The Role of Luck in Life Is Still Misunderstood - <AUTHOR> http://joshuaballoch.github.io/luck-in-life-still-misunderstood <comment><USER2> Absolute junk science. A negative contribution to net human insight.

>The simulations show that although talent has a Gaussian distribution among agents, the resulting distribution of success/capital after a working life of 40 years, follows a power law which respects the "80-20" Pareto law for the distribution of wealth found in the real world.

As opposed to what? What kind of distribution might you expect? Based on the insanely simple model that was presented, what other possible outcome could have been drawn?

>In this paper, starting from very simple assumptions, we have presented an agent-based model which is able to quantify the role of talent and luck in the success of people's careers.

No, you have not. You have presented an agent-based model which is able to quantify the role of talent and luck in a 2D roulette game with a completely contrived, non-empirical bias parameter you've named "talent". It bears literally no relationship to reality, where random massive doublings of wealth are the exception, not the rule.

It really bothers me that people write news articles about the impact of this "research".

<comment><USER3> I'd love to see your model. Criticizing a model is relatively easy, coming up with something that describes the reality (in this case, Pareto distribution of wealth) yet better is much harder.

> As opposed to what? What kind of distribution might you expect?

For one thing, they might have expected the result not to be dominated by luck.

> It bears literally no relationship to reality, where random massive > doublings of wealth are the exception, not the rule.

I don't think this will help to control the luck as opposed to talent. I suspect the problem is in the "leverage". Having more wealth makes it easier to accrue more wealth in the future, however, the same is not true for talent. Having more talent doesn't help you get much more talent.

So eventually, regardless how big your talent can be, the accrued wealth will dominate the end of the distribution. The rate at which the wealth is accrued doesn't matter, it will only reduce social mobility.

Addendum: Interestingly, the model actually shows what we would expect for low to middle end of income distribution, that talent there is more important than wealth. Which is in line with my explanation.

<comment><USER4> I don't think that's how it works. A model doesn't become a good model simply because it's hard to or nobody has bothered to make a better one.

<comment><USER3> > A model doesn't become a good model simply because

I agree, and

> nobody has bothered to make a better one

So bother! I have made 4 comments here and all of them ask the same question. What would you improve and how do you think it would affect the outcome?

Sometimes the simple model is (almost) as good as any in answering a simple question. For example, some people do not accept climate models (and probably never will), ostensibly for reasons that they are not good. I see the opposite - the models have gotten much better and much more realistic in the past 60 years. Yet, the same basic outcome (Earth will warm roughly 3 degrees by doubling CO2) was foretold by very crude models that even don't have the circulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I still think the focus on wealth/income inequality rather than on absolute poverty is irrational. I've seen people justify it to me on the grounds that people care about relative poverty, which to me reads "people are jealous". But then the result is:

1) A focus on inequality is irrational. 2) People focus on inequality for irrational reasons.

This means that if policy-makers and intellectuals fully give in to the people's wishes, we'll accept decreases in wealth in exchange for more equality indefinitely. If this sounds like a strawman, it's because we have "backstops" to inequality-decreasing wealth-destruction. But why should we tolerate any wealth destruction at all?

And if reducing inequality is possible without wealth destruction, why focus on inequality?

(This is besides the "Oxfam problem" \-- there never is a coherent definition of "wealth" and Oxfam never seems to fully value people's homes and work animals and suchlike in poor countries.)

<comment><USER6> The reason we care so much about inequality has nothing to do with jealousy and everything to do with power[1]. As resources are a major source of power (and often vice-versa), and because power is relative, inequality of resources means inequality of power. And as power means influence (and so the ability to reduce another's freedom), inequality reduces overall freedom.

As freedom can never be total[2], the question is do we prefer to reduce the freedom of the powerful few (whose freedom is already large) in order to increase that of the many, or vice-versa?

So while absolute income is certainly very important, ignoring inequality is simply irrational for someone who values freedom.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_\(social_and_political\))

[2]: One person can be totally free; two cannot. X would either be free to infringe on Y's freedom or not -- in either case, freedom is no longer total.

<comment><USER7> This is a distortion.

Young men see rich men with beautiful women flying to anywhere they want on the planet. Only a few of them will get that when they're older, and it oftens boils down to intelligence, work ethic, cleverness, other abilities like athletics and looks, and a few lucky breaks that they take advantage of. Exceptions being inherited wealth. Law of averages, those who do make it are hard working and intelligent. Law of averages, those who do not are often less so. However, everyone still wants the hot girl and the jet. So what's the right thing to do? Take "power" from [Hard working and intelligent]U[Scott Disick, Donald JR] to normalize influence across everyone? Should the group, who by and large, has contributed more to the society not have proportionally more say? And then the issue becomes more nuanced when you take into account inheritance and things of that nature.

<comment><USER8> _However, everyone still wants the hot girl and the jet._

I'd settle for decent healthcare and enough stable income to raise a family.

 _Should the group, who by and large, has contributed more to the society not have proportionally more say?_

1) They haven't and 2) no. You appear to be advocating plutocracy.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure what to tell you, people who have built organizations that employee thousands of people have contributed more to society than average. If that needs further justification then I'm not even sure how to respond to that.

You're reading things into what I'm saying - if Elon Musk raises a campaign fundraiser for his favorite candidate, do I mind that? Do I mind him having more "power" in that people listen to his twitter account over joe schmo? Not at all. Is he colluding with other executives to fix automative prices and then pressuring his candidate to change regulations as a favor when they're elected? Yes. That makes me a "plutocracy supporter"?

<comment><USER9> > _I 'm not sure what to tell you, people who have built organizations that > employee thousands of people have contributed more to society than average. > If that needs further justification then I'm not even sure how to respond to > that._

A very large portion of those people have contributed more _suffering_ to the world, and continue to do so through the continued exploitation of the worker class and lower classes.

<comment><USER7> Should probably bow out after this one; I don't think there is much room for rational discussion for my viewpoints here.

I agree that walmart is a piece of crap, but you don't really know what suffering is. Please ask your grandparents what options their grandparents had in life.

If you have some notion that corporations that try to profit are a blight on society and that their abolition will lead to some dream world, then by all means. Please knock over all the establishments, nationalize all corporations and divy profits amongst the workers, redivide the wealth of every millionaire, publish a list of banned words like 'wealth', and so on, and then point me to the nearest democracy.

<comment><USER10> > I don't think there is much room for rational discussion for my viewpoints > here.

I agree, you refuse to address the arguments people bring up in favor of attacking straw men and relying on sarcastic hyperbole.

<comment><USER7> Funny, your comment is self referencing

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> America's aversion to the role of luck is based on the Protestant work ethic. There is no chance and everything is predetermined by God's grace. God's grace is demonstrated by hard work, frugality, and discipline. There is a concept of double predetermination where you already need to be saved to be saved. Which means the poor is poor not because of chance, but because they lack God's grace.

<comment><USER12> Be that as it may, this blog is about a specific paper and the strength of its claims. I don't really think puritanism has anything to do with whether this paper's model or inferences are sound.

<comment><USER13> But puritanism's remains are responsible for many of the opinions critical of the paper's conclusions. Just ask a few wealthy persons about this paper or others like it: they are usually fiercely critical and have bought completely into ideas that support their "blessed" position in society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > It could be that the results were built into the model's design.

Every true mathematical proposition is a tautology. I don't find this point particularly convincing. As long as the model's predictions match reality in interesting ways, it can lend possible insights on why reality might have certain characteristics.

> Like getting an improbable series of heads when flipping a coin long enough, > improbable clusters of events are bound to occur for at least some agents in > a large enough set.

Yes, but what's alarming is how _most_ agents' capital fell from bad luck alone, and how good luck only seemed to benefit a very small subset of the population, and talent was not any kind of guarantee. These characteristics of life are denied by many people, so to see it reflected in such a simple model is, I hope, instructive.

> Why should capital growth only occur on chance events, when most workers are > paid wages in exchange for their work?

The way I see it, chance events that exponentially increase wealth drown out one's piddling wages. Wages don't seem particularly relevant to why Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have billions, and many people live paycheck to paycheck.

<comment><USER15> >> It could be that the results were built into the model's design.

>Every true mathematical proposition is a tautology. I don't find this point particularly convincing. As long as the model's predictions match reality in interesting ways, it can lend possible insights on why reality might have certain characteristics.

I think the problem is that nothing about the model lines up with reality. For example:

\- Each agent begins with an identical amount of capital. -- nothing like the real world.

\- Every 6 months you have the possibility of doubling or halving your capital. -- nothing like the real world.

\- Chance of doubling capital is proportional to talent. -- nothing like the real world.

As an argument for such a simple model they provide:

> The previous agents' rules are intentionally simple and can be considered > widely shareable, since they are based on the common sense evidence that > success, in everyone life, has the property to both grow or decrease very > rapidly.

