacation ends and time resets to before the vacation and it’s all gone, memories, sunburn. All of your new Facebook friends are strangers again.

  If this is the problem he meant to specify then I’m still confused. Isn’t this vacation model a microcosm of life? One day it ends, and everything is gone. Do you still bother living it? Is talking about a vacation that resets just less likely to trigger existential angst in the audience than asking people to think about why they bother living?

De­con­struct­ing the rid­dle of ex­pe­rience vs. memory

• michael_bFeb 16, 2015, 1:56 PM

  1 point

  on: Two Cult Koans

  When I read these I flip between understanding and confused like I’m staring at a Hollow-Mask Illusion.

• michael_bFeb 15, 2015, 10:02 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: CellBioGuy’s comment on: Open thread, Feb. 9 - Feb. 15, 2015

  Try to hack your body into feeling more relaxed so your scholarly zeal calms down a bit and lets your mind rest.

  I’ll tell you what works for me.

  1. Start dimming the lights as you approach bed-time. You can buy electric tea candles (as you may have seen in restaurants) to provide low lighting so you can still get around your home. The candle-like flickering of the light is pretty calming.

  2. Install f.lux (or its ilk) on any PC or mobile device with a screen.

  3. If you listen to music, make sure it’s relaxing. Playing nature sounds or whatever YT returns for “meditation music” works pretty well.

  4. Don’t underestimate olfactory senses. Buy an aroma diffuser and pick up some essential oils. Grapefruit or ginger scented mist can be seriously relaxing.

  5. Keep some kind of whimsical treatise next to your bed so you have an outlet for what should now be sleepy intellectual curiosity: Godel-Escher-Bach is perfect for this.

  Good luck! :)

  EDIT: Oh, also what about psychoactive stuff like coffee and alcohol? Coffee in the afternoons can cause tossing and turning at night even though the wakefulness benefits are long gone. Alcohol is considered a CNS depressant but it can still lead to some difficulty sleeping because of other related effects.

• michael_bFeb 9, 2015, 10:51 AM

  6 points

  on: Have you changed your mind re­cently?

  After initial success but then several bouts of plantar fascitis, new mystery leg pain and a heaping helping of denial I’ve finally given on up the minimal shoes thing.

  I agree walking around in super comfortable shoes all the time probably makes us puny and weak, but I doubt paleolithic man walked and ran on hard city-grade pavement 50+ miles a week.

• michael_bFeb 6, 2015, 9:27 AM

  −1 points

  0

  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Lifestyle in­ter­ven­tions to in­crease longevity

  Fair point.

• michael_bFeb 6, 2015, 9:15 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: RomeoStevens’s comment on: Lifestyle in­ter­ven­tions to in­crease longevity

  Sorry for the confusion. I’m picking authorities at random and asking why I should trust you over them, not vouching for any authority in particular. Perhaps I should have asked more bluntly: who are you and why are you qualified to give us health advice?

  No offense. :)

  I am having a hard time finding places I disagree significantly with them.

  More a curiosity than anything: dairy isn’t represented at all on the HSPH’s “healthy eating plate” but is specifically highlighted in your section on nutrition. Why the discrepancy?

• michael_bFeb 3, 2015, 11:33 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Anders_H’s comment on: Lifestyle in­ter­ven­tions to in­crease longevity

  Noted. To be clear, the question I’m asking is why is OP a more worthy authority than the rest?

  Why should we listen to OP and not follow, say, the UK’s NHS healthy living guidelines? I hope the answer is better than “because nobody at the NHS is a member of LW”

• michael_bFeb 3, 2015, 6:03 PM

  4 points

  on: Lifestyle in­ter­ven­tions to in­crease longevity

  Why should we listen to you and not, say, the Harvard School of Public Health ?

  That is, why do you think you did a better job of reading and interpreting the literature and publishing guidelines?

• michael_bFeb 3, 2015, 11:02 AM

  −5 points

  on: The Im­por­tance of Sidekicks

  Kenzi said, approximately [I don’t remember her exact words]: “What if your aura of destiny didn’t have to be those things? What if you could be like…Samwise, from Lord of the Rings? You’re competent, but most importantly, you’re loyal to Frodo. You’re the reason that the hero succeeds.”

  In Australia, something about the way you interacted with people suggested to me that you help people in a completely free way, joyfully, because it fulfills you to serve those you care about, and not because you want something from them… I was able to relax around you, and ask for your support when I needed it while I worked on my classes. It was really lovely… The other surprising thing was that you seemed to act that way with everyone. You weren’t “on” all the time, but when you were, everybody around you got the benefit. I’d never recognized in anyone I’d met a more diffuse service impulse, like the whole human race might be your master. So I suddenly felt like I understood nurses and other people in similar service roles for the first time.

  Project this idea to community scale and you have a gift economy.

  If you’re interested in seeing how 50,000+ people apply this for a week do look into Burning Man

• michael_bFeb 1, 2015, 2:29 PM

  2 points

  on: Earn­ing to Give vs. Altru­is­tic Ca­reer Choice Revisited

  There’s a bit of a false dichotomy here between ‘earning to give’ and ‘altruistic career’. I’ll talk about one of them which we’ll need to go macro to see. I will also implicitly complain that ‘earning to give’ allows companies to deflect on charitable giving in a way that satisfies individual actors but may result in less charitable giving overall.

  Working on Wall Street and practicing an ‘earning to give’ plan may not be a great way to maximize giving to high-ROI aligned charities.

  I work at an HFT of order 1000 employees. The HFT itself makes no charitable donations. When employees ask about charity the HFT points at their large bonuses and says if a cause is important to you go ahead and donate your (huge) bonus to that cause. The HFT occasionally invites representatives from GiveWell and similar to come talk to us about pledging to donate a portion of our income to high-ROI charities. The bonuses can be big and if you do some multiplication you really can come away with the impression that you and your coworkers are collectively contributing enormous value to charity.

  Is this a fantasy though? I can’t know how everyone spends their bonuses but projecting from intimate discussions with my peer group has led me to believe that most employees, if they do donate, donate token amounts of $500-5000. Usually to more “name brand” causes like MSF or EFF. I’m aware of one person who donates their entire bonus to charity and a handful of others who have taken the GiveWell pledge.

  (Don’t take this as an endorsement of GiveWell or anything, I’m simply holding them up as a symbol of the idea)

  I don’t mean to overstate the progressiveness of the company either. There are also the more familiar Hollywood renditions of Wall Street employees who appear to spend their bonuses on sweet apartments and fancy cars before they’ve even been paid.

  Obviously this is anecdotal. I’m only describing a practice inside of one Wall Street firm. This may not be an accurate picture; it’s frowned upon to discuss compensation with one another so it’s hard to know the amounts at stake. There could be a handful of extremely high earners that secretly plow all of their wealth into high-ROI charities, which would more than make up for all of the modest earners who save their bonuses or take very nice holidays in the tropics.

  (btw, I’m not making an absolute value judgment on how people spend their bonuses, only speaking about how to maximize value to charity)

  Wait, why are we talking about what the entire company does when we’re trying to figure out what individual actors should do? Here’s why.

  All-in, if you can’t make a more valuable altruistic career choice it’s not strictly true that earning to give on Wall Street is the only reasonable alternative. If you could find an organization whose policy is to donate, say, 10% of all profits to charity, that number may be much larger than the discretionary charitable gifts made by employees at an equivalently sized Wall Street firm. If you’re concerned that the company with the 10% policy is donating to the wrong charities, you could consider joining that firm and campaigning to allocate more of the firm’s giving to charities aligned with GiveWell.