Eminent Philosophers Name the Most Important Philosophy Books from 1950-2000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.openculture.com/2018/04/eminent-philosophers-name-the-43-most-important-philosophy-books-written-between-1950-2000.html <comment><USER2> Since R.M. Hare's "Language of Morals" is on the list, I recommend Alasdair MacIntyre's "After Virtue" should be on the list for any one who want to study Moral Philosophy today.

Along with Popper and Kuhn's works on that list, read Larry Laudan's "Progress and its problems" and "Science and Relativism: some key controversies in the philosophy of science". This goes under Philosophy of Sciences.

<comment><USER3> > Since R.M. Hare's "Language of Morals" is on the list, I recommend Alasdair > MacIntyre's "After Virtue" should be on the list for any one who want to > study Moral Philosophy today.

"After Virtue" is a legit recommendation.

> Along with Popper and Kuhn's works on that list, read Larry Laudan's > "Progress and its problems" and "Science and Relativism: some key > controversies in the philosophy of science". This goes under Philosophy of > Sciences.

I demur. Comparing two giants of the Philosophy of Science (nb: not plural) to a relative unknown. I would recommend instead "Against Method" (1975) by Paul Feyerabend or "The Sleepwalkers" (1959) by Arthur Koestler.

<comment><USER4> I'd recommend against _starting_ with "Against Method". Instead, go directly for the 'sequel' both to Feyerabend's "Against Method" and to two paper/essay collections (both published in 1976, two years after his death) that essentially originated from Lakatos, although they contain numerous contributions, among others by Feyerabend, "Method and Appraisal in the Physical Sciences: The Critical Background to Modern Science 1800–1905" (edited Colin Howson) and "Method and Appraisal in Economics" (edited by Spiro J. Latsis), namely, "For and Against Method: Including Lakatos's Lectures on Scientific Method and the Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence" 'by' both Imre Lakatos AND Paul Feyerabend, which Matteo Motterlini painstakingly assembled from the drafts for the book (which Lakatos and Feyerabend both wanted to produce, but which never produced a finished result in their lifetimes, primarily due to Lakatos' unexpected death in 1974.)

I say this because of what I personally like to think of as 'paraduality' in science which both Lakatos and Feyerabend discuss & address, but from 'opposite' ends. I put "opposite" in single quotes here because I find too difficult to phrase the point I wish to make, so I can only allude to it: Reading Feyerabend without reading Lakatos carries with it the same (and not just similar or the opposite) problems as reading Lakatos without Feyerabend does - and vice versa. The same applies to science itself, which kind of sums up the problem both of them approached, from 'different' sides.

I thus find it rather helpful to read the entire matter chronologically 'backwards', starting with 'For and Against Method' and then going back from there.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for your in-depth comment. I did not mean to imply starting immediately with "Against Method", what I meant is that after exploring Kuhn and Popper by all means move onto Feyerabend.

I do appreciate your suggesting Lakatos. I was under the impression that one had to read Feyerabend first, then Lakatos. The work by Lakatos I have made note of that came up in my travels is "The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Philosophical Papers". Would you be able to recommend that text as well or are you sticking to the ones you have suggested?

If I had to pick one I think you are saying to go with "For and Against Method[…]"† because it contains both sides of the coin. Thank you Oh random internet person for such helpful advice!

† [http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3629717...](http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3629717.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Solomon maintains that "nothing has been more harmful to philosophy than its > 'professionalization,' which on the one hand has increased the abilities and > techniques of its practitioners immensely, but on the other has rendered it > an increasingly impersonal and technical discipline, cut off from and > forbidding to everyone else."

> As an addendum, Ho adds that "most of the works on the list are analytic > philosophy,"...

Interesting that analytic philosophy is both seen as being the most harmful yet also most prestigious.

<comment><USER6> Ironically, I took multiple philosophy courses at the university of Texas taught by both Bob Solomon (one of the "eminent philosophers") and his wife.

I graduated from the philosophy program with a profound distaste for analytical philosophy, believing it to be pedantic BS that really only shows the limitations of whatever language you're using for discourse. Hence the abstraction into symbolic logic, but symbolic logic only works as a pure abstraction: any link to the real world becomes limited by the language constructs you can use to describe the world, the subject/object relationships, etc.

There are many languages and writing systems in the world. I expect the peculiarities of each to rear its head when attempting to use them to do "real" philosophy (I honestly view most of the analytical offshoots of philosophy as mathematics; somewhat telling, the university disagreed and forced all CS majors to take logic classes in the philosophy department).

<comment><USER7> I think that the perceived stiffness of analytic philosphy is really just the true limitations of philosophy made obvious.

> _that really only shows the limitations of whatever language you're using > for discourse._

It's not entirely clear that natural languages are more powerful than formal ones (in terms of stating true facts,) but what _is_ easy to see is that English makes it far easier to appear to prove something you haven't. That gives it an illusion of power.

Ironically Neitzsche had something to say about this: you've got the small claims that seem pedantic and insignificant, and the grand claims that explain the meaning of it all, but in the end the small claims can be made so much more certain than the grand ones that they're what you want to base everything off of. Viscosity of water vs. angels on the head of a pin.

<comment><USER6> Exactly; I'm not saying natural language is better, just that you can't really do any better without running into the same issues around discourse/rhetoric.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unsurprisingly, this list is heavily biased towards analytic philosophers.

They don't even mention Heidegger, the most influential 20th Century philosopher in the Continental tradition. _Being and Time_ is his most influential book.

They don't mention Sartre, who probably comes in 2nd. _Being and Nothingness_ is his most famous book (you can tell the Heidegger influence just from the title).

Their token Continentals are Foucault, Derrida, Habermas, and Ricouer... out of a list of 30.

Update: Looks like I misread the title of the article as being about philosophers from 1900-2000, but it's from 1950-2000. Sorry. My bad.

<comment><USER9> > biased towards analytic philosophers.

I swear I've looked up the difference between analytic vs. continental multiple times and never understand the difference.

<comment><USER10> Analytic philosophy was largely a reaction to the idea that philosophy was developing into a mass of meaningless, incoherent, poetic mumbo-jumbo. For example, Bertrand Russell said:

> Hitherto the people attracted to philosophy have been mostly those who loved > the big generalizations, which were all wrong, so that few people with exact > minds have taken up the subject.

Analytic philosophy is the tradition that grew out of this reaction, and focuses on precision in language and logic, with a particular focus on the philosophy of language because it turns out it's hard to map natural language to the kinds of rigorous logical propositions that analytic philosophers prefer. Continental philosophy is the tradition that rejected this critique and burrowed even deeper down the path they were going, eventually inventing postmodernism and poststructuralism and other new and exciting forms of what analytic philosophers would consider mumbo-jumbo.

<comment><USER8> You've basically described all of Continental philosophy as _" a mass of meaningless, incoherent, poetic mumbo-jumbo"_.

First, that's really not a particularly charitable way of describing it. Second, it bespeaks an Analytic approach to things they don't understand -- that is, to assume they're meaningless and not important (or at best some trivial little puzzle to solve). Third, it really doesn't help to understand what Continental philosophy is actually about.

Now, if you'd described Continental philosophy as difficult or incoherent _to you_ , then that would be more reasonable. But it should be pointed out that plenty of analytic philosophy that is also difficult and incomprehensible to some (though I would grant that for the most part Analytics at least try to be clear in their language -- something that can't be said of most Continentals).

<comment><USER11> > "a mass of meaningless, incoherent, poetic mumbo-jumbo".

Also: are new developments of analytic philosophy really that "clear" in their language? Usually, no. For example, is Saul Kripke really that "meaningful, coherent and logical" or he is just developing his own jargon?

In my opinion, analytic philosophy often tries to be rigorous with concepts that just are not rigorous to begin with. And they just end up by creating an "ordinate mess".

<comment><USER10> I haven't read a ton of Kripke, but the fender and more jargon-filled analytic philosophy is still in a different style.

I think the best oversimplification is that analytic philosophers are more like mathematicians and continental philosophers are more like artists and poets. (And, fittingly, many of the foundational analytic philosophers _were_ also mathematicians, and the continentals, poets and playwrights.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The original post: [http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/the-most- impor...](http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/the-most-important- philosophical-books-since-1950.html)

<comment><USER13> The comments there are fairly extensive with suggestions for additions. Quite worthwhile if your made it this far in the HN comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd argue that _every_ programmer interested in language design needs to read Wittgenstein. His later work in ethics and epistemology (that the article recommends, Philosophical Investigations) is hit or miss, but his _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ , which deals with the nature of language as it relates to our ability to think and formulate ideas, is undeniable. He essentially builds a framework for breaking reality down into logically composable components which can be reasoned over in their own right, regardless of semantics.

See this article which was posted here a few years ago: Wittgenstien for Programmers [http://www.hxa.name/notes/note- hxa7241-20110219T1113Z.html](http://www.hxa.name/notes/note- hxa7241-20110219T1113Z.html)

<comment><USER8> Wittgenstein was more of a mystic than a logician, though he tried to dress up his mysticism in what may at first glance appear to be logical garb in the _Tractatus_.[1] This is something the early Logical Positivist analytics of the Vienna Circle, perhaps willfully, did not understand. He was championing the very thing that they abhorred: religious mysticism.

