Huawei Reveals the Real Trade War with China - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-06/huawei-bust-signals-the-real-u-s-trade-war-with-china <comment><USER2> The article alludes to, but doesn't expand on, the US's lost lead in furniture manufacturing. For more on this fascinating story, I recommend Beth Macy's "Factory Man" [0], the story of the systematic destruction of the North Carolina and Virginia-based wooden furniture industry by Chinese imports.

It's the exact same playbook as Huawei -- govt-backed "dumping" of loss-priced goods in an attempt for total market dominance. And US companies have historically been way too willing to expose trade secrets to Chinese manufacturers in exchange for temporarily cheaper supplies -- a Faustian bargain.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Factory-Man-Furniture-Offshoring- Amer...](https://www.amazon.com/Factory-Man-Furniture-Offshoring- American/dp/031623141X)

<comment><USER3> In the case of furniture and other lower tech industries (clothing & textiles too), when Chinese products got slapped with tariffs production shifted to a different off-shore countries (Vietnam, Bangladesh, etc). The structural disadvantages that American manufacturing has doesn't go away, and honestly how many trade secrets are there to producing furniture. It's not like they don't have furniture already in the rest of the world.

<comment><USER4> But presumably they won't be sold at a loss in a bid for market dominance.

<comment><USER5> Funny, because that seems to be precisely what Uber is all about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _" The U.S. still makes — or at least, designs — the best computer chips in the world. China assembles lots of electronics, but without those crucial inputs of U.S. technology, products made by companies such as Huawei would be of much lower-quality."_

The accusations against Huawei are coming at a time where this is simply not true anymore. Huawei are making their own chips under the HiSilicon brand. Just like Qualcomm chips, their CPU part is based on ARM IP, and ARM are based in the UK and owned by SoftBank. The current Kirin 980 is the fastest non- Apple SoC available on the market and as power efficient as the A12.

[https://www.anandtech.com/show/13503/the- mate-20-mate-20-pro...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/13503/the- mate-20-mate-20-pro-review/3)

<comment><USER7> The Kirin 980 SoC uses the Cortex-A76 which was designed in Austin, TX, United States of America.

The statement "The U.S. still makes — or at least, designs — the best computer chips in the world" is accurate in the context of a manufacturer attempting to build a high-performance microprocessor-based device.

<comment><USER8> Exactly, thus far China doesn't have the technology to do sub-14nm foundry work at any notable scale, and as we saw with Dhyana, they apparently don't have the internal talent to improve AMD's Zen cores. The foundry issue isn't apt to change anytime soon, as newer nodes are extremely expensive and take years to bring up (see Global Foundries & Intel's troubles with newer processes).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reading Michael Pillsbury will help you understand actions by the US admin against China. His book, the hundred year marathon, states the theory it subscribes to according to Bloomberg and Politico (I dont know how true the theory is and some China experts disagree with the book)

"But what if the "China Dream" is to replace us, just as America replaced the British Empire, without firing a shot?

Based on interviews with Chinese defectors and newly declassified, previously undisclosed national security documents, The Hundred-Year Marathon reveals China's secret strategy to supplant the United States as the world's dominant power, and to do so by 2049, the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. Michael Pillsbury, a fluent Mandarin speaker who has served in senior national security positions in the U.S. government since the days of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, draws on his decades of contact with the "hawks" in China's military and intelligence agencies and translates their documents, speeches, and books to show how the teachings of traditional Chinese statecraft underpin their actions. "

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

[http://www.michaelpillsbury.net/](http://www.michaelpillsbury.net/)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-27/trump- ide...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-27/trump-identifies- the-leading-authority-on-china-who-is-he)

[https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/30/trump-china-xi- jin...](https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/30/trump-china-xi- jinping-g20-michael-pillsbury-1034610)

Competition to usd, Petroyuan is coming.

"The Rise of the "Petroyuan"

For the past decade, China's strategy for internationalizing the renminbi has involved greater reliance on the IMF's Special Drawing Rights as an alternative international reserve currency. But the launch of renminbi- denominated oil trading this year suggests that China will now pursue de- dollarization head-on."

[https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/rise-of- petroyu...](https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/rise-of-petroyuan- challenges-dollar-hegemony-by-john-a--mathews-and-mark-selden-1-2018-12)

<comment><USER10> They can have whatever plans they want, it doesn't mean they have a remote chance of success.

The natural resource of the information age is not iron or oil, but a populace of free thinkers who are unafraid to fail while working outside of cultural norms. Why does the US dominate the Internet? It's not because our 1s and 0s are better quality, or our technology education is superior or even that we have better funding for tech (it costs almost nothing to create a web site except time, desire and expertise.) It's our culture: we value the pioneer spirit. New frontiers are dove into head first.

China's recent successes can be attributed to intellectual theft from innovative cultures, and brutal oppression of their own people. This does not scale. Until they free the minds of their populace, they will never be able to globally complete in science and technology.

<comment><USER11> People have been saying China haven't a hope in succeeding since the 80s yet here we are. Smashing everyone out of the water with ease. Doing the unthinkable as a matter of fact. They play to win and they're good at it.

<comment><USER12> The thing is back in the 80's, China was starting from a low point. It's easy to catch up which is what they've done but like the original poster said, it's much tougher to take the lead position. I agree with him that the Chinese culture makes it harder to innovate.

<comment><USER11> While I can see the logic in the argument I think it doesn't reflect in reality. For example they are miles ahead in stem cell research because they pursue technological advancement with much less concern about morals and regulation at the research phase.

<comment><USER13> Are they miles ahead? My impression of Chinese biology isn't that it's super advanced - I mean, it's another subject, but consider the recent headlines about the CRISPR baby. Ask any biologist about that experiment, and they'll tell you it's not only the ethics that are seriously bizarre, but just the idea that you should use something like CRISPR on a baby at this stage in the technology's development. It's mad science, but it's not likely good science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here is my confusion: if the war against China is really about high tech dominance, and Huawei is a particular target because it just surpassed Apple for #2 spot, then why isn't action taken against Samsung instead which is at the #1 spot?

Samsung is not a Chinese company, so this seems to be about national competition and not tech "dominance".

<comment><USER15> Samsung is the result of US's stripping of Japan's manufacturing power. Japan used to challenge US's hi-tech status in the 70s and 80s. US forced Japan signing the "Plaza Accord" and immediately Japan entered the "lost decade", and so the chip manufacturing power was strategically moved to Taiwan and S.Korea.

Now it's turn for China.

<comment><USER16> One thing I don't understand is how US, Japan and S.Korea led high-tech outsourced manufacturing efforts in China. As far as I understand everything is hunky dory starting with _Good will_ from Deng, until China became world's manufacuting hub. Only then it became a huge issue. My question is didn't any one consider China's current rise in late 80's and early 90's when they started outsourcing manufacturing?