Sure, success/failure _can_ increase or decrease rapidly, but is it the rule? Arguing the basis of your entire model on "common sense" seems weak. It would be better if they had provided at least some real world data where this pattern emerges. In my experience people seem to move a little bit up or down from their baseline, but I have never personally seen a swing from rags to riches or the other way around.

If they had begun by drawing parallels to the ways in which we see the real world and letting the model simulate it into the future it would be more compelling. As it stands, it seems like a set of arbitrary rules designed to reach their desired conclusion, albeit weakly through "it looks pretty similar".

<comment><USER14> > \- Each agent begins with an identical amount of capital. -- nothing like > the real world.

Not relevant. Part of the main point was that _even in the case of equal opportunity /equal starting points_, bad luck readily overcomes talent, good luck rewards even the less talented, and so talent isn't any kind of guarantee, contra many people's claims.

> \- Every 6 months you have the possibility of doubling or halving your > capital. -- nothing like the real world.

I don't think this is relevant either. You can pick any progression you want and it won't affect the final results. The point is to simulate regular opportunities of dramatically increasing one's wealth. So again, even when faced with _equal opportunity_ , dramatic wealth inequality just due to luck seems inevitable.

> \- Chance of doubling capital is proportional to talent. -- nothing like the > real world.

The claim that wealth is proportional to "talent" is widely believed. This paper puts it to the test and refutes it. That's one of the main points.

> In my experience people seem to move a little bit up or down from their > baseline, but I have never personally seen a swing from rags to riches or > the other way around.

I addressed this in the post you replied to: small swings up and down are probably wage-driven. This doesn't explain wealth disparity, because dramatic swings in wealth will largely not be wage-driven. These events thus aren't of interest.

> If they had begun by drawing parallels to the ways in which we see the real > world and letting the model simulate it into the future it would be more > compelling.

Not as easy as you think. We have no idea what factors are involved. That's why we study models, and see how closely the results match with reality. That then gives us insight into how some parts of reality might work.

<comment><USER16> In their model the only benefit of talent is it makes you more likely to double your wealth given luck. This means that they assume luck is _needed_ for advancement while talent is not. Hence they assume that luck is more important than talent, and it's unsurprising that they see the result.

Likewise the power distribution is built in. Power distributions are created by multiplicative laws and the only ways wealth changes in this model are multiplication and division. This means they also assume the power distribution they claim to discover.

It's definitely very hard to build models that match reality, but this one doesn't really seem to try and it's outcomes are so predictable they don't offer meaningful insight. Luck surely plays a _huge_ role in success, but something like longitudinal studies where we measure the abilities of children and then follow their outcomes are likely far more insightful.

<comment><USER14> > This means that they assume luck is needed for advancement while talent is > not.

Which is clearly true. You can be as talented as you like, but talent without a corresponding opportunity to use that talent for monetary gain obviously yields no wealth. There's nothing objectionable here.

It's also widely believed that greater talent makes one more successful at exploiting opportunities, and the paper accepts this premise in order to test it.

Now you can quibble that perhaps the random variable governing opportunities is _not independent of talent_ , in that, those with more talent are simply presented with more opportunities. Perhaps that's true.

But the paper actually shows that our world is also consistent with the hypothesis that opportunities are completely random.

> Power distributions are created by multiplicative laws and the only ways > wealth changes in this model are multiplication and division. This means > they also assume the power distribution they claim to discover.

I think you're looking at this wrong. The power distribution is not the discovery, the discovery is that what we see in real life is consistent with such a simple formulation based on a small number of factors where wealth disparity is largely dominated by luck.

Perhaps that's not actually the case in reality, but we now know that it's absolutely not _impossible_ , which some previously believed.

> Luck surely plays a huge role in success, but something like longitudinal > studies where we measure the abilities of children and then follow their > outcomes are likely far more insightful.

These aren't mutually exclusive. Modelling and empirical studies both yield insights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think generally modelling life in 2d grid with simplifications such as talent = 0.0 - 1.0 and events doubling or halving capital with a deterministic number of "good/bad" events isn't going to give you anything real as output. I don't like this sort of science, it stinks of foregone conclusion. Running the model itself is irrelevant as the outcome is pretty obvious by the maths put into it.

How far is it really from just writing console.out("my hunches are correct!");

Maybe in a future world of modelling where we feed real-world data into the model then maybe we can get somewhere?

<comment><USER18> They introduced talent as a bias in capitalizing on doubling events (the less talent, the less doubling events in proportion). A priori you would consider that this should lead to the talented being overrepresented in the higher percentiles of capital, yet they discover this bias does not dominate over the underlying uniform randomness of merely encountering a doubling event.

So no, I wouldn't say the conclusion is foregone. It shows an example where something that can reasonably be called talent (the ability to capitalize) is not as important as luck (the chance encountering of an event where you can capitalize).

<comment><USER17> > So no, I wouldn't say the conclusion is foregone.

With the distribution of people and events over space and the distribution of talent the end result was a given because its more likely for an arbitrary person to trigger multiple good events than for very specific "talented" people to trigger multiple good events even if their factor means they don't need as many good events to be "even". Same way that if you had more events then people then the outcome would completely change because then "talent" would become a bigger factor than "finding an event".

Its just about what they decided to make scarce (events) in the model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm not quite getting how can you put talent vs luck, when talent is based on luck you got from your genes, parents, environment etc.

I see it as the same thing.

<comment><USER20> Yes. Therefore, ultimately, in a society without work, wealth should be distributed according to the happiness it delivers. If one person loves reading books and another person loves driving expensive cars, then it's clear how the money should be distributed.

On the other hand, this might take the fun out of driving expensive cars, because in a society with such wealth-distribution, having an expensive car doesn't mean "I'm more successful than you", but rather something like "I have a pathetic need to show off".

<comment><USER9> It could also mean "I simply enjoy driving cars with a lot of power and/or comfort, because the sensations are inherently pleasurable to me".

I love driving cars. Not to show off or because of prestige, I just really like driving, for some reason. I don't care if it's a 300hp grand tourer or a 60hp supermini, it's the act of driving that's enjoyable to me personally.

Not everything is a matter of "keeping up with the Joneses".

<comment><USER20> Yes, I stand corrected. It's difficult to predict how people would think/live in a Utopian society.

Perhaps cars wouldn't be owned, but borrowed/rented whenever people would want to have an experience like you described.

<comment><USER9> We could certainly do that today (and we are, on a limited scale), and I think it may happen with electric cars surprisingly soon.

Certainly for those of us living in larger cities, a subscription service would make sense, so you would have to worry a lot less about parking. Especially with self-driving cars that could deliver themselves when needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Instead of wasting time on a (rather biased) critique, read the original paper:

"Talent vs Luck: the role of randomness in success and failure" by A. Pluchino. A. E. Biondo, A. Rapisarda

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068)

Are the rich wealthy because they somehow _earned_ it? Examination reveals that this is not true and that the most extreme cases of wealth accumulation (which show a surprisingly consistent pattern across cultures) are attributable more to luck than to skill. Mark Buchanan examines this in his excellent book "The Social Atom" (pp.172-174):

[https://www.amazon.com/Social-Atom-Cheaters-Neighbor- Usually...](https://www.amazon.com/Social-Atom-Cheaters-Neighbor- Usually/dp/1596910135/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521127098&sr=8-1&keywords=the+social+atom)

A reference from that book:

Jean-Philippe Bouchaud and Marc Mezard, "Wealth Condensation in a simple model of economy":

[https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0002374](https://arxiv.org/abs/cond- mat/0002374)

See also Christopher Jencks, Inequality (New York: Basic Books, 1972) which focuses more on the effect (or non-effect) of education on income:

[https://www.amazon.com/Inequality-Reassessment-Effect- School...](https://www.amazon.com/Inequality-Reassessment-Effect-Schooling- America/dp/0061319600/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521126691&sr=8-1&keywords=Christopher+Jencks%2C+Inequality)

If extreme wealth is largely due to luck then I see no reason why government should not lop the "lucky" portion off for its purposes. Of course there will always be argument as to precisely where the line is drawn between luck and skill.

Finally we must not forget bad luck, which makes fools of us all. Just as there are those who are super-wealthy due to luck, there are those whose livelihood has been destroyed by luck. I do feel an obligation to help them back onto their feet.

<comment><USER21> Robert Frank's book _Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy_ is another enjoyable book about this (and supports your argument for some form of government redistribution).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> From my experience you can increase your luck in life by exposing yourself to more choices. This can be something as simple as having saved up money so you can quit your job whenever you want to. That in turn gives you the "luck" to get a better job if the opportunity presents itself.

<comment><USER23> I do 100% agree with this, recognizing, of course, that merely being in a position to have choices to begin with is _also_ a factor of luck. (Parents' socioeconomic status; your own intelligence; if you had someone around to have taught you this, etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some time ago there was a post on HN where they had an even simpler model (not based on talent). Everybody was given an equal amount of capital at the start. Then at every tick of the clock, everybody would give 1 dollar to a random person (if they had the money). After many iterations, an exponential wealth distribution resulted.