When Wittgenstein said _" Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent."_ He meant it in a respectful way, as a defense of religious mysticism. The Logical Positivists assumed that attitude in the exact opposite direction: to attack religious mysticism and religion in general. They labeled it as meaningless nonsense. No wonder Wittgenstein wanted nothing to do with them, despite their (misplaced and misunderstood) hero-worship of him.

I'm really not sure what any programmer would get out of reading the _Tractatus_... at least not for anything programming-related.

[1] - The full title being the _" Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"_, just in case you missed that it was supposed to be logical and philosophical. Wittgenstein starts by labeling some of his statements as "axioms" and constructing what might appear as derivations.. which don't actually follow. On superficial inspection it might look like some kind of logical treatise, but that impression vanishes if you actually try to read and make sense of it.

<comment><USER15> My reply ended up being too long for HN.

If you have some time to kill, you can read what I wanted to say here:

[https://pastebin.com/raw/YukL4uc5](https://pastebin.com/raw/YukL4uc5)

(apologies for any obvious/stupid mistakes, been a long day)

<comment><USER16> Not the OP, but I've gone through your (very well written and well thought) answer and it reminded me of what it was that turned me away from Wittgenstein (even though at some point I was a big fan of his, in some regards I still am): I'm talking about the tautology that you also remarked about. I couldn't get over it once I realized it was there. At least Hegel (which I'm not a fan of, that's for sure) had the "courage" to surpass said "tautology" by inventing a conflict (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) that at least looked like it was carrying the conversation, that was carrying us, closer to the truth, with Wittgenstein you feel like nothing like that happens, you're just left sitting there. I'm not criticizing him or anything of the sorts, just stating what I felt.

It is also true that with age (I've now approached my late 30s) I've started to become less and less interested in inquiring about the "truth", or what "truth" means, or what "words" mean, i.e. the topics mostly related to philosophers like Wittgenstein and Heidegger (haven't read anything by Derrida yet), and instead I've started becoming more and more interested (and even obsessed) by what us, humans, really are and what we think. As such, I've started reading more and more political philosophy, and as such I can say that (at least for people like me) philosophers like Hobbes and Rousseau are a lot more interesting and thought-provoking compared to the subjects approached by the likes of Wittgenstein or Heidegger.

Later edit: Because I just remembered later after writing most of the above comment: what also drove me away from modern/contemporary philosophers like Wittgenstein was reading a collection of the Heraclitus fragments. After reading them I realized that "truth" was, well, multi-faceted, polyvalent, taken at the limit truth was everything and nothing at all (which you could say that approaches some of Wittgenstein's views as well). More important of all, according to Heraclitus (or to my understanding of his sayings) "truth" and other philosophical-important concepts were on the same "level" as other, less important (from a philosophical point of view) concepts, i.e. that (again, taken to the limit) truth was falseness and falseness was truth. Once I realized that I was no longer interested in pursuing what "truth" is.

<comment><USER17> Has 'Eastern' philosophy affected your point of view in any way?

<comment><USER16> Not really, at least not until now (I'm in my late 30s). Technically the most "Eastern" philosopher that has had an influence on me was Lucian of Samosata (afaik Samosata was close to the present border between Syria and Turkey), but other than that I didn't have the "inner drive", so to speak, to immerse myself into Eastern philosophy. At least not until now. From a distance I do find some parts of it pretty interesting, but, again, that's just a "guess".

Come to think of it, I was pretty impressed by Plotinus and the Neoplatonists, who I think are the closest "Western philosophy" got to "Eastern philosophy", even though I found that they're not that much discussed in the Anglosphere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can we estimate in any way about how happy these people were?

I doubt there's an objective measure, but I feel like how to be happy and to live a good life are among of the main goals of philosophy. Are they? Did many of them succeed?

<comment><USER19> This is an interesting perspective, because in his book, "The History of Western Philosophy" recommended elsewhere in this thread, Bertrand Russell makes this one of the metrics by which he rates historical philosophers. For example, he rates Schopenhauer:

> He habitually dined well, at a good restaurant; he had many trivial love- > affairs, which were sensual but not passionate; he was exceedingly > quarrelsome and unusually avaricious. ... It is hard to find in his life > evidences of an virtue except kindness to animals ... In all other respects > he was completely selfish. It is difficult to believe that a man who was > profoundly convinced of the virtue of asceticism and resignation would never > have made any attempt to embody his convictions in his practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone have recommendations for a layman interested in philosophy?

<comment><USER21> Bertrand Russell - The Problems of Philosophy

<comment><USER22> Also by Russell: A History of Western Philosophy. It has various critics, for good reasons, but it's as good a walkthrough of philosophical developments in the West as anything you'll find.

<comment><USER23> I want to second this one, if for nothing else than the fact that in addition to being a wealth of information about the philosophies themselves, it's also a fascinating (granted, biased) perspective about how philosophical developments might map to political and cultural developments, and vice versa. Again, with a nod to its critics.

Also, Russell is, as always, a charmingly witty writer.

<comment><USER8> I like Russell. He's a witty and entertaining writer. But anyone reading his work should be aware that he's heavily biased towards an Analytic perspective.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any summary from the Continental perspective that's remotely as well written as Russell's. Maybe you could start with reading through some of those comic-book style "Introduction to..." books about various philosophers. They seem to do a decent enough job for a taste of what the philosopher in question is about.

But, really, there's no substitute for taking an intro to philosophy course. Philosophy isn't just meant to be read and pondered. It's critically important to discuss it and the ideas and questions it provokes in you with others who are also encountering this material along with you. A philosophy course is ideal for that. Though, once again, the Analytics dominate such courses in the English-speaking world (and increasingly in the rest of the world as well). So it's pretty hard to find philosophy courses where you can get an Continental perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This being HN, I can't believe anyone hasn't mentioned Searle (on the list) or Hofstaedter yet as prominent thinkers on computing, philosophy of maths, and the limits of the ongoing AI summer. In 'Goedel, Escher, Bach' Hofstaedter has entire chapters dedicated to LISP and its philosophical implications / foundations, ie homoiconicity, metacircularity.

<comment><USER25> Which chapter is that? I'm looking through the table of contents but none of these terms are mentioned there explicitly. Does he talk about LISP directly or only in passing?

</comment></comment><comment> kitten-fine David Armstrong and David lewis for metaphysics! Quine word and object is great, but some of his short essays are more accessible. For a good logic book graham priest an intro to non classical logic. Russell is pleasant intro, but you'll probably want to go deeper.

</comment><comment><USER12> " _As an addendum, Ho adds that "most of the works on the list are analytic philosophy," therefore Prof. Chen asked Habermas to recommend some additional European thinkers, and received the following: "Axel Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung (1992), Rainer Forst, Kontexte der Cerechtigkeit (1994) and Herbert Schnadelbach, Kommentor zu Hegels Rechtephilosophie (2001)."_ "

Note also that this list was collected "at the behest of a Chinese publisher seeking important philosophical works for translation", so the fact that A.C. Graham is missing doesn't disturb me much.

</comment><comment><USER26> > two professors emailed sixteen philosophers in the U.S., England, Australia, > Germany, Finland, and Brazil, asking specifically for "ten of the most > important and influential philosophical books after 1950." "They received > recommendations," writes Ho, "from twelve philosophers, including: Susan > Haack, Donald M. Borchert (Ohio U.), Donald Davidson, Jurgen Habermas, Ruth > Barcan Marcus, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, Peter F. Strawson, Hilary Putnam, > and G.H. von Wright." (Ho was unable to identify two other names, typed in > Chinese.)

</comment><comment><USER27> I would recommend all the works by Robert Nozick, listed at #14 on the list for "Anarchy, State and Utopia". While that might be his most influential book, I found his other books more fun to read.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's nice and all that but I think there has been far more influence on what would be called philosophical questions like why are we here, how should we live, why is there evil, what is consciousness and the like from scientific discovery than from any of the books in the list. Things like the discovery of DNA, the big bang, evolutionary psychology and neuroscience have had a big impact on how we see the world. Those books I'm not so sure.

</comment><comment><USER29> *Western.

There's a whole wide world out there.

<comment><USER30> Much of the thinking that we call philosophy was created to make sense of the apparent conflict between particular western institution, like (western) science and religion. There are thinkers in other parts of the world who are interested in similar issues, but it might not be right to categorize it as philosophy because they don't have the same sort of clash in their culture to make sense of. That is, western philosophy was consciously created to oppose religious dogma and scientific reductionism, but the same can't be said about (say) Buddhist philosophy, even though they ask similar questions. In other words, part of what makes philosophy "philosophy" is that it insists that it's something different than religious or scientific theory.

<comment><USER31> What utter rubbish. Every culture has their own philosophical issues that they grapple with. This does not mean these thoughts cannot be labeled "philosophy". "Philosophy", means love of knowledge... the seeking of knowledge is not limited to the West, and there have been philosophers from all around the world.