<comment><USER17> I think the idea was to let china do the dirty work of manufacturing and staying at that. That didn't work as we we can now see. And I'm blaming the west's confidence of conveniently outsourcing the production to China thinking they'll always be in control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> ZTE was close to breaking point while they were blocked from US components, until that sanction was lifted (after the big fine). According to the Bloomberg article there may be a similar deal for Huawei - pay a huge fine or get locked out. What will obviously happen is that the Chinese will not, can not, accept that they're depending on US components when they could get locked out from them at any moment. They will therefore accelerate, by whatever means (research, hack, steal, invent, anything) their own ability to produce all the parts themselves. In short, putting the squeeze on China will only hold back the tide for a moment, and then backfire.

<comment><USER19> This is awfully similar to when China refused to sell rare-earth element metals, causing the USA to restart production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I find the term trade war misleading, its really just countries trying to protect their intellectual property from theft by China. Money made in the skewed trade deals is used to swop debt for equity in failing economies in Africa, South America and Asia. Further, buying of technology companies in developed economies is another way to duplicate the technology in China to achieve global dominance. Don't forget that China has a political objective, its not all trade and fair play

<comment><USER21> > China has a political objective

And the US doesn't ?

<comment><USER20> I often hear that China is a victim of a US trade war, in fact its often framed as Trumps trade war. China is a very aggressive protagonist and we should be wary of the politically correct narrative that is being used to mollify the west. So of course the US is political and it needs to stand up for its own society

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "'U.S. moves against Huawei and ZTE may be intended to force China to remain a cheap supplier instead of a threatening competitor."'

This is what I also first thought when hearing about the arrest. This is all about economic warfare. Long term, I think this will be bad for my country (USA) because this will induce China to continue a huge national program to develop home grown tech.

<comment><USER23> On the other hand China is already committed to undermining US market dominance anyway.

So maybe this just buys US industry a little more time.

Allowing a foreign competitor to grow to a dominant position by skirting sanctions or from profiting from state-sponsored industrial espionage is not good either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Anyone know of big, marquee examples of "trade secrets & technologies" handed over to chinese affiliates. I hear reference to this all the time, but have a hard time "putting meat on it."

Any nice clean examples where a chinese company gets IP/secrets that a French company would not have got?

<comment><USER25> Qualcomm deal with ARM cpu development that they recently canceled (ip stays with the Chinese joint venture) :

[https://www.pcworld.com/article/3163189/components- processor...](https://www.pcworld.com/article/3163189/components- processors/new-made-in-china-chip-on-the-way-as-country-boosts-indigenous- tech.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So China's only choice is to stay as a cheap supplier of the US forever? That sounds fair...

</comment><comment><USER27> The US should ban export of all high tech related IP to China as a national security concern. The wholesale outsourcing of decades worth of our hard earned technological innovation is treasonous. China would never give us access to that kind of tech if it were developed in China.

<comment><USER28> Can you explain how it is a national security problem (I didn't understand that phrasing in the article either)? But you also might be forgetting that almost all hardware is manufactured in China (and thus they could easily reciprocate such actions).

<comment><USER27> The ease with which China can disrupt our supply chain (in the short term) is precisely the point. Their theft of millitary and comercial secrets is another.

China requires american companies selling or manufacturing in china to divulge secrets and implant chinese nationals (agents of the communist party) into said american companies so they can copy our technology and use state funds to begin competing chinese owned companies. This has hollowed out the American manufacturing base. Fewer qualified American engineers and workers means less military readiness, especially against threats China doesnt want us engaged with. Think Russia.

This process also means that their military will both have a larger industrial base to support it, and better technology to arm it.

The USA is not a tool for the Chinese to extract reasources and knowledge from. We worked hard to get where we are, and they are illegally piggybacking on us by stealing our intellectual property.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> She created a subsidiary company in Hong Kong, bought products made in the US and sold them to Iran.

The investigation started long ago.

This may just be a case of bad timing.

Who knew that an exec of a US competitor just also happened to be corrupt?

It doesn't make sense in the context of the trade deal, the better reality is that it's actually just the US locking down on people breaking the sanctions.

<comment><USER30> Based on available public information, the case happened about eight years ago, and Meng was not a top executive at Huawei. At that time there were many companies in China and elsewhere selling US products to Iran. Huawei allegedly sold about 1 million dollar goods for civilian use. The selective law enforcement in this case is rather curious:

Why would the US persecute this particular case so vigorously? Extradition is not very common for crimes of this level of severity.

Why would the US want to have someone physically arrested instead of to punish Huawei with fine and export ban, which are more common for companies violating sanctions?

Why would the US choose to arrest the daughter of Huawei's founder, instead of someone who is more directly involved in the Iran deal?

It is hard to believe this is a case of bad timing. There has been lots of infighting within the Trump administration. Most likely, the hawk fraction intentionally chose to arrest Meng at the time of Trump-Xi meeting in order to undermine a possible trade deal by embarrassing China. Think about what happens if China arrests Tim Cook because Apple didn't pay the right amount of tax in China eight years ago.

<comment><USER31> > _Why would the US persecute this particular case so vigorously? Extradition > is not very common for crimes of this level of severity._

To send a signal "we can go tough if you don't sit back and take it on our trade terms (which have nothing to do with Iran)"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Everyone trashed Trump for the solar tariffs but I liked it for this reason. Sure, temporarily they get more expensive but what happens in 20+ years when the world is reliant on solar power and China has a complete monopoly because they played the long game and subsidized it until all competitors died out?

China is playing the long game, the west plays quarter to quarter because of the stock market

<comment> java-man and of course we don't want the free market to punish the incompetent and reward the smart ones, do we?

<comment><USER32> In what free market does a government subsidize a company and force competitors to give their native companies their IP to do business?

China never cared about free trade, they use it like a weapon to beat idealists like yourself over the head

What happens in 20 years when China has complete dominance of the solar market and those "cheap" solar panels get tripled in price because there is no competition left and the rest of the world can only grit their teeth?

<comment><USER33> > In what free market does a government subsidize a company

The idea that the Chinese government subsidizes every Chinese company is nonsense. This is just something that Americans need to believe because they don't want to admit how extraordinarily inefficient their domestic industries were before 2000.

> and force competitors to give their native companies their IP to do > business?

This is hilarious. Nobody forces foreign companies to give away their IP. These companies, which are supposedly the best in the world, analyze the trade and make it voluntarily or walk away. It's called the free market. Remember that?

> What happens in 20 years when China has complete dominance of the solar > market

The irony here is that all the tariffs do is put America further and further behind. The tariffs don't help America at all eg [1]. This should be obvious to anybody who understands how solar works and knows that the real money is not in panel printing.

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jillbaker/2018/04/06/tariffs- on...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jillbaker/2018/04/06/tariffs-on-chinese- solar-products-are-set-hurt-the-u-s-rather-than-help-it-heres- why/#3cc6b8ce1ea4)

<comment><USER34> All companies report to the party, there is no free market there.

XI is the new emperor for life

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The US are at war with China. Trade is just one aspect.

The issue is that they cannot 'win' that war. They can only delay the rise of China.

At the moment US' actions are uniting the Chinese people behind their government so the Chinese might actually be able to (or forced to) take a harder line on some issues.

<comment><USER36> Or 10 years will pass and China will be stuck with 400 million sick old people slowly turning from the key asset to liability.</comment></comment>


The Surprising Startup Hub That's Second Only to Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/paul-grossinger/the-surprising-startup-hub-thats-second-only-to-silicon-valley.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10693764](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10693764)

</comment><comment><USER3> > "The Nordic countries, particularly Sweden, have the highest percentage of > unicorns per capita in the world"

And yet no mention of Mojang. A unicorn among unicorns. No funding. $2.5 billion exit.

