Nobody Thinks About EBay - <AUTHOR> https://www.racked.com/2017/10/16/16473414/ebay-online-shopping-resale <comment><USER3> The fact that eBay is now primarily (80%!) new items that are 'buy it now' not auctions is why I have lost interest. Amazon wins that game hands down with competitive pricing, 2 day shipping, and no-hassle returns. I can't get any of those assurances from a bunch of random sellers on eBay.

What made eBay fun and interesting were all the weird things you could find there that you couldn't find on sites like Amazon. Now every time I try to go searching for something on eBay I have to wade through all the shady sellers who have packed it with thousands of items that are better bought elsewhere.

<comment><USER4> for non-Americans, Ebay is great for cross boarder shopping. Amazon doesn't have nearly the selection outside the USAA, so E-bay becomes a great way to do that.

<comment><USER5> Yeah Amazon is pretty weird for cross-border stuff, even in the EU. I'm in Czech Republic which doesn't have its own "amazon.cz" ... you can order from amazon.co.uk or amazon.de but many items are unavailable. I think there's an upper-limit on price as it tends to be Electronics (laptops, phones) that I struggled with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They should try sucking less:

My most recent peeve is that its virtually impossible to order searches by cost anymore. Every hole-in-the-wall Chinese seller has figured out that you can do a multi-select on your listing and just stick in a random item with a $0.99 price as one of the selections. This makes it appear as a $0.99 item in the search results. The real product then has to be selected before you can see the real price.

Literally every product is $0.99 from friendship bracelets to jet-skis with no way to sort them. You just have to click each one to discover what it really costs.

I mostly use Aliexpress now for that sort of thing; It's just easier and works better.

And don't even think about selling an Apple product or you will learn quickly about the "brick scam" that's been going on so long and is so well know, ebay is basically complicit in it at this point.

Yes, I'm ranting but: I used to use ebay a great deal. Now I don't. They are richly earning their irrelevance.

<comment><USER7> _Yes, I 'm ranting but: I used to use ebay a great deal. Now I don't. They are richly earning their irrelevance._

Another recent misstep on eBay's part has been to prohibit links to offsite information in listings. So if you're selling anything that requires an informed buyer -- from electronic parts and equipment to the aforementioned jet skis -- your ability to communicate that information has just been removed, or at least made artificially awkward.

It's as if eBay can't decide what kind of company they want to be. A back- alley venue for scams and junk? A storefront for cut-rate Chinese clones of popular gadgets? A place where the latest luxury goods from Guccci and Sorny are always on display? Or a legitimate online marketplace that encourages honest transactions between informed buyers and sellers?

<comment><USER6> They used to be the world's garage sale. This worked for them.

Now, not only did they become the world's sketchy back-alley, they're not even very good at it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I use eBay all the time. It's my default shopping site. It has the things i want, and it's no more expensive than Amazon, sometimes cheaper.

Indeed, i feel it has a bit of an edge over Amazon in selling slightly odd, not entirely mass-produced things. For example, a while ago, i wanted to grow a couple of plants from cuttings. Just two. To do that, i needed a couple of millilitres of rooting hormone and a couple of peat pellets. No manufacturer packages those things in such small quantities. xxlbigdaves-hydro does, though. He buys big packs of rooting hormone and peat pellets, splits them up, and sells a tiny quantity of both, together. He even throws in a razor blade. Ideal.

More recently, i wanted a very particular make of lipstick for a halloween costume. I could buy a single 2.5 ml tube of it on eBay. On Amazon, you can either buy a big tube, or packs of several 2.5 ml tubes. That's a lot more lipstick than i'm likely to get through in my life.

I'm in the UK, and maybe the sellers here are better than in the US, or Amazon is worse. It probably matters that i am the last surviving human without Prime, so Amazon has a higher marginal cost for me than for the typical Hackernews. And i confess that i use eBay partly out of sheer bloody-minded desire not to see Amazon take over the entire universe.

<comment><USER9> Re: Amazon comment. How do you see this playing out?

<comment><USER8> Amazon will take over the world outside China, and then a few years after that, become just another seller on Tmall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Surprised by the comments here, I've always found eBay positive, I buy mostly used items, usually 'Buy it now' rather than auctions, and usually from sellers with solid sales histories. I can't remember ever having a problem, and I can't really imagine buying from random classified ads in preference.

It is disappointing though that they're focusing on new items, and not trying to find ways of improving the situation for buying or selling used items. For instance, perhaps you could have projects to figure out what most customers look for in images, and encourage sellers to provide good coverage, or to pick up images not properly focused on the product. Think of how many pictures eBay must have of any particular laptop model, and when buyers browse, what images they pause on, and where they zoom; it really must be an unparalleled dataset. There are a lot of listings, even for expensive items, where the pictures are just insufficient. And even with filtering and categorization, you could more intelligently encourage sellers to answer categorization questions that meet seller desires, that can be picked up through analysis of how people browse or search for listings. If you could say to a seller "not putting in RAM for a laptop cuts your audience by 18%", and gameify the process of improving the listing, I imagine you could make a lot of progress. Or perhaps using known dimensions of objects or their packaging to provide an simplified, streamlined marketplace for shipping options.

Essentially, they probably feel that second hand sales are a niche market, so they can't continue explosive growth without moving into standard retail. It's the downside of the continual fast growth mindset. They could really cultivate their market, and grow the company by growing the market, by incrementally improving the buyer and seller experience for 2nd hand items. Shifting focus away from that has big risks, not just rewards.

<comment><USER11> I hate to say it, but it appears they have no idea where they're going.

They talk about Etsy, they talk about amazon, they talk about aliexpress - <USER2> then they say they want to focus _more_ on new goods. From where I come from moving out of the niche you dominate and increasing your competing surface area (retail of new goods is, uh, crowded) is an asinine move.

As to "millennials haven't even heard of eBay" - what utter tosh. I and many, many others I know have used eBay since our teens, and I'm now in my 30's. I've just furnished an entire house, from floors to fittings to fridge to furniture through eBay.

Either way, if they honestly think they'll succeed by trying to compete with amazon and Ali on their own turf, they're deluded, and signing up for an express train to insolvency depot, where buyers loiter offering shady deferred stock deals for sick companies to harvest for corporate organs.

They'd do far more for their brand by making the feedback system actually useful again.

