What You Can't Say (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html <comment><USER2> Here are some things I think future societies will condemn us for:

1\. Prison. Almost every modern penal system focuses on punishment rather than rehabilitation. I think that as our understanding of the brain improves, we'll be able to find the causes of violent behavior and cure them. Punishment will become cruel and unusual.

2\. Eating meat (and other animal rights issues). Even if they're not conscious, most tasty animals can suffer just as much as we can. They have desires and kin. Some even mourn the passing of their brethren. But few eyes are batted when our microencephalized cousins are abused and killed by the billions. Cheap in-vitro meat is probably a prerequisite for this change.

3\. Banning assisted suicide for the elderly and terminally ill. See [http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow- decay/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/)

I doubt I'll be right on all of these, but I'm hopeful. Now for something I really can't say: I think all three of these atrocities share a root cause. Some of you will probably guess what I'm getting at.

<comment><USER3> Dude, you're not trying hard enough. :)

Most unspeakable thoughts today deal with isms and phobias: sexism, racism, agism, Islamophobia, homophobia.

There are others of course. For example, I am not a climate-change denier, but if I was I certainly wouldn't say so on HN!

I'm gay so I'll pick on my own group: HIV is ridiculously high amongst urban gay men. To me, it's obvious why this is the case. Evolutionarily, men have had no reason not to try and be as successful with as many partners as possible. Women, who may be saddled with a pregnancy and baby for years, had evolutionary pressure to be more choosy with sexual partners. This created fertile ground for HIV to spread amongst gay men.

Now, could a straight person say that without being ostracized from polite society? Probably not!

The question I would throw back to pg though is this: are we better or worse off for avoiding these topics entirely? The truth sometimes comes at a cost. Let's say that we found out that white people are less smart than East Asians. What good could come from knowing that? I don't know the answer...

<comment><USER4> I agree with you about most of those phobias, but I strongly disagree about Islamophobia.

I think future societies will be surprised by how much human suffering we permit in the name of being "tolerant". Religions are not all created equal, and no intellectually honest person will claim that Islam and Jainism are equally valid moral frameworks (this is why few people fret about Jainophobia). We _know_ that Islam and its adherents are generous contributors to the surplus of misery in the world. People concerned about the quality of human life will recognize that we were right to be extremely suspicious of Islam.

(Note that I'm defining Islamophobia as "deep suspicion of Islam / thoughts informed by Islamic beliefs", especially when it comes to questions of morality and ethics.)

<comment><USER5> Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and philosopher, wrote an interesting post on Islamophobia and how he believes it doesn't actually exist, at least not in the framework that we normally consider phobias: [http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to- controve...](http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to- controversy2/#views_on_islam)

The relevant part:

 _The meaning of "Islamophobia" is not at all like the meanings of those other terms. It is simply not easy to differentiate prejudice against Muslims from ordinary racism and xenophobia directed at Arabs, Pakistanis, Somalis, and other people who happen to be Muslim. Of course, there is no question that such bigotry exists, and it is as odious as Greenwald believes. But inventing a new term does not give us license to say that there is a new form of hatred in the world. How does the term "anti-Semitism" differ? Well, we have a 2000-year-old tradition of religiously inspired hatred against Jews, conceived as a distinct race of people, both by those who hate them and by Jews themselves. Anti-Semitism is, therefore, a specific form of racism that, as everyone knows, has taken many terrible turns over the years (and is now especially prevalent among Muslims, for reasons that can be explicitly traced not merely to recent conflicts over land in the Middle East, but to the doctrine of Islam). "Sexism," generally speaking, is a bias against women, not because of any doctrines they might espouse, but because they were born without a Y chromosome. The meanings of these terms are clear, and each names a form of hatred and exclusion directed at people, as people, not because of their behavior or beliefs, but because of the mere circumstances of their birth.

Islamophobia is something else entirely. It is, Greenwald tells us in his three points, an "irrational" and "disproportionate" and "unjustified" focus on Muslims. But the only way that Muslims can reasonably be said to exist as a group is in terms of their adherence to the doctrine of Islam. There is no race of Muslims. They are not united by any physical traits or a diaspora. Unlike Judaism, Islam is a vast, missionary faith. The only thing that defines the class of All Muslims—and the only thing that could make this group the possible target of anyone's "irrational" fear, "disproportionate" focus, or "unjustified" criticism—is their adherence to a set of beliefs and the behaviors that these beliefs inspire.

And, unlike a person's racial characteristics or gender, beliefs can be argued for, tested, criticized, and changed. In fact, wherever the norms of rational conversation are allowed to do their work, beliefs must earn respect. More important, beliefs are claims about reality and about how human beings should live within it—so they necessarily lead to behavior, and to values, laws, and public institutions that affect the lives of all people, whether they share these beliefs or not. Beliefs end marriages and start wars.

So "Islamophobia" must be—it really can only be—an irrational, disproportionate, and unjustified fear of certain people, regardless of their ethnicity or any other accidental trait, because of what they believe and to the degree to which they believe it. Thus the relevant question to ask is whether a special concern about people who are deeply committed to the actual doctrines of Islam, in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, is irrational, disproportionate, and unjustified._

<comment><USER6> I've never ready anything by Sam Harris that I've considered to be rational and well-reasoned. The guy's whole schtick seems to be making arguments that are valid but unsound. Here his premise is "But the only way that Muslims can reasonably be said to exist as a group is in terms of their adherence to the doctrine of Islam," which is completely false. He implies that anyone who practices Islam is "deeply committed to the actual doctrines" as practiced by the hijackers, which is false. He's implying that people who practice Islamophobia are targeting people by their beliefs, when in reality they will target them by their headwear (see the various crimes against Sikhs, one of the gosh-darn nicest religions in the world). Every time I read something by Harris my blood boils a bit because of how insidious his pseudo-logic is.

<comment><USER7> >that people who practice Islamophobia are targeting people by their beliefs, when in reality they will target them by their headwear

Are you proposing that they should read minds? As far as I know that's not possible so this statement is preposterous, of course they are going to target by the headgear/skin-color, is the only way they can determine who is Islamic and who is not; being bad at it is a different matter.

<comment><USER8> Reread the comment you're replying to; that's exactly what he's saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Let 's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?

If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are you just think whatever you're told.

The other alternative would be that you independently considered every question and came up with the exact same answers that are now considered acceptable. That seems unlikely, because you'd also have to make the same mistakes. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them. If another map has the same mistake, that's very convincing evidence._

Is it a possibility that someone has controversial opinions but could be unafraid of expressing them to a group of peers?

<comment><USER10> It's possible, yeah, but you have to be particularly insensitive to both verbal and nonverbal rejection cues in order to be willing to do it more than once.

Ever pitched a controversial opinion to a group of peers? You'll find that a lot of people look down at their hands, or away from you, or at each other with a blank/expectant/fearful face.

<comment><USER11> This can depend a lot on the particular peer group and the opinion holders position within it. Plenty of people will state proudly that they hold certain controversial views (often borderline racist etc) but they tend to surround themselves with people who either hold those views themselves or by people who are meek enough to accept the views without resistance so the social penalty doesn't apply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find that in engineering circles theology and the notion of the existence of God is one of those 'moral taboos.' And advocating more nuclear power stations or private gun ownership.

It is fascinating that were you to advocate gun control in the late 19th century, it seems nearly everyone would have laughed you out of the room. But that sentiment has reversed here in the 21st century.

Always interesting to think about.

<comment><USER13> Exactly. Even in Paul Graham's own essay, some things are always forgotten. He's smart enough to question why the Church/Italian state attacked Galileo for repeating Copernicus' ideas, who was a celebrated hero of the church.

And nobody ever realizes that Galileo was not at all interested in the scientific facts (well he was, up to the point he went insane and became a political agitator and generally a lunatic, read his letters, you'll see that I'm actually quite polite here). Rather he was organizing demonstrations and violence because the church owed him a different kind of state (needless to say, with him on top) because the earth rotated around the sun (amongst many other "reasons", most of them quite insane). This case was then dug up later to justify ripping the catholic church out of Germany. That failed, but the story about Galileo stuck.

Some of our historical heroes ... aren't heroes. Socrates is a similar situation. Celebrated philosopher. Speaker at nearly every forum (meaning the weekly meeting where their direct democracy happened). He was an advocate, a statesman, a philosopher.