<comment><USER4> This speaks to our assumption of how great companies are built: large venture capital investment.

From my experience, most people think they can build the next Uber for X, if only someone would give them that level of capital. Few think they could be the next Mojang, building a real business the hard way.

Mojang did what every startup should be doing:

1) Build a phenomenal product 2) Once the business starts taking off, keep building a phenomenal product 3) As your user-base grows and diversifies, focus on building a phenomenal product

Venture capital can be wonderful if you're already entrenched in that ethos. Otherwise, it will only paper over your mistakes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In US many high-tech companies provide perks for their workers: free daycare, paid maternity leave, free tuition for employees' kids, good health care, etc.

Nordic countries provide similar perks for all their citizens. High taxes pay for safety, infrastructure and welfare.

Ramen-eating startups work for young single people. Getting older and having children reduces the risk taking ability dramatically without good welfare.

</comment><comment><USER6> Lies! Look at the actual source data of this supposed study. "Silicon Valley" has far more billion+ companies per capita than the nordic countries:

(75 / 3.75 million) vs (9 / 26.6 million) = 20 vs 0.34 billion dollar companies per million people = Silicon Valley has 5882% more.

Likewise when just looking at Sweden:

(75 / 3.75 million) vs (5 / 9.6 million) = 20 vs 0.52 billion dollar companies per million people = Silicon Valley has 3846% more.

[http://www.atomico.com/explore-d3](http://www.atomico.com/explore-d3)

I don't know why the author chose to compare Silicon Valley to the country of Sweden, but those are the actual numbers.</comment>


TSMC 5-Nanometer Update - <AUTHOR> https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/2879/tsmc-5-nanometer-update/ <comment><USER2> I wish the industry would move to transistors per mm or something instead of bongus "nm" numbers that are meaningless - 91 to 171 MTr/mm^2 even sounds more impressive then whatever 7 to 5 nm means.

<comment><USER3> It depends on the mix of circuits. Memory don't follow same design rules as logic so can scale quite well. Logic density may well be limited more by power dissipation than by design rules. In other words you can pack some circuits a lot denser than others.

I do agree that it is frustrating for someone from the outside to understand exactly what kind of scaling one can expect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://semiengineering.com/5nm-vs-3nm/](https://semiengineering.com/5nm- vs-3nm/) TSMC's 5nm technology is 15% faster with 30% lower power than 7nm. A second version of 5nm, due out next year, is 7% faster. Both versions also will use EUV.

</comment><comment><USER5> Seeker released a very insightful feature about the ASML Extreme UV / soft X-ray (13.5 nanometers) photolithography system that is being referred to in the article.

[http://youtu.be/f0gMdGrVteI](http://youtu.be/f0gMdGrVteI)

</comment><comment><USER6> Quick question, what does "ip compatibility" mean between nodes?

<comment><USER7> It means that you can produce the same design (IP or intellectual property) on both processes. The denser process should then result in a better frequency or power performance without a redesign. Many processes do require a redesign because of different latency or more redundancy/error checking required and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> N5s being optimised for high performance computing off from the start (Ratber than only mobile) look like just the kind of thing an Arm MacBook would use.

<comment><USER9> Or, you know, AMD?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it just me or the competition on the CPU market is about to get really interesting? My understanding is that if Intel loses the edge on fab-tech then the door is open for all kinds of new entrants. (I could be wrong though.)

Who knows, perhaps even Intel will use TSMC's process at some point.

<comment><USER11> What makes you think new entrants? Just curious. On the fab side definitely not... there's really only 3 fabs competing on the bleeding edge side of things, and it costs way too much to open another. On the 'chip designer' side maybe, but I'm not sure why Intel's performance affects whether or not someone jumps in. I basically see a convergence coming, with ARM stuff getting better performance, and x86 stuff using less power...so there will be an interesting crossroads of sorts to see which direction things go.

<comment><USER10> The new entrants would be on the design side. If Intel no longer holds the keys to best fab-tech in the world then all bets are off.

(I'm assuming that Intel doesn't allow competitors to use their fabs; and that Intel does indeed have the best fab-tech at the moment; maybe I'm wrong.)

<comment><USER12> Even a fabless semiconductor company (e.g. nVidia, Apple, heck, AMD) needs to spend hundreds of millions to tape out a leading-edge IC. It's a capital- intensive business, and would present quite a risky bet for any upstart competitors. Also, patents.

[https://semiengineering.com/big-trouble- at-3nm/](https://semiengineering.com/big-trouble-at-3nm/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What does "iso-power" mean?

A quick search didn't bring anything.

<comment><USER14> That means "same power", in the context of a comparison of some other metric. So (from the article) "15% higher performance at iso-power" means that for the same power draw, a chip made with the new process has 15% better performance (clock speed) than one made with the old process. Likewise for iso- performance: new chip can get the same perf with less power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If I'm reading this correctly... the expected soon to be released AMD 7nm mobile chips (early 2020) will potentially consume 50% less power than their current generation?

With 5nm further improving that 7nm another 30% reduced power?

If so, we're talking 25-35% of the current power draw for the same speed in the next 18-24 months?

I have to be wrong here... I know they use a design which doesn't get 100% of the Benefits due to the "chiplet" arch, but still.

<comment><USER16> Maybe not 50% less, but it is definitely more efficient. [https://www.anandtech.com/show/14605/the-and- ryzen-3700x-390...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/14605/the-and- ryzen-3700x-3900x-review-raising-the-bar/19)

(Also, I think a 50% reduction followed by 30% would be 35% of current power not 15.)

<comment><USER15> Fair - I'll edit, I did the math wrong (I was looking at each iteration N7P, N6, N5, N5P). However, judging from their graph not all paths should be multiplied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How is Samsung's 7nm production going? I read that IBM will be using them for their next gen POWER architecture in a couple years.

<comment><USER18> Depends on who you ask, yield is definitely not as good as TSMC, but Samsung like to use brute force approach to literally everything so I assume it will be sorted out soon. The downside to this approach is margin but profits isn't important to Samsung Foundry ( yet ).</comment></comment>


Apple buy map service to compete with Google? - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10364988-37.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

<comment><USER2> That's a really annoying headline because it's not a question, so why's there a question mark?

<comment><USER3> Apple buy map service.

To compete with Google?

I think that's what they were aiming for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> the class references on these two are strikingly similar:

<http://www.pushpin.com/api/1.3/docs/>

[http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/reference.htm...](http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/reference.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> here is two links what it looks like

<http://www.pushpin.com/api/1.3/docs/tabs.html> <http://www.pushpin.com/api/1.3/docs/maptype.html>

<comment><USER6> If there's one thing that stands out for me in Google Maps at a very quick glance it's the colours. I've always loved Google's brighter, more distinguishable colours more than any other services (MapQuest uses/used such muted ones as well.)

<comment><USER5> Zooming-in in Europe, it appears that they don't have any license for maps outside the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You are missing a few words: " _Did_ Apple buy _a_ map service to compete with Google?"