Oh, and their API is a world of hatefulness. Built an end to end integration for an ecommerce platform - stuff of nightmares. 2000+ page PDF API guide. Zero consistency in communications. Count from zero, count from one, can't count here. Single shared sandbox for the universe. No support. Spontaneous deprecation. Never again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember when eBay was though of as the ability to sift through a million attics or garages to but all the things that someone else thought was barely worth the effort to carry down for curbside trash pickup. Now it has a very different feel, and it is somewhat taken over by new low dollar junk. Thankfully the auctions are still there, and I can still buy old synths that few people want, used parts for my motorcycles, or 30 year old Pentax lenses.

I've had far less problems with eBay than I have with Amazon. I mostly buy used items on actual auctions. Occasionally a buy it now used item, but rarely new stuff. Perhaps its because I'm a long time user of eBay (1997 IIRC) that I've internalized a consistent process that works. Amazon was great when Amazon was the only seller, but when the opened it up to third party sellers and that turned into questionable and counterfeit items, I don't generally go back.

</comment><comment><USER13> Ebay lacks consistency, UI-wise. It reminds me of MySpace in the generation of Facebook, where users can use whatever visual themes they like and either include or omit whatever technical details they'd like. After seeing people get burned with being shipped empty boxes or just instruction manuals for games, and then the hassle they dealt with just because the seller had evasive language and fine print, I lost a lot of respect for Ebay.

Sure with Amazon, my shipper's items are all mingled together, but if I get shipped a lemon, I don't even have to worry about it being taken care of because Amazon handles that extra-mile beautifully. Ebay is borderline scams and china reseller junk most of the time. One thing that Ebay has cornered the market on, however, are items being sold for parts.

<comment><USER14> I think Ebay's value is in its flexibility: you don't need a category to sell an item.

Once a particular item can be sufficiently categorized, it gets its own marketplace, like what's happened with cell phones.

It happens to Craiglist all the time. E.g.

Rooms for rent --> Airbnb.

Craft products --> Etsy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "We have to tell our story differently because what people know about us is not really who we are anymore,"

My last sale (of macbook) on Ebay was to somebody clearly trying to scam me. But they were not good at it. I knew they were trying to scam me but I also knew ebay protects the seller as long as you can prove the package went to the address from the payment and the weights and sizes for the package made sense. "Not really who we are anymore"... meaning a trustworthy place to sell junk?

</comment><comment><USER16> I feel like ebay died when they removed the ability of sellers to leave negative feedback for buyers back in 2008. I understand why they did it, but they created a less than desirable environment for sellers who moved to other platforms like Etsy, and the buyers just moved along with them.

<comment><USER14> Iunno, negative feedback for buyers was never helpful for sellers since sellers never had much control over their buyers anyway.

At least these days you can somewhat restrict buyers (can't have zero feedback, more than 2 unpaid item reports...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> They should double down on the auction part and maybe find some way to make money off a craigslist like feature. Why bother trying to chase amazon?

<comment> mark-r They're taking exactly the opposite approach, I wouldn't be surprised to see them eliminate auctions entirely someday.

<comment><USER18> That's a very Apple thing to do haha. "The _new_ eBay. Get what you want. When you want. You'll never have to wait for an auction to end again!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "The company's research has found that a younger audience wants unique products and "is searching for items that push against conformity.""

I wonder how much time and money was spent for Ebay to realize the obvious: that young people like (and have always liked) being different.

</comment><comment><USER20> One of the biggest problems of eBay is item categorization. Just search for "iPhone 6" and see what I mean:

[https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m...](https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.XiPhone+6.TRS0&_nkw=iPhone+6&_sacat=0)

Even if you go the their "structured" iPhone 6 page it barely gets any better: [https://www.ebay.com/b/Apple- iPhone-6/9355/bn_3897179](https://www.ebay.com/b/Apple- iPhone-6/9355/bn_3897179)

<comment><USER21> All I see are iphone 6's, what do you mean?

<comment><USER18> Try sorting by price. I commented the same thing (oddly enough, using the same example) above and I remember, when searching by price, how difficult it is because idiots don't like to use the categorization!

<comment><USER21> Eh same thing happens on amazon. I search for a bike jersey and get totally unrelated stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I stopped thinking about ebay a long time ago. I would only consider it if it's the last seller of the thing on the planet. And I definitely do not and will not use paypal, willingly, ever.

They've done not much more than strong-arm their user base on both sides in one form or another for years.

Sorry, they're nothing but a ghost of the Internet past to this little clicker.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think about ebay. No other place to search (learn/discover) used collectable stuff, like maps

A far as buy it now, that is a "wish" price for collectable stuff we buy. Everyone knows the real bidding starts with 2 minutes left in the auction.

Where else is there? When craigslist could search every city - that was the closest.

</comment><comment><USER24> For me Ebay is the place where I go to buy x and instead find a million listings for knock off Chinese versions of x, novelty accessories for x and finally when I find x it is a sad worn out x that sells for 80% of the cost of a new x on Amazon. Except Amazon shipping is cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER25> eBay is quite a mess today but it seems Amazon is almost on the same path these days.

</comment><comment><USER26> They shut down Half.com not so long ago having bought it in 2001 or so for $300 million. There goes a good marketplace for books & CDs. Bad move!

</comment><comment><USER27> Betting the farm that mom and pop shippers can deliver a better customer experience than Amazon is a fast track to an earned death. Cest la vie.

</comment><comment> oh-kumudo Bought some stuff from EBay back then, the tracking status never works, not even once. Until it was delivered after 2 weeks, I had no idea where my order went. Never used it afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER28> ebay is great for buying things like fabrics and wholesale items but I would never trust it to buy or sell anything more expensive than £20.

The risk of fraud is too high and I have zero confidence in ebay to resolve the issue if I were to buy or sell an item and something went wrong. None of this is based on actual experience just a feeling and other peoples experiences - and I think that may also be why people are moving away from ebay, a lack of trust.

</comment><comment><USER29> Any idea why the stock price is 4x from 2009? Does the company own other significant assets aside from the marketplace?

<comment><USER30> Well the entire market is up over 3x since 2009. Also Ebay does indeed make a lot of money. The current P/E ratio is 5.6 which actually makes it a good value. Amazon is starting to struggle with the issue of fake or defective goods that hurt Ebay as well.