And then they execute him. Wait. What ? Nobody ever seems to think that they've probably skipped over small part of the story here.

An inaccurate summary was that Socrates' students were involved TWICE with actions that led to the military sacking of Athens, with very strong suspicions of him having ordered them to do so. This "just happened" to occur right after one of the first times he didn't get his way in the forum. The first time he got off with a stern warning, execution of every one of his students involved that sided with the occupying force, and a promise not to have any students for 2 years, which he promptly ignored. Then it very nearly happened again, and again his students were helping the enemy army. Then he was executed together with his students.

There is at least a decent case to be made that Galileo was executed for organizing violent protests against the state (using, amongst many other things, the idea that the earth rotated around the sun as a rallying idea).

Likewise, Socrates was likely killed for organizing the military conquest of Athens when he couldn't democratically get his way in parliament _twice_ (and for having a habit of sleeping with the wives of other Atheneans). Not because Atheneans were afraid of science.

Neither of them were very nice people. Not that horrible people can't be important forces of good in history, but you should at least note that this is so. E.g. Kemal Ataturk, an early 20th century figure that a lot more genocidal than Hitler. He also ended the 1.5 millenia long war of muslims against the west and the east, and frankly without him we would not have a modern time. He ended it because he thought it was a waste of money, effort and most of all, lives, not because he was against war. He just didn't believe the objective was worth the cost. Still, his importance in making our current mostly democratic world possible is at least on par with Churchill. But he is a monster, personally responsible for several ethnic extermination campaigns, no doubt about that.

<comment><USER14> > There is at least a decent case to be made that Galileo was executed

Where do you get that he was executed?

Also, regarding differences between Copernicus's treatment and Galileo's. Copernicus didn't publish a lot of his material, nor was it widely known, until late in life. Galileo basically stepped into the controversy that had developed _after_ Copernicus died. Essentially, there was little controversy in Copernicus's time because it wasn't widely known, and those that did know his theory didn't have a reason (yet) to view it as controversial or "wrong".

<comment><USER13> This is my point. Galileo didn't advance knowledge by his acts, that was already done (within the scientific community if not within the wider world) (And granted, he did advance knowledge at other times on other subjects). He attempted to use it to change the state by agitating large portions of the population using that fact.

I would even say he was not so much looking to change the state, rather to destroy it, becoming a sort of dictator himself, without any thought to what that would do. This he did after a few years of sending out letter that made it very clear he would immediately execute half the nobility and clergy if he did come to power. It didn't help that he had pissed off all of his teachers and environment with those letters. This is what his trial was really about, and of course it mentioned his rallying cries.Those were not the essence of the trial though.

Think about it. Suppose you're an autocratic ruler in the middle ages, in Italy. Everybody's writing letters, a lot of them calling for your throat getting slit. One more of these lunatics starts writing letters. Disturbing letters, lots of them. You ignore him, at this point, there's 100 others like him. Then a few demonstrations happen, led by him, with hundreds of people calling for your throat getting slit on the street. This is unnerving, but happens regularly, most demonstration leaders are never seen again, so, again, you probably ignore this. But if he manages to make the demonstrations grow, you've got to react. That's what happened.

Regardless if you agree with the second paragraph, he was not attacked because he claimed the earth rotated around the sun.

<comment><USER14> Can you cite some sources on Galileo as instigator against the state? I've never heard of this before. Also, did you really mean, in your OP, to say that he was executed? That was the first I'd heard of that, and everything I checked (in an admittedly short search) indicated that he died of old age.

<comment><USER15> he doesn't know what he's talking aout

<comment><USER14> I figured as much. For a while I thought waps was going for an ironic, given the pg post that prompted this, posting. Now I think s/he is serious, but without citations there's no way to know for certain. Either way, I learned more about Copernicus and Galileo trying to figure out what waps was talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?"

I think this test is fascinating when applied to the Musk vs. Gates debate from yesterday.

How taboo is it to say forget charity? I know I feel uncomfortable with saying: 'forget the poor, we can fix them after we've figured out how to create a sustainable form of first world living' and yet that seems like a far more rational strategy to act upon.

<comment><USER17> I had this thought this morning, though of a slightly different tone. The radio talking head mentioned that they were going to interview an anti- civilizationist, someone who apparently thinks that developed society is unsustainable and will be the end of us all. Apparently he advocates for a return to pre-civilization?

I immediately thought, "We need to be able to leap forward, not backward. If this involves some sacrifice of human lives, it will save trillions in the long run. Pre-civilizaiton is just waiting for the next asteroid to impact the planet."

I don't understand how someone could be against civilization.

<comment><USER18> 2000 yeas ago, the Earth population was ~200 Millions. (This is only an estimation, so don't take the number too seriously.) And 2000 years ago, we had ~10,000 years of agriculture and ~5,000 years of diverse grades of civilization.

So, to go to a pre-civilization population level we need at least 6,900,000,000 volunteers.

<comment><USER19> They don't necessarily have to volunteer. There's always the option of a forced choice. More likely through disease and/or starvation in my book, though other forms of population reduction are possible.

The argument that present, let alone near-future projected populations are long-term sustainable doesn't merit much support in my book.

And, NB, your 200 million estimate's reasonably close -- Wikipedia gives estimates of 150 - 330 million worldwide as of 0 CE:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't really understand this article. What is the point of an empirical approach to taboo. I was a student of philosophy for years, and ethics is essentially a top-down way of finding the exact things he's looking for. Whether it be Kant's categorical imperative or Singer's expanding circle, it seems to me this taboo chasing is missing the bigger picture of finding a justifiable ethical framework, and then everything he's asking about falls out simply, and easily.

<comment><USER21> You're right, this article is missing the bigger picture, but I don't think that was ever its target. It's simple, accessible, and piques peoples interest into something much bigger. I don't see it as an attempt to directly contribute to any specific field.

<comment><USER20> But it's just plane incorrect. It conflates ethics with aesthetics.

>What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people.

It may appear that morality behaves like fashion, but it's doesn't, or at least it shouldn't. The key ingredient here is that in fashion, there is no wrong, only taste. Thus, you can pull back the curtain on any would-be wizard trying to force you to conform.

In ethics, on the other hand, screaming a bunch of hurtful crap at people, just because you're "not supposed to do that" isn't cocksure cleverness. It's wrong. It hurts people. There are good, justifiable, reasons why you shouldn't say them.

Do we have taboos we shouldn't have? Sure, but if we are going to talk about them, they should be within a moral framework, not in some empirical mess of hey-that-shouldn't-be-that-way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm pretty disappointed in most people's responses. Here's two real, actual taboos that no one wants to touch with a 20ft stick:

1\. consensual incest

2\. consensual pedophilia

All of these things are just utterly shunned. It would be unspeakable for me to argue in support of these in real life, except with very close friends and in a very detached manner. In fact, this has probably put me on some sort of list (especially considering the stuff I saw on 4chan last night...).

The interesting thing is that I would never want to do any of those things. Yet I know that my own repulsion is based on irrational disgust, and the reason for our shunning is also based on irrational disgust. When we take universal moral baselines -- empathy, compassion -- none of these taboos, assuming the sex is protected and consensual, harm anyone.

We've also got eugenics and polygamy, but I could probably argue for those without being shot. Oh wow, and consensual cannibalism. I'm usually the devil's advocate, but even this shit is starting to make me feel dirty.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm glad this was submitted here for discussion. The first time I read this essay I had trouble coming up with ways our society behaves that "people in the future will find ridiculous." Many of the ones in the comments are just ways our society is backwards, but not many taboos.

1\. America's devoted support for our military. A support so unquestioning that you can be beaten up for saying otherwise. Polar opposite from the Vietnam war. Strange how much this has changed in less than forty years.

2\. Eugenics, while not totally taboo, it's hard to talk about it without being labeled a bigot, racist, etc.

3\. I also think it's difficult to have a discussion on pedophiles that doesn't involve advocating locking them up forever, it might be worth having a more empathetic discussion on such crimes. (I almost didn't include this last one for fear of getting in trouble, I rewrote it a dozen different times, but it's such a taboo subject that it should be examined.)