</comment><comment><USER24> > There's a serious risk of this runaway momentum building an ever-growing > chain of misguided agreement.

to think we might alter our society to redistribute wealth to those who are most lacking, lifting people out of poverty and improving the world, when we DIDNT EVEN HAVE TO, turns out those losers _were_ talentless and therefore deserve nothing. Horrifying.

<comment><USER25> In that sentence he's talking about the risk of propagating flawed research. A few paragraphs up he makes it clear that he doesn't hold the view you ascribe to him:

> I care deeply about the issue of growing wealth inequality, and would love > for research to be done that finds concrete evidence of how luck and > privilege play a role in it.

<comment><USER24> yeah I don't buy that. Someone looking to identify flawed research can choose from a vast amount of subject areas to focus upon. The research that this person chooses to attempt to debunk is IMO telling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> But aren't the exceptionally talented(2%) people supposed to win way more than 3%, if we assume talent plays a larger role. It is not a bad output, but not good enough either considering they are exceptional. The paper probably indicates that talent stops becoming the limiting factor somewhere pretty close to average talent, and environmental influences/luck take precedence.

We could argue as to what constitutes luck but I think the core of the paper suggests that talent's importance in success is overestimated, which is rather believable (MY ANECDOTAL OPINION).

Haven't read the paper, just assuming from the articles.

</comment><comment><USER27> Long ago I stumbled upon bound copies of the Journal of Parapsychology in the basement of the university library, when looking for written lectures on Nietzsche.

One of the articles was about finding people who attract more good luck and people who attract more bad luck while ruling all kinds of psychological, behavioural or environmental factors. The relevance the authors argued was that persons with bad luck could be screened for to not work for nuclear facilities. I really wanted to find that article again, but the library has been rebuilt and I don't come there often.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is not directly related to this article (which I liked), but instead to the topic in general.

I heard of a study a few years ago where researchers divided a bunch of teenagers into a few groups (each of which was quite large), and each teen was allowed to go to a website and hear a collection of songs (same songs for everyone). Each person could then vote on which was their favorite and, importantly, they could see how many votes that song had already gotten just within their group. The researchers wanted to see if the same songs were picked as the favorite across different, isolated groups. The result was that each group had chosen completely different songs as their favorite. These groups were large enough that they were probably all statistically similar. Once people in a group saw that some song already had a lot of votes, they were more likely to pick it as their favorite as well. This suggests that in the world of pop music, success may have more to do with luck and social influence than with talent.

Ah, I found a link to a description of the study: [https://www.npr.org/2014/02/27/282939233/good-art-is- popular...](https://www.npr.org/2014/02/27/282939233/good-art-is-popular- because-its-good-right)

<comment><USER29> Sounds like the good old Matthew Effect.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is all interesting to me. Probably around 40 years ago someone in management decided that certain people were winning the economic game because they were better (meritocracy) and then when we went through a series of technological disruptions we came upon a funny variant which I will attempt to paraphrase "those who are successful are the best at increasing their at-bats and therefore their opportunity to have 'lucky' events." This system seems OK, it selects on people who aren't afraid of failure, and that can't be bad. However, the new problem we have is a situation where there are basically monopolies whose heads still have the 'fail fast' mantra stuck in their heads....

</comment><comment><USER31> Where Warren Buffet would have landed if he was born in Afghanistan?

I have thought about this question a lot recently without any satisfaction.

<comment><USER13> My tendency is to say "Well, but that didn't happen, so discussing it isn't fruitful."

But counterfactuals seem to be part of our reasoning processes ("If i had turned left at the last light I would be closer to the restaurant.") and they do often capture the imagination (alternative histories, etc.):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_conditional](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_conditional)

<comment><USER32> That tendency is valid when you're plotting your own future strategy, because you can't go back in time.

However when you're looking at society in aggregate, you have to consider what will happen, so the conversation is still useful when planning for the future (since people will be at different points in their lives) of the group as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I generally agree we are products of the environment/circumstance we are born into but it's left to your free-will and choice as to how to best persevere in that environment. I've always viewed talent as the tool that enables you to make the best of the environment you are placed in. Chance/opportunity is not a equally distributed resource but by working hard/efficiently you prepare yourself to make the best of the opportunities you are presented with in life. No one is immune to sheer bad luck but if you did everything you could to set yourself up for success, you shouldn't be derided for it.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder if this type of analysis if even worth our time as individual people and as society. Will the information it uncovers lead to a better life for us? We all know success is some combination of luck, skill, and hard work. Luck is probably partially dependent upon the other two components (skill and hard work). But by how much, who cares?

If success and well-being is fully determined by luck, then what should I do today?. If it's not, then I'll continue reaching for the stars. I don't think you will ever prove 100% dependence so anything less means you have to try.

</comment><comment><USER35> Let's face it - how intelligent you are, what if anything you're gifted at, how tenatious you are, where you were born, who your parents are, who you know, what opportunities life presents you, what you enjoy doing, how much you are driven to win... ALL of these things are out of your control. The real falacy is that rich and successful people think they somehow "deserve" their status and that other people just didn't try hard enough. The reality is that life is a random shitshow and the rich / successful have been extremely lucky.

</comment><comment><USER36> > Indeed, based on the way its rules are set, the high concentrations of > capital seem like they were a foregone conclusion.

You could say much the same about modern market economies.

</comment><comment><USER37> Read Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers for a mind opening perspective on how much "luck" and timing plays into individual "success".

</comment><comment><USER38> My favorite novel on the topic is Fooled by Randomness

</comment><comment><USER39> Was there a particular reason to post the same link within an hour?

Two discussions posted by the new account:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16591908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16591908)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16591878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16591878)

</comment><comment><USER40> R/economics went over this a bit too. There are other issues with the model that and to make it very poor:

\- fixed rate of return (doubled or halved) make luck play an oversized role. One of talents greatest contributions is knowing how to let your winners run and cut your losses. The setup is close to a random walk by definition.

\- risk reduction is hugely important. High earners especially when speaking of finance tend to know how to reduce risk. Only fools always bet half they capital in every decision.

\- talent would understand what events are more likely to succeed than just every event having the same probability.

\- talent and preparation generate events. The more you prepare the more chances you'll have available. Most successful people have failed multiple times but keep trying.

\- no learning. One of talents great benefits is learning from mistakes. And when combined with increased number of chances that talent provides, this is a critical feedback cycle the model misses.

Basically the model made everybody similar and then had an exponential random function. With such small tails in the talent pool, there is no other decision it could have reached.

</comment><comment><USER41> As an anecdote, my friend's dad was once camping with a friend and lightning hit. His friend died, he did not although he, too, was struck by lightning. Years later he won a $5M home lottery.

I consider him to be the luckiest person I know. He has bad luck and good luck quite often, for no reason.

<comment><USER21> That reminds me of the Japanese fellow who was in Hiroshima when the bomb hit, survived, returned to work in his home town Nagasaki when the second bomb hit, survived, and lived until 2010. Talk about bad luck and good luck.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Seems like this is just measuring a natural effect. The bigger the star, the more mass it has, the more it pulls towards it self. Or the bible version "to those that have more shall be given" The richer you become, the more opportunities you attract to make money.

</comment><comment><USER43> A book I recently read on this topic

[https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Bets-Making-Smarter- Decision...](https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Bets-Making-Smarter- Decisions/dp/0735216355)

Really insightful and highly recommended

</comment><comment><USER44> I am the luckiest. I make my luck. Every bad event brought me here and formed me. Every good thing is mine to enjoy. Whatever happens I will own it. Luck is a lie you tell yourself. But it is a useful lie.

</comment><comment><USER45> Why authors of article assume that talent is distributed according to Gaussian function? Am i mistaken or authors didn't give any references to researches on this assumption?

<comment><USER21> They don't assume that real world talent is normally distributed. It's just a property of the agents in their model that makes it more likely that they can take advantage of good luck, "talent" here is just an evocative name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I stopped reading the paper, thinking it was amateurish garbage, when I saw the graph containing tiny people

</comment><comment><USER47> See also, like, every economic model ever.

</comment><comment><USER48> The original model was so abstracted that it was absurd.

There is no such thing as "luck", it is only a name for what we call the intersection of preparation and opportunity. Both can be controlled. People tend to think opportunities are random and based on chance – they aren't. They are the result of smaller intersections of preparations and opportunities that happened previously.

<comment><USER6> For the purpose of this discussion, the precise definition of luck doesn't matter, and can be taken to be anything that isn't talent.

<comment><USER48> There is no such thing as talent either.