<comment><USER31> The P/E ratio being low does not imply it is a good value. Indeed, the most reasonable assumption would be that the market does not think highly of its future prospects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've recently been exposed to the resale community that uses eBay, and it's quite impressive. Many people scour thrift stores like Goodwill for items to resell, but the process seems inefficient for both the resellers and the thrift stores.

To make the process more efficient for both and to increase demand for goods, I imagine that there could be pre-processing services provided to both sellers and buyers, which take photos of groupings of goods and use ML to provide likely metadata about each good and assemble thumbnail photos of each good. They could then be posted to a central "marketplace" area that is accessible to buyers.</comment>


McMansion Hell - <AUTHOR> http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mcmansion-hell-devil-details/ <comment><USER2> The commentary is blistering.</comment>


People with unusually high IQ, why are you still unsuccessful? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/People-with-unusually-high-IQs-why-are-you-still-unsuccessful/answer/Susanna-Viljanen?share=1 <comment><USER2> Oh, this is an easy one. When people say a child is talented they mean he or she is a good learner. But a talented adult is a good do-er. High potential people who fail to make an impact are stuck in child-mode, because that is what they were always praised for.

<comment><USER3> > High potential people who fail to make an impact are stuck in child-mode, > because that is what they were always praised for.

Or they realised that praise is meaningless and 'making an impact' is overrated.

<comment><USER4> > Or they realised that praise is meaningless and 'making an impact' is > overrated.

indeed, by success people usually mean make lots of money, is this the definition of success to a High IQ person? maybe, but perhaps it means why can't I solve Fermats last theorem or something they think is important.

Or put it this way - smart people will only solve the problems smart people see as problems.

<comment><USER2> _Or put it this way - smart people will only solve the problems smart people see as problems._

Agreed, but we all know smart people who are unhappy and can't quite figure out why.

I should have included "fulfil their personal goals" along with make an impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Leaving aside company founders who hit it big, the people I know who are the most successful (i.e., as employees), don't seem to be of above-average IQ, and many of them have poor written communication (i.e., spelling, grammar, etc).

What makes them successful is that they are good at interacting with other people, and they can communicate quickly and assertively and see to it that important things get done.

Such people tend to work in customer-facing roles, such as sales, client- relations/customer-success, but they could also be in internal roles like marketing or management (including engineering management).

But contrary to stereotype, the ones I've seen be effective are not insincere charmers/schmoozers, nor bullies. They are just fast-thinking and fast-acting and able to work their way through organisational barriers and ensure things get done in order to satisfy their customer or meet the business's requirements.

On the other hand, I've observed that a lot of people who may be of above- average IQ are less comfortable with social interaction, and less able to engage in the kind of fast, confident communication you need to do well in an organisational context.

It's not always the case of course - plenty of highly intelligent people are great communicators, and these people can do the best of all.

But where a person of "high intelligence" does not achieve great success, low confidence/assertiveness/effectiveness at interpersonal interaction is likely to be a significant factor.

<comment><USER6> An advantage less smart people have over more smart people is that they get genuinely more impressed over others achievements. This means that they have a much easier time giving genuine compliments which is one of the most important parts when forming relationships.

Either that or the ability to tell white lies with a straight face is negatively correlated with intelligence.

<comment><USER5> Or maybe there are just different kinds of "smart", and that it's possible to be effective and successful in admirable ways even if you're not exceptionally great at completing IQ-test puzzles.

The kinds of people I described in my first comment have all seemed as smart, honest and respectable as anyone else I've known.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The communication range is a great point, one I've never considered before. It's the reason I enjoy the comments on HN so much: for once, a good deal of the discussion is in my communication range, and the rest is above it, pushing me higher, rather than encouraging me to sink below.

I think this is one reason alcoholism is so common among high IQ people, including several of my relatives who are very social. They socialize but they always drink beforehand. The drink lowers the effective IQ, bringing them into a much wider communication range. I had the same experience just the other day.

<comment><USER8> Except presumably everyone else at the party is also drinking alcohol. Are you saying people with low IQ can drink alcohol and be unaffected, or that people with high IQ are lightweights?

<comment><USER9> Assuming that at some point people pass out (equivalent IQ=0), there will always be a moment when the effective IQ of any two people will match, no matter the initial IQ.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Intelligence is orthogonal to financial ambition and work ethic.

There's no particular reason why someone with a high IQ would (e.g.) want to build a startup or any other kind of business, or would necessarily have a talent for corporate politics.

It's just as likely someone with a high IQ would consider corporate culture pointless - even stupid.

<comment><USER11> This.

High intelligence people often seek other goals, such as the relatively complete freedom of time while having their needs met.

You only get so many years... How many of them are you going to spend doing something that you care about rather than some "means to an end" task?

To many smart people, real agency is the only currency worth persuing... And you only need a trivially achievable amount of money well spent to achieve relative freedom.

So many zero marginal cost things can provide 10-100k a year, and if you are willing to travel, 10k is more than enough to free up 100 percent of your time.

Projects you may wish to work on might require additional funding, but for anything worth doing, it is usually easy to find people willing to throw money at it IME. There's more money looking for good ideas than ideas looking for money, especially as interest rates begin to go negative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This post seems based on some questionable assumptions. IQ is not the ultimate metric of intelligence and may at best measure only one facet of intelligence.

On a related note, I recommend David Robson's book The Intelligence Trap.

<comment><USER12> Questionable indeed; apparently "smart" people don't enjoy sports or fashion.

<comment><USER13> Sports as in watching and talking about sports, or practicing sports?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I tend to be a critic of IQ and (non-applied) psychology in general, but there must be something of value here.

I've experienced something similar to what is described here, and I know many others who experience it too. The highly intelligent people I've known who are also high achievers tend to have an exceptional work ethic, and yes many (but not all!) come from relatively privileged backgrounds.

Communication problems may in some cases be linked to autism spectrum disorders, but in other cases highly intelligent people are actually exceptional communicators.

However, I would agree with those who point out that intelligence is manifold and encompasses far more than the narrow logical puzzles found in IQ tests. Some people who are not even remotely 'book smart' seem to possess acute intelligence of another kind.

Disclosure: Yes, I read Nassim Nicholas Taleb (who is pretty popular here I think).

</comment><comment><USER15> > The trick is to find your own tribe. It took me forty years to find mine. > The group of people where you really can feel yourself belonging, where you > can be one of all. Only then will you succeed.