> That is, western philosophy was consciously created to oppose religious > dogma and scientific reductionism,

Where are you pulling this stuff from? Western philosophy traces its roots to mainly Catholic (and some Islamic) philosophers, many of whom were very religious. These philosophers often drew upon earlier philosophers (the Catholic Church is probably the reason why Aristotelian philosophy survives to the present day). These earlier philosophers were also religious.

The separation between philosophy and religion (And between philosophy and science for that matter) is something that has only arisen in the present day, and -- in my opinion at least -- is unlikely to last very long, if history is any indication.

> In other words, part of what makes philosophy "philosophy" is that it > insists that it's something different than religious or scientific theory.

These are your own thoughts and opinions on the subject. You are unnecessarily antagonizing science, philosophy, and religion, and I think this perhaps stems from the very western desire to segregate and classify everything.

<comment><USER30> I don't mean to antagonize, I'm just offering another perspective. There are no doubt many different kinds of rich intellectual traditions around the world. Should we call them philosophy? Philosophy is a category of intellectual discourse invented in the west. The history of the term is bound to the history of the west. Why should we apply a western category to try to understand non-western thought? Isn't this imposing our own way of thinking about intellectual disciplines onto a culture that doesn't understand itself in the same way? It would be better to categorize these disciplines in the way they people from other countries understand them. Islamic thinkers don't draw a line between what we call "philosophical issues" and what we call "theological issues". Why should we draw that line when we read them?

<comment><USER31> Philosophy is a word used to describe things. The word has meaning in and of itself. It is not a proper noun. You are attempting to make a word that means something already, mean something specific, and it's not working.

Would you not classify al-jabr as mathematics simply because 'mathematics' describes western manipulations and not Arabic ones? Of course not. Mathematics means a certain thing in the English language, and al-jabr (which we call algebra) falls under that category.

I'm sure other cultures have a word that denotes things like Western philosophy, and they apply that word to people like Aristotle.

However, HN is a mainly english website, and so philosophy refers to any field that concerns itself with knowledge.

<comment><USER30> A word with just one meaning would be a boring word ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> E.O Wilson's (the Nobel prize winner) book "Consilience" should be on a list like this but probably isn't. He's a biologist after all, not a philosopher. But a lot of thoughtful people would likely find a lot more to ponder than in it than most of the 'real' philosophy texts.

</comment><comment><USER33> Weird, no Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, one of the best applications of utilitarianism.

<comment><USER34> And no _A Thousand Plateaus_ by Deleuze & Guattari, in spite of having an impact on the anti-globalization movement over the last two decades-plus that is hard to overestimate. Plus, that work isn't just relevant for contemporary political disputes or the perennial question of how to organize human societies; Deleuze and Guattari's epistemology is a major contribution to human thought in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Richard Rorty "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature"

Need a little Pragmatism on this list.

<comment><USER35> >Need a little Pragmatism on this list.

Quite so. Except Rorty later admitted that he was not really a Pragmatist. I would say he was more of a liberally-oriented Existentialist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Have your book list posted on HN with Amazon (affiliate) links => Profit :)

</comment><comment><USER37> Glad to see Parfit on the list. Reasons and Persons could honestly be the foundational text of a civilization.

</comment><comment><USER38> Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, What Color is Your Parachute are both absent. Also, science fiction.

</comment><comment><USER39> No Paul Feyerabend, I see.</comment>


We Design for Trainer Productivity - <AUTHOR> https://trainervision.com/articles/how-we-design-for-trainer-productivity <comment><AUTHOR> I'm founding Trainer Vision with my partner, who is a certified personal trainer. Normally they write our blog posts since that's our target demographic. This week we switched things up and I wrote a more explanatory post. I think focusing on what your users do with most of their time is a helpful frame for any developer or creator.

Happy to answer any questions or discuss any feedback!</comment>


How to land a great developer job in London - <AUTHOR> http://www.meetup.com/Find-A-tech-Job-In-London/events/69728542/

<comment><AUTHOR> Join now, we have a fantastic event tomorrow evening you wont want to miss.</comment>


Goldman Sachs Will Pay $5B to Settle Financial-Crisis Claims - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/14/463107541/goldman-sachs-will-pay-5-billion-to-settle-financial-crisis-claims <comment><USER3> So the company that was one of lead bad actors in a global crisis that wiped out lots of little folks gets -

No execs (or anybody else) go to Jail

Continues to do business as usual

Pays a small fraction of its profits in fines (but gets to keep the multi- billions of tax-payer money under various govt. programs)

Admits to no wrong doing

Basically a speeding-ticket that gets dismissed when you pony up the cash after being caught drunk driving with dead body stuck on your fender.

<comment><USER4> My dad was heavily invested in NASDAQ-listed stocks and lost half his 401k in the 2000 crash. Who on Sand Hill Road should be in prison right now?

<comment><USER5> The 2000 IPO process was pretty much a pump and dump for both the VCs and IBs. There were legal consequences for bad investment advice and misuse of shareholder money.

According to wikipedia, Citi and Merrill were both fined for this. I don't know who was held legally accountable for misusing shareholder money but there was the worldcom fraud which ended in jail sentences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a quick refresher, these guys sold CDOs that they knew weren't priced correctly, obfuscated the mispricing, and then profited on short positions against the securities. Took 7 years to settle for being straight up crooks. Still the Wild West out there.

<comment><USER7> There should really be some way to punish the individuals responsible, even just a fine comparable to the bonuses they made, rather than just having their employer pay compensation while those responsible continue to get richer.

<comment><USER8> > _There should really be some way to punish the individuals responsible_

Honest question: do reasonable really look at the The Great Recession and think that there are "individuals" wholly responsible for what happened?

<comment><USER9> I think the problem is not "we can't find anyone who did wrong here", but "there are so many who cheated people that we wouldn't know where to start, or we'd have to arrest thousands - so we might as well do nothing about it".

Regardless of punishing those guilty or not (which I think they should be), it's absolutely criminal that virtually nothing has changed in how these companies operate, and that the "too big to fail" companies continue to remain too big to fail. The next time these banks crash - and they will crash - <USER2> taxpayers will have to bail them out in the _trillions_ of dollars.

<comment><USER8> > _it 's absolutely criminal that virtually nothing has changed in how these > companies operate_

Except that this is simply not true if you've been paying attention beyond the populist headlines.

<comment><USER10> Can you give some concrete examples of what has changed in their modus operandi? Preferably with citations,but I won't even hold you to that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> OK this would not be popular opinion here, but it's a problem of people that bought those products and not GS. They went to same biz schools and were paid millions to run their funds. It's their job to do due diligence on the deals they make with GS or any other counterparty.

<comment><USER12> It used to be in the 90's/2000's in the UK that all was fair in love and war between banks - they are the big boys and are supposed to know what they are doing.

If you rip off "widows and orphans" though you will get punished severely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> While this isn't trivial as far as settlement dollar figures are concerned, I can't help but think it represents a small fraction of Goldman's ill-gotten gains.

They've had eight years to literally make bank on the proceeds.

</comment><comment><USER14> I guess I'm cynical but I'm worried that Goldman's takeaway here is to make the financial products, transactions, and their position more complex/opaque in the future.

<comment><USER15> That's not being cynical. When a fine is less than your profits for breaking the law you are into a sound business model.

Suppose that when you caught a thief the sentence were to return 60% of whatever he has stolen, nothing else. The result is quite obvious. Even if it where 100%, it will still be a good business as you will get away with all the money when you are not caught.

Lloyd said it quite clear "We are pleased to have reached an agreement in principle to resolve these matters,". Of course they are pleased! We are not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So a quick google search turned up this:

"Overall, Goldman Sachs received a $12.9 billion payout from the government's bailout of AIG, which was at one time the world's largest insurance company." [1]

Now, these might be related, but [not] identical - or indeed not connected - but on the face of it it _seems_ rather outrageous... perhaps someone who's a bit more up on the details can comment?

[1] [http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/banking/2010...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/banking/2010-07-24-goldman- bailout-cash_N.htm)

<comment><USER17> When the government bailed out AIG, everyone who was owed money by AIG got paid. Is there more to the story?

We seem to revisit the crisis on HN. Someone should do a write up. We seem to rehash a lot of this. Basically , history just repeating itself. TARP, for example, being a loan:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Progra...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program)

<comment><USER16> From the USA Today article above, along with this story here, it would seem that government bailed out AIG, which benefited Goldman and a lot of financial institutions that really should have been in a position to "know better", and be prepared to take the loss themselves, while Goldman will happily make sure small home-owners go bankrupt. Or put another way, government pays Goldman 12 Billion for not knowing their business, and Goldman grudgingly passes on 2 billion in consumer relief.

That's a pretty sweet deal for Goldman?

Does remind me to keep "Swimming With Sharks" on my reading list:

[http://www.amazon.com/Swimming-Sharks-Journey-World- Bankers-...](http://www.amazon.com/Swimming-Sharks-Journey-World-Bankers- ebook/dp/B010KNF704/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452839853&sr=8-1&keywords=swimming+with+sharks)

(I assume the Book has more along the lines of what's in this interview/promo- piece):

[http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/sep/30/how-the- bank...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/sep/30/how-the-banks- ignored-lessons-of-crash)

<comment><USER18> The controversy at the time was that Goldman was given 100 cents on the dollar in the AIG bailout.. They should have had a significant haircut but were made completely whole with taxpayer money. Ugly all around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For context, that's about 3 months' profits. Not nothing, but not much compared to the damage they caused.