No one is born with a natural skill to do something unnatural. Genetic traits are not talents, they are traits. To be born with a talent would be to be able to do whatever it is you do from the moment you are born, if you had the physical capacity for it. Otherwise, any "talent" you display later is really just the result of effective learning and practice, but that is just what you would call a skill, there is no need to build it up with all the mythology of "talent". Just another form of ladder kicking to discourage others from thinking they could achieve that same level of skill.

So if neither definition matters, then in essence this discussion is about nothing.

<comment><USER49> Luck is anything the individual cannot control. You don't get to choose your parents, for example. I don't see what your point is.

<comment><USER50> @matte_black

There's a big component in American culture at least, that assumes that the success in life is due to talent. It provides an excuse for inequitable distributions of resources, for example, by justifying the distribution as a natural consequence of individual talent, skill, and hard work.

This study shows that this cultural assumption is not true, that talent or hard-work alone are not enough to achieve success, and much of success is down to random events.

I think talent and hard-work along with ambition better prepare an individual to take advantage of these random events but without fortuitous providence, they aren't enough to provide success.

<comment><USER51> Well, as an American, I can say that it isn't an assumption that success in life is solely due to talent. However, there is a belief that one can be successful with an entrepreneurial, hard-working attitude. Everyone knows that ultimate level of success is influenced by things out of one's control, but the American work ethic is more about making the most of what one has. People choose to control what they can, which is effort and attitude, and not worry about that which they can't.

<comment><USER52> The problem is people mix personal motto with social policy. Social policy isn't about personal comfort with the concept, it's about what actually works, and if luck matters to social policy, then it needs to be taken into account, regardless of how much you pay attention to luck on a personal level.

> People choose to control what they can

Don't worry, everyone already does that. The difference is do you look down on other people (or even yourself) who are not doing as well?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Will there ever be another Red Hat? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2015/04/28/will-there-ever-be-another-red-hat/ <comment><USER2> > Red Hat didn't have to pay for the bulk of the development of Linux. As soon > as it was clear how Linux could change the world of computing, IBM, Oracle, > SAP, Intel, and many other companies added full time developers to the > project. If Red Hat had to pay for all the development of Linux, it would > never have become what it is today.

This is a misunderstanding of how the development of Linux works. It's not a project in the conventional sense and never has been. Anyone can contribute as long as their code is good enough and solves a problem or adds a feature. But because the code is under the GPL, no-one can take others' work and make it proprietary. It creates a level playing field for customers because OS development is not their core business but rather just a cost of doing said business.

It's also a misunderstanding of the value Red Hat brought - and still brings - to enterprise software. A subscription buys you enterprise support, certification with third party vendors and the guarantee that Red Hat will distribute improvements to the kernel in a predictable way for you.

<comment><USER3> > Red Hat will distribute improvements to the kernel in a predictable way for > you.

I'd hope that means you just get read access to their linux.git if you're paying them.

If you're _not_ paying them, in order to get access to the Red Hat 7 kernel source, there's git repo that houses a reference to a xz-compressed tarball that you download from another site which you piece back together to get a .src.rpm - inside of which is a the raw kernel.org source and a monolithic patch file.

I _would_ also call that predictable (and thus, thankfully scriptable) process, but it's pretty convoluted. Actual git access to kernel source would be preferable.

<comment><USER2> I wasn't really thinking of source access because I don't think the vast majority of their customers need it. I was thinking more from an enterprise point of view where you're a large customer who wants confidence that Red Hat has done a bunch of testing and validation on new kernels for their particular environments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The licensing model is another thing that is going to be a big issue as the world moves into the cloud.

So far, many of the big names in FOSS, such as MySQL, have been using GPL to their advantage. By forcing competitors to release their modifications under the same license, GPL grants the copyright owner an effective monopoly on proprietary features. RMS probably isn't very happy with this situation, but it works.

GPL, however, is nearly useless in the cloud. You can add features to a GPL program and offer it as a proprietary service running on your servers. Since you're not distributing the program itself, you don't need to open-source your changes! AGPL was designed to prevent that, but hardly anyone uses AGPL.

Moving in the other direction are LGPL, BSD, MIT, and a bunch of other "permissive" licenses that are getting ever more popular among the cutting edge of the tech scene. In an ideal world, this should lead to even more freedom and better tools for everyone. But we don't live in an ideal world.

RMS has a knack of saying seemingly outrageous things that turn out to be highly relevant 10-20 years later, so I wonder what consequences the current proliferation of easy-to-convert-to-proprietary-software licenses will have on the tech scene of the next generation. Will all the good features get locked into walled gardens, or will companies continue to see value in releasing code under a permissive license?

Today's FOSS culture didn't arise on its own. It owes its existence to a dedicated group of people, such as RMS, ESR, Linus, Red Hat, MySQL, etc. who provided a large and stable copyleft core for the rest of the ecosystem to revolve around. But if the cloud makes the copyleft core largely irrelevant, how will the rest of the ecosystem adjust? Will it even survive? I don't know.

<comment><USER5> I think the situation isn't quite that dire, based on a couple factors:

First, keeping your own private fork of a GPL library isn't all that easy an option if you also expect to be able to benefit from any further work done by the project's maintainers. By going that route you're committing to spending a lot of time and money on a lot of hairy merging.

Second, for most serious companies the open source libraries they rely on are not a part of their secret sauce. You're really not maintaining a whole lot of competitive advantage by closely holding that tweak to MySQL's query optimizer that lets your social office supply reviewing site respond to requests with 1% lower latency. Unless fractionally shorter response times is really what your company has going for it, of course. In which case it's probably doomed anyway.

I think these two factors in concert mean that it's generally much better for a business to contribute back than to try and maintain an internal fork.

Of course, businesses only contribute back to projects that they've decided to use in the first place. Using GPL code for your SASS product probably won't cause any immediate problems. It can still be a huge strategic misstep, though, because it does still limit your options for how you can pivot in the future. If you're a startup that could also mean a big drop in your value in the eyes of a potential suitor.

<comment><USER4> > _Using GPL code ... can still be a huge strategic misstep ... that could > also mean a big drop in your value in the eyes of a potential suitor._

Yes, I think this explains the dearth of GPL contributions from recent startups.

I didn't mean to imply that GPL was ever the perfect way to license code that you also intend to use commercially. It's mediocre at best for that purpose, and intentionally so. After all, why would RMS want to facilitate production of proprietaty software?

What is undeniable is that the cloud and the startup scene are leading a new trend in FOSS licensing. The recent Github statistics show more MIT/BSD/Apache licensed projects than ever before. This shift will have far-reaching consequences on the FOSS ecosystem in the long term, and I'm just not sure whether those consequences will be good or bad. We've got too many idealists and too many VC-chasers in the same room here ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I sure hope so, on a smaller scale. I fully plan to bite into Matlab's market with GNU Octave. Wish me luck, folks!

<comment><USER7> GNU Octave is a great project.

Yet, the replacement for MatLab appears, at least to me, to be Python. The abundance of resources due to its general purposeness swamps Octave/MatLab's niche tailoring. Python is a mire flexible tool for STEM because it supports a broader array of applications.

<comment><USER6> Python does not replace the Matlab language itself. For as long as we have Matlab code, we will need Octave.

My hope is to make Octave as obsolete as Matlab itself, but so far neither is. Matlab is _huge_ and Python has not unthroned it. It will take a combined effort to do so. Octave is but another contributor to this effort.

<comment><USER7> In that sense Linux doesn't replace other Operating Systems. But of course it does and that's the sense in which I used the word "replace". As with Windows and Linux, Python is used in lieu of MatLab frequently for new applications as the total number of applications grows.

MatLab is also often replaced by R these days.

<comment><USER6> Programming languages are not quite like operating systems (and even Linux has Wine). When you have a large codebase written in some language, you can't just easily throw it out and rewrite the whole thing in another language. Programming languages never really die out: COBOL is still used these days.

There is a lot of Matlab code out there, and it needs something to run in other than Matlab. That's why Octave is still important.

<comment><USER7> I didn't suggest Octave wasn't important as an alternative for MatLab. I stated my opinion that Python appears to be replacing MatLab in the niches where it dominates. If there is a new project, Python is likely to be a competitive alternative to MatLab or Octave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There have already been two other Red Hats, and Red Hat bought them both: JBoss and Cygnus.

If there's ever another breakout in enterprise open source, Red Hat will buy that firm, too.

</comment><comment><USER9> Red Hat will probably stay the biggest one, but there's a huuuuge room for applications in specific areas today that range far beyond the operating system.

In particular, I think Big Data and Open Networking are two of those areas.

Do they need to get as big as Red Hat is now? Defintely not.

Levine's (linked) comment that OSS companies can't execute on Product Management is incredibly short sighted, if done correctly, they have infinitely _more_ data than their proprietary counterparts. But later on he seems to be saying that there can't be another people keeping it as "pure" ... well, no, Red Hat isn't really a product company. I'll get to that.