That was a spot on answer. But this last bit was the best, mainly because it universal. We all - high IQ on down - need others to be more successful.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is because the premise of the question is bogus. People with high IQ are very successful on average.

[https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/blogger2wp/2Meth...](https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/blogger2wp/2Methods- Zagorsky00-RelationshipbetweenIQandIncome.png)

If the question is about why some of them are not, then the answer would be the same as for everyone else: coincidence of other factors. And even with them in mind high IQ means higher averages, e.g. bottom 95% income at the higher IQ on average is higher than bottom 95% income at the average IQ.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Once the difference between two human beings' intelligence becomes too > great, all communication becomes impossible.

Would an intelligent person use such meaningless, imprecise exaggeration? Maybe we shouldn't conflate IQ with general intelligence?

<comment><USER9> Anyone can learn to communicate in a simpler way, otherwise nobody would be able to train a dog. However doing so in most communications is not only tiring, but also has some pernicious psychological effects.

<comment><USER18> What would be the bad effects of using simple words to talk, despite being capable of procuring needlessly complex terminological constructs?

<comment><USER19> It's not just having to use simple words, but also simple concepts, simple topics, etc.

The real problem is that talking this way is exhausting. As if someone told you that e.g. you are not allowed to use words containing the letter "m". It is certainly possible, but it requires constant attention to something other than the idea you are trying to convey.

Talking this way feels quite different from talking to someone who uses the same style as you.

<comment><USER20> I would say that it all boils to "topic relevance". What is relevant enough to foment communication is too divergent in different IQ levels. That brings miscomunication and specially boredom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You can't be that smart, if you don't figure out how to bridge the "communication range". Showing that IQ is a much too narrow measurement of puzzle solving ability, not related to being smart in real world situations.

<comment><USER22> You are conflating definitions, specifically making the mistake that IQ=smart. Tabooing "IQ" and "smart" [1], we can say:

Her hypothesis is that people who have some quantified ability to solve math/logic/verbal problems, find it universally easy to communicate with people with similar ability for solving such problems, assuming you control for other factors like quantified communication ability or quantified emotional intelligence etc.

Put this way, there is no obvious internal contradiction in her hypothesis, whatever the empirical support for it might be.

[1] [https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rationalist_taboo](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rationalist_taboo)

<comment><USER23> >You are conflating definitions, specifically making the mistake that IQ=smart

On the contrary, I had a strong feeling that the person who asked the question, and the woman who answered it, were doing this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> git-pull I can't imagine how boasting about superiority working out in well in the end. There has to be an Aesop's Fable short story for this.

Bragging about being smarter is a standing invitation to receive passive aggressive behavior from others. People will unfairly try to find flaws, and who can blame them? They're acting innately better than their peers - while at the same time not being wise enough to be humble / modest.

I also worry it ends up having a person with potential ending up hiding behind a cryptic / abstract facade, afraid of failing when not being an instant prodigy at a new skill. Don't we will have to work our way up and build a track record of some sort?

What does being intelligent mean anyway?

Ultimately, if someone wanted to be recognized as smart, wouldn't at least some "normal IQ people?" have to understand and appreciate the value of something they synthesized/made?

<comment><USER24> This isn't about boasting, nor it's about "wanted to be recognized as smart". You can be as humble as you honestly can, up to the point of avoiding showing achievements to other people for fear of their reactions (and believe me, I know this very well. You learn to behave like that quite fast), and yet the communication problems will persist. It's difficult not to become a misfit, to feel like you are fundamentally different to the people around you. The article mentions that your arguments won't convince "average" people, and neither do theirs convince us; this is also something I also feel deeply.

I guess I can't complain much; at least I got a good job. For a very modest definition of success I could even consider myself "successful".

<comment><USER25> it's just a bit funny that you included the parenthetical about your own experience, which mostly just serves to make sure you are also labeled as "very smart". your whole point could be made in general without signaling this to the reader. :)

<comment><USER24> I know :). I actually hesitated, because of that. To be honest I ended writting and sending it just because this is Hacker News and such things are much better received here. In Reddit, for example, I wouldn't have bothered.

Also, I'm not "very smart". I have a high IQ, which might be correlated but it's a different thing. EDIT: I strongly believe that a high IQ means, above all, a fundamentally different way of thinking. Which _might_ make you smart, and which is the main cause of the communication problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Axioms:

-The most important quality to _succeeds_ is the ability to perform in high stakes, inter-personal, coopetitive, status-seeking, small world games (politics).

-One of the most powerful tools to achieve _results_ for an individual (and for a group ) is through the mastering of abstractions.

Puzzle:

-There seems to be a negative correlation between the willingness to engage in political games and the willingness to engage with abstractions despite the advantages both procure. _(see the "Nerds" essay by Paul Graham [0])_.

Funny hypothesis:

-Politics is the most dynamic, reflexive games there is. Abstraction handling requires (whether consciously or not ) to substract oneself from the world. Those two activities tend to exclude each other, or to consume a lot of energy when both running at full speed. ( they are polar opposite in 2x2 quadrant of [static,dynamic]x[contemplative,reflexive] )

-The silver linings is so much value can be created from mastering abstractions, that a small change in the conditions of the political field (by improving one's attention to it, or by limiting artificially the field like in a elite school) is enough to tip the balance.

\----

[0][http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> There seems to be a certain amount of "Autistic Spectrum Disorder" mixed in with this. I imagine there are a few papers published with this comparison in mind.

<comment><USER28> This was my feeling too.. I suspect there's enough overlap between those people who are interested in completing IQ tests, and those on the spectrum to create the same effect mentioned by the author. I found their comment about small talk particularly reflects this; My experience is that I can't engage in it with strangers as it feels like forced dumb chat, with the end result that a lot of people I casually interact with end up treating me like I'm mentally retarded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not applying intelligence on real-world aspects that will make you successful is very much non-intelligent.

Likewise, not being able to effectively communicate with a variety of people shows a lack of analysis, learning, etc.

IOW, people feeling in the situation that their "IQ" is unfairly treated should level up, by broadening their conception of intelligence and also applying it in more contexts.

<comment><USER30> Successful is a rather loaded term. Maximizing income and prestige is not inherently a great use of our limited time on earth.

I am not saying becoming an ascetic monk is a better or worse choice, just that people will try to maximize different things.