<comment><USER24> I'm happy you did include 3. While I can normally discuss absolutely anything with my girlfriend, my opinion on this matter is one of the very few things she refuses to discuss with me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is probably my favorite essay from PG. I think about it at least once a week. It's easy to get caught up in a world of professionalism, which is just a fancy word for acting like you aren't human, and go through every day doing social norms just because they are social norms. This essay reminds me to stop and think about the things that I do and see other people doing.

</comment><comment> B-Con > It would be a remarkable coincidence if ours were the first era to get > everything just right.

I love this kind of insight. I think that we, as humans, are very egotistical by nature. The time we're living in is _surely_ the time we have all the answers and everything important figured out. We simply can't live with the feeling of "eh, it'll be way better in 100 years". We always need the feeling of certainty and ownership. Throughout history, we have always been certain of what we thought, regardless of how much reason we had to believe it.

> If you believe everything you're supposed to now, how can you be sure you > wouldn't also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown > up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in > the 1930s-- or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you > would have.

Here's a similar thought: "What are the odds that a huge percentage of the people with a certain position were born together in the same geographic location at the same time?" If that doesn't make you scared of being morally brainwashed, I don't know what will.

</comment><comment><USER26> The true genius of this essay is that it gives to the reader a sense that every controversial idea they believe is indeed correct.

<comment><USER27> That's what I'm seeing here. Very little discussion on the article, lots of people posting lists of things they feel persecuted for believing, with the implication being that they're sitting there drumming their fingers and waiting to be validated by history. Oh, and other people arguing with them about those things. Hooray for the Internet I guess? :)

<comment><USER7> And of course there is the meta discussion where they feel superior for analyzing the behavior of the crowd and pretending that discussing random controversial matters is a childish behavior.

Hooray for internet I'm sure (not guess).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> _The prohibition will be strongest when the group is nervous._

Hence the behavior you see inside many startups - non-founding members questioning the mission/purpose/intention/success of the company is typically taboo.

</comment><comment><USER29> "What can't we say? One way to find these ideas is simply to look at things people do say, and get in trouble for."

I was thinking of this very essay when pg "got into trouble" for his comments about female founders, whenever I see vicious backlash to dissent here whenever some of these issues are discussed. I think (haven't read anything to back this, absolutely my own personal feeling) that debacle may have had just a little bit in his decision to step down.

Read the section headed _Why_ once again, it's gold. This piece ranks in my personal top ten pg essays.

It's so interesting that the piece mentions Summers, albeit one year earlier than the famous speech ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_be...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_between_the_sexes)). I would so love to sit down with pg and have his honest opinions on this subject. Of course, not probably he cannot afford to deviate from ""i pensieri stretti & il viso sciolto."

</comment><comment><USER30> Ask pg: What does the pg of today (the pg with kids) think about what the pg of the past (circa 2004) wrote about the parts of the essay related to kids?

If there's something interesting to diff, it's the ideas people have that pertain to taboos and taboo subjects before and after kids.

I suspect if more developers and engineers had kids, iPads would have a kid mode. I wonder how thinkers and writers (and painters?) would think and write and paint differently with/without kids.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have to say, while I really like this article, I think it goes too far with the statement: "Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot."

He prefaces that statement with a very black and white example of people who ban the color yellow. Using that example every reader can agree they are idiots, but in truth these issues are never that black and white. So calling them idiots, and suggesting you would become one by entering the debate goes a little too far - IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER32> This all rather reminds me of the thinking that brought about the female founders conference.

I have faith that at some point in the future this form of sexism will become less fashionable !! What were we thinking you will all say. And no-one will remember the dissenters.

<comment><USER33> So sexism is bad then. I guarantee you this is not something "you can't say", or goes against today's moral fashion.

<comment><USER32> What you get a reaction to is not sexism is bad. It is that sexism in favour of women is bad. You're not allowed to say that.

<comment><USER34> The only mention of this taboo on this thread, and it is more dangerous to say this in today's society than everything else suggested by everyone. Congratulations.

I have more to add:

It is either extremely difficult or impossible for a society to treat its men and women equally. Though it is possible to grant them equal respect, the experience of living as a man and living as a woman is, and always will be, different.

Assigning target ratios of men/women in various industries makes as much sense as making sure each man have an equal number of sexual opportunities. There are some jobs that, in general, one sex is better at, and so it _may_ be perfectly possible for one sex to, on average, be the majority of those doing that job, as well as, on average, attain a higher wage in that role, achieved without the interference of some male authority past or present.

That would only get us started on the list of things we aren't allowed to say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> >It could be that the scientists are simply smarter; most physicists could, if necessary, make it through a PhD program in French literature, but few professors of French literature could make it through a PhD program in physics.

I think this is a pretty unfair generalization, and furthers the stereotype that STEM majors are smarter/harder-working/generally better than liberal arts majors. It is not inconceivable to me that most people choose to major in something they are passionate. I think people who choose a major just because they perceive it as easy are a small minority of students.

Aside from that, I personally believe academic success is primarily due to hard work, rather than intelligence. I imagine almost all PhDs are reasonably intelligent and _could_ in fact make it through a physics program, provided they were willing to put in the time and effort.

<comment><USER36> Academic success is based on hard work, intelligence and to know exactly what not to say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Previous discussion (1789 days ago): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581050](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581050)

Today's discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443420](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443420)

Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER38> Do you think you'll raise your children to believe in Santa, HN?

<comment><USER39> Honestly I will probably do as my parents did. I will buy christmas presents, label them "From: Santa", and I'll put them under the tree in the middle of the night, and I will decline to explain how they got there. My children can choose or decline to believe whatever rumors are swirling around the neighborhood.

EDIT: personally I never asked about it because I didn't want to risk stopping the gifts.

<comment> jack-r-abbit That is pretty much what my parents did. I turned out alright. And that is pretty much what we are doing. I would rather my kids blindly believe in Santa than blindly believe in God. They will need to reach an age where they must question both of those things for themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> In the future, people will not be measured by how productive they are. They will see that human organizations greater than 150 people are divorced from reality. Productivity will be considered a shared delusion held during the Age of Work.

Managers often ask me how they can make their workers more productive. What I cannot say is, "There is no productivity."

There is a book that goes into deconstructing productivity. It's called "How to Survive in an Organization" by James Heaphey. It's based on a generation's worth of study on organizations like corporations.

</comment><comment><USER41> I see Sexism, Racism, Islamophobia (and speed limits !) mentionned as taboo and unspeakable several times in this thread. I'm not sure we live in the same era. There is mainstream politicians all over Europe and the US saying sexist, racist and islamophobic things. They usually win votes by saying them. (And there is motorist groups still openly advocating for no speed limits ;-). There is a confusion here between unspeakable and "currently fought by a sizable active minority".

</comment><comment><USER42> A fairly minor but prevalent one is speed limit laws. I personally feel most speed limit laws in North America are ridiculous. In almost every situation it is safe to drive significantly faster than the posted speed, so it seems fairly obvious that there's something wrong with the law itself.

Now, in this particular group I expect that isn't _terribly_ controversial. But it can be a very unpopular opinion in some circles for two different reasons.

1) It's the _law_. You want to break the _law_?

And the somewhat more reasonable one:

2) Nothing is more important than human life. If driving slowly can save even one life, it's worth it. By advocating an increase to speed limits, you're valuing a few minutes of your time over people's lives.

Now, for one thing, it has been demonstrated by numerous studies that increased speed limits do not necessarily result in increased accident rates (in fact, often the opposite). But even leaving that aside. Say that an across the board increase to speed limits of X%^ results in a Y% increase in fatal crashes. For some sufficiently (very) small Y/X, would that not be worthwhile? __It 's callous, but it seems to me that it must be true. (I mean, look at the extreme case. Driving at any speed is much more dangerous than walking, but we do it anyway since it gets us places faster.) I definitely wouldn't feel comfortable saying so in a lot of peer groups though, nor without all the preamble.

^Not that that would be the most logical way to do it of course.

Edit: I should clarify that I'm speaking of main arterial roads and highways here, not residential streets. At least in most of Canada, almost all non- highways have speed limits of 50km/h, regardless of whether they're a residential side-street or a major 4 or 6 lane road. Most highways have limits of 80km/h, a few 100, and the highest I've ever seen is 110. In good conditions, most highways could easily be safely traveled at at least 120km/h. I don't think it makes sense to set speed _limits_ for the worst case scenario, and ignore all the efficiency that could be safely gained in most driving conditions.