The first article itself doesn't seem to know what Red Hat _really_ is either, saying "Red Hat has become a technology sommelier that selects the best of open source infrastructure and development software and organizes it into packages to solve enduring problems for enterprise computing.". It's more about support of base OS. Really. All the packaging stuff makes that possible, but the various products that Red Hat buys and sells are tiny in comparison.

Whether we like it or not, if you are building building-block software the expectation is now that these components be OSS. Proprietary software is generally viewed as acceptable in SaaS apps and end-user products, but is growing less acceptable in application substrates, programming languages, and the like.

Red Hat is doing well because of a lot of big (read: bank) customers needing expertise on kernel/hardware related issues, other companies will likely grow differently.

If people are asking for "another" Red Hat, what do they want? It's really a meaningless phrase in a way. I don't think they want Red Hat's various ancillary products, I think they mean something with the teeth of an operating system company.

Red Hat is great, and in many ways still is. There are many more interesting things to do instead. The comparison of thing-that-is-a-company-but-not-in- the-same-space with Red Hat is typical VC meaningless-ness question.

Maybe it's asking "can something get so big without being an OS company". I think it can, because the OS is largely a solved problem, and there is lots to be done is going to appear on top of it - but I'd also rather companies didn't try to get that big, and just concentrate on making one or two awesome things, and there being lots of awesome things.

<comment><USER10> Cloudera, Hortonworks, and Pivotal are shaping up to be possible contenders and most of the large players are pretty openly announcing that they're planning IPOs. Big Data platforms are a lot like OSes in how they'll schedule jobs and allocate resources for you across nodes. What's bothered me a lot about these stacks is how significant the overhead is and how little really technical work has gone into them like we had developing kernels from the 70s to even today. Most Big Data articles are... not exactly meant for developers while mostly engineers cared about OS design back even to the early 90s as Windows v. Macs v. OS/2 wars still were argued.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Probably not. Just like there has not been a new IBM, Microsoft, Google or Facebook. New things will dominate new areas, not compete with existing giants, until they're quite large already. Usually, at least.

</comment><comment><USER12> SuSE seems to me pretty much like another Red Hat

<comment><USER13> Really? Fedora is my first choice for desktop OS, worked for companies that RedHat was their first choice for server OS, hosted some of apps on OpenShift and currently I am setting up my Ghost installation, also on OpenShift.

Last time I used any of SuSE's products was about seven years ago (when I was 14), when I couldn't install Linux on my mother's PC and played around with their LiveCD from a magazine.

<comment><USER14> Sample size of 1!

SuSE seem to be much more popular in the parts of the linux community that do not have English as a first language.

<comment><USER15> Particularly in Germany, where they are (were?) based.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> SUSE is doing well and while not as large as Red Hat, continues to make valuable contributions to OSS across the board.

<comment><USER17> According to Wikipedia by employee count Red Hat (7500) is 10x the size of each of SUSE (750) and Canonical (700) but the SUSE and Canonical numbers cited are a few years out of date.

Anyone have more up to date numbers or other ways to characterize overall size or contribution to open source? Am also curious whether SUSE or Canonical do any public policy, perhaps just as a side effect of selling to governments. Red Hat apparently has a "Global Public Policy" department though there's little info about it on the web. In theory a larger entity can reap more benefits of policy activity including lobbying, so will do more of it.

<comment><USER16> I don't have any good answers to that, sorry. I know that SUSE and Red Hat worked together on the live-kernel-patching stuff just shipping with kernel 4.0 and work together on a number of other open source projects as well.

There is no denying the size of Red Hat, and thus its influence. I'm just thankful there are other out there doing the good work as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, there will be another Red Hat, in the same sense that Apple and Samsung is another Kodak.

</comment><comment><USER19> Isn't Microsoft slowly turning into another Red Hat?

<comment><USER5> They're slowly turning into another IBM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's a smaller market, but I'd consider 3D Robotics to be another RedHat. Arguably the most complex component in the drones is the flight controller, and both the hard and software that 3DR uses for their FC is open-sourced.

</comment><comment><USER21> GitHub? But it's market is much smaller- just the 5% of computers that develop code. The vast majority just consume apps.

<comment><USER22> GitHub could extend their offerings to the broader market of distributed/collaborative content creation.

<comment><USER23> That's one of those fortresses for Microsoft and Sharepoint.

<comment><USER24> Or Google Docs...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is Red Hat still primarily funded by US Military contracts? That's what worries me most.

<comment><USER26> What software company in the US isn't bringing in huge military contracts?

<comment><USER25> but this is more alarming because of RHEL's influence back on the greater open source community. Poettering is employed there. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think Sonatype's doing for Java what Red Hat did for Linux.</comment>


Ask HN: Microsoft lied about upgradability of our computer, how mad should we be? - <AUTHOR> My father's Microsoft Windows 8 computer had the Windows 10 upgrade prompt as expected but when followed it said it wasn't possible to upgrade because his Nvidia graphics (GeForce 7025/ NVIDIA nForce 630a) was "unable to run Windows 10" and that Nvidia was responsible for not making it "compatible".
Note they didn't say it was just "not supported" but that it was _unable_ to run and was incompatible.
An example image of the error is shown here, http://ivanrf.com/en/nvidia-compatibility-issue-with-windows-10/ (nvidia-compatibility-windows-10-01-en.jpg).
Note Microsoft in their misleading error message give a handy link allowing you to purchase a new computer from them ... how, er, convenient.
The only thing is that the computer is completely able to run Windows 10. Running the upgrade using a Microsoft tool that was easily downloaded the computer ran, even without driver upgrade (albeit with reduced graphics) and after a simple graphics driver update (with an Nvidia.com downloaded installer) was fully working.
Clearly Microsoft lied in saying that the upgrade was impossible, their tool did it perfectly.
What should the response to this sort of fraud be? I wonder how many users like my father assumed they had to get a new computer to get Windows 10? <comment><USER2> Your dad's computer didn't ship with Windows 8. His graphics card is from 2007, and Windows 8 shipped in 2012 (Windows 7 in 2009).

Windows Vista, which was originally on your dad's computer, isn't supported by the Windows 10 free upgrade promotion, and by extension a lot of hardware from that period also isn't supported.

So you want to know why your dad's computer isn't compatible? It is too darn old.

> What should the response to this sort of fraud be?

You should be compensated every penny that the Windows 10 upgrade cost you: Zero dollars and zero cents.

But snark aside for a second: Microsoft is trying to offer the best user experience. They would prefer NOT to upgrade a user who will wind up with a poorly supported system (e.g. an 8 year old graphics card not supported by the manufacturer on Windows 10).

According to Nvidia's website, they do not offer a Windows 10 driver for that specific chipset. Windows 7 seems to be the latest driver.

So while I'm sure Windows 10 can fall back to a Windows 7 64 bit driver (just as I suspect Windows 8 did also) there is no assurance of how well this graphics driver will work with Windows 8/8.1/10 specific features.

It might work but Nvidia or Microsoft aren't making assurances. I agree with them, it is "incompatible." It works, but who knows what edge cases may appear.

Ultimately your tone for a completely free promotion and calling it "fraud" is utterly pathetic.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's practically entirely _compatible_. The card may have been released in 2007 but the system was purchased new in 2012. Win 8 cost £100+ for the license.

>a poorly supported system //

They didn't say that though; they said "unable to run". Yet clearly MS know that's not the case (now if not at release). Unsupported and "unable to run" are entirely different. I'd have no problem if MS said "may not work" or "unsupported by Microsoft".

>You should be compensated every penny that the Windows 10 upgrade cost you: Zero dollars and zero cents. //

The cost is time - as an ordinary user the nag telling my father to upgrade was treated as an essential. Then on that nag screen Microsoft informed him that his computer couldn't run the upgrade and kindly offered to sell him a new computer.

If he hadn't asked me the cost would then be disposal of a perfectly good computer (who wants a 2nd hand computer that "can't run windows") and the price of replacement from the MS offerings. I imagine quite a lot of people would have trusted that there computer was "unable to run" Windows, MS would know after all, and so followed the sales links in the nag screen.

What do you call false statements made to increase sales if not fraud?

<comment><USER2> > The card may have been released in 2007 but the system was purchased new in > 2012.

You purchased a 5 year old Vista machine in 2012?

If it was actually from 2012 you wouldn't have needed to spend "£100+" for Windows 8, it would have shipped with it. Not to mention that in 2012 Windows 8 upgrade only cost £14.99[0] for the upgrade edition (the promotion ended January 31st 2013).

> Yet clearly MS know that's not the case (now if not at release).

They don't "clearly [.] know that." They don't go through and test every piece of hardware one by one. They often just depend on what the manufacturer of that hardware (namely Nvidia) tells them. In this case Nvidia offered drivers for XP, Vista, and Windows 7 (32 and 64). They did not offer drivers for 8/8.1 or 10.