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://blogs.computerworld.com/14835/apple_purchased_mapping...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/14835/apple_purchased_mapping_company_in_july_to_replace_google)

Apple bought Placebase in July it seems.</comment>


Firmware is the most expensive thing in the universe. - <AUTHOR> http://www.ganssle.com/tem/tem245.html#article1

<comment><USER2> Ganssle's book _The Art of Programming Embedded Systems_ (Academic Press, 1991) is an eye opener for software writers. Highly recommended.</comment>


Do you care about animals? Then you really shouldn't eat octopus - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/26/do-you-care-about-animals-then-you-really-shouldnt-eat-octopus <comment><USER2> A potato has 2 more chromosomes than I do. Does it mean that I shouldn't eat potatoes?</comment>


Ask HN: Any resources to learn the fundamentals of critical thinking? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Do a web search for "trivium".

[https://classicalacademicpress.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/0...](https://classicalacademicpress.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/02/ICE.pdf)

> _"Our teachers of the last generation have divided knowledge into relatively > isolated "subjects" without emphasizing the interconnection of all > knowledge. We have learned "subjects" without actually learning how to > tackle these subjects—we have not learned how to learn. We might say that we > have been set to work hammering, chiseling, planing and carving without ever > being taught how to use the tools. We have picked up what we could as we > went along, incidentally.

> The classical educators started from the other end and emphasized the > importance and use of those master tools that could be widely applied. Of > course in order to learn the use of these master tools (grammar, logic and > rhetoric), it is necessary to apply them to some piece of wood, to some > subject—and so actual subjects must be studied (English, Latin, History, > etc.). But note that the chief goal was to master the tools—for in mastering > the tools, the subject (any subject) would soon be mastered as well. We > encounter a paradox: classical educators favor tool over content and > therefore help students to master more content than ever. They have taught > their students how to learn."_

(warning: above PDF has a specific worldview)

<comment><USER3> It's a lack of critical thinking that requires a disclaimer about the PDFs world view.

<comment><USER2> Totally, but there will be less noise if I state that upfront to decrease the chances that someone will take offense. Your comment, for example, is much more interesting :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Studying math is the most direct and easiest route to get the human tendency to believe what's psychologically expedient beaten out of you. Any rigorous intro to math (abstract algebra, analysis, topology, whatever) book will do. But the easiest, most varied and funnest would be intro to discrete math or the so called "transition" books. For example, check out [1] Discrete Math by Susanna Epp, [2] Transition to Advanced Math by Gary Chartrand et al, [3] How to Think about Analysis by Lara Alcock, [4] Learning to Reason by Nancy Rodgers

[1] [https://books.google.com/books?id=PPc_2qUhXrAC&pg=PA1&source...](https://books.google.com/books?id=PPc_2qUhXrAC&pg=PA1&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Proofs-Transition- Advanc...](https://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Proofs-Transition-Advanced- Mathematics/dp/0134746759/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528561282&sr=8-1&keywords=chartrand+proof)

[3] [https://books.google.com/books?id=n0tuBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA4&source...](https://books.google.com/books?id=n0tuBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA4&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false)

[4] [https://books.google.com/books?id=J9RLuhDRWGQC&pg=PR6&source...](https://books.google.com/books?id=J9RLuhDRWGQC&pg=PR6&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false)

If you're on a budget, check out the free ones like [1] Book of Proof by Richard Hammack, [2] Math Foundations of Computing by Keith Schwarz

[1] [https://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/](https://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/)

[2] [https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs103/notes/Mathematical%20Fo...](https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs103/notes/Mathematical%20Foundations%20of%20Computing.pdf)

<comment><USER5> I've been doing the book of proof front-to-back, all the odd problems and finished like 30% of it. Been doing it for about 1.5 months so far before I go to sleep.

Its made me realize that critical thinking is just breaking down logic to its smallest component form. And having some means of expressing different ways of organizing those components. Logic applies to all things, so time spent learning math is always useful.

I'm trying to make math derivations / critical thinking something I can do without trying, so its easier for me to pick up more complex topics and actually understand what's going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Two general principles that have helped me a lot:

1) Resist attaching my ego to my thoughts and ideas, whenever possible (sometimes it is unavoidable).

2) Avoid having a strong opinion on something without really good reason [1], especially if it is a serious issue.

This makes it easier to deeply look at a difficult issue from multiple angles, and perhaps get a better understanding. Something that is difficult but very rewarding is the practice of taking some idea or belief that you disagree with, and trying very hard to imagine what the world would look like if it was true.

[1] Such as significant time researching and studying multiple sides of an issue. And even then, we have to be careful. How do we know our research was actually sufficient? The world is incredibly complex.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here are two books I've enjoyed

Systems Thinking: [https://amzn.to/2y43BaO](https://amzn.to/2y43BaO)

. Shows how most situations in life we face require a larger perspective, to see them as a complicated system. Contains many good references to systems thinking

How to Solve it: [https://amzn.to/2sR1Jw4](https://amzn.to/2sR1Jw4)

A book by a mathematician (Polya), which tells you how to think about problems in a way that you can generalize to any type of life situation

Edit: Sorry, fixed the second link

<comment><USER8> Both links point to the same book. Do you mind posting a link for the second book?

<comment><USER9> [http://a.co/j9e8T90](http://a.co/j9e8T90)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I believe that there is no one-fits-all recipe for critical thinking, because its more of a personal thing.

It depends on your motivation for starters. Ever caught yourself thinking "Why do I need to question _everything_?"? Well, there you have it. Are you just curious, or is it mistrust that drives you? Are you able to question your own thoughts and motivation? Can you identify and fix your own errors? Are you able to answer these question? Observe your own thoughts and examine ideas that come to your mind, as if in argument with yourself.

Critical thinking is an endless stream of: Why, why why? So its not really about finding the answers, but rather asking the right questions.

<comment><USER11> @dschuetz's answer is pretty good.

I would add that it helps to hang around people who are themselves critical thinkers. Not the negative cynical kind, mind you, but those who like to explore new ideas, question old ones, and are not afraid to admit that some new ideas ended up sucking (after some consideration) and that the old ones weren't too bad with which to begin. Surrounding yourself with people like these help expand perspective and avoid group think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://www.fs.blog/mental-models/](https://www.fs.blog/mental-models/)

This site has great information on how to think. The above post is particularly excellent.

<comment><USER13> As someone who wanted to ask a similar question to the OP, and didn't specifically know how to word it, the link on mental models really hit the nail on the head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Make sure that whatever resource you find doesn't prescribe the results of your critical thinking. There are plenty of ideologues that try to prove to you that with critical thinking and rationality you will come to the same conclusion as the ideologues and that this is the only valid way of thinking.

</comment><comment><USER15> [https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality](https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality)

<comment> oh-moses If you read one thing and one thing only, it should be this. It's overwhelmingly long, but it's really, really, really worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you define "critical thinking" as the ability to reason correctly, ie to identify the truth value of a statement or idea, given certain assumptions, then you're talking about logic.

It baffles me that -- at least in the U.S. -- we don't include logic per se in the core curriculum of a liberal arts college (let alone high school) education.