I haven't done a ton of driving in the US, so it's possible the situation differs there more than I was aware.

<comment><USER43> I don't think you are correct about speed limits. Most limited access roads can probably support higher speeds (Except when there is a lot of traffic entering and exiting), but the majority of 2 lane roads don't have the visibility to support much higher speeds (More developed roads probably do, but they are small fraction of the total mileage).

Roads that see much pedestrian use certainly don't need higher limits (they don't necessarily need lower limits either, just some better sharing system).

<comment><USER42> I'm in Canada, so it's possible that my experience differs. I will edit the post to clarify that I'm talking about arterial roads and highways though, not residential streets. Most main non-highway roads here still have limits of 50km/h (30mph), with the average speed ranging around 20% higher than that. Most highways have limits of 80km/h (50mph), with average speeds perhaps 10-20% higher, and IMO safe speeds in good conditions often 50% higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This article actually makes me think of something I first liked about hacker news: I noticed that posts which went against widely accepted views tended to be up-voted.

Seriously, even now when I'm writing something people like it'll generally ok on any site. If I write something I think is well founded and people will not agree with, it'll probably do better on hacker news.

I guess that reminds me to read and up-vote things that I didn't initially like...

</comment><comment><USER45> "To launch a taboo, a group has to be poised halfway between weakness and power."

</comment><comment><USER46> It reminds me of this blog post by Moxie Marlinspike, basically people should be allowed to dissent otherwise we will never have any progress because nobody considered any alternatives.

[http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/we-should-all-have- somethin...](http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/we-should-all-have-something-to- hide/)

</comment><comment><USER47> If you know two or more languages you may realize that you cannot say the same things with each language, actually there are some words that doesn't exist in some languages. For example, I'm from Spain, there are some adjectives that doesn't exist in English and the other way around. That is why I met English people who have not the behavior of that adjectives (which doesn't exist) and Spanish people that don't have the behavior of some adjectives I learned in English which doesn't exist in Spanish. I think cultures depend on the adjectives they have, how are you gonna expect a behavior that you cannot qualify with your own language with an adjective? As he says at the end"How can you see the wave, when you are the water?" you have to go to other waters (countries) to learn/absorb/feel about other waves(language, culture, behaviour… or whatever) and at the same time you learn about the previous water you were.

</comment><comment><USER31> I find pg's earlier writings, like this one, to be the best.

</comment><comment><USER48> Maybe future societies will condemn us for always being so opinionated on subjects that we don't know much about, instead of just accepting that no-one knows for sure yet.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm surprised peadophilia and bestiality haven't come up. These are often victimless but you can say "I want to have sex with children".

</comment><comment><USER50> Even something like a person's name change change within a generation, names once considered male becoming primarily associated with females.

Swearing seems more commonplace now even in my workplace people casualy saying fuck is as common as hello, even in front of small children. Not so long ago you wouldn't dare say such a thing in a workplace.

</comment><comment><USER51> Living longer is a problem, not a solution

Cars are a problem, not a solution

Religions are a problem, not a solution

Democracy is broken. Weighted democracy may work slightly better: (you take a test on the voting matter and the weight of your vote is proportional to the score)

this feels good...

</comment><comment><USER52> If I made known my views on a number of issues to my coworkers, I would quickly be looking for a new job and may even be shunned in the greater tech community.

I've made peace with that knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER53> Capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER54> Stretching before running increases your risk of injury. This is because you inhibit the pain response and increase your mobility.

</comment><comment><USER55> Wow - It's ten years already... Time flies.

</comment><comment><USER56> I was going to post a comment but I deleted it.

<comment><USER57> Well, Paul did suggest that you should keep your ideas to yourself. Why give the NSA a list of all your subversive thoughts anyway? They can and will be used against you, if the situation requires it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> tlwrl; Now that pg has more time to dive into the meta-er layers, guess we'll see some progress with the Arc language.

<comment><USER38> This article was published in 2004.

<comment><USER59> But it is no less true now.

If anything the explosion of ubiquitous and instantaneous social media has only exacerbated the tendencies towards branding unorthodox thinking as Thoughtcrime as a twittermob of snark and hatred can be summoned in hours if not minutes.

<comment><USER60> Yeah I was thinking the same thing.

Social media, at it's core, glorifies groupthink, rewarding you handsomely with stars and likes when you say the right thing. In time, you start thinking of what you _should_ be saying, and then you start wondering what you should be posting so that you're perceived as a certain type of person. And when you start down that path, it feels like you become a bit more intellectually subservient. If your concern is always how to please people, how can you be expected to explore heresies? How can you plumb the depths of the unknown to explore and discover things when you concern yourself with safety?

The immediacy of the medium rewards snark and off-the-cuff remarks instead of analysis, insight, and distance. It incentivizes heated discussion (as it garners more pageviews!) and cheap, "me too" posts. It generates a fear of missing out, which is used to manipulate visitors into consuming more and more content for less and less value, exactly like any addictive substance.

<comment> jack-r-abbit This happens here too. The downvote is a pretty big deal for such a tiny button. I'll admit to writing comments I never posted because I knew people would eviscerate me for going against the groupthink. It doesn't change my thoughts... I just don't say them "out loud".

<comment><USER60> I admit I enjoy inciting things on here sometimes, especially in the face of groupthink, perhaps so I can self-righteously claim that the groupthink exists without giving time to fully think through the opposing side.

It can come off as aggressive, for sure. I do think a healthy community needs skepticism and introspection to remain that way.

But I do think people unintentionally reinforce the notion of the status quo needs to be reinforced/destroyed, which can affect the types of thoughts you'd think about sharing with a group.

<comment> jack-r-abbit > _I admit I enjoy inciting things on here sometimes_

Yes... there are times I do just say fuck it and post it anyway. HNKarma _is_ pretty worthless after all. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> 1\. War and conflict are desirable

2\. Unfit/unintelligent people should be sterilized

3\. Sex with children is ok

mad yet?

</comment><comment><USER62> This is a great article.

 _If you believe everything you 're supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn't also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s-- or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have._

This is lost on most people. You'll just hear "of course it was wrong!" and this point won't be given further thought.

But if it was obvious that it was wrong, why did masses of people agree to this? They wouldn't have done it if they also saw it as wrong.

So why are we the exception today? Couldn't we be just as gullible or misguided? You have to move your own ego and preconceived notions aside to seriously address the question.

<comment><USER10> It's difficult to overstate the power of propaganda. I think an apt comparison here is the public's opinion of the Iraq war during the build up. The media told people what to think, and, by and large, they thought what they were told, or were cowed into silence. Not that it mattered-- millions protested anyway, and were ignored.

To be blunt, the majority of people didn't even have the capacity to say "but this is wrong!" whether behind closed doors, in their mind, or in public.

They have no agency.

I think a good rule is that people who are handed their worldview from the mainstream media are going to be gullible/misguided by default. It's harsh, but I haven't found any examples to the contrary yet.

<comment><USER63> I can't help but intrude here.

The point made in the italicized line [1] above is much much larger than the typically-trite debate over the consumption of mass media narratives.

Reducing it to a talking point - about the power of mainstream media to silence skeptics - cheapens the vast and profound meaning embedded in it.

This is not about doves vs hawks. This is much larger than that.

That statement is not just about propaganda or consensus, at the societal level.

It is also about personal convention and the nature of agreeableness in itself.

[1]

 _If you believe everything you 're supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn't also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s-- or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have._

<comment><USER64> The major problem is that everyone\\* likes to believe that—while they, of course, are not perfect!—they are _fundamentally_ , in the end of the day, a basically decent and good and rational person. Likewise that their friends and loved ones and co-workers are too. And that their lifestyle, and the society they live in, and the institutions they belong to and identify with are _fundamentally_ okay as well, not out-of-control nightmare carnivals. And that in so far as things are seriously screwed up, it's the fault of _those other guys_ , a clearly-identifiable outlaw, villain, or oppressor group which does not include me or mine.