<comment><USER20> They made 8 bil in 2014 fiscal year. That's 5/8 of their profit. It might not make up for what they did, but its a big fine.

<comment><USER21> Unless punishment sets you to negative net profit, it is not a punishment

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Relevant wikipedia link: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture)

Edit to add:

For a specific Goldman Sachs context, see for example: [http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/sep/26/us- regulator...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/sep/26/us-regulator- ray-rice-tapes-finance-goldman-sachs)

Maybe there's some reason I missed that this didn't make a bigger or longer- lasting splash.

</comment><comment><USER23> The $1.8 billion in consumer relief is not actually a penalty, since most of it is money that has already been lost, and is only being recognised now under the pretence of it being a penalty.

> "The consumer relief will be in the form of principal forgiveness for > underwater homeowners and distressed borrowers; financing for construction, > rehabilitation and preservation of affordable housing; and support for debt > restructuring, foreclosure prevention and housing quality improvement > programs, as well as land banks."

The principal forgiveness had to happen anyway in the normal course of business, one way or another. If underwater homeowners and distressed borrowers owe you a billion dollars, that does not mean that those mortgages and loans are worth a billion dollars in reality. At best you can realistically hope to eventually be repaid 60% of that (to pick an arbitrary number), given that these are _distressed_ borrowers we're talking about. So writing down those assets in your books to e.g. $600 million dollars does NOT constitute a penalty or consumer relief of $400 million, since your assets were not really worth a billion to begin with and probably haven't been for years.

Same for the rest of the "relief", for example foreclosure prevention is almost always a net positive for the lender. Finding a way for the owner to stay in the house, look after it, and keep repaying whatever they can afford, will usually recoup more money for the bank than a distressed sale at auction (how foreclosed properties are usually sold).

Principal relief for homeowners who are above water and up to date with mortgage payments, now that _would_ be an actual penalty

</comment><comment><USER24> Am I the only one finding it odd that the company who has triggered a global financial crisis is paying a fine to the US ???? The damage spread far outside US borders ! I would rather see this fine paid to a global organisazion, like the IMF ([https://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/finfac.htm](https://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/finfac.htm)).

<comment><USER25> > the company who has triggered a global financial crisis

I'm hardly a defender of Goldman, but that's a bizarre characterization.

What do you think Goldman did to cause RBS's failures, exactly?

<comment><USER26> RBS bought subprime mortgage backed securities - the same ones that were (mostly) created by Goldman[1].

RBS (along with most buyers) didn't realize that the AAA-rated securities they bought were actually subprime-backed (because of completely stupid rules by the ratings agencies, which Goldman exploited)

When people suddenly discovered what a disaster these were, RBS wrote down £5.9bn, and was forced to seek additional capital[2].

RBS was responsible for heir own fate of course. But Goldman sure made money out of it.

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/recession/5025115/RBS- tra...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/recession/5025115/RBS-traders-hid- toxic-debt.html)

[2] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7096845.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7096845.stm)

<comment><USER25> Goldman did not invent CDOs, and they did not create the CDOs RBS purchased. (Also, what actually doomed RBS was overpaying for ABN Amro, but that's neither here nor there.)

> But Goldman sure made money out of it.

How? Exactly?

<comment><USER26> The sold the securities and shorted them at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> >The firm said it will pay a civil monetary penalty of $2.385 billion, a cash payment of $875 million and $1.8 billion in consumer relief

Where is that $3.26 billion of cash going? I know you're going to say the SEC, the DOJ, or some other [combinations of] government entity. I get that. But _then_ where does it go? It seems that people often forget that when this happens, there's still a human that sees a $3.26 billion uptick in the amount of money he controls (though it's possibly divided between branches/depts).

What does that guy do with it? Build a (few dozen) new office building(s)? Hire 10k more employees for the agency that employs him (only 50 of which are his family and friends collecting 250% of their market rate)? Does he keep it in a bank account and collect interest on it? Send it into a black hole somewhere in the Treasury so that it can help pay off "the national debt"? Spend it on contractors? Bonuses for himself and the other people who helped "take the bad guys down"? Motorboats? Yachts?

People act like it's just an inherent truth that fined money is better off on a bureaucrat's desk than a banker's. Is that really real life?

<comment><USER28> Do you have a better idea? It sounds like you're trying to make a "taxes are theft" argument against _fines for committing theft_ which is pretty hard to take seriously.

<comment><USER27> >Do you have a better idea?

I think almost any idea is a better idea than that.

>It sounds like you're trying to make a "taxes are theft" argument against fines for committing theft which is pretty hard to take seriously.

I'm not making an argument that taxes are theft. I'm really just trying to illustrate that while there may not be an _institutional_ profit motive for governmental bureaus, there is a personal and/or professional profit motive for whoever gets to spend that money. A lot of young people seem to think that it's always better to have the government providing a service because "they care about more than just profit" or something similar.

Moving the money between a third-party contractor that provides a service _bought_ by the government into the actual government itself doesn't _necessarily_ mean anything good is going to happen. You don't have to look very far, either into the past or into the map, to see that; in many countries, the absolute richest people are politicians and bureaucrats.

It's a lot easier to fire a contractor that does a bad job than it is to replace a government bureau that does a bad job. I think it's important to convey that bureaucrats can and sometimes do still get a large amount of money, and that can affect their motives and decisions just as easily as it can for anyone else. These positions deserve scrutiny and oversight too. The people running the private sector are not that different from the people running public services.

<comment><USER28> > I think almost any idea is a better idea than that.

Okay I'll take that as a "no", then.

Again, this is a fine, not even a tax. Whatever ethical considerations are bothering you about levying fines for corporate criminal behavior are not going to be addressed by handing over the fines to some third party instead, or whatever you're going on about.

Frankly, they could take the money collected from the fine and launch it into a heliocentric orbit, for all I care, because the primary aim of levying the fine in the first place i.e. _as a punishment for criminal behavior_ is still achieved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Can someone express this as a percentage of the claims themselves? The $5B figure is meaningless without knowing the size of Goldman's loot.

</comment><comment><USER30> Let's just go through the docs and bring it all out.

>"We are pleased to have reached an agreement in principle to resolve these matters," said Lloyd C. Blankfein...

All you really need to know.

</comment><comment><USER31> Not to mention, low interest rates gave banks 7 years to bolster their balance sheets. They have as much money as ever. It's really hard to see how Goldman gets penalized for this under that regime: "We're going to help you make tens of billions to recover and then we're going to charge you $5B for damages. I hope you've learned your lesson."

</comment><comment><USER32> Suppose I buy something(1) and collude with an appraiser(2) to value it much higher than its actual worth and then get it insured (3). Now suppose the market discovers the true value of that it and massively devalues it. Consequently, I collect on the insurance.

Why isn't this insurance fraud?

(1) home loans (2) rating agencies like Moodies (3) AIG

</comment><comment><USER33> I'd be curious to hear GS employees points of view. We often get "insiders" comments here on HN, but not so much on this topic.

</comment><comment><USER34> Financial penalties/settlements: The modern world's indulgences.

I expect a similar amount of change in the underlying behavior.

</comment><comment><USER35> So they are paying back some of the bail out money. Not exactly a fine, and the individuals responsible are not affected.

</comment><comment><USER36> Not enough. 500B would be more accurate.

</comment><comment><USER37> I mean, we gave them loans, not free money, right? The American people profited in a literal sense on the bailout.

<comment><USER38> Sure, it was a loan--that no other financial institution could have dared to make, thereby making the expected interest rate on the open market for such a loan much higher than whatever accounting tricks are used today to determine that the government turned a "profit." Furthermore, the loans involved the government purchasing financial instruments that were basically impossible to value fairly [1], because much of it was junk at the time, and so the Treasury probably overpaid for them [2]. Finally, as far as using the money for long- lasting economic change, the loans were given with basically no strings attached, so banks that "qualified" for TARP (does anybody seriously believe that the Treasury selected participants in a neutral, transparent manner?) could use the money to swallow up smaller institutions for a bargain [3], basically subsidizing more of the bad behavior that led to the collapse in the first place.

[1] [http://web.archive.org/web/20090110184334/http://www.uiowa.e...](http://web.archive.org/web/20090110184334/http://www.uiowa.edu/ifdebook/issues/bailouts/eesa.shtml)

[2] [http://web.archive.org/web/20090207100935/http://cop.senate....](http://web.archive.org/web/20090207100935/http://cop.senate.gov/documents/cop-020609-report.pdf)

[3] [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/business/18bank.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/business/18bank.html)

<comment><USER39> >whatever accounting tricks are used today to determine that the government turned a "profit."

The government got back more money than it loaned out? Does that qualify as an accounting trick now?

<comment><USER38> Is the fair market value for the interest rate on a loan really that abstract? This must be why with the simplest rhetorical flourishes, the financial industry can convince people that their hundreds of millions in lobbying dollars are well spent on regulation that protects average Americans. An interest rate has to incorporate size of the loan, expected term of the loan, and _risk of default_ (recall these were distressed banks), among other things.