So Microsoft looks up the device, the device doesn't have a compatible driver, so they decide not to upgrade. Last thing Microsoft need is a bunch of threads about how "Microsoft broke my computer during upgrade!!!" The Windows 7 driver mostly works, and that is great, but Microsoft has no way of knowing that without testing every piece of potential hardware one by one.

> What do you call false statements made to increase sales if not fraud?

Microsoft made none.

This is one of those "damned if they do, and damned if they don't" situations. If they do what you want and are more liberal with upgrades (e.g. upgrade anything with a working Windows 7 driver) then there is a real chance they could effectively upgrade people's computer to a version of the OS which the hardware doesn't support, however if they don't upgrade those computers then people moan about "fraud" and "lies."

[0] [http://www.techradar.com/us/news/computing/microsoft- confirm...](http://www.techradar.com/us/news/computing/microsoft-confirms- windows-8-upgrade-offer-uk-pricing-1084035)

<comment><AUTHOR> >You purchased a 5 year old Vista machine in 2012?//

New motherboards with the geforce7025/nforce630a chipset are currently on sale even now. Not that it's pertinent to whether MS made false statements but my elderly father purchased the machine and it seems paid for the OS as a line item, it was not an upgrade but a non-OEM install at the full price advertised by MS. None of that is pertinent really.

>> [pbhjpbhj] What do you call false statements made to increase sales if not fraud?

> [Someone1234] Microsoft made none

The upgrade now nag screen said the machine was "unable to run" Windows 10. That is categorically false.

The presence of the 'but never mind you can buy a new computer from us with this link' on the nag screen suggests a motive which I'm inclined to agree with.

If they don't know whether a particular hardware arrangement works or not then they shouldn't state twice that it doesn't, they should say "your hardware may not work" or "your hardware is unsupported" or "we don't consider your hardware to work well enough" or something else that is actually true.

The motive isn't a fact but the lie is.

<comment><USER2> > New motherboards with the geforce7025/nforce630a chipset are currently on > sale even now.

So is a mint condition boxed Apple II+ from 1977 (for $1,400). Why doesn't Windows 10 run on that?

You can still buy a new motherboard with a 7025 but they're still from five years ago. They're just old inventory sitting in a warehouse somewhere.

> The upgrade now nag screen said the machine was "unable to run" Windows 10. > That is categorically false.

It is more true than false. It has a graphics card in it that has no compatible Windows 10 drivers available. The fact it runs at all is surprising, and considering these are completely automated messages it is completely understandable why Microsoft would relay that message.

MOST users with a machine like your father's would be better off not upgrading to Windows 10, because compatibility cannot be assured. It could break their computer.

> If they don't know whether a particular hardware arrangement works or not > then they shouldn't state twice that it doesn't, they should say "your > hardware may not work" or "your hardware is unsupported" or "we don't > consider your hardware to work well enough" or something else that is > actually true.

I will grant that it could be worded more carefully. The upgrade agent shouldn't allow people to proceed, however, the wording could be constructed differently.

Overall I don't have a whole lot of sympathy. This is a free upgrade. Nobody is forcing you to take it, and nobody owes you anything because it wasn't compatible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Suck it up. Nobody lied to you, you are still entitled to the Win10 upgrade if you want it, but Nvidia has not made a Win10 driver available for your GPU.

</comment><comment><USER4> > _What should the response to this sort of fraud be?_

I really wouldn't assume it was fraud. Margins aren't that amazing on hardware, and it's very possible that Microsoft has more of an interest in having your father on Win 10 than selling him a new laptop. In fact, Microsoft's hardware business is supposedly just to make sure that flagship Windows machines exist, not to make Microsoft the premier vendor or have the largest market share.

This false negative was probably A) a bug, B) a design flaw in the installer that told you whether the PC could run Win 10, or C) Microsoft covering their asses.

In the past, Microsoft caught tons of flak for driver issues when people upgraded to Windows Vista. They've probably learned their lesson on that one.</comment>


Show HN: recommendable, a like/dislike recommendation engine for your rails app - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/davidcelis/recommendable <comment><AUTHOR> I released this gem late last night and am just excited to share it with people. It's my first own open source project and I'm proud with how the first release has turned out. The logic is based on a website (<http://goodbre.ws/>) I wrote last year for my thesis project at school, which was to alter existing collaborative filtering algorithms to work using set math. For a while, I have wanted to strip the logic out into a gem for others to use, but I finally buckled down a few days ago and got to work.</comment>


This may be the Apple II of AI-driven robot arms - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613289/this-may-be-the-apple-ii-of-ai-driven-robot-arms/ <comment><USER2> It's called Berkeley open arms. I thought it was open source and 3d printable...</comment>


Oceans warming faster than anticipated, study finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-oceans-study-climate-change-20181031-story.html <comment><USER2> Somewhat off topic comment, but in 2003, Bill Bryson's book "History of Everything" states that anthropogenic CO2 output is 7billion metric tons per year where natural CO2 output is 200 billion metric tons a year (mostly volcanoes IIRC)[0]. It left me with the impression, that an additional 3% a year is small and we have time before this becomes a crisis. For the record, Scientific American calls Bill Bryson "A Champion of Science".

Then when climate change appeared to accelerate, I assumed that it must because we are removing our carbon sinks and that deforestation is likely the more dominant cause than our +3% additional emissions.

Earlier this week, I revisited the above figure and according to Scientific American: "the world's volcanoes, both on land and undersea, generate about 200 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, while our automotive and industrial activities cause some 24 billion tons of CO2 emissions every year worldwide." [1]

At 3% I can see how a climate change skeptic might feel this issue is alarmist. But if it is 12,000% I don't see how anyone could honestly be skeptical that global warming isn't being caused by humans.

It is mind boggling that two authoritative sources could differ by 3000X. Any clarifying comments are appreciated.

[0] [https://books.google.com/books?id=_CWlKRYLbIwC&pg=PA268&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=_CWlKRYLbIwC&pg=PA268&lpg=PA268&dq=bill+bryson+200+billion+tons&source=bl&ots=3kPeY28foc&sig=EDlYNvIm6eAbvtZKEQxBMhokN4c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjuuNzwmbLeAhVpS98KHbm9D-sQ6AEwAnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=bill%20bryson%20200%20billion%20tons&f=false) [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks- volcan...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or- humans/) [1] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks- volcan...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or- humans/)

<comment><USER3> Didn't read the links but the numbers in your comment differ by 3x (7 billion vs 24 billion). Unless I'm misreading something?

<comment><USER4> One is million vs billion.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. I was looking at the wrong number. The scale difference is in the "200" number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So here's an honest question from an honest climate skeptic: how come every time we update our understanding of climate, invariably it turns out the climate change is worse than we thought before? I understand that science is never perfect, so with each discovery we re-evaluate our estimations about climate change, but it should be roughly 50-50. I understand a bit of bias in reporting, so I would expect to see 60-40 or 70-30, but how come it's close to 99-01? I will not pretend that I don't have my own explanations (such as big conflict of interest of climate scientists, who would see their career advance if their findings confirm the doom and gloom consensus), but would someone care to change my mind? (preferably without ad-hominem attacks).

<comment><USER6> For one thing, take the tabloid headlines with a grain of salt. This article should actually read something like "Interesting new way to measure warming oceans could be even more accurate". But in reality, they still model/interpolate the results between the many thousands of measuring points, which is still just part of the picture. Which hasn't really changed that much, just a gradual refining. Which is sort of how science works.

By the way, as a skeptic, you have access to the raw data yourself and can come up with a hypothesis that the oceans aren't warming and prove it yourself. [http://www.argodatamgt.org/Access-to- data](http://www.argodatamgt.org/Access-to-data)

I don't think climate change is worse than we thought. It's more that it's becoming acceptable to report it in those terms and gradually that's how the populace as a whole are coming to view it.

The key thing appears to be political will. You get the full spectrum of politicians. Some have been pushing for environmental policies since the 60's and 70's when it was very fringe (and scientists were already giving us plenty of warning - with claims of CO2 causing radical climate effects if unchecked... as it mostly has been). Then you've got the muppets who are still in denial and don't appear to give a shit about what sort of planet is left to the next generation(s).

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think it's very likely you are right. Also thanks for the link to the data. I tried in the past to get access to actual raw data so I can play with it, and draw my own conclusions, but all I got was always many levels above the raw data.

Your point about politicians in denial is 100% on. And as a skeptical guy it bothers me that people perceive me as being somehow in the same boat as them. It is my perception that those guys are not really trying to find truth, or what's best for humankind, or anything beyond what will get them elected in the next cycle. However, that being said, I'm still skeptical.

To give you an example, how many times did you not read in the media that Greenland is melting. Well, here's the real time data about the Greenland ice sheet mass [1]. Have you ever heard that the mass accumulation for the 2017-18 year was way above the 30-year mean?