<comment><USER29> Generally, we are rewarded with income and prestige when we did something valuable for society - so pursuing success isn't inherently shallow either.

<comment><USER31> So human rights lawyers are well paid and famous, unlike, say rap musicians?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I suspect this answer is missing an underlying point - high IQ is correlated with high ego. I find that there are wicked smart people in this world, who have also managed to overcome their own egos, and who get along well with anybody. They don't feel that there are topics that are beneath them, or that people are lesser beings because they like TV shows. They might not like the same things, but they accept people's differences.

The way I explain it to my kids is that your intelligence is just like the color of your hair. You are born with it. You can take actions to change it, to some extent. But there is zero reason to judge anybody for it. People are who they are.

<comment><USER18> Fully agree. I've met many high-IQ people who treat normal humans with a sort of "I'm better than you" disdain. And, obviously, being too arrogant will make communication difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> IQ tests measure specific abilities but not _all_ abilities.

As for the definition of success, that depends on the individual.

For example, to be successful in academia correlates reasonably well with IQ. However, success in sales far less so. Many successful artists also have high IQ due to their spatial and creativity traits, however that doesn't mean that they'll attain high levels of profit from their art. Programmers often have high IQ, but that doesn't guarantee executive suite jobs with their high salaries and lots of perks.

</comment><comment><USER7> > People with over 152 are effectively 'The Excluded', routinely finding their > thoughts to be unconvincing in the public discourse and in productive > environments. If placed in a leadership position, they will not succeed.

> The trick is to find your own tribe. It took me forty years to find mine. > The group of people where you really can feel yourself belonging, where you > can be one of all. Only then will you succeed.

</comment><comment><USER34> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Intelligent enough to realize being productive is pointless?

</comment><comment><USER35> Even if IQ tests measure something useful - and I'm skeptical of that - intelligence itself is far down on the list of traits needed for success.

Ambition. Confidence. Charisma.

There are probably others but the successful people I've known have those - and it's hard to tell (certainly harder then the IQ test implies) but I don't think those people were particularly smart.

<comment><USER36> I believe we focus too much on the individuals, successful people are successful because of the products they helped create.

Instead of analyzing the traits of successful people, we can devise and create frameworks which would help direct our efforts in an efficient manner to produce real value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> A common weakness (and one I sometimes share) is looking for exciting, new, and intellectually stimulating things to do, when seemingly boring, repetitive and hard work is actually called for.

A common example: startup founders who'd prefer to build new features (or worse, explore new tech stacks!) instead of the boring work of sales and marketing.

<comment><USER14> Absolutely. High intelligence and the thirst for novelty and stimulation that often comes with it can make it hard to focus on anything for very long. It also makes people lazy. You learn as a kid that you can achieve a lot with minimal or no effort, so you develop terrible work habits (or none at all). Bright kids who are brought up with a very strong work ethic are far more likely to be high achievers or at least successful at their chosen vocation. This work ethic is often a cultural thing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's another question for you: without reference to IQ or academic achievement, what qualities would you associate with intelligence, or perceive as indicators of intelligence? Have you ever had a hard time figuring out if someone is really bright or not?

<comment><USER38> > Have you ever had a hard time figuring out if someone is really bright or > not?

How do you define bright? Assuming bright to mean able to achieve post-grad honors:

I feel like you could easily distinguish if someone is bright or not within a few minutes of chatting.

I think that regardless of the subject of discussion, there are a number of strong indicators in the way a person speaks. One example is confidence: very rarely have I met a person I'd call intelligent that is also absurdly confident in their beliefs.

I realise my above statement is highly interpretable. What I mean is intelligent people seem to allow for their assumptions to be flawed, and be open to being proven wrong, about stuff that they can be proven wrong on (i.e. belief about a mathematical postulate versus belief in an objective truth such as global warming is real).

<comment><USER19> It is probably easier to describe the opposite.

If someone is not bright, then when you start discussing a topic that is outside their everyday experience (i.e. not their job, not their hobby), they only have three options: (1) ignorance and indifference "huh?" "I don't know, this seems stupid/boring", (2) repeating a statement they heard from TV or radio, but unable to e.g. explain what that really means, what would be the consequences thereof, and (3) just saying something completely random.

A bright person would be able to admit their lack of knowledge in the topic, but then do some independent thinking, or ask additional questions, or... something.

<comment><USER38> That makes a lot of sense, and is probably a version that's much easier to quantify.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> My life was in shambles mainly because of ADHD. Once I found drugs that helped a bit I managed to start programming and it turned out I am very good at it. Even though it's still daily struggle to put even 2-3 hours of work it's enough to make mid 6 figures after taxes. I am very lucky to be that talented. I often feel I don't really deserve it as others work harder and will never find that much success.

If anyone of you is always told how intelligent you are but struggle in school and work I encourage you to get tested for various conditions. Diagnosis and meds can change your life even if it doesn't cure you.

<comment><USER14> Hey I'd be interested doing the same thing, similar problem here. Where should I start? If I started tutorials in one language now, what should it be?

<comment><USER40> Just pick one that does not need much research to get properly installed. It's about learning the concepts, especially in the beginning. At uni they made us learn two programming languages that have no use in real wold jobs to teach us concepts, one was even a functional one.

Python seems to be easy enough to begin with and useful enough with its libraries and frameworks to be the language for data scientists. That's a good point to start at. As are ruby or java or JavaScript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > The price of unusually high IQ is terrible loneliness. We truly are the > outsiders.

This is so true unfortunately. But success has almost nothing to do with being more intelligent as success depends mainly on luck.

<comment><USER40> This is self selecting nonsense with a pile of no true Scotsman and a good dose of mawkishness, very transparently downplaying the work of successful people.

I wouldn't want to know you, whatever IQ you have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I feel like this is a complicated topic. Two common reasons spring to mind....

1) Intelligent but interested in things which are not necessarily eat paths to becoming successful according to society i.e. R&D

2) Low emotional intelligence and therein poor social skills. Humans rely heavily on social connections and collaboration to drive value. I've often see clever people who think they are better than others but do not have the ability to get on. Some intelligent people think they are extremely logical but their decision making is often emotionally charged.