Of course, this is basically never true. But the unhappy realisation that it's not true in _your own_ case is so agonising that the human mind distances itself from it like a cat from a hot stovetop. Cosmic-horror stuff about how many stars there are or how many metres you are from the centre of mass of the universe are is just an amusing trifle in comparison. Even people who are _rationally_ aware of some of this (often because they recite it once every week) are protected by powerful psychological defence mechanisms from actually having to confront the realisation very often. (Often the upshot of the weekly exercises is that the person simply becomes more confident than ever that they're a great person and they have it all figured out, in much the same way that developing a self-image as a lover of truth and rationality so often makes people markedly dumber.) Add to that the fact that, of course, changing your behaviour to become less of a scumbag often comes with serious or very serious costs to your well-being and relationships with others, and it's not even close.

The final nasty kicker is that, of course, an individual person's judgement of right and wrong isn't necessarily any better than that of his or her society. Futhermore, people who share a particular critique (good God I hate that word) of their society tend to band together into their own subcultures, partly to better resist the material and social pressures from society to conform. So now you have a new self-image, a new lifestyle and a new in-group, and the process repeats itself.

\\* The few exceptions, sadly, are largely psychopaths and other people who simply don't give a shit.

<comment><USER65> [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm)

I think his ideas about us humans are brilliant. Still are very relevant. We didn't change. I believe Nietzsche turned out to be extremely far-sighted.

Would Zarathustra be the opposite of your scumbag description?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> This seems timely in light of the new "pending comments" system.

What it boils down to, is comments being _censored by default_ , until they're _possibly_ uncensored by group-think. As if the community needed a narrower focus on supporting Basic Income and other misguided but popular ideas.

The effect will be silencing unharmonious views, which seems like something the author of "What You Can't Say" would see. Maybe silencing dissent is the goal here. I don't expect (m)any of my own comments to get uncensored.

</comment><comment><USER67> > "most physicists could, if necessary, make it through a PhD program in > French literature, but few professors of French literature could make it > through a PhD program in physics"

This is simply an embarrassingly stupid and ignorant comment.

The rest of it is fine if stating the obvious/sophomoric. I'd have like to have seen him take the interesting nuggets on fashion being political in nature and run with it (already well understood by fashion students but might deserve wider exposure).

<comment><USER68> I'd be surprised if PhDs in either of those fields genuinely disagreed with that.

<comment><USER69> Well, I don't quite qualify - I have a BA in French and I'm working on a PhD in another humanities discipline - but I disagree pretty strongly with the idea that a physicist could do what a French literature specialist does but not vice versa.</comment></comment></comment>


10GB Free Secure Cloud Storage - <AUTHOR> https://xxlcloud.com/en <comment><AUTHOR> Get 10GB Free Cloud Storage by using Coupon Code "Free2015" when signing up for a free account at XXL Box.

</comment><comment><USER2> Another one of those who going to disappear in a year or two.

<comment><USER3> My thoughts. The only reason i need cloud storage are automated backups. Therefore i need something that just works and will in the future. Amazon/Google/...</comment></comment>


Show HN: App Guides and Messaging as a Service – Wrkflows - <AUTHOR> https://www.wrkflows.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Hacker News! I've been building Wrkflows for several months now and it's finally ready to show off. Using Wrkflows you can easily create guides and tutorials in your app with zero code. Let me know what you think.</comment>


Epic's stunning new Unreal demos show off high-end ray tracing and photorealism - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/20/18273832/epic-unreal-engine-demo-troll-rebirth-ray-tracing-gdc-2019 <comment><USER2> Looks absolutely gorgeous. Just imagine another 30 or 40 years of advancement in gaming. I think at some point the real world will just start feeling mundane compared to the incredible journeys you can take in gaming environments. Most people might choose to spend large parts of their lives in these digital worlds.

<comment><USER3> Smell is the next thing they need to software control

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm impressed. All the demos and games so far that demonstrated RTX made it look like a silly gimmick, a band aid to make rasterized gfx look a bit better. Now as far as I remember, tech demos for previous generations of the unreal engine always looked way better than what was to come in the following one or two years, but if those videos show what game studios will be able to deliver in two years, than I'd be tempted to consider this the first really notable jump in gfx card tech in quite some time.

</comment><comment><USER5> This, coupled with things like nvidia's AI creating images from doodles, and you can see the beginnings of a holodeck. Only 400 years to go.</comment>


Why I don't care about quick sort - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mdnbar.com/why-i-dont-care-about-quick-sort <comment><USER2> I agree and disagree. I agree that understanding quick sort likely isn't all that important as a means to itself and especially for most companies. However, understanding O(n) or O(log n) and coming up with the proper solution to a problem that is optimized when you are scaling to running that code _millions_ of times an _hour_ is drastic to _some_ businesses.

It is always beneficial to learn something you don't know to build at least a basic understanding of it than it is to ignore it.

It's great you can admit you don't know how to implement quick sort. But the proper attitude would be to _go find out_. :)

Lastly, some advice for running a blog. Spell check before posting. If you don't care to read your own blog - why should I? For many users, especially the HN crowd, a blog littered with typos is going to be met by a closed tab.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, sir. I'm not a native speaker, as you might already have guessed, and probably think of my spelling skill too much :) I'll fix the typos.

But I'm not going to "find out" about the quick sort, anyway. And the reason why is exactly what this article is about.

What I was trying to say by it, is that we as developers should invest our time consciously in learning things that will lead to company's profit. There's so much to learn these days. Many new shiny interesting things. And we are sometimes being too tech-y, we like to learn hard stuff, because it make us feel smart.

While the smart thing would be to constantly thinking about whether I really need that skill or not.

<comment><USER2> _> I'm not a native speaker, as you might already have guessed_

I picked up on that, don't worry! It was meant as advice, as many people would stop reading without keeping that in mind.

 _> What I was trying to say by it, is that we as developers should invest our time consciously in learning things that will lead to company's profit._

This assumes you're already working for the company. Generally this sort of thing is asked in an interview. If the company is asking you to perform a quick sort - it may be the field of work that is beneficial to the companies bottom line and therefore be important to know!

The reasoning here is much like the argument against "code a binary tree search on a whiteboard" except it replaced "search binary tree" with "quicksort". It may or may not be applicable but if a company is asking, they believe it might be. (Or they consider it a display of talent/skill, which can be equally important in hiring decisions.)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: best way to (indirectly) invest in a startup via angel/seed fund? - <AUTHOR>

Background of question:
I am in the fortunate position of recently exiting a business I co-founded in 2002 in the UK healthcare technology sector that sold to one of the top 3 US healthcare companies and I'm now on a short sabbatical to look at new opportunities and try new things - such as angel investing.
I remember one of the hardest problems we faced in the early years of my business was not technical related but fund raising as you would expect (obviously harder then due to domcom afershocks etc). So now, 8 years later, other than starting another company (or even joining another startup!), I also want to give back and invest in other startups but as I have only invested in my own I don't believe I yet qualify to be an direct angel investor as other than money I'm not sure what extra value I could bring as I mainly have very specific domain knowledge in UK primary care healthcare sector (I'm have a techie/developer background) and have limited connections outside this field.
In my research I have found places like angellist and startup funds like http://www.kimaventures.com/ but my question is how does one invest into a seed or angel fund as there is little or no information about how to go about it - it seems that either you know someone in this area or your outta luck? There is plenty of info on how to raise funds from angels and angellist describes an angels application requirements (3 previous investments for example) so how to do I get out of this (apparent) chicken and egg problem?
Has anyone on HN got experience in this particularly from the UK/EU that can input - like what angel funds in the EU/US are open to newbie angel investors.
I also think I would rather invest in US based startups unless others can recommend otherwise.
Appreciate any feedback on this topic. Thanks. <comment><USER3> Way of the future may be sidecar funds that are for passive investors interested in angel investments. The sidecar fund invests automatically in all the deals of the angel group to which it is attached. This is a good way for the angel group to be assured of committed capital - especially during economic downturns where members may be less free with cash - and also allows external investors to achieve a diversified exposure to start up investments with a relatively small capital commitment. This is a good way for newbie angels to learn more about the angel group and their investment process - <USER2> if they like they may later choose to join the group and become more active "mentor" investors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting concept and sounds like a good way to start as a newbie angel investor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you had a look at these (not that I'm recommending, but might be worth a look)?

<http://www.angelinvestmentnetwork.co.uk/home> <http://www.venturegiant.com/> <http://www.angelsden.co.uk/>

I believe Business Link also run a similar scheme but I generally stay well clear of them, I've yet to see anyone from Business Link try to do anything other than sell me more Business Link stuff I don't need.

Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the links - I came across those during my research and they all seem to links angels to entrepreneurs/companies looking for investment. I am more interesting in seed/startup/angle funds that pick the companies to invest in during the early startup phase.

<comment><USER4> Whereabouts are you? If you're in the south, drop me an email and lets meet up for coffee sometime. I'm not averse to investing in the right opportunity either - might be a good idea to knock our heads together and see what comes out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm obviously biased here but I think a great way for you to get your hands dirty would be to invest in an accelerator, such as (plug alert!) Startupbootcamp or The Difference Engine or Tetuan Valley or a number of others.

By invest I mean either time (as a mentor) or money (as an investor in the accelerator itself) or both.

You get to be involved in 10 early stage startups, but you are not alone. You can follow their progress as they get input from dozens of super star mentors. It's actually an awesome due dilligence process as you get to see which teams are great at generating traction.

</comment><comment><USER6> Funds are always looking for Limited Partners. You may be able to learn this way while also investing...

Shoot me an email if you are interested -- I know a few Seed stage funds looking for LP's.

</comment><comment><USER7> Can I ask a question back? You were obviously in a UK startup. Why don't you want to invest in the UK?

Not judging here. Just curious as I'm scoping out the startup 'scene' in London.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question: Yes I was in a UK startup. I feel that the risk adverse nature/attitude we came across significantly impedes innovation in the UK (remember this is in my experience and this was around 2001-2005). I believe we had to work harder to overcome this and this took focus away from our core activities at times. We often found no one was willing to invest unless you had 5 years of track record and £1mill/yr turnover and if you where doing something disruptive (like we were) and innovative in a new market, then it was even harder. So I guess I feel there is more chance that good startup WITH cash will fail due to being crushed by this problem. Plus I think the US is known for its better startup fostering nature and work ethic as suggested in this article. [http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/11/20/european-startups- need-t...](http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/11/20/european-startups-need-to-work- as-hard-as-valley-ones-or-forget-it/)

Wooly reasons but having said all that, times have changed and I'm not against UK startups at all, I would just like to look at US ones first... I suppose if a UK startup was doing something disruptive in healthcare I might be more interested!

<comment><USER7> So your point is that even if you can get the Angel cash in the UK you'll face larger hurdles in the later stages compared to the US.

And I think you have a point about the risk adverse nature of Brits.

Thanks for the answer. Wish I had an answer to your question :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good summary of my waffle ;) I suppose the stats of startups making it out of the 5th year is appalling. Less than 10% as I recall which may be similar to US but every extra hurdle in the way doesn't help either! Plus US markets are generally larger so ROI is bigger for similar risk profile at a guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can try angel networks.

Angels join networks that search and filter investment opportunities, and the angels choose to co-invest if there's a match.

The largest one in the US is Tech Coast Angels.

I work in an angel network, based in Chile, with angels/dealflow from abroad. For example, right now we are closing a round in a medical devices startup in San Francisco, where 4 angels (two in Chile, one in Mountain View and on in Spain) are co-investing using convertible notes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't know about US/UK but in Australia the government has set up Early Stage Venture Capital LP structure to encourage investment in innovation. Investments via these structures are income and capital gains tax free. Here is link to news story regarding sidecar fund linked to Sydney Angels <http://t.co/RoicITs>

</comment><comment><USER9> Maybe find a US angel group investing in primary care solutions, your expertise in the UK market would probably be quite valuable to their portfolio companies looking to expand abroad.

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://angel.co/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link to angellist - something I aspire to join but as I said in my post, you have to be approved to get listed and one of the requirements is you're not a newbie - you must have connections to other angels - in fact you must be referred by another angellist angel and have invested at least 3 times before. This was revealed in this great interview with one of the angel.co founders: [http://www.danielodio.com/2010/10/21/fundraising-hacks- inter...](http://www.danielodio.com/2010/10/21/fundraising-hacks-interview- with-naval-ravikant-of-angellist/)

<comment><USER11> I'm in a very similar position - done an exit, taking some time off, have some money to invest.

I have yet to find a group that doesn't advertise that they need experience. I would guess that some of them would bend this rule if you got in touch and networked with them and their current members and they decided you were of sufficient quality to be allowed into the club.

We should start a 'newbie angels' group where we kick you out after you've done 3 investments!

<comment><AUTHOR> I like it :)

drop me a message offline (see my profile) perhaps we can share our research?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hi, please send me an email dawson @ nhs .info</comment>


For Sale: Dating Website... - <AUTHOR>

Until recently, I was planning on marketing my website and making a go with it.  However, I was recently laid off and unable to maintain the hosting cost of my site.
If you're interested in buying a fully functional dating website (that could easily be converted to also be a social site) then take a look here:
http://mikesandmegs.com
The name is not so hot, however, it could be changed, and the graphics revamped to make a completely hot site.
The sale would include the rights to the source code, the IP etc.
Serious inquiries only please: mikecurry74 (at) gmail (dot) com <comment><USER2> I'm sad to hear this ... I was/am rooting for you guys. What platform did you build on? Maybe we can recommend some low/no cost hosts that you can use to bootstrap yourself until you get more traffic.

Really, being unemployed is the worst time to throw away your startup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just unsure what to do. At this point, google ads is not a revenue stream ($23.00 over the last month).

Seems, that I jumped before I looked, there are thousands of dating sites, not any with the social feel mine has, however. I am facing dating 'chicken and egg problem', perhaps I should have tried to solve that one first.

You could say, that this is the perfect example of someone not doing research before they start a huge project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hosting a low-traffic site at 1and1.com is cost prohibitive? Should be running you a couple bucks a month if not a shared hosting account.

<comment><AUTHOR> its on a dedicated server.

<comment><USER3> Any reason why? By all looks it has almost no traffic (not a slam at all, just an estimation). Unless you have a lot of back end processing it could almost certainly be run easily off of a small VPS or even a shared hosting account.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I overestimated the success of a dating site. I should say, its the VPS III package from 1&1 which is running me $60.00 a month. Though it doesn't seem like much, when the bills are adding up, it does affect the bottom line.

I think I will sleep on it, and see how I feel tomorrow. Any advice would really help me right now.

<comment><USER4> If you're burnt out, over it, and just not going to put any more energy into it: go ahead and shop around for a buyer.

It doesn't hurt to get a gauge on what people _would_ pay for your site, though I doubt you'll get a price that comes close to repaying you for the time already spent.

Otherwise, your site doesn't need a dedicated host at this stage. Get a shared host and reduce your hosting fees to $60/yr instead of per mo. Your adsense revenue should cover that easily.

In most situations being unemployed is a benefit for a low-burnrate startup with potential. Plus, a lot of employers love to see entrepreneurial experience.

Hope this rough spot passes swiftly, and good luck with whatever you decide to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why don't you use the time off to really put some serious work into it? Are the hosting fees that excessive?

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose I could put more time into it, however, I think I am probably going to face the same problem I am facing now again in two months.

I think I need someone to redesign the site graphically- the code is perfect in my mind, but the design- well, I think its lacking.

Any advice welcome...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Well, thanks for the advice, I decided on dropping the $60.00 monthly fee for the 1&1 package, and went down to the shared hosting pro which will cost about $5.00 a month. I just have to rewrite a few things (use postal codes instead of a giant geo database) and a few others that will actually help the application out.