Here's an accounting trick for you. Why don't you give me a $1000 loan for twenty years, and since you don't know me, the risk of default is, let's say, pretty high. I'll repay you $1001 in 2036—heck, just to be generous, I'll do it in inflation-adjusted dollars. When I do that, I will be happy to have you tell me about the "profit" that you made off of your investment.

<comment><USER37> No one said or implied any of what you're saying. Did we or did we not get more money back from the banks than we gave? That was the question, and the answer was we did.

No one's making value judgements about that, it's just a statement of undeniably true fact. That is the literal definition of profit, and the US government made a profit on the loan.

<comment><USER38> Look, man, there's a reason this thread is all the way at the bottom of the page. If you actually think that your "literal definition of profit" (that any returned Y in the future, minus X loaned now, exceeds 0) is at all meaningful in a world with inflation, risk of default, and the commonly accepted practice of charging interest, I don't know what else to say.

Please see any [1] of [2] these [3] to understand why it isn't as simple as "Y - X > 0", considering things like where the repayments are coming from, comparing the nominal annualized return to Treasury bond rates, all the fraud that will never be accounted for, etc., etc. Even pro-bailout articles [4] have to include weasel phrases like "on a risk-adjusted basis, even [such and such proposed Y - X] isn't that big a profit, given the huge downside the government had," speaking directly to my point of how _it 's hard to properly account for risk_, which is what any other lender would have done. Arguably, since there weren't any competitors to the US government for providing bailout money, the interest rate we use to judge whether it was "profitable" should be sky high.

[1]: [http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395822/overselling- tar...](http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395822/overselling-tarp- myth-15-billion-profit-matt-palumbo)

[2]: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/tarp-profit-a- myth_...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/tarp-profit-a- myth_n_1450363.html)

[3]: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2012/04/25/dont-b...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2012/04/25/dont- be-fooled-theres-no-profit-in-bank-bailouts-tarp- watchdog/#2715e4857a0b2626bb5a72f2)

[4]: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/bailout- high...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/bailout-highly- profitable-for-taxpayers-when-you-look-at-the-right- numbers/2015/01/01/dc2a05a6-8fa5-11e4-a412-4b735edc7175_story.html)

<comment><USER37> What are you trying to prove, that it wasn't profitable? That the government's bank account was not a higher value higher after the bailout than it was before the bailout?

Because that's a fact, and not an opinion. You seem to be equating a lot of "is" with "should", and I'm not dealing at all in the "should". It is a fact of this universe that the US government made a profit off of the bailout, not mater how many links you provide (that _don 't_ provide a contrary point of view).

<comment><USER38> > What are you trying to prove, that it wasn't profitable?

I'm trying to tell you that your chosen definition of "profitable" is utterly meaningless in a discussion of economics, but you have completely closed your mind to this idea. You don't seem to understand inflation, interest rates, opportunity cost, or the difference between accounting profit and economic profit [1]. Therefore, I can't proceed with this conversation.

[1]: [https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance- domain/microec...](https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance- domain/microeconomics/firm-economic-profit/economic-profit- tutorial/v/economic-profit-vs-accounting-profit)

<comment><USER37> I asked a question because I was unsure, and you behaved like a prime ass. You will continue to get responses like mine as long as you try to push a viewpoint as hard as you've been trying to here.

<comment><USER38> I'm sorry you feel that way. You don't come off as unsure when you answer all your own questions and call these answers "undeniably true fact." But yes, I was more argumentative than I should have been. Best of luck to you.

<comment><USER37> Thanks for the apology. I especially liked where you minimized your own fault and tried to blame your behavior on me.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Oxygen generator for space colonisation - <AUTHOR> http://www.levonx.com <comment><USER2> "Men are explorers"

Pretty sure Women are too. I think that opening line needs to be re-thought.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, sorry about that !

Updated :)</comment></comment>


'Employment crisis' for new Ph.D.s is an illusion - <AUTHOR> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6288/880.full <comment><USER2> Link from Google [via HN's |web| link]: [http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2016/05/employment- crisis-...](http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2016/05/employment-crisis-new- phds-illusion)

</comment><comment><USER3> paywall; didn't read

</comment><comment><USER4> paywall; would love to read but can't</comment>


Galaxy Nexus OS Variant Not Controlled By Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.techieinsider.com/news/13274 <comment><USER2> Damn it Google. I thought I could count on you not to mess this up. I want to be able to tell my mom that she should get a galaxy nexus and not have to worry. Now I have to track down a GSM edition from abroad that has a particular software build on it? You're not making this very easy.

<comment><USER3> It's not meant to be. Google has sold their users down the river, including letting Verizon disable Wallet, in exchange for a piece of the action in mobile. So they can keep having a relevant platform for their ads.

It's been a mostly sharp move, but it wasn't done for reasons of user experience. And it shows with stuff like this. I wish they would take a harder line – enforce higher standards, fight the good fight on NFC. But that's not what they're after. Every phone that ships without Android, or a Google-free flavor of Android, is one more point where they can be left out in the cold when something like Siri comes along.

So as long as they can get most of what they want from these manufacturing partners, they'll take it.

<comment><USER4> Not sure how to interpret this comment.

I don't understand why Wallet is a big deal. For users, it wouldn't be much of a difference from Isis. How is this selling users down t he river? What exactly is the good fight on NFC?

 _Every phone that ships without Android, or a Google-free flavor of Android, is one more point where they can be left out in the cold when something like Siri comes along._

What does this even mean? Google-free? Show me an Android phone on the market that's Google-free. And, at least as far as I can tell, Siri seems to have been a dud. I certainly don't know anyone that uses it regularly, and I don't know anyone who uses it at all for anything other than simple voice commands, which are not really Sir's value prop.

 _So as long as they can get most of what they want from these manufacturing partners, they'll take it._

Manufacturing partners? This is about Verizon, isn't it?

I also wish that Google would take a harder stance on stuff like the Nexus experience, and UI consistency, and update frequency. But I don't really see what Google is bargaining with here. What can they withhold from Verizon at this point?

EDIT: I know one person who uses Siri regularly. His name is Nicholas. He seems like a pretty nice guy. A bit snarky.

<comment><USER5> > Google-free? Show me an Android phone on the market that's Google-free.

Nook & Kindle Fire are examples of Google-Free android devices, though you specified 'Phones' so I guess that excludes them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So basically Google just ruined the nexus brand? It was the one constant in Android they'd created that you could supposedly rely on and they just killed it in only the third generation.

<comment><USER7> i was pretty disappointed with the nexus s as the successor to the nexus one. cheaper-feeling hardware, all plastic instead of rubber and metal, no sd-card expansion (i think that was on purpose to push google's cloud synching), no notification light, and a bigger footprint with no bigger screen resolution.

</comment></comment><comment> old-gregg United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc: <http://bit.ly/5xgJcA>

We need this to happen to:

      * All wireless carriers and their practice of locking phones
      * Apple/Amazon with their "stores" tied to their devices

<comment><USER8> Companies in a given market sharing many of the same practices does not automatically violate the Sherman Act, nor does vertical integration by a non- monopoly or non-coercive monopoly.

<comment> old-gregg Doesn't it bother you that there is only 1 retailer in the world who sells software for the iPhone? It is very possible that 3-5 years from now literally every byte of information flowing to our portable devices will be 100% controlled (or approved) by the big 3: Google, Apple and Amazon. Wintel domination pales in comparison.

P.S. In my comment above I used wireless carriers but forgot Google. In reality they all try to do the same thing: google/apple/amazon are using the platform, while carriers are using the pipe, but in the end they all want to own the whole enchilada.

<comment><USER8> Lots of things bother me, that doesn't necessarily mean I think they should be illegal. Laws affect society as a whole, that means they should be made carefully and with restraint, and applied in the same way, because there's a lot of variation within society as to what is viewed as right or wrong.

I don't like that iOS is as closed as it is, but I do have other choices. Apple is not a monopoly, they don't control the market, they didn't make it more closed, or less consumer-friendly. On the contrary, they're directly responsible for the smartphone market's rapid advance, and a renewed focus on the needs and wants of end-users.

In other words, your call for an antitrust case against Apple, besides being a serious perversion of antitrust law, is proposing to harm Apple for the good they've done for consumers. What kind of sense does that make?

Certain markets have long been dominated by a handful of large companies. That's always been the case with telecommunications and consumer electronics, and to some extent, it will probably always be the case.

On the other hand, technological advancements, some of which came out of these very companies you're vilifying, have made it more practical for smaller players to enter markets that have had prohibitive costs of entry. It is increasing competition -- the very goal of antitrust law.

Everybody sees the danger of a few large companies controlling a market, that's why the FCC and Department of Justice have been, shall we say, less than receptive to the idea of an AT&T/T-Mobile merger. That doesn't automatically mean that those companies should be torn to shreds because some of us don't like their business model.

<comment> old-gregg You are arguing against the points I did not make: I am not "vilifying" these companies, and I am not proposing they to "be torn to shreds". Paramount Pictures with other movie studios aren't evil either.

Users should be able to freely exchange software/information (which they paid for) between their devices (which they paid for).