</comment><comment><USER43> If at first you don't succeed, maybe failure your is your style? (C)

</comment><comment><USER44> Nassim Taleb wrote a thorough rebuttal of IQ as a concept, if you can trudge through the math:

[https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a- pseudoscientific-...](https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a- pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39)

It's also worth noting that no one in the field of neuroscience (or genetics, for that matter) takes IQ seriously. It's solely an abstract toy for some psychologists to play with.

<comment><USER45> Real thorough math right there (quotations from your article):

> "[IQ] ends up selecting for exam-takers, paper shufflers, obedient IYIs > (intellectuals yet idiots), ill adapted for "real life"."

> "It is at the bottom an immoral measure"

> "If you want to detect how someone fares at a task, say loan sharking, > tennis playing, or random matrix theory, make him/her do that task; we don't > need theoretical exams for a real world function by probability-challenged > psychologists"

> "Only suckers don't have that instinct."

This is just a trash article by a bitter science denier. IQ-deniers are for me not much different from anti-vaxxers. Yes, you are free to criticize aspects of the test but there is no denying that people have different thinking speeds, as "immoral" as that fact might be.

<comment><USER18> I think the article is quite correct with its statement that pure IQ is meaningless.

If you use your intelligence to learn something useful, that is, well, useful.

But if you just have intelligence and don't utilize it towards a purpose, it is useless, like an unused full battery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Extremely mature and hard to swallow answer.

</comment><comment><USER46> It's also worth checking out the linked article from The Polymath: [http://polymatharchives.blogspot.com/2015/01/the- inappropria...](http://polymatharchives.blogspot.com/2015/01/the- inappropriately-excluded.html)

</comment><comment><USER46> There is a point that is missed here, even if some points seem familiar. Maybe I'm an outlier, but: I turn out to have top half-percentile IQ (as I'm sure many on HN do), which is not the disconnected genius level that the author describes, but still about two standard deviations above the average. I'm only moderately successful career-wise -- a "follower" in the author's words. Excellent grades from education. In professional life, not destitute and getting a decent amount of professional respect, but nothing outside of what you'll expect to find in a decent-sized company. Salary is likewise. No ambitions of being a boss. I can take technical leadership roles temporarily, if it feels like a good fit, and that's great fun. I'll get bored after a while, and it takes a lot of energy & focus to do well.

The biggest reason I can identify for this moderate and not spectacular level of success, is that I just don't care so much about being super successful in my career. I also crucially lack the _energy_ and _drive_ that some of super- successul people the author describes obviously has. Even if I was born in a millionaire family with excellent connections to power and prestige, I doubt I would have been an entrepeneur or a successful academic.

The vast majority of things you'll do in those professions just seem so boring and tedious. Elon Musk's 100 hour workweeks, all year every year, seems like hell. Ditto for most successful entrepeneurs I'm aware of. Even if they lead fascinating, cutting-edge technology development. I'd much rather spend most of my time learning new things, satisfying my curiosity, playing computer games or learning new skills. As well as spending time with the people I love, which means I deliberately choose to not work 50 hours per week in a high- demand software-related job far from home. I'm certain in a different life I could move to California and do much better, but there's so much in my life today I don't want to sacrifice to do that.

I've just never found a subject that interests me enough (money-earning _or_ otherwise) to dedicate my full effort to it. There's certainly something to the author's points of being surrounded by like-minded people, but there's three or four of them near my hometown that I've met through university. We have fun and get along well, but we won't change the world. Maybe that's a waste. My goal in life is to be happy, not earn power and prestige. Sometimes I wish I had the drive and interest to do cutting-edge research and development in a new field, but when I visualize that, it seems like a lifestyle that will require cutting out so much of what I currently love.

It's probably not possible in the human condition to be truly happy, but I'm certain I'd be more unhappy if I spent all my time doing ambitious things that I don't have an innate drive for.

Maybe I could work super hard five years and then retire, but I'll most likely be able to retire early anyway. Anything can happen in those five years. It's not worth the risk.

<comment><USER24> This resonates with me a lot. All over my life, even when I was still just a student, I've had people telling me that I could do much better and that I could aspire to much more. I invariably looked at their proposal, saw a huge amount of work that I was definitely not willing to put, and I continued my path of having the minimization of stress as one of my main priorities.

I've mentioned this a couple of times here in HN: the real trick is to keep learning outside of your job. Don't count on your job as a source of intellectual satisfaction; if you learn something while on the clock, that's great, but that will come and go. Having a steady source of brain food outside your job gives you much more control and ends up being much more satisfying.

Also, never ever trade sleep hours for work hours. Sleep as much as your body wants, work as much as you are stipulated (i.e. 40h a week and no more), and squeeze as many satisfying activities (learning, in my case) out of the rest of the time. And yes, diversify if you want: this is why I dropped out of a PhD and started new degrees instead.

I guess that this applies to me because I have zero ambitions outside the purely intellectual ones. YMMV. I strongly feel like I would be much more miserable if I were more ambitious, especially taking into account that I've been, for a long time, acutely aware that time is much much more valuable than money.

<comment><USER18> I'd wager that it would be easy to argue that the majority of people who work super extra hard to become rich and successful have some sort of childhood trauma that they never recovered from.

So maybe the answer is simply that intelligent people can figure out why they feel a yearning for success, and then solve the root issues instead of joining the rat race like everyone else.

As a practical example, some guys work super hard to buy expensive cars to impress the ladies. But if you're a great conversationalist with a witty humor, you can probably skip the car, so you don't have the need for working hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are people who seem to affect the qualities, habits, and quirks of 'highly intelligent' people, yet are probably not particularly brilliant (or even above average) themselves, except perhaps in some social sense. Any thoughts on that? Can you differentiate between the two without reference to IQ? If so, how? Do these people pay the same price for their quirks, and if so, are they better able to compensate? Are they likely to be more successful at whatever they do by appropriating the trappings of intelligence? Think of it as a thought experiment.

</comment><comment><USER47> > The only really Meritocratic system is the military.

Wait what ? Anybody has experience/comment on that ?

(I'm not trying to dismiss anything, genuinely curious !)

<comment><USER48> I can only speak to the Marine Corps, but there is a pretty structured/meritocratic method for being promoted.

At least for the enlisted ranks, your promotion potential is dependent on a couple of factors: how many people of a particular rank for any given job field are needed, your personal fitness scores, rifle range proficiency, professional military education completion, etc.