If there is anyone out there who would like to put some sweat equity into the site for SEO, and Graphics/UI contact me at mikecurry74 (at) gmail (dot) com. There is so much that I am lacking in the graphical area and UI area that I don't know where to start.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> advice welcome</comment>


David Goodall, 104, Scientist Who Fought to Die on His Terms, Ends His Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/world/europe/david-goodall-australia-scientist-dead.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17038710](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17038710)</comment>


Google Developer Account Wrongly Terminated NO MEANS OF DISCOURSE - <AUTHOR> Here's the long and short of it:
My brother in law requested I write an app for him, and in return I only asked him to pay the $25 registration fee to open a developer account with google. I was happy to develop the app for him. I am a student and it was great practice.
The problem arrives when he has fraud issues on his card, and so mistakenly issues a chargeback for the google registration fees amidst the confusion and immediately closed his account completely, so there is no possibility of reversing the chargeback.
Well this one little mistake has REALLY made my life difficult, and may in fact result in a lifetime ban from developing android apps, which would be devastating because I am studying Computer Science and Engineering at The Ohio State University and I LOVE to develop apps and code.
Google terminated my developer account, suspended my google payments account (which prevented the purchase of a class textbook I needed), and even deactivated my email account for this. It took me a week to successfully get my payments account and email account back up.
I have filed an appeal for the termination 3 times in the last 3 weeks, all with NO RESPONSE WHATSOEVER. I've attempted to contact Google, with no success. It is impossible to get a hold of anyone who actually deals with developer account reinstatement, and I cannot find ANY resources to determine a way to provide documentation that proves the termination was made in error.
I have done absolutely nothing wrong and yet it is looking like I may be banned from doing something I love for the rest of my life (not to mention having no apps to add to my portfolio).
Somebody please help me resolve this issue, this little mistake (not even my own) has been a complete nightmare, and Google seems to be completely indifferent and utterly unhelpful.
If anybody knows any way to help, please do so! I would be eternally grateful! <comment><USER2> > _I may be banned from doing something I love for the rest of my life (not to > mention having no apps to add to my portfolio)_

1\. You can continue writing Android apps. You can (very likely) start distributing apps through the Play Store again just by creating a new account with a new credit card. Create an account as a company instead of an individual, for example.

2\. Unless you're very old, distributing apps through the Play Store isn't something you'll be doing "for the rest of your life" regardless. Technologies come and go. Native apps will be replaced by web apps on mobile, just like they were on desktop.

3\. You don't need to have apps in the Play Store to have apps in your portfolio.

<comment><USER3> > "Native apps will be replaced by web apps on mobile, just like they were on > desktop."

Provocative. I might agree with you.

<comment><USER4> Google and Apple appears to be trying to avoid it but I hope that they fail.

<comment><USER5> Google is pushing PWAs pretty hard and WebKit recently started working on service workers so it's closer than we probably realize

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you succeed in getting your account back you will only deepen your dependence on this silent, unaccountable leviathan. Do yourself the favor of learning from this experience. Walk away from Google services and count your loss as cheap tuition. Bend your path toward free and open systems instead. Where you can't find them, develop them.

<comment><USER7> While I generally agree with your statement, we all rely on each other's software to some degree, as it isn't possible for everyone to custom build everything that isnt yet open source.

There should be some impetus for the largest and most profitable corporations to not be /egregiously/ evil.

<comment><USER8> Google makes its money on search+adwords. Everything else they do is a hobby, and it shows. Not necessarily evil, but sloppy produces the same bad result.

<comment><USER9> Google makes single-digit billions in revenue from the Android App Store. While not explicitly broken out, the info is in their annual report [0], where "other revenues" are a bit over 10B USD (>10% of total revenue):

"Google other revenues consist primarily of revenues and sales from:

• Apps, in-app purchases, and digital content in the Google Play store;

• Hardware;

• Licensing-related revenue; and

• Service fees received for our Google Cloud offerings."

As an aside, the risks section is surprisingly interesting and honest. A recommended read.

[0] [https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/2016_google_annual_report.pdf](https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/2016_google_annual_report.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From this, you have learned many things already. Make sure you have learned a key lesson: handle your own finances. It was fine to have him pay the fee. It was not fine to tangle up his credit card in your life. YOU pay the fee, he hands you $25, you remain in control of your finances.

<comment><USER10> I don't think this is gonna help.

<comment><USER11> It won't now, but it will next time. $25 is a small amount of money that has caused a large amount of trouble. It would have been better to risk never getting the $25 back from the brother in law than be in this position.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good luck, Google has a terrible customer service which is why I do not use their cloud offering nor do I recommend it to my clients. They terminated my adword account a few years ago for alleged click fraud (I never clicked on a single ad) while they were owing me money, I have never been able to get a hold of a real person to plead my case. They don't do customer relations, unless you are a big player then you get assigned a google rep, but for the rest of us? NADA. I had plenty of issues with other services, including Microsoft and I always managed to get a real person answer me, with Google? zip.

So don't depend on them for anything, you don't need a google account to distribute your android app.

<comment><USER13> Cloud has great support (just check any HN discussion around GCP's offering and their customer support). Adwords can also have some really good support depending on your spend (even low-level spend has decent support).

The case you are mentioning seems to be AdSense? While you are showing ads from AdWords, it is a bit of a different product and has its own support (email-only it seems).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In your appeals, have you stated that the chargebacks were done in error and that you would like to repay them?

As well to be clear, your brother in law closed the credit card entirely and is unable to issue a reverse chargeback? Has he tried calling the issuing back to see if they can issue a reverse chargeback in some way?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have indeed mentioned that the chargeback were made in error, and stated my intention to repay it.

And yes, entirely closed and unable to issue a reverse chargeback. As far as I know, he's done all he can with his card account. I'm still trying to get him to contact his bank again, but I think it's a long shot

<comment><USER13> Reverse Chargeback is the best thing to fix these kinds of situations. Chargebacks are bad for companies, outside just the fees and lost revenue that happens with them. Card networks have limits on how many chargebacks a company can have before there starts being issues for them. Reverse-chargeback takes that mark off of them, so it makes the company happy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In most states, setting up a sole proprietorship is simple and costs a one time fee of $100. You get to name it (it's called a DBA - doing business as).

Get one under a company name and open a bank account with a debit card.

I realize it's not ideal but it's a simple workaround that is relatively painless and quick.

</comment><comment><USER15> Absentee Ownership.

It used to refer to a business that was owned by someone who wasn't involved in the day to day operations.

But the same class of problems apply to an enormous monopolistic enterprise like Google, where the owner can't pay attention to it's operation in the same way as a traditional business could.

So instead of knowing it's customers, Google does it's best, and accepts a certain 'defect rate.' Those defects end up costing Google money in the long run. Of course, they cost people like us our means of earning a livelihood, and possibly our mortgage etc. But it's not really reasonable to expect a person at google to understand & fix everything Google does.

<comment><USER12> > But it's not really reasonable to expect a person at google to understand & > fix everything Google does.

Google is the only business I have ever worked with which has virtually no customer service or no way to resolve a conflict when they decide to boot you out. Even a behemoth like Microsoft does customer service better. Google doesn't do that, it doesn't even understand what it is for apparently. It's exactly for unusual cases like these. They have the money to hire people, they have billions, they're just don't see the point. Well when it turns out people using their cloud services can't get a hold of a real person in when there is a problem and decide to migrate somewhere else they shouldn't be surprised they failed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Lesson learned: submit the app under the client's account.

<comment><USER17> Using his own credit card could have been good, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Find someone that works on the gmail team using linkedin and get on twitter and spread the word about your issue.

<comment><USER19> From what I've seen, the only real way these things tend to get reversed is if a Android fan blog that Googlers actively follow posts it publicly. If it's costing them press, and it's on a medium they consume, it'll make it to the right desk. Most of these sorts of stories that Android Police writes about seem to get resolved pretty quick.

<comment><USER20> I suspect that is why they posted this here to be honest... currious if it works

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Get a new identity maybe or use a friends or a older man who does not use the internet. Start all over.

</comment><comment><USER22> The lack of customer service contact points around developer accounts is really appalling. I had a similar issue, and it was immensely frustrating.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad someone agrees! I thought I just didn't know how to navigate or I was missing something. It really is unbelievably frustrating

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This totally makes sense for Google. You charge back a purchase, and you've set a precedent about your relationship with them. Regardless of the circumstance, something about your account was shaky enough to lead to a chargeback. In your purported case, it was a brother in law accidentally disputing it.

You know how many people make apps/IAPs and charge back? A lot of people, so they can't go through every single case, ban one person but not another, and have inconsistent policies. Otherwise, the people who get banned see posts from people who CBed and didn't get banned, and they wave the exceptions in the face of Google. You're basically asking for a workaround to a fraud- related shutdown.

Once you issue a chargeback on a merchant, it's like pissing in their bed or cheating with a girlfriend: you can apologize and never do it again, but it breaks the trust, sometimes irrevocably. They don't owe you shit, as they already paid the bank $25 and Visa/MC about $8 per chargeback.

Even if you paid them back, they have no idea if you'll continue to pay back the CB fees with stolen cards until you either give up, or make enough IAP money to run off.