This is all about consumer protection, not about how evil/awesome/innovative these companies are. Nobody is going to be "torn to shreds" if the practice of companies locking and controlling access to devices that don't belong to them becomes illegal.

Look, Apple selling you the phone which only runs software they approve is no different from, say, Toshiba selling you a TV which only shows FOX News, but refuses to show you the video which you bought here: <https://buy.louisck.net>

<comment><USER8> I disagree with none of your principles except the one that apparently says legal intervention is necessary. The walled gardens are not a secret, people are making the decision to buy these devices knowing they won't be able to do certain things. They do have other reasonable options.

This isn't fraud, and it's not a hidden problem hard for people to grasp. There's no apparent collusion to block new competitors. If the masses conclude it is intolerable, the companies will stop making money and that's the end of it. If not, it shouldn't be illegal in the first place.

If you're upset about it, well, this is a site targeted at people into startups...

<comment><USER4> Disagreement downvotes... such a shame. I disagree with you, but find your position to be valid and reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In other words, can the Verizon Galaxy Nexus even be considered a "Nexus" anymore? The article implies "no."

<comment><USER10> According to the twitter conversation linked in a message here (<http://twitter.theinfo.org/146020135109533696,>) mysid, which is the Verizon GN is built by Google, like yakju (the Google GSM build,) and unlike yakju.+ (which are built by Samsung)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a conversation on twitter with Jean Baptiste Queru, who works on AOSP for Google. It's not completely illuminating, but there are interesting details:

<http://twitter.theinfo.org/146020135109533696>

</comment><comment><USER11> Why can't Google or Samsung push out the updates? Is it just that Verizon won't let them?

I guess it takes the selling power of the iPhone to ink a deal like that with Verizon.

</comment><comment><USER12> So in these builds are they going to disable the ICS feature to disable programs, like the crap-ware Verizon shoves on the phones.

</comment><comment><USER13> So again, what is the problem when you can "flash" the phone with the OS variant you want? I noticed there already are floating various user builds for Galaxy Nexus. I'm much more worried about the frequent hardware build quality issues that German users are reporting about so much. I hope I won't have to send mine back. Let's stay optimistic!

</comment><comment><USER14> Somehow, I can't help but think "LOL, Verizon."

</comment><comment><USER15> It sure does seem like Verizon likes to add their 2 cents to everything rather than leave it as intended. To have a clean phone without all the bloatware that Verizon adds on would be great.

</comment><comment><USER16> What would stop people from removing crapware that VZ enjoy crippling their phones with? I know it's not as easy to remove apps on Android than it is on iOS but still...

</comment><comment><USER17> Not a Nexus.</comment>


Phishing Protection at the DNS Level. Comparing DNS-Based Security Filters - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/phishing-protection-comparing-dns-security-filters-9d5a09849b91 <comment><USER2> I wonder if there are any SaaS providers out their implementing DNS filtering for their users as part of their product. Say if you're running a high-traffic platform for content sharing, it would probably be trivial to alert users that they're about to clicking on a potentially risky link forcing a user to copy/edit haxxs://evil.com instead of sending them there and pushing the responsibility for protection to the user.

It would mean a massive overhead in DNS queries (as opposed to passing the link on to the frontend) for a large site, but wouldn't this be something a DNS caching could easily handle?

While this wouldn't do anything to reduce actual spear phishing by email, it would reduce the possibility of spreading links widely on big social media sites.

I'm probably missing something though because sure others would have thought about such an obvious thing and turn it into a feature.

Edit: I forgot that you'd also have the overhead parsing the link so it's _not just_ extra DNS. still ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Google and twitter does that by default. If you try to click on any link from their search / tweet feed, it will be blocked if they flag it as phishing.

There are multiple phishing blacklists that any provider can leverage.</comment></comment>


Double Saw Bye (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sdmrra.org/Odds-n-Ends/saw_bye.htm <comment><USER2> Problems like these bear a lot of similarity to CS brain teasers, such as exchanging N items without using N + 1 slots. [1]

I wonder if that contributes to why model railroad clubs (like the TMRC) and early computer hobbyist groups intermingled so easily.

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

<comment><USER3> In the first section of his 1984 book 'Hackers', Stephen Levy wrote about the Signals and Power Subcommittee of the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club, which included quite a few computing pioneers among its ranks. Levy mentions that one of the skills of the subcommittee was in disrupting any meeting through creative use of Robert's Rules of Order.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_Model_Railroad_Club#Syste...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_Model_Railroad_Club#System_layout)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I did not get any hits on 'single saw bye' \- Is that the case where a siding is connected to the main line at only one end? When I get a chance, I will see if I can figure out that one (I guess there are two variants of the single- junction siding, one with one and one with two switches.) Then there is the question of the minimum-length siding for arbitrarily-long trains. There seem to be some similarities to the Towers of Hanoi problem.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love this kind of problem solving. Doing this safely is probably a time consuming pain, yet less time consuming and dangerous than steaming several miles backwards.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't see why you won't have maximum train length for every part of track & check that beforehand while routing.

Reminds me of the infamous MTU networking problems.

<comment><USER6> While through manifest trains are stable length locals pick up and set off cars along the way - and historically there was no reliable way you'll know exactly how many cars you'll switching in and out. Even today you can see conditions change after a local leaves a yard and before it reaches say an interchange between two railroads or a major shipper.

<comment><USER5> Why don't they make an app to track trains' length?

Indeed I have hard time imagining an unaccounted car running on public rail.

<comment><USER4> Human error. These kinds of things happen all the time - packages going through UPS/FedEx get lost, containers on ships are lost (i.e. put in the wrong stack or fall off into the sea), containers in ports are lost/hidden...

There's a lot of rail cars in the US by itself. And while they are already well tracked, mistakes happen.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


ReasonML evaluation order gotcha - <AUTHOR> https://sketch.sh/s/lZ3c797jCcCVIZBgSLaey5/ <comment><USER2> js_of_ocaml (and thus sketch) has the same behaviour as both the ocaml bytecode and native compilers. I think, if anyhing, targeting the behaviour of the ocaml compiler should be raised as a useful fix for bucklescript

<comment><AUTHOR> OTOH, since Javascript's order of evaluation is specified to be left-to-right, it might make more sense to also make Reason behave like Javascript, since the point of giving Reason a Javascript-like syntax was probably at least partly to make it easier for Javascript developers to understand the language.

If the semantics would be different for something as fundamental as order of evaluation, there is a risk Javascript developers will find the language awkward.

I guess it boils down to whether it's more important to make Reason appeal to existing Javascript- or OCaml-developers.

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8405989/what-is-the- orde...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8405989/what-is-the-order-of- evaluation-for-function-arguments-in-javascript)</comment></comment>


How America Turned Against Smart Kids - <AUTHOR> http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-america-turned-against-smart-kids/ <comment><USER2> It's a feel-good piece for the wealthy that ignores huge swaths of evidence. Also, the author is the former policy coordinator for Trump's campaign.</comment>


List of Cognitive Biases - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases <comment><USER2> I was a big fan of cognitive psychology and biases and tried to read as much books as possible on the subject. Even had a mind-map on finished and TODO books ([https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/buybackoff/8746464/10862/108...](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/buybackoff/8746464/10862/10862_original.gif) upper-right corner).

I think the best practical material on the subject is Charlie Munger talks. Particularly his talk "On the psychology of human misjudgement" ([https://buffettmungerwisdom.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/mung...](https://buffettmungerwisdom.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/mungerspeech_june_95.pdf)) and "Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger", which is an edited collectoin of his many talks.

My main conclusion from reading all the books/talks is that you could only be aware of the existence of the biases, but cannot realize which one(s) is(are) at play now in your brain and cannot "fix" a bias with any cognitive effort. So "sleeping on"/delaying an important decision is the best practical way I have found to mitigate the always present pervasive biases.

<comment><USER3> There are efforts to train biases out of your system. A long time ago I did such a training from a renowned scholar online (he made a simple web page). I forgot how it was called, but I remember one clear thing that I use in every day life.

When you estimate something, never ever estimate a single value. Always estimate within a range. He showed in his training that, for me, I would come to more sane averages/point estimates. It helped me. Unfortunately, that's simply anecdata.

In any case, when you google on "debias training" or something similar, you will see that many efforts are underway.

<comment><USER4> IIRC the book "How to measure anything" contains some advice like this: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118539273/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118539273/)

The author also offers webinars, so maybe it was from him: [https://www.howtomeasureanything.com](https://www.howtomeasureanything.com)

<comment><USER3> I think it was from a pretty prominent researcher that had a .edu site, but I couldn't find it and I really tried.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am wondering which of these are "solid" enough to be considered? I am asking because of the "replication crisis" which affected also Kahneman et. al.

EDIT: I am _genuinely_ interested in knowing, since it would be helpful to know which of these are reliable - in order to change my behavior accordingly.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/psycholo...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/psychologys- replication-crisis-real/576223/)

[https://replicationindex.com/category/kahneman/](https://replicationindex.com/category/kahneman/)

<comment><USER6> Beware of potential recursion. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_blind_spot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_blind_spot)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How many of these will appear naturally in powerful AI systems?