There is a certain degree of subjectivity, as you are given what are called "proficiency and conduct" ratings in the earlier ranks. In the mid-later ranks, you are given performance evaluations. Those evaluations are at least partly based off the factors I described above, though.

Interestingly, when you put in for promotion at the mid-later ranks, the people who make the selection are not in your chain of command. You put together a package and the decision is made by a board consisting of third parties.

In the earlier ranks, your performance/ratings is compiled into a score, then each month the Marine Corps issues a total scoring that must be met in order to be promoted.

It is by no means a perfect system, but it seemed mostly fair. It is also incredibly complicated, so I apologize if I did not do the explanation justice.

<comment><USER47> Ok, interesting, thank you for your answer !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Simple answer for a simple question. Because Fortune favors the "brave", not the intelligent.

</comment><comment><USER50> Mensa demographic: Highly intelligent upper-class non-achievers

</comment><comment><USER18> Lazyness.

As someone who did coaching for lonely high-IQ guys, I know firsthand that there are lots of self-absorbed lazy pricks that feel like they deserve to be successful and loved just because they're intelligent. And the advice I hand out is always the same:

This world is run by normal people. Learn the ways that normal people use to express their emotions.

That regularly incites complaints, like the usual platitudes that they just want to be loved for who they are or that true love should just happen by itself. But the simple fact is that many of these intelligent guys feel like it's either too much work to learn about how normal people talk, or they are too arrogant to do it.

Especially when you use a lot of brainpower in one area of your life, it is very tempting to slide into intellectual laziness in other areas of your life. Lowest common denominator slapstick comedy is quite popular with my high-IQ friends. Nobody is super clever all of the time.

Also, I find it fascinating that the article presupposes that high IQ should lead to success, as pure intelligence is mostly just useless. Being rich is obviously helpful to your friends. Having good genes or being athletic is also obviously helpful for many tasks. But for intelligence, the skills that you derive from it are the important part, not the intelligence itself. And if you use your intelligence and your superior learning abilities to learn a useful trade and become a good communicator, you will most likely end up being successful. So this article is similar to asking: "People with strong biceps, why are you still unsuccessful?"

And lastly, I don't buy the concept of a communication range. Most deep connections are made by sharing emotions. There's no reason why your talking partner would need to understand the specifics of your mathematics problem, in order for him/her to be able to relate to you feeling frustrated about it.

</comment><comment><USER51> Because IQ is a scam measurement for success in life

/end

<comment><USER51> PS (to the downvoters): Neither IQ nor HN upvotes correlate with real-world success =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. - Albert Einstein

Smart people usually never learn to work hard.

</comment><comment><USER53> Life is dice.

</comment><comment><USER54> made an account just to ask you define unsuccessful. PLease?

</comment><comment><USER25> because IQ has no bearing on discipline and you get nowhere without putting in work (no matter how astronomical one's IQ is)

</comment><comment><USER55> yeah</comment>


Ask HN: Is location check-in dead?  - <AUTHOR>

I would like to hear what people on HN think about location check-ins. Is there a future for startups focusing on it?
It seems like Foursquare is going nowhere, Facebook is abandoning it, etc. Is this going to be replaced with Facebook just posting your location when you post something? <comment><USER2> As a stand alone feature? I never really got the use case.

Other than using things like Google latitude to mark locations and routes for hiking and photography and the like; I didn't use any of the other services.

I would say that it would start being integrated into other services where it makes sense. For example, proximity services to share coupons or offers or reviews with your would-be customers...

</comment><comment><USER3> My feeling has always been there has to be something more than "I was here!" to make it compelling. For the most part, few people really (or at least SHOULD) care that you were just getting a coffee or in line at the water park. How can "your" presence at a particular location be compelling to me?

I've been working on a project (and realizing how dreadful my self-taught coding skills currently are) that uses that innate tendency we have to associate our identities or personalities with the places we frequent, and our desire to communicate with others.

As a side note, if anyone is looking for an interesting mobile/web app project to get involved with, I'm now looking for someone better than me with Javascript ;)

<comment><USER4> Put contact info in your profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes there is a future. Gigwalk for example is a great idea (I was raising seed cap for the same thing when they launched) but it could be about more than taking photos for websites. Create a competing product that enables the buying and selling of all types of information based on location and make sure that the users at both ends of the transaction can remain anonymous. Alternatively create a product that will allow professional photogs and videogs to be located if someone needs a stock image or clip from their location. Disrupt the stock image/footage industry. Again.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't see it as giving up, but rather tighter integration. It's easier to just check a box by your status saying "yeah, you can let people know I'm here," instead of the old option where it was a completely separate input.</comment>


The Memories of Plants - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/plant-memory-hidden-vernalization <comment><USER2> I wonder to what extent cuttings are effected by these epigenetic memories?

Ex.

\- Grow plant A. Expose it to stimuli to make it form a 'memory'

\- Take a cutting from plant A and root it, making plant B.

\- Test plant B for response to the stimulus.

Does plant B have the memory? If so, how many cutting-generations does it take for the memory to decay?

<comment><USER3> There's probably no reason cuttings should be different than a whole plant as they don't have any fundamental difference. Unless the roots themselves have an importance in the process (since the cuttings will then grow new "inexperienced" roots) but I doubt it.

I'm more intrigued by what would happen with grafts.

Does rootstock transmit memories ("memories") to a scion, does a scion transmit memories to rootstock, does it work with interspecific grafts, does it work with intergeneric grafts? Do multiple scions transmit memories between each other?

<comment><USER4> > There's probably no reason cuttings should be different than a whole plant

Its uncommon, but it happens sometimes... and there can be in fact a fundamental difference: different hormone gradient. A well known case is with ivy. If you take cuttings on flowered stems of common ivy, the new plants retain the rombic leaf shape typical of reproductive stems and the effect last for the life of this first leaves. The ivy born from seeds do not have this rombic leaves until many years later, when they mature.

> Does rootstock transmit "memories" to a scion

Not, because memories are stored in neurons and plants do not have this, but is a well known fact also that rootstock can change the scion behaviour (for example improving the sugar in fruits and advancing the age of first maturation). If you change 'memories' by 'chemicals', the answer could be yes, of course. It depends on the definition of what could be loosely called as 'memory' in a plant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A surprisingly common argument against veganism is "but plants feel pain, too," based on interpretations of articles such as this one on Vice [[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xd74nd/we-asked-a- botanis...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xd74nd/we-asked-a-botanist-how- sure-science-is-that-plants-cant-feel-pain-302)]. I suppose the argument is that, if there is any amount of cruelty in our consumption, then we may as well surrender to this fact and eat whatever we want. (Also, haha vegans are dumb.) I'm sure this study will be added as support for this perspective.