As an undergraduate I took an "Intro to Formal Logic" course, found I really enjoyed it, and was invited to become a tutor in subsequent semesters. At the time (circa 1995) we used the 7th edition of a classic textbook, "Logic & Philosophy: A Modern Introduction"[1]. Doing logical proofs in sentential and predicate logic is a lot more fun than it sounds, and results in improved instincts and ability to determine the logical validity and veracity of any set of statements. This skill is profoundly useful, and has incredibly broad applicability. It helped me ace my LSATs, and enabled my transition to software engineering. I think logic per se should be a core requirement for any kind of decent education. And if you're looking to improve your critical thinking skills, this is the foundation. It's reason, distilled.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Philosophy-Introduction-Alan- Ha...](https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Philosophy-Introduction-Alan- Hausman/dp/113305000X)

[Edited to add intro / context]

<comment><USER17> While not disagreeing with your thesis, I took "Argument and Applied Logic" in college and found it to be a low-point in my academic career. It was less fun than it sounds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think one of the fundamental aspects is self-awareness and meta cognition. Think about your thinking process, in comparison to those you interact with, and you will learn about your assumptions/biases (and theirs). Use that awareness to compare with people whose judgement you respect (and those you don't), and how they frame their opinions. These might even be fictional/idealized characters—the point is that they provoke meta cognition in you. As you become aware of different mental models, start practicing applying them to matters you encounter, and learning from feedback. Most resources take a short cut to this stage, but the art of choosing which mental models to apply when is an intensely personal matter, and can't be obtained by reading about mental models.

Further, as a useful rule of thumb: On any controversial topic, you're not allowed to hold a strong opinion till you can clearly articulate the reasons for both/all sides of the matter (such that a person advocating the respective side would consider it a fair representation of their views/thought process)

</comment><comment><USER19> The highest roi I ever found for critical thinking enhancement was LSAT prep.

Specifically, the logical reasoning section has you evaluate a series of arguments and answer (often tricky) questions about the argument--analogizing, finding flaws, etc.

Formal books etc are fine, but if this were programming, I'd say dive in and write code. Imo LSAT prep is the 'write code' in this instance.

</comment><comment><USER20> [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intellig...](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/Tradecraft%20Primer- apr09.pdf)

<comment><USER21> Also add the classic: [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intellig...](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence- analysis/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Logical thinking is the absence of illogical thinking. Therefore, one way to learn logical thinking is to learn the common patterns of illogical thinking, and avoid them.

Here is a list of the most common ways that humans think illogically:

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

</comment><comment><USER23> In all seriousness, the comedian Gallagher started me on the path. He would point out a lot of flaws in our language, society, a lot of odd things, but the bit of wisdom that rung in my ears:

"What is the truth? And what does it mean to be true to the truth?"

A full exploration of that question is its own education.

</comment><comment><USER24> My personal advice is patience.

Patience is the key to so many things! I break into three steps:

\- Faith: in your methodology or approach

\- Determination: to actually follow through

\- Courage: to act when the time is right or to admit you were wrong

If courage fails you lack determination if determination fails you lack faith. Such is patience.

Now what should you believe? Cause that is the question you are trying to have answered here, when you ask to learn 'critical thinking' you are asking for a method to believe in.

I don't think that makes much sense, you already have a method and it is your raison d'être. Now what you need is introspection, but approach the task of incremental improvement patiently (i.e. explicitly / scientific method-y) and you won't go in circles.

Math is a fine place to start but just study whatever is relevant and do it well.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's not as easy as one would think, no pun intended.

For way too long I have lamented the steep decline of critical thinking in everyday life, and yet - outside for Academic circle - there's very little discussion and education on the matter. In my ever-long TO-DO list there's a project to write a Critical Thinking 101 book, alas it's probably not going to happen.

Good comments and resources in this discussion, I'd like to add [http://criticalthinking.fsu.edu/news/ted- talks/](http://criticalthinking.fsu.edu/news/ted-talks/) and also the usual suspects at Amazon.com.

P.S.: If someone has a good resource/book for Critical Thinking for kids, please post it.

</comment><comment><USER26> 'The Fall of the Human Intellect'

Study it critically: [https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Human-Intellect- Parthasarathy/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Human-Intellect- Parthasarathy/dp/8187111933)

</comment><comment><USER27> I would recommend this book: [https://www.amazon.com/Art-Thinking-Clearly- Rolf-Dobelli/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Thinking-Clearly-Rolf- Dobelli/dp/0062219693/)

</comment><comment><USER28> "Structure of Magic, Vol. I" by Bandler

The "Meta-Model" is a set of questions based on Chomsky's Transformational Grammar that are designed to elicit"hidden" information by detecting and "surfacing" the deep structure of linguistic models in a therapeutic context.

For example, a statement of the form, "Foo shouldn't bar." omits the reason or motive, and can be met with a question of the form, "What would happen if foo did bar?"

You can use the Meta-Model to guide your own introspection and elicit thoughts or beliefs that you might not even be aware you hold.

</comment><comment><USER29> Not an external resource but I've identified that there are thought tools I continually apply in my own thinking to gain new perspective. I started writing them down and organizing them which has immediately benefited me and maybe one day I'll have distilled them clearly enough to share with others. Kind of like a toolbox for the mind.

Anyway, my advice is write down your own thoughts and discoveries. You'd be surprised how much content there is when you start collecting it all in one place and it will help you be more critical of your inner workings

</comment><comment><USER30> Coursera offers multiple classes on the subject:

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/mindware](https://www.coursera.org/learn/mindware)

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/critical-thinking- skills](https://www.coursera.org/learn/critical-thinking-skills)

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/critical- reasoning](https://www.coursera.org/learn/critical-reasoning)

</comment><comment><USER31> the book The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking is a fantastic resource. The first part of the book discusses how to structure your ideas in writing to communicate them well. The second half of the book addresses logical thinking

[https://www.amazon.com/Pyramid-Principle-Logic-Writing- Think...](https://www.amazon.com/Pyramid-Principle-Logic-Writing- Thinking/dp/0273710516)

</comment><comment><USER32> Always look for the hidden agenda.

Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see and still will believe twice too much.

Rationalism over emotionalism.

Get facts only from respected, objective, primary sources.

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence.

As Sharyl Attkisson warns, essentially everything in the mainstream media is paid for by someone who wants to influence your opinion.

Remember the statement of Nazi Minister of Propaganda, J. Goebbels "If you tell a lie often enough, then people will believe it. Eventually even you will come to believe it.". A lot of people out there are pushing propaganda in just that way.

Measure twice and saw once.

In many circumstances, people are permitted to lie and commonly take advantage of that fact.

At dawn, a lie can circumnavigate the globe while the truth is still getting its shoes on.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think for me, the key was reading books by authors who were exceptionally good at it. Here are a few off the top of my head from the political domain that opened my eyes:

Gaddis: The Landscape of History

Bazerman & Watkins: Predictable Surprises

Kuperman: The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention

You simply cannot read enough material by people who think well.