Perhaps many! Maybe by trying to emulate a human brain we will end up recreating its flaws.

I am very excited in the progress of deep learning applied to symbolic, logical reasoning, like theorem proving. Theorem verification is easy and tractable, proving is not.

We can have heuristic algorithms come up with provably correct algorithms! That is vaguely analogous to a human writing a program then proving it correct. Now that will be useful.

<comment><USER8> I wonder if we might achieve better* results in some systems if we added in these biases on purpose. (I.e. treated them like features, not bugs or even emergent patterns.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some of which may be replicated.

I'd be tempted to down-vote myself for snarky trolling except that I work in the field of psychological research, and perhaps it is my bias, but many of the cognitive biases that came from social-psychology research do not stand up to scrutiny, too frequently resulting from bad statistical practice...at least two decades ago.

<comment><USER10> Can you expand on that? My impression is that Kahneman and Tversky "proved" that human cognition is not Bayesian and now much of cognitive psychology is turning around and saying, no, they didn't, and it is. As a layperson, I don't know whom to believe.

<comment><USER11> Richard Nisbett claims that with training a lot of the biases can be overcome (I'm paraphrasing)

There is an interesting course of his on Coursera ( [https://www.coursera.org/learn/mindware](https://www.coursera.org/learn/mindware))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is purely my opinion.

All theories within Psychology and Economics are based on people being 'rational'. Any thing contrary to their theory is branded 'irrational' and given a name. The name usually sounds like a 'disease/ailment'.

<comment><USER13> Well, people shared your intuition for a while but then new results came up. This literature started with the supposed rationality of compelling axioms of decision making by Ramsey, von Neumann, Savage, etc. These are in the end based on measurement theory. People noticed early that humans seem to remain rational even if they violate intuitively acceptable rationality postulate.

Take Luce's coffee cup example as an illustration. You prefer black coffee to sweet coffee. Suppose you compare coffee with no sugar to coffee with one grain of sugar added. You're indifferent: a~b. Then add another grain, and so on. You will get comparisons a~b, b~c, c~d, e~f, ..., j~k, and then suddenly a>k, a violation of the supposed transitivity of equipreference (aka indifference, equally good). But that seems to be rational.

So people relaxed rationality requirements and now there is the problem what 'rationality' actually means.

Fast forward a few years and empirical studies found the following strange behavior: If you mention a high number before asking people for some fictional charity contribution, then people tend to be be willing to pay more than if you mention a low number before, and it does not matter in which way you mention the numbers. (Actual experiments were made by making people roll a rigged lottery wheel before doing some completely different task, for example.) You can even tell participants about the observed effect before, it will still be observed.

I see no way how this "anchoring effect" could be described as being rational.

But many people nowadays share your opinion, and there is a whole field called "ecological rationality" in which scholars try to re-interpret supposedly irrational biases as good and rational heuristics increasing e.g. evolutionary fitness. I don't think they're right in general, though. Some of the biases are just flaws. If I flash a number before your eyes and this affects your subsequent decision making, then that's not a useful heuristics, it's a flaw in your brain processing. My 2 cents, others disagree with me.

<comment><USER14> >Some of the biases are just flaws.

It's probably a trait that is (or was) advantageous in one context, that is disadvantageous in this new or less vital context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I once tried memorizing this list of cognitive biases but eventually came to the conclusion they were ill-defined and in some cases, not even biases at all, but a heuristic to keep me alive and well-functioning.

<comment><USER16> I tried to memorize them, but recency bias meant I only remember the last one in the list.

<comment><USER17> I tried to think of others, but availability bias means I'm stuck on recency bias.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's an alphabetically sorted list, sure one can read the whole list top to bottom, but it just doesn't _flow_ very well.

If you're interested in rationality and cognitive biases, I'd highly recommend reading Eliezer Yudkowsky's "Rationality: A-Z" sequences: [https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality](https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality)

</comment><comment><USER19> Thinking Fast and Slow explains many cognitive biases.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking%2C_Fast_and_Slow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking%2C_Fast_and_Slow)

</comment><comment><USER20> Previous threads: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=List%20of%20Cognitive%20Biases...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=List%20of%20Cognitive%20Biases%20comments%3E10&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

</comment><comment><USER21> I had a class at Babson about "Decisions". Best class ever. My favorite case was about decision making process at NASA that led to the Discovery disaster. Along the case (you can find multiple versions online and it is an awesome read) there was this HBR article about flaws in decision making process. "The Hidden Traps in Decision Making" by by John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa. [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12948100_The_Hidden...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12948100_The_Hidden_Traps_in_Decision_Making)

<comment><USER22> i went to babson as well -- too bad i missed this class, sounds interesting!

i grabbed a copy of that HBR article and will read it later. thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think human rational thinking is completely f*cked. We are just not capable of thinking very logically/rationally.

I think all the more reason to meditate, be mindful and adopt philosophies that are not always rational, but good instead.

Also, the truth is often very complex or very dark, so thinking is only going to bring incorrect simplified (black/white) conclusions or negativity/resentment.

<comment><USER6> You just reminded me... [https://www.xkcd.com/1163/](https://www.xkcd.com/1163/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Being reminded of cognitive biases on a regular basis does wonders for staying grounded! I currently use a browser plugin for that but this poster seems like a better alternative — [https://designhacks.co/products/cognitive-bias-codex- poster](https://designhacks.co/products/cognitive-bias-codex-poster)

<comment><USER25> What's the browser extension?

<comment><USER24> [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/my-cognitive- bias/...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/my-cognitive- bias/cmapeoagadpppgajnicpagcgpdklfhch)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anyone want to work with me to create a cognitive debiasing AI algorithm/chat bot?

<comment><USER27> That would be really interesting project. Only up for it if it's open source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> According to Daniel Kahneman the research on whether biases can be overcome is "not encouraging". [https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-cognitive-biases- tric...](https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-cognitive-biases-tricking- your-brain)

</comment><comment><USER29> The list is missing "The Bias Bias in Behavioral Economics" ([https://www.nowpublishers.com/article/Details/RBE-0092](https://www.nowpublishers.com/article/Details/RBE-0092))

<comment><USER30> Gerd Gigerenzer's work and the book Simple Rules are far more efficient ways of making better decisions than reading a list of 100+ "biases" and trying to overcome them. A good intro is Risk Savvy. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnRWVmWQG24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnRWVmWQG24)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A more digestible format for this: [https://busterbenson.com/piles/cognitive- biases/](https://busterbenson.com/piles/cognitive-biases/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Which biases are startup founders more likely to fall into?

</comment><comment><USER33> Do we suffer from normalcy bias when dealing with the effects of global warming? It sure looks that way.

</comment><comment><USER34> While I think it's good for pedagogical purposes to have a catalogue of many examples of where our thinking goes wrong, I worry that these lists can give off the wrong idea that our thinking is broken in so many "different" ways.

In some sense, many of these biases seem like specific instances of a more general phenomenon. For example, illusion of control and pareidolia both seem like they'd arise if you buy into the brain as doing [predictive processing]([https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing- un...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing- uncertainty/)). So it's not exactly that we have over 100 ways that our thinking goes wrong, but that the same types of mistakes occur in different ways.

In which case, for preventative reasons, knowing the core mechanism at play seems much more important. Similarly, I feel that lists of mental models might also be missing the point; no one can really go through a list of 100+ items to figure out which one is at play. You're going to need a smaller, more general toolkit.

<comment><USER35> what toolkit do you use?

<comment><USER34> I don't have something that feels comprehensive yet, but another more general concept aside from predictive processing that I've been thinking about is substituting a hard thing for an easy thing, if the easy thing looks like the hard thing.

Examples: \- Following through the steps of a proof vs covering up the proof and doing it yourself \- Asking yourself if something sounds familiar instead of trying to summarize it \- Criticizing an idea instead of adding a new one or suggesting an improvement

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Wow, there are now 194 listed Cognitive Biases. The number keeps growing.

It is an awful sign for a scientific community when they are working on a theory that includes 196 different exceptions and adjustments that have to be made in order to make a model fit the data. It means that your underlying model probably isn't right.

This reminds me of when Astronomers thought the universe revolves around the Earth, rather than the Sun. The earth-centered theory made sense until we got better data, and then sometimes planets appeared to go backwards. Sometimes they appeared to swirl around a line. Sometimes there were swirls within the swirls, and sometimes swirls within those: [https://invisible.college/attention/dissertation/retrogrades...](https://invisible.college/attention/dissertation/retrogrades.png)

Astronomers had to account for this data with a complex set of retrograde motions and epicycles layered upon epicycles. These complexities only increased as telescopes and charting techniques improved, uncovering more distortions from in the idealized orbital lens. Take, for instance, the numerous parameterized gears required for an early Galilean planetary model: [https://invisible.college/attention/dissertation/galileo2.jp...](https://invisible.college/attention/dissertation/galileo2.jpg)

Only when Copernicus and Kepler put the _sun_ in the center of the universe could the models be simplified. Suddenly, each planet's orbit fit a perfect elipse -- no epicycles, no retrograde motions.