But it should be obvious that even if plants were proven to be sentient, vegans would continue to eat them. Our primary directive on this planet is to survive, just like every other organism. Once that's settled we can focus on doing so with as little suffering as possible, to the best of our ability.

<comment><USER6> And the Vegan shows up! I kid, but the stereotype really holds true all too often.

The unsaid assumption in your comment, that I disagree with, is that harvesting animals causes anymore suffering than caring for and harvesting plants (in a humane manner, which admittedly, many facotry farms fail at on either side.)

<comment><USER7> How does harvesting animals cause less suffering, in the real world we live in? The usual answer is "well IF you are friends with your cow/chicken and give it lots of pasture and then you squeeze it for milk occasionally and one day quickly and painlessly end its life, then its humane" but then motte-and- bailey--style that gets used to excuse a diet full of factory-farmed meat and chicken trucks and forcibly-impregnating cows and then seizing and killing their newborns[1], which is the vast vast majority of meat consumption.

[1] [https://www.google.com/search?q=chicken+trucks&source=lnms&t...](https://www.google.com/search?q=chicken+trucks&source=lnms&tbm=isch)

[2] [https://www.ciwf.com/farm-animals/cows/dairy- cows/](https://www.ciwf.com/farm-animals/cows/dairy-cows/)

<comment><USER6> All my meat is raised on open pasture locally, fed only on wild grasses. I specifically said factory farms are a clear problem. Thanks for talking past me and ignoring my point. This is what makes conversing wih you people get on my nerves. Show some intellectual respect and get some in retuen.

<comment><USER8> I agree with you on all your points. However, you last two sentences are not necessary. To be honest, the first time i read your comment i though the same thing. Only on a re-read did i see your last little bit of the message addresses that argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A little off-topic, but since Atlas Obscura crops up here fairly often, I'd just like to say that their book's a very pleasant thing to own, if you're into coffee-table books at all. I bought it on a whim after seeing an ad on the site, and I'm quite enjoying picking through it in fits and starts. Nothing in it that isn't on the site as far as I'm aware, but sometimes a laptop just doesn't cut the mustard for leisure reading.

<comment><USER10> Seconded, it really is a nice, as you said, coffee table book. It's just really nice to pick up and read briefly while waiting for the wife to get ready or when you have moments of brief leisure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interestingly enough, a similar chromatin-based mechanism could be responsible for long term memories in animals. If that is the case, this could mean interesting times for, say, cryonics or even psychiatry.

</comment><comment><USER12> If plants having memories is something that interests you, then you should also check out this recently (2017/05) published study:

 _Temperature variability is integrated by a spatially embedded decision- making center to break dormancy in Arabidopsis seeds_

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1704745114

In short, it shows a seed having binary decision-making areas that communicate with each other to determine the best outcome for survival.

From the paper:

"Both plants and animals make decisions in response to the environment to maximize their fitness. Plants use dormancy in seeds to move through time and space, and timing of the transition to germination is influenced by external cues, including temperature. Here, we report the presence of a decision-making center within the root tip of dormant seeds and demonstrate that it shares a similar configuration as some systems within the human brain. Unlike in humans, where this spatial structure is used to filter out noisy inputs from the environment, seeds use this arrangement to harness fluctuating temperatures and stimulate the termination of dormancy. Variable inputs therefore act as an instructive signal for seeds, enhancing the accuracy with which plants are established in ecosystems."

</comment><comment><USER13> "Monica Gagliano began to study plant behavior because she was tired of killing animal"

Considering she still calls plants 'he' & dedicated her life to study them, I wonder what's her current perspective on the above statement. The article does mention abusing plants as part of the study, does this mean the scientists themselves feel it's less violent. Since it's proven that the plants react to stimulus, how do they convince themselves that they aren't hurting the plants.

</comment><comment><USER14> That's really fascinating about the Mimosa pudica responding differently to being dropped after a while.

Interestingly along with Venus fly traps, their movement response can also be triggered with electricity.

<comment><USER15> Considering that it all boils down to ions moving to trigger various actions, it's not surprising that electricity could trigger it. That's a good way to get anything with muscles to move, too. :)

<comment><USER14> Heh, that's true.

As far as I know though, you can't force the venus fly trap or mimosa to open it's leaves again via electricity.

I think with the mimosa iirc, strong bright light can open it's leaves though.

<comment><USER15> Correct. Both of those actions occur due to the ion channels and gates resetting to their normal, pre-triggered state. In both of these plants their movements are triggered by ion potentials changing, like nerves in animals, opening channels to move water from one area to another, changing the shape of cells, bending cell walls due to water pressure, causing the movement. Then, slowly the water is moved back to its pre-trigger state, slowly opening the venus fly trap, or leaflets in this plant. Some insects move their legs through adjusting liquid pressure.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the description, that makes a lot of sense.

I'll have to read up what light is doing wrt the Mimosa, as to how it opens the leaves.

I bought one recently, as well as closing it's leaves when you touch them, it seems to 'go to sleep', when it gets darker.

Edit:

[https://backyardbrains.com/experiments/Plants_Mimosas](https://backyardbrains.com/experiments/Plants_Mimosas)

Is cool, measuring the action potential.

<comment><USER15> Those diagrams are fantastic. Great find!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is C# better than Java or are they just different? - <AUTHOR>

I've heard C# described as what Java was meant to be. But Java is the single most dominant programming language according to things like the Tiobe index. Is it fair to compare them or are they apple and oranges? <comment><USER2> They share a similar core OO based language, but C# went out and got a bunch of flashy add ons. C# got generics before Java did. C# added delegates, lambdas, LINQ, the async keyword... Some people see that as progress and making day to day programming easier. Some might see it as bloat(how many ways are there to do async in C# now?)

</comment><comment><USER3> More like comparing a Braeburn Apple to a Gala Apple.

<comment><USER3> I should expand this statement. They are both two very similar languages with different pros and cons. Your statement is too broad for anyone to answer. If you state specifically what you're trying to do then we would be able to tell you better if there is an advantage of one over the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They are just different.</comment>