Edit: Also, thanks the Hacker News community. This is the first time I express my views on climate change without using a throwaway account, and I fully expected my karma to take a huge hit. So far it didn't, it stayed about flat. I expected to be destroyed in the comments. Nope, all comments have been respectful. Well done Hacker News.

[1] [https://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice- shee...](https://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet- surface-mass-budget/)

<comment><USER7> My question for you would be, what exactly are you skeptical about? (Genuinely curious). Is that global climate change exists at all? Or that it's somehow being misprepresented?

To me it's always just come down to which do I think is more likely:

A) 99% of all scientists are intentionally duping society into believing global warming for some unknown agenda that they all share and we don't know about for an unknown benefit

B) the people who stand to make billions (maybe trillions) of dollars by claiming that global warming doesn't exist or is at least to some degree a conspiracy are behind the idea that globally warming isn't real

When i want to find out who is behind something, I typically look at who stands to make the most money from their viewpoint being accepted as the dominant one.

To me it seems, given the enormous amount of money at stake, that scenario b is much more likely.

<comment><USER5> >what exactly are you skeptical about? (Genuinely curious)

I was fully convinced that the science about global warming is settled until I read Crichton's novel "State of Fear" [1]. That one planted some seeds of doubt in my mind. I know, a lot of climate change advocates say the novel was debunked (and maybe it was), but after I read the novel, I started thinking that maybe I should take a closer look and try to draw my own conclusions.

And what I saw was not always good. Not always bad, mind you. To be honest, in the last 2 years or so, I get less and less skeptical, but overall, I still consider myself skeptical.

Let me list a few things

* A large part of Earth's land mass is in remote areas of Russia, Africa, South America. It's likely that more than 50% of the land mass does not have good temperature records.

* Many temperature stations, while somewhat appropriate for reporting temperature for purposes of weather forecast, are not appropriate for climate change science (e.g. they are located in a parking lot, subject to the heat of the asphalt).

* The temperature in a hot desert often drops below freezing during nighttime. Why? Because the air is dry, in other words the greenhouse effect is much lower. That should tell you that water vapors in the atmosphere are a very powerful greenhouse gas. Climate scientists admit as much. More powerful than CO2? Well, you will not get a straight answer to that question. You'll start hearing jargon such as "forcing", and in the end it will sound like CO2 is a more potent greenhouse gas. But behind all the jargon is the fact that CO2 in itself is not such a potent greenhouse gas, but only considering all various feedbacks (including water) that it induces. But those feedbacks are only modeled on a computer, they are not facts. Are they tested, validated, as good science would require? Oh well, it turns out that climate scientists don't believe a whole lot in falsification and validation.

* By the way, did I mention that greenhouse effect is a miss-nomer? Actual greenhouses are not hot because of the "greenhouse effect"[2]

* Bjorn Llomborg [3]. For those who don't know, the guy is a statistician who decided to take a look at the climate science through the eyes of a statistician. He wrote a book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist", which had a pretty moderate tone in my opinion. He was viciously attacked by the climate science community. For example, here's a quote from the wikipedia page: "The Climate Feedback reviewers assessed that the scientific credibility ranged between 'low' and 'very low'". If any scientist gets the modern day Giordano Bruno treatment, it's never climate science consensus scientists, always climate skeptics.

I could keep going, but I don't want to write a wall of text. I'll stop here, and if people want more bullet points, I'll put them in some separate comments.

Oh, and just to clarify. Many times I looked into the science, it did check out. For example, some skeptics point out to volcanic emissions. I spent time finding the numbers, and yes, it turns out that volcanoes emit peanuts compared to what we put in the atmosphere. I could go on with things that check out as well, but as I said above, I don't want to get people bored.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Fear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Fear)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjørn_Lomborg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjørn_Lomborg)

<comment><USER8> I am on a bus, but I want to point out here that CO2 is a powerful greenhouse gas because of its volume and its _residence time_. Its half-life in the atmosphere is far far longer than the H2O molecule, so its corresponding contribution to the greenhouse effect is also greater over time.

<comment><USER5> It depends how you look at that. Currently about 1/3 of our carbon emission are absorbed by the ocean [1]. H2O is pretty much entirely absorbed by the ocean, and then re-released (the well-known water cycle in the nature). Now, when people say that the half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere is 1000 years or so, they generally neglect that part where some CO2 is dissolved in the ocean, presumably because it can be re-released later. But that's (trivially) the same with H2O.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solubility_pump#Anthropogenic_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solubility_pump#Anthropogenic_changes)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The lede is buried at the end of the article:

> Much of the data on ocean temperatures currently relies on the Argo array — > robotic devices that float at different depths, surfacing roughly every 10 > days to transmit readings to satellites. There are about 3,800 such pieces > of equipment in waters around the globe that provide the publicly available > information...

> By comparison, Resplandy and Keeling calculated heat based on the amount of > oxygen and carbon dioxide rising off the ocean. Filling round glass flasks > with air from research stations in the Canadian Arctic, Tasmania and La > Jolla, San Diego, researchers analyzed the samples to determine the > aggregate temperature of the ocean.

On what grounds is three samples of a novel measurement preferable to a few thousand direct temperature measurements? I mean in terms of reliability, not ability to generate clicks.

<comment><USER10> 1\. There's more than 3 samples. And they picked the locations for taking these samples very carefully.

2\. They're measuring different things, obviously. One is measuring the mixture of gasses, the other is pure temperature.

The gas measurement is good for getting a picture of the entire system because it allows us to use basic chemistry, which is well understood, to gain a picture of the overall temperature change by looking at how much gas has escaped the ocean.

The ocean temperature data, while very useful, can still be subject to both sampling errors and problems with the analysis as far as how to interpret it in aggregate. Especially since you have to put overall weather patterns, like El Nino / La Nina, etc. into your analysis. There's always going to be uncertainty into how you should do analysis of the data over so many disparate points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Without taking a position either way, my understanding of the skepticism is not that warming is not occuring, but rather the degree to which things that humanity can control influence that warming (0% to 100%).

<comment><USER12> > my understanding of the skepticism is not that warming is not occuring

That's a fairly recent goalpost move as "warming is not occurring" has become an untenable position.

<comment><USER13> yep.

First it was: it's not happening.

Then: but how much?

Now: but can we affect it?

Soon it'll be: are we sure it's a bad thing?

Then it'll be: it's bad but it's that other guy's fault.

<comment><USER11> I don't think that's right, though it may be your view. Temperatures have in general been warming since the Maunder Minimum 400 years ago.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Ca...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg/800px- Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg.png)

Clarification edit: Meaning I think there is a better argument in the polemic (I'm not suggesting the answer)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So, okay. We have a problem. Climate change likely with an significant anthropogenic component. I hear a lot about magic solutions like electric cars whose batteries are incredibly polluting to produce, solar farms that are super expensive and require crazy amounts of acres per watt, wind farms that kill birds and have toxic materials inside to operate. The problem, almost certainly, is mostly fossil fuels and to a lesser extent the meat/dairy industry. Let's say, hypothetically, I accept all of this. Let's say the USA and Europe do everything, everything that climate advocates suggest.

It won't matter.

The vast majority of carbon emissions and almost _all_ of the carbon emission growth over the last ___50 years_ __has come from the developing world. Thats right. CO2 emissions haven 't grown in the West for 50 years. They've shrunk in fact. [1] Seriously. Are we really talking about crushing the energy production of the poorest, most disadvantaged places in the world?

My point isn't that we shouldn't do anything. My point is the problem is way, way, way bigger and more complicated than is commonly phrased. We have to stop the developing world from accelerating out of poverty, and fast--if the climate projections are indeed correct.

This, my friends, is what we call a tragedy. The next time I hear something about the West harming the planet disproportionally, I'm going to collapse into a neutron star.

The only solution I see with any chance of working is if we start a global project to flood the world with nuclear reactors. Everywhere. Nothing else will deliver the gigawatts in time to stop the developing world from burning the planet alive.

Assuming, of course, the climate models are correct.

[1] [https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas- emis...](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions)

<comment><USER15> (My response is from a US perspective)

You make a lot of very strong claims that you think are fair handed but are terribly biased. "solar farms that are super expensive and require crazy amounts of acres per watt". We can afford to cut taxes by $100B a year despite having a budget deficit. How crazy expensive is it for the US to maintain a vast military to secure our access to oil and gas (among other things)? We can afford $700B every single year to do that, but spending tens of billions of dollars on green energy would be crazy expensive. As for acres, we have lots of them to spare.

Yes, wind farms kill birds. Do the people who point this out ever weigh that against the number of dead animals and people and reduced health from coal and oil? Do they really care about the birds? Have they ever made an omelette?

Classifying electric cars as a "magic solution" is silly; they are just one small part of an incremental solution. Nobody says they are magic or the total solution. Your verbiage is emotion based and not fact based. Apparently these tactics worked on you, but I find them lazy and not compelling.