We can do the same thing for Economic theory, by moving the center of the utility function from the _future_ to the _present_. Right now, Economics models humans as optimizing future outcomes. The modeled humans are focused on the future: they allocate infinite attention to computing the optimal action for the future. But real humans have scarce attention for computing the future. When they run out of attention, these 194 heuristics and biases display themselves in full effect.

We solve this dilemma when we evaluate the utility function in the present, rather than the future. Instead of assuming humans have infinite attention, the utility function itself predicts _how_ humans allocate their scarce attention. The new utility function evaluates the utility of attention itself.

And it turns out that we can empirically measure this value of this utility function, by running controlled experiments online with 1,000s of participants, and paying them different amounts of money to attend to different tasks. This lets us measure how much utility people ascribe to paying attention to television shows, sexy pictures, video games, advertisements, iPhone screens, or reddit posts. We can measure it in pennies per second.

This new model is a measurable _Attention Economics_ : [https://invisible.college/attention/dissertation.html](https://invisible.college/attention/dissertation.html)

<comment><USER37> As I understand it cognitive biases aren't exceptions or adjustments to a model; they are observed phenomena. Any model of psychology or economics which purports to unify these phenomena must be able to explain/predict each bias individually. How does "attention economics" predict the planning fallacy?

<comment><USER36> Cognitive biases _are_ exceptions or adjustments to the _rational model_ : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory) On the whole, the field of Behavioral Economics is a correction to the Rational Economic Model. Behavioral Economics says "people are rational, _except_ for the ways in which they are biased." They call it "bounded" rationality.

For instance, the planning fallacy is a correction to the idea that people will rationally predict how much time something will take. So we first estimate how long something might take, and then the planning fallacy teaches us to increase it to account for our bias.

> Any model of psychology or economics which purports to unify these phenomena > must be able to explain/predict each bias individually

That's close to correct, but I'd like to distinguish explaining the _bias_ vs. the _data_. The new theory should explain the _data_ , not the biases in the old theory. Consider that Kepler's elliptical orbit theory didn't explain each individual planetary epicycle -- it didn't need to. Kepler's theory didn't need epicycles at all to explain the data.

Likewise, Attention Economics doesn't need a "Planning Fallacy", because it doesn't assume humans are good planners. It rather looks at how people actually allocate their attention while planning. Consider that if people allocate more attention to their plans, they are likely to make better estimates. So how are they allocating their attention when planning? In the "planning fallacy" [1], Kahneman and Tversky envisage "that planners focus on the most optimistic scenario for the task, rather than using their full experience of how much time similar tasks require." I haven't run the experiments myself, but one could certainly test for this in an Attention Economic experiment, by seeing how much more attracted people are to focus on the most optimistic scenario for their task, rather than the pessimistic scenarios. And then we can learn _why_ they focus on the optimistic scenario, by manipulating other variables until we see which ones lead people to consider optimistic vs. pessimistic scenarios when planning.

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

<comment><USER37> Thanks for your detailed response. I'm afraid I'm still not sure how this simplifies much. The fact that people focus specifically on an optimistic scenario rather than having a random variance like a normal distribution seems very significant to me. If you can't predict this from first principles then you have to add in some extra explanatory factors, and then you still get your cursed epicycles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Defense mechanisms are far more interesting

</comment><comment><USER39> Are these just made up or found by scientific method?

<comment><USER40> Those two things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But a lot of them have been studied pretty extensively, I know I've seen a lot on the "Anchoring".</comment></comment>


Social media content creation for Startup Founders. Does it make sense? - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
I'm building a company that creates content for social media to be used as a service per Startups. Does it make sense? <comment><AUTHOR> Our landing page

[https://thepopcornmedia.com/](https://thepopcornmedia.com/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Description too general. Hard to comment</comment>


A New Book: Building Machine Learning Systems with Python - <AUTHOR> http://metarabbit.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/building-machine-learning-systems-with-python/

<comment><USER2> The book details building ML systems with Python and does not necessarily teach ML per se. It is a good time to write a ML book in Python particularly keeping in mind efforts to make Python scale to Big Data [0].

What material you want to refer to is entirely dependent on _What you want to do?_. Here are some of my recommendations-

Q : Do you want to have an "Introduction to ML", some applications with Octave/Matlab as your toolbox?

A :Take up Andrew Ng's course on ML in Coursera [1].

Q : Do you want to have a complete understanding of ML with the mathematics, proofs and build your own algorithms in Octave/Matlab?

A : Take up Andrew Ng's course on ML as taught in Stanford; video lectures are available for free download [2]. Note - This is NOT the same as the Coursera course. For textbook lovers, I have found the handouts distributed in this course far better than textbooks with obscure and esoteric terms. It is entirely self contained. If you want an alternate opinion, try out Yaser Abu- Mostafa's ML course at Caltech [3].

Q : Do you want to apply ML along with NLP using Python ?

A : Try out Natural Language Tool Kit [4]. The HTML version of the NLTK book is freely available (Jump to Chapter 6 for the ML part) [5]. There is an NLTK cookbook available as well which has simple code examples to get you started [6].

Q: Do you want to apply standard ML algorithms using Python?

A : Try out scikit-learn [7]. The OP's book also seems to be a good fit in this category (Disclaimer - I haven't read the OP's book and this is not an endorsement).

[0] [http://www.drdobbs.com/tools/us-defense-agency-feeds- python/...](http://www.drdobbs.com/tools/us-defense-agency-feeds- python/240151767)

[1] <https://www.coursera.org/course/ml>

[2] <http://academicearth.org/courses/machine-learning/>

[3] <http://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html>

[4] <http://nltk.org>

[5] <http://nltk.org/book/>

[6] [http://www.amazon.com/Python-Text-Processing-NLTK- Cookbook/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Python-Text-Processing-NLTK- Cookbook/dp/1849513600)

[7] <http://scikit-learn.org>

</comment><comment><USER3> For anyone curious to learn more about machine learning, I would recommend: [http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-Algorithmic- Perspecti...](http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-Algorithmic-Perspective- Recognition/dp/1420067184)

<comment><USER4> I have this book, and would not recommend it as a stand-alone learning guide. It gives a decent intuitive treatment of some topics but is inconsistent. It will furthermore jump between e.g. an explanation of neural networks without any mathematics to the full derivation of backpropagation. It tries to hit a sweet spot between rigor and intuition but in my opinion it largely fails to bridge the two.

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any good ML books that are current. Mitchell's was really good but is out of date. Bishop is a megalithic tome of statistical mathematics and is better as a reference than a textbook. I think that a good MOOC course paired with selected readings is the best currently available option.

<comment><USER5> Murphy's is probably most current, and an excellent text (read first review). OTW there's lots of stuff on the web for various levels of rigor

[http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-Probabilistic- Perspec...](http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-Probabilistic-Perspective- ebook/dp/B00AF1AYTQ/)

[http://metaoptimize.com/qa/questions/186/good-freely- availab...](http://metaoptimize.com/qa/questions/186/good-freely-available- textbooks-on-machine-learning)

<http://www.p-value.info/2012/11/free-datascience-books.html>

<http://www.kaggle.com/wiki/Tutorials>

<comment><USER6> Now is a good time to pick up the Murphy book:

[http://mitpress.mit.edu/content/spread-knowledge-sale- detail...](http://mitpress.mit.edu/content/spread-knowledge-sale-details)

<http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/machine-learning-2>

<comment><USER7> It appears that the deal doesn't apply to eBooks, as there is no place to enter the code. Also, they have gigantic red text informing the potential purchaser that they don't offer Android or "normal" eBooks (PDF, ePub, etc).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Hacker News showing me ads? - <AUTHOR> I've something like this article pop up time and again: "Flexport is hiring engineers around the world". It seems that the ability to comment and upvote is also disabled on such a post.<p>Which begs the question: is this an advertisement? <comment><USER2> Yes, but it is only available to YC companies.

From [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

> _Another kind of job ad is reserved for YC-funded startups. These appear on > the front page, but are not stories: they have no vote arrows, points, or > comments. They begin part-way down, then fall steadily, and only one should > be on the front page at a time._

</comment><comment><USER3> In a way... Yes. [https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs](https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs)

It's also described plainly in the FAQ [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

No conspiracy here.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's a lot of links here that works as advertising. Likely majority of.</comment>


Happiness Traps - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2017/09/happiness-traps <comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes I think of this as being trapped at a local optima, where striving to improve can't take you anywhere better. You have to make a jump to somewhere different and then start trying to optimise again in order to reach a more optimal optima.</comment>


Open source will always win out - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mobclix.com/2010/03/04/android-vs-iphone-an-age-old-story/

<comment><USER2> "In all things legal, should we not get what we want? It's only a matter of time before the free market attitude of Google creates an open forum for creativity and gives the people what they're asking for. I expect profits will follow."

While there will always be a proud happy class of tinkerer, I think more and more users want something that simply works without headaches. I've felt from the day the App Store happened that it was at least a moderate threat to our ideas of open computing and information sharing, but talk to nearly anyone, and what they _want_ isn't necessarily more choices, more Freedom, or more control over their device. What they want is something that works and supports them, not something that requires their support.

Predicting profits from ideological lines is a dangerous game.</comment>