SFYL

</comment><comment><USER24> I think you mean recourse.

<comment><USER25> Considering that they're not responding to him, "discourse" fits as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Get a new identity maybe or use a friends or a older man who does not use the internet. Start all ovet</comment>


Quick-sort with Hungarian (Küküllőmenti legényes) folk dance - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywWBy6J5gz8 <comment><USER2> If you like that, I suggest you have a look at just some of the other submissions:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=folk+dance](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=folk+dance)</comment>


A Tale of Two Queues - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jupo.org/2013/02/23/a-tale-of-two-queues/ <comment><USER2> High quality benchmark for one time! Thanks.

A few remarks:

1) It's worth to try Redis 2.6 against this. It is possible that it will perform better or worse, not sure, but more probably better.

2) Believe it or not Redis Pub/Sub was never tuned for speed so far, nor profiled / optimized, because as far as I can tell nobody asked for more performances given that with the order of magnitude we can see with both Redis and ZMQ, it is pretty hard to hit the wall. However there are demanding applications, so probably it's worth doing it.

3) Maybe ZMQ only uses one core as well, otherwise to have an absolutely fair comparison, N Redis nodes should be used simultaneously. Pub/Sub is the kind of application where sharding sometimes it is really really easy, just by channel. In general with Redis you have three options to go distributed with Pub/Sub.

Option A) Have N nodes and shard by channel.

Option B) Use replication, as it also does PUBLISH of messages on slaves.

Option C) Use Redis Cluster, but currently it is in alpha. However it already does message propagation across all the cluster so it is very easy to implement a reliable HA Pub/Sub system with it. However currently the propagation is not smart, every message is propagated to every node, however in Redis the cost of Pub/Sub is proportional to the number of receivers, so this is usually not a big issue, but we'll improve this aspect in the future anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> Question: Was gevent, used by hiredis, using select or kqueue? IIRC gevent will default to select on OSX. kqueue could be faster.

Also, both kqueue and select were slightly buggy in OSX: [http://pod.tst.eu/http://cvs.schmorp.de/libev/ev.pod#OS_X_AN...](http://pod.tst.eu/http://cvs.schmorp.de/libev/ev.pod#OS_X_AND_DARWIN_BUGS)

Not sure if that's still the case.

Would be interesting to see how these benchmark on a Linux or FreeBSD machine.

<comment><USER4> Zed Shaw benchmarked epoll vs poll a while back[0]. It looks like it really depends on the proportion of "active" clients to the total number. I would expect similar results for kqueue vs select (and as you point out, kqueue was horribly broken in OS X for a while).

[0]: [http://web.archive.org/web/20120225022154/http://sheddingbik...](http://web.archive.org/web/20120225022154/http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1280829388.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll wait for AntiRez to chime in. It is possible that ZMQ has better performance than Redis, because the Redis server has to parse the request and then act on it, and then there's the marshalling on the client side; with ZMQ, you're just sending a command. I'm not sure if Redis has an efficient binary protocol, but having that may eliminate some of the bottleneck?

<comment><USER6> From the graphs it doesn't look that ZMQ has generally better peformance; it depends on the number of clients and whether they run on Python or Go. It's pretty interesting:

\- For up to 4 clients, (buffered) redis is better than 0MQ in Python but worse in Go.

\- For more than 4 clients it's exactly the opposite: redis is worse in Python but better in Go.

I'd be interested to hear an explanation for this, even if it turns out that a graph line was mislabeled :)

<comment><USER7> Seems that latency was not measured. I'd expect it to be much lower in 0mq. First there is no intermediate server, and secondly you don't have to wait for the flush thread to send a message.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think there must be something seriously wrong with zmq golang bindings if the performance plummets like that. I mean, it's significantly slower than the python version.

<comment><USER9> This seems to be the bigest one: "GoZMQ does not support zero-copy."

There still seems to be some work to do to improving the Golang bindings: <https://github.com/alecthomas/gozmq#caveats>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If all things are equal (as they appear to be here)), I would go with 0MQ if only for the lack of adding another server to manage and that hassle. However that being said 0MQ is quite the black box and that offers it's own disadvantages.

I would be curious to see what would happen if gevent were added to the Python code.

<comment><USER10> You're still adding a server. But you have to write it first.

<comment><USER9> A Redis database would be a server in addition to the server you write in either case. 0MQ uses no server, it is just a library.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a fun read, and the external links alone are worth it for me (msgpack, 0mq guide, python multiprocessing). But frankly, the conclusion says it all: "Conclusion. What can we take away from all of this? To be brutally honest, not much... ."

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there a way to ensure that both redis and zeromq have the same buffer size / flushing interval?

<comment><USER13> This is a really good question. I don't know the details around how zmq approaches buffering, I suspect it's much smarter than the approach used by the buffered Redis client in these tests (flush on every 1000 messages and every 200ms).</comment></comment>


Germany enlists machine learning to boost renewables revolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/germany-enlists-machine-learning-to-boost-renewables-revolution-1.20251 <comment><USER2> This article in Nature, which the Popular Mechanics article appears to be based on, is much more informative: [http://www.nature.com/news/germany- enlists-machine-learning-...](http://www.nature.com/news/germany-enlists- machine-learning-to-boost-renewables-revolution-1.20251)

It's a little misleading to say they're using AI. Most of this work (and all the specific examples listed on the project webpage) is more appropriately called statistics.

<comment><USER3> Nowadays there's no clear difference between statistics and machine learning. But the latter gets you more grant money. :-/

<comment><USER4> > no clear difference between statistics and machine learning

Yes, there is. When your model has thousands/millions of parameters, or when your model has many more parameters than the number of examples in your training set, it's called Machine Learning.

<comment><USER5> That's not true. Linear and logistic regression are like the first things you learn in a machine learning class. Many popular ML models do not have millions of parameters, including decision trees and shallow neural networks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Since wind and PV-power forecasts do not follow exact theoretical error > distributions, the probabilistic power forecasts will be based on quantile > regression coupled to artificial intelligence or data-mining methods. > Additionally, methods such as kernel density estimation, ensemble dressing, > or Bayesian model averaging, which have proved useful in meteorological > applications, will be evaluated in this subproject.

Source: [http://www.projekt- eweline.de/en/subproject2.html](http://www.projekt- eweline.de/en/subproject2.html)

AI is only mentioned as a possibility in the context of one subproject of three subprojects. Based on titles alone they've made only a single publication[1] involving AI and they've been publishing for a few years already. Saying that AI is used here may be technically correct but seems like a massive overstatement.

[1]: [http://www.projekt-eweline.de/en/publications.html](http://www.projekt- eweline.de/en/publications.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Great. Can we start doing this for the economy, already?

<comment><USER8> This does happen, but in the US (and most(?) countries) we don't have command economies. Consequently, this sort of model-based approach to economics (logistics) is done by businesses. The big, successful ones are very good at it. Walmart knows how much of what good to send to what region on what day. They've been collecting and correlating data for decades now.

Where it's done by the government it's applied at the level of bonds and currency production and such. More abstract levels than directing purchase or production of specific items (generally, more direct intervention does still happen of course, but usually masked).

<comment><USER9> Germany doesn't have a command economy either, it's a combination of government incentives, private enterprise, and (semi-)public utilities all going in this direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A tangential question related to carbon-free energy production:

Are there companies that do software for nuclear power plant construction? Like modern project management software for nuclear power plants? It seems that a few bigger nuclear projects in Europe (namely in Finland and France) are in trouble mainly due to project management reasons.

<comment><USER11> Siemens. They are building the plants, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Renewable energy supply strongly depends on weather forecast so essentially one needs a good algorithm for weather forecast. Yet, forecasting energy supply is much easier if all generators are integrated into one power grid because it is necessary to predict average supply for a (large) reagion.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why is this news? We've been doing the same thing at deregulated US RTOs for at least 6 years.

<comment><USER14> AI is the new Nanotechnology

<comment><USER15> I thought it was the new carbon nano tubes?

<comment><USER14> I also considered graphene as a candidate. Or "biofuel made from X" (with very rare and expensive catalyst).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That name yields some rather unfortunate Google image results.

<comment><USER17> Looks like a product of German engineering, so what?

<comment><USER18> More like Swedish.</comment></comment></comment>