Finally, addressing your overall point: If I'm fat, I should eat better. You are right to say that cutting out sugar from my coffee won't solve my problems if I continue eating two hamburgers and fries for lunch. But to reason that I might as well have the sugar in my coffee because I haven't cut down on everything else is just factually wrong. Incomplete solutions may still buy time to address those other issues, and incrementally reducing use may mean we still suffer terrible consequences, but perhaps not quite as intensely.

<comment><USER14> They absolutely will not buy time. The developing world is, right now, growing in carbon emissions at what appears an exponential rate while the West is reducing emissions, both absolutely and per capita.

We can't succeed at what the climate advocates think we need to do without addressing the problem of the developing world.

Let me state the point more clearly: if the West drops to ZERO carbon emissions yesterday, it won't matter.</comment></comment></comment>


Yaron Minsky: Effective ML (video) - <AUTHOR> http://ocaml.janestcapital.com/?q=node/82

<comment><USER2> Here's a blog post by Yaron describing the talk:

<http://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/75>

<comment><USER3> I have to say that I agree with all of small lessons presented, and I couldn't say enough on how the lesson "Make illegal states unrepresentable" is core to any static type system and makes my life much better.</comment></comment>


What is it like to always be the smartest person in the room? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-always-be-the-smartest-person-in-the-room/answer/Alex-Kamil

<comment><USER2> Probably the same as not being a very smart person at all: Really smart people try to seek out even smarter people... and it's rather improbable they won't find any!

</comment><comment><USER3> next question, please!

kidding.</comment>


The oldest vegetarian restaurant - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190513-the-worlds-oldest-vegetarian-restaurant <comment><USER2> Having been vegetarian since the early 90s, I can happily say the last few years has gotten amazing for eating out. 20 years ago I was in Hungary for a week and lived on salad and deep-fried camembert from the regular restaurants while my friends gorged on meat. The day before I left, I stumbled across a hidden buddhist restaurant in a basement - I believe I cried with relief. These days I can travel almost anywhere and be assured of filling my stomach with more than salad greens and cheese.

<comment><USER3> I've noticed a bit of an ebb and flow of vegetarian options at restaurants here in the mid-west US. There were not a lot of options when I went vegetarian/vegan in the early 2000's, but gradually that got better and better and then peaked sometime in the early 2010's when it was super popular to be vegan. I feel like that popularity has dropped off and I've begun to notice less options than before.

Couple that with the insane number of breweries that have been opening and you'll see their food options are very, very meat-heavy. Most in my area (and there are an awful lot) will only have an option or two, and a lot of the time that will be grilled cheese or macaroni and cheese, not exactly what I'm looking for when I eat out.

Of course, this is just my perception and it really only applies to the area I live in.

<comment><USER4> My wife is vegetarian, so by extension I end up being very conscious of vegetarian options. It's generally pretty easy to find good for her, but I am pretty surprised how limited the options can be. I feel like it's a coin flip with newer restaurants - they either have a pretty wide selection, or like you mentioned, they go really heavy on the meat and offer few or no vegetarian options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fun fact: the first vegetarian restaurant in Krakow ("Przyroda" at Św. Krzyża St. 7) opened in 1912 due to the 8th World Esperanto Congress. The staff spoke Esperanto.[1]

[1] [http://digital.onb.ac.at/RepViewer/viewer.faces?doc=DTL_6196...](http://digital.onb.ac.at/RepViewer/viewer.faces?doc=DTL_6196698&order=1&view=SINGLE) page 56

<comment><USER6> In the early 20th century, vegetarianism in Europe and North America was utterly outside the mainstream, its practitioners considered total weirdos. So, no surprise that vegetarians would overlap with Esperantists, another bunch of weirdos.

(I am former member of the Esperanto movement, very heavily involved in it. When I say the Esperanto world abounds with weirdos, I know of what I speak. Yes, I know, that claim might mean I was/am one too.)

<comment><USER5> Yup. Both were mocked at the time: "militant Catholics [...] solemnly disavowed modernism, monism, masochism, vegetarianism, and Esperanto" (Rydwan, September 1912)[1]

[1] [https://docplayer.pl/112655650-Rydwan-miesiecznik- poswiecony...](https://docplayer.pl/112655650-Rydwan-miesiecznik-poswiecony- sprawom-tw-orczosci-i-kultury-polskiej.html) page 29

<comment><USER7> > "militant Catholics [...] solemnly disavowed modernism, monism, _masochism_ > , vegetarianism, and Esperanto"

But they were totally on board with sadism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I eat at Hiltl frequently and love it every time! Strongly recommended.

For a friend of mine, Hiltl's presences in Zürich (and other vegeterian restaurants) was a big factor in moving to Zürich :)

I was on an airplane once where SWISS served Hiltl food. The person next to me was very positively surprised by the quality and asked me about details of the dish.

<comment><USER9> I was working 6 years in Zürich, and I really miss Hiltl. I go back every year for a weekly visit though :)

For people who go to Hiltl for the first time, I suggest using the self serving part. It's cheaper and you can get a much better selection of the food.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd say Guinness should probably explain their decision-making process.

 _" Oldest restaurant in the world: Restaurante Botín, 1725"_ ([https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world- records/76907-old...](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world- records/76907-oldest-restaurant)).

Yet St. Peter Stiftskulinarium was recorded as operating in Austria in 803 (1), Bianyifang in Beijing was established in 1416 (2), Zur letzten Instanz in Berlin in 1621 (but recorded existing a century earlier) (3), White Horse Tavern in Rhode Island established in 1673 (4), etc. This list from Japan alone could contradict Guiness' claim (5)

(1) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter_Stiftskulinarium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter_Stiftskulinarium) (2) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bianyifang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bianyifang) (3) [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zur_letzten_Instanz](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zur_letzten_Instanz) (4) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Horse_Tavern_(Newport,_R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Horse_Tavern_\(Newport,_Rhode_Island\)) (5) [https://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan/articles/the-10-oldest...](https://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan/articles/the-10-oldest- restaurants-in-japan/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Japan has had Shojin ryori for centuries before this. It is a purely vegetarian strictly codified cuisine. This claim is false imo.

[https://www.saveur.com/japan-shojin-ryori-temple- cuisine](https://www.saveur.com/japan-shojin-ryori-temple-cuisine)

<comment><USER12> I agree. Guinness world records for things like this should probably not be taken as authoritative since they are heavily skewed by selection bias.

It seems completely implausible that there aren't any vegetarian restaurants older than that in parts of Asia (especially in religious communities of Buddhists, Jains, etc.) where large populations have been practicing vegetarianism for many centuries. Even if you rule out things that aren't "continuously running" (whatever that means in practice) that seems quite unlikely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Obviously.. how could we know. The source of all worked great practices started some where in Europe or America.. the rest of the world is just a giant shithole according to your people..

</comment><comment><USER14> India Coffee House in Kolkata opened in 1870's. It is definitely much older than this. Leopold cafe in Mumbai is also from 1800s. They both serve only vegetarian dishes.

</comment><comment><USER15> First time I went to Hiltl I loaded up the plate. Went to get it weighed. And the 45 Francer (45 USD) as I call it was up. It's not the cheapest, but the buffet food is consistently good. And in my time in Zurich they have expanded rapidly (recently Bahnhofstrasse and Landstrasse). And I like the free water. Just watch you don't load the plate too heavily!

</comment><comment><USER16> In London, there are two Tibits locations, which are owned by Hiltl. They share the buffet concept and some of the menu items. Pretty delicious!

</comment><comment><USER17> Today, Haus Hiltl isn't just one Zürich's most popular dining options; it's recognised by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest continuously run vegetarian restaurant

\- i dont get this, India has a long history of vegetarianism for centuries and you find thousands of "dabas" or small eateries all over India for centuries. How can it be the oldest?

<comment><USER18> I'm sure Indians gonna raise a huge noise over this.

>How can it be the oldest?

ultimately it'll boil down to what one knows versus what one can prove.

<comment><USER19> 1) The above comment is rather condescending

2) 100 years is nothing in Indian history

3) Our ancestral home, which still stands, is over 150 years old and there are small eateries below which have been family run for ever and are vegetarian.

4) There are probably 1000s of 100 year old vegetarian restaurants in India. Granted they are not probably as fancy as the one in Switzerland, but they are _vegetarian_ and _restaurants_ and _over 100 year old_ nonetheless.

5) If the post said _in Europe_ , I'll believe. But given history of Asia, I have no doubt that it is _not_ the oldest vegetarian restaurant.

<comment><USER20> Problem with most of Indian History is lack of written or otherwise corroborating evidence. Also the claim is not for the oldest, but oldest continusly running. Even then the ship of Theseus argument can be raised.

<comment><USER11> And the Ship of Theseus argument does not apply to Haus Hiltl because ... ?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>