</comment><comment><USER33> [http://www.openculture.com/2013/05/philosopher_daniel_dennet...](http://www.openculture.com/2013/05/philosopher_daniel_dennett_presents_seven_tools_for_critical_thinking.html)

<comment><USER33> Daniel Dennett [philosopher] Presents Seven Tools For Critical Thinking

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I can't remember who said this, but it was something along the lines of "mastering the use of an abstraction means one must understand what's happening one layer deeper". So in essence, always ask why something works.

</comment><comment><USER35> The Philosopher's Glove [http://www.jesus- eucharistie.org/wisdom](http://www.jesus-eucharistie.org/wisdom)

</comment><comment><USER36> Good for you for wanting to think more critically.

Sorry if this is anecdotal babble, but when I was in junior-high they put all of us that were 'ahead' (I.e. those that read too much instead of going outside and socialising) in a Critial Thinking class.

I loved it, thought I was a great critical thinker, and then ended up getting a D in the final exam. My teenage hubris was a double-edged sword. Nevertheless, some of the concepts we were taught over a decade ago still stick with me as great heuristics that crop up all the time in poorly constructed arguments.

A few of my favourites that I recommend you read-up on (Wikipedia or otherwise) are:

\- Tu-Quoque

\- Ad Homeneim

\- Straw Man

\- CRAVEN for Credibility of Evidence

Apologies if you already know these, just thought they may help you on your journey to more critical everyday thought. :)

</comment><comment><USER37> Critical thinking, one of the two most important skills IMHO, is not a defined set of skills but more an undefined set of principles applied in different ways by different fields and, of course, by different people. Probably the best resources, IMHO, are university courses and their cirriculums.

* Most importantly, surround yourself with the very best. As much as possible, read the best thinkers. Stop reading Reddit, blogs, op-eds, Internet rants etc. as much as possible; they will drag you down. If you want to write well, you read the best writers; their high standards and abilities become your norm and you absorb their techniques and ideas; if you read average writers, they become your norm and you absorb average techniques and ideas. It's the same for critical thinking; the best are not perfect - they are not prophets and they don't write scripture; they are flawed and we all should read them that way - but for flawed humans, they build amazing things. Thanks to the wonders of written language and the efforts of endless generations of scholars, you can read some of the very best thinkers over the history of humanity. The cirriculums of university courses can be a great starting point.

* Study with experts: You don't know what you don't know. Amateurs in any field often have enormous blind spots. They ask the wrong questions, based on the wrong assumptions, and have the wrong answers to those questions. There are other critical questions they simply have no idea to ask. Again, expertise shouldn't be taken uncritically, but someone who has spent a lifetime studying the field knows more than you do. The obvious solution here is to take classes, online or in person, or at least utilize some of their work product, their curriculums.

Also, going a step beyond the (brief) question, I'd especially make an effort to learn critical thought from a variety of perspectives and fields, to using variety of tools. Off the top of my head,

* Scientific method, and the philosophy behind it (post-positivism, etc.). Actually designing, implementing, and writing up an experiment is an invaluable experience.

* The difference between the Enlightenment, the birth of modern critical thought, reason and science, and the Middle Ages (and really all of human history) which came before it.

* Quantitative reasoning, including statistics: how they can be applied and misused, and how to think critically about them. I don't mean learning all the quantitative tools (though that can be helpful too).

* Post-modernism, in the critical literary sense: The fact that so many respond so angrily to it should tell you how powerful and challenging it is, as well as the fact that those same people use it without seeming to realize it.

* Anthropology: I've always wanted to study this, as it steps outside the culture, and all cultures, and views them from a different perspective.

* Radical / revolutionary thought: I'm not at all saying to become a radical or revolutionary. But in this field are tools to step outside and think critically about social norms, which is one of the hardest things for humans to do - most people can't even imagine the universe is larger than their norms.

* Historiography: You can't understand history unless you can think critically about the sources of your knowledge of it.

* Economics: This set of tools is very powerful, extremely influential, and widely applicable.

Descriptive knowledge:

* The psychology of perception: All critical thinking begins with inputs of observation and communication, which necessarily are processed through human perception. The psychology of it is both critical and not at all what most people expect.

* The psychology of reasoning and decision making: How people actually make decisions, which is not at all how they think they do.

<comment><USER38> In my view, the best way to learn critical thinking is to practice it. For example, let's analyze this part critically for a moment:

> * Post-modernism, in the critical literary sense: The fact that so many > respond so angrily to it should tell you how powerful and challenging it is, > as well as the fact that those same people use it without seeming to realize > it.

Some of the most devastating criticism of postmodernism consists of incidents like the Sokal affair [1]. I don't see how this would count as 'using' postmodernism, though, when it is merely pointing out that the theory is indistinguishable from word salad. I suspect you had other criticism in mind, but this specific criticism could only be seen as 'using' it if you privilege postmodernism itself as the overarching framework under which to understand everything else. Such a viewpoint which would be quite ironic in postmodernism, though, and should therefore be rejected as self-contradictory.

The other bit of reasoning employed here seems to be pretty much the 'denial is proof' trap, which should also be understood to be an inherently self- refuting argument. This is true even if one wishes to say that it 'uses' the argument in some sense while playing the thing against itself to arrive at a contradiction.

After all, one cannot both accept that denial is some kind of proof, while denying the rest of the above logic and thereby providing proof for it.

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

<comment><USER37> As I said, read the best, not the Internet forums. There are problems with post-modernism just like there are with everything else, but not those described above. Read the best criticisms of it.

> devastating

The same way cold fusion 'devastated' physics, the Piltdown Man 'devastated' archeology, and nonsense comments 'devastate' Hacker News. I have no idea of the facts of the event in question - not the claims endlessly repeated as a dramatic gimmick, but the reality - and I don't really care because it amounts to very little either way.

Read about actual post-modernism; you might find some of yourself in it. It would make you a heretic in some circles, I know.

<comment><USER38> It's been repeated multiple times, not targeting the weak low quality journals (which, I agree, can likely be done to any field) but the top journals. If the Piltdown man had been published in the journal Science, that'd be more analogous.

Some of the criticisms levied by post-modernism are valid, but if the best journals can't distinguish between it and a Markov chain, we have a problem of low information content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Strive to become comfortable with uncertainty and doubt. At first your instinct is to arrive at certainty, to hang onto "facts" and put things in boxes. It can cause anxiety to leave things in some state of either-or-maybe, but it's a critical too. I'm not arguing for global intellectual relativism, but a lot of what people settle on with certainty isn't certain. Ask endless questions, and assign weights to answers, but even when one is 99.9% likely, don't totally ignore the other 0.1%. Take opportunity reevaluate what you "know" based on new information, and try to avoid traps like groupthink or contrarianism.

Above all, accept this as an ongoing process that only ends when you die.

</comment><comment><USER40> Critical thinking is really easy. Just take something that is self-evident or obvious and start thinking about why you believe that thing. Doubt it for a moment and come up with evidence for (or against) the thing. If you get into the habit of doing that, you will be a great critical thinker. Especially do this to new information that enters your system. Critical thinking is not a difficult concept to grasp at all.

</comment><comment><USER41> One that's currently on the front page is playing games like The Incredible Machine. I credit games - and to some extent, the fiddlefucking that was involved to get them running in the MSDOS days, for most of my critical thinking skills.

You learn to question the published truth, and get down to the bare, hard facts of reality, which often doesn't match. And you learn to try things, and how to iterate if things don't work, in a relatively low stakes environment.</comment>


Apple Is Trying to Kill Web Technology - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/apple-is-trying-to-kill-web-technology <comment><USER2> They killed this page to? It gives 404.

</comment><comment><USER3> I got 404 too</comment>


Regular Expression Matching Can Be Simple And Fast [2007] - <AUTHOR> http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html

<comment><USER2> Its not clear how allowing the state machine to be in all states at the same time consitutes "guess[ing] correctly", but the article is nonetheless quite informative</comment>


Ask YC: Great software companies to work for in DC? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking at moving to DC at some point soon, and I would really love to work for a great, medium-small software company.  Based on previous experience, I feel I'd be much happier at a smaller company (being at a "big corporation" hasn't been so exciting for me) that focuses specifically on developing software, rather than a company where software is in support of other developments.  The list may include, but by no means be limited to, software startups.  Any ideas? <comment><USER2> I know you said software, but if you're into web development at all, Freewebs and Clearspring seem to be two big companies in the area.

Disclaimer: As an FW employee, I may be a bit biased. Besides, it's technically Silver Spring MD. Go figure.

</comment><comment><USER3> We are a start-up seed-funded by investors in DC. Depending on your expertise and/or time frame, we may be able to leverage your help :)

We are fairly well-connected in the start up scenes here in DC through introductions from our investors. If your expertise doesn't align with our needs, I will be happy to make introductions. Drop me a note, my Email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER4> We're an energy efficiency software startup called Positive Energy, and we're expanding rapidly, looking for software engineers (Java, web, database) to grow our engineering team. We're based in Rosslyn, across the river from Georgetown. Our products are 100% software and are designed to help utilities inform their customers and drive down energy usage. You can read about what we do, our team and our jobs at www.positiveenergyusa.com.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's not small, but I like working for Booz Allen. I have been on a small project <3 million a year budget and 3 developers so it's like working for a small company but with great benefits. The only real problem is a large portion of your pay is in benifits (ex: 16 days off, 2 floating holidays at level 1) which is nice if you have a family but it's not so hot if your trying to save up capital for a startup.

</comment><comment><USER6> Juice Analytics: www.juiceanalytics.com

Looking for python/django developers, UI types, db developers, and machine learning people...

</comment><comment><USER7> It may not be exactly what you are after, but I highly recommend considering woti.

www.woti.com/jobs.cfm www.woti.com/benefits.cfm

<comment><USER8> Why do you recommend them highly?

<comment><USER7> In a nutshell, I would say that woti simply "gets it". If anyone is seriously interested in working at woti.com and is highly qualified, I would be happy to talk to you offline. My address is utefan001 -yahoo-

<comment><USER9> It just goes to show how compartmentalized gov't work can get. My first project there seemed more like a body shop than anything else; a few people developed the software, and the rest of us just fed it data and wondered why they bothered with such a rigorous hiring process.

Some of the projects that WOTI did sounded very cool, though. My experience was pretty disappointing, but that was three years ago, and most of the co- workers that I was friendly with while working there have moved on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://jobmatchbox.jobthread.com/> \- has a great listing of startup/software company positions in DC area.

</comment><comment><USER11> Come to the Sunlight Foundation. SunlightFoundation.com. No jobs are listed on the website, but they're hiring for the right people. Ping them.

</comment><comment><USER6> summize.com is also in the DC area...</comment>


School lunch shaming: Inside America's hidden debt crisis - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/09/news/economy/school-lunch-shaming-debt-crisis/ <comment><USER2> I've always found this policy to be sad. My father was a business manager at a few different school systems - and always did away with this policy. He thought it was unfair for children to be punished for their parents not having money. The alternative wasn't good - taking the parents to small claims court - but it was better than the brown bad lunch solution.

I generally wish this sort of thing was just included or completely excluded.</comment>


Was Paul Feyerabend Really Science's "Worst Enemy"? (2016) - commons-tragedy https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/was-philosopher-paul-feyerabend-really-science-s-worst-enemy/ <comment><AUTHOR> His insistence that there is no scientific method is pro-science. Science's only method is "opportunism," he said. "You need a toolbox full of different kinds of tools. Not only a hammer and pins and nothing else." This is what he meant by his much-maligned phrase "anything goes" (and not, as is commonly thought, that one scientific theory is as good as any other). Restricting science to a particular methodology--such as Popper's falsification scheme or Kuhn's "normal science"--would destroy it.

:s/science/software/g

<comment><USER2> Well, it's true that the cliched "scientific method" taught in high schools is a gross oversimplification, and many discoveries are made by accident rather than deliberately trying to test a clearly defined hypothesis. But in the 1980s-1990s "Science Wars", there was a movement by postmodernists to try to claim that science is just an ideology no better than religion or magic. This movement liked to quote Feyerabend and Kuhn regularly. That's why many working scientists don't really have warm feelings towards philosophers of science in general.

<comment><USER3> That sounds interesting. Do you have a recommendation for some reading materials on those Science Wars?

<comment><USER2> I'd recommend Samir Okasha's "Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction" (one of those Oxford University Press "Very short introduction" books that are only around 100 pages) as he has a short section on the Science Wars, and then if you are interested in more, James Robert Brown's "Who Rules in Science?: An Opinionated Guide to the Wars". Both Okasha and Brown are philosophers of science themselves, and do cover both sides, but they are are scientific realists in that they believe that scientific models do reflect to some degree the reality of the universe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Feyerabend's work reminds me a bit of Alvin Plantinga's.

As a young objectivist at university, I had the idealistic idea that if two people could use logic and science to determine certain facts, they could settle any disagreement, even moral ones.

However, science is built upon certain assumed first principles, like causation and other minds sharing your reality. Plantinga argued that one could start with additional first principles (he called "basic beliefs"), in particular, belief in God.

In this way, two people might disagree without having any way to resolve disagreements, because they don't share the same first principles.

Science does not have primacy here. It is just one of several ways to arrive at knowledge.

<comment><USER5> Have you heard of Aumann's agreement theorem? [1]

Consensus is possible, provided that the interlocutor have a shared goal and maximize for information exchange.

Otherwise, the whole notion of discussing one's "beliefs" is philosophical (non-empirical) nonsense. If I shut my mouth there is no way to empirically determine whether "I believe in God or not".

I don't have beliefs - I have methods of various degrees of effectiveness that get me what I want. To those ends knowledge is only instrumental. Which makes me an unapologetic opportunist/pragmatist/instrumentalist.

To you it may be "knowledge" - that Earth is round, to me it is inconsequential and immaterial even if I "believed" (whatever that means) Earth was triangular.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem)

<comment><USER6> _> I don't have beliefs - I have methods of various degrees of effectiveness that get me what I want._

It is a self-contradictory claim. You believe in your methods. You believe that your vision works by means of your methods, but how do you know this? Take a look at a your hand, all your mind get from it is a bunch of "pixels" from your retina, and by some means your mind construct a mental representation named "hand". How your mind had learnt to do it? Did it use bayesian learning or maybe it used some other mistaken method and your vision fools you? Maybe in the basis of your bayesianism lays totally non-bayesian vision? Maybe information about reality you have is not facts?

You fool yourself believing that you use bayesian reasoning. Mostly your mind thinks for yourself by itself, all you can do is to get into your consiousness some small part of reasoning and to check it with bayes. No one proved that it is possible to build mind based on the bayesianism. Our computational resources are weak for this. You cannot be a bayesian mind while you have no ability to reflect all the reasoning of your mind, starting with individual "pixels" from your retina as informational input and ending with claims like "there is no God".

So you are believing that you are bayesian mind, and therefore Aumann's theorem is applicable to you.

<comment><USER5> That's generally how all the Philosophy language-games work.

You claim that I've contradicted myself and then you go onto re-describe my argument in your vocabulary. Ex falso sequitur quodlibet...

You are imposing your language/vocabulary onto me, rather than adopting mine, while failing to realise that language itself is just another instrument. I use it for communication.

Not only are you imposing your language onto me, you are trying to impose your logic onto me also - failing to realise that logic is also just an instrument.

And in so far as you seem to care about contradictions - your dogma/religion is the 'Law' of non-contradiction. It's a false God, a man-made authority. Trivially side-stepped with either Dialetheism or Paraconsistent logic.

      Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large -- I contain multitudes. --Walt Whitman

Bayesianism, Intuitioinism, Structuralism, Counter-factualism, Reflection, Introspection, Self-reference, methodism, particularism (obviously the list is incomplete) are just some of the tools (formal languages/models - used for communicating with other humans, not to be mistaken for ontologies) in my toolbox. How and when I might use any particular instrument is context- dependent and is largely up to me. It's purposeful and intentional.

The rest of the time my mind does whatever it does all by itself - I can't tell you what the autopilot 'believes'.

And I am not here to be persuaded (by you or anybody) that your way is better than my way - I can change my mind all by myself if you give me the relevant information. That's how I use introspection/reflection.

<comment><USER6> _> You are imposing your language/vocabulary onto me, rather than adopting mine, while failing to realise that language itself is just another instrument. I use it for communication._

You mentioned Aumann's theorem, so it seemed for me that you are bayesian thinker.

 _> Bayesianism, Intuitioinism, counter-factualism, methodism, particularism (obviously the list is incomlete) are just some of the tools in my toolbox. How and when I might use any particular instrument is up to me._

No, there comes another question: how you might claim that Aumann's theorem is applicable to you, if you are not a strictly bayesian? Maybe logic is also just a one tool of many, and can be rejected when you feel like that? Have you formal rules to judge when some or other tool might be used or rejected? If so, do you believe in this rules to work?

All I want to show, that you cannot reason without some beliefs you take as granted. So your claim that you have no beliefs is false.

<comment><USER5> >You mentioned Aumann's theorem, so it seemed for me that you are bayesian thinker.

As with all things in Logic/Formal languages - the conclusions are true IF you accept the axioms. The CHOICE to accept (or reject) the axioms (read: play the game according its set of normative rules) is up to you. It's cooperative game theory.

Aumann's theorem applies to me in as much as my goal in any conversation/interaction is to optimise for consensus-building - to this end, I will happily abandon my language and adopt my interlocutors' (if they are not comfortable doing so). If my interlocutors understand how 'the game' works and are themselves comfortable using language effectively/metaphorically/constructively/adaptively in real-time then there's no need for compromise on my part.

It seems to me that you are playing a non-cooperative game. You are trying to 'be right. That signals to me that you aren't even playing by the same rules as me.

So if you dislike the word 'methods' and you would much prefer me to use the word 'beliefs' when talking to you - I will happily do that (after I've made my point).

>All I want to show, that you cannot reason without some beliefs you take as granted. So your claim that you have no beliefs is false.

Then it's false. So what? You seem like you belong to the Church of Truth also...

      All models are wrong, but some are useful --George Box

Since you are the one making positive claims about 'my beliefs', then (by the rules I am guessing you subscribe to, but I don't) the burden of proof is on you?

<comment><USER6> _> Aumann's theorem applies to me in as much as my goal in any conversation/interaction is to optimise for consensus-building_

But Aumann's theorem is true for rationalists only. I checked wikipedia artice, and seems that it is not just about bayesian rationality as I thought, it is about any rationality. Why do you think, that you are rational agent? All the psychology shows that people are irrational beings.

 _> It seems to me that you are playing a non-cooperative game._ _> That signals to me that you aren't even playing by the same rules as me._

Maybe I am. Why should I? What could I gain from being cooperative in this particular case? What could I gain from following your rules?

 _> You are trying to 'be right._

No, I'm trying to make a point. I'm not interested in the search for consensus. I need no consensus. I made a point. You have a choice to understand it or to not understand. You have a choice to agree or to disagree. I'm interested in your understanding, but I'm not interested in your agreement. Your disagreement is much more fun, it could be much more educational for me. It is more educational for you also, though it is more about your gain, then mine. An agreement is boring and useless.

 _> So if you dislike the word 'methods'_

No, it is misunderstanding. I'm trying to say, that methods are also beliefs, or they based on beliefs.

 _> Then it's false. So what? You seem like you belong to the Church of Truth also... > All models are wrong, but some are useful --George Box_

Of course all models are wrong, but some are useful. Moreover, our mind can work only with models. Logic is one of such a models, it can simplify a lot of cases by reducing them into true/false statements. Either you have beliefs or you have not. Isn't it? Or your point that it is not so simple and dichotomy cannot capture all relevant properties of the problem? Could you propose some other model which we can use to speak about your beliefs that you take as granted and do not question?

 _> Since you are the one making positive claims about 'my beliefs', then (by the rules I am guessing you subscribe to, but I don't) the burden of proof is on you?_

I cannot prove that, because to prove I need to find an example of your belief. It is a hard work by itself and it is more so, because English is not my native language. But I can give you tools to find your beliefs which you had not questioned yet. Dig your methods, they are themselves based on assumptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If a field of knowledge is associated with a person or group of persons ("Frankfurter Schule", "Wiener Kreis"), I am a priori sceptical. Genuine scientific knowledge exists for itself and does not require authority and sectarian admiration. Philosophy can produce more useful things (e.g. knowledge representation, ontologies) than subjective individual opinions.

<comment><USER8> So how do you feel about Newtonian physics or algorithms? All knowledge is social.

<comment><USER7> Expressing opinions does not create new, reliable scientific knowledge. Instead scientists observe, make claims, deduce the effects of their claims, and then conduct experiments suited to possibly observe these effects. So it's not just claiming. And the laws of physics exist by themselves, even when there is no human society to discover and know them.

It's a different story how knowledge is passed on or accepted by society.

We know that the proof of authority is the weakest and most unreliable type of evidence. But still the proof of authority dominates in practical everyday life. We believe things because our parents or teachers tell us, even if we had the possibility to check them ourselves from a scientific point of view. But parents and teachers are not the source of knowledge, they are only transmitters.

In the humanities ("Geisteswissenschaften", and similar disciplines) the situation is different. Knowledge is rather believable and not falsifiable, but only accepted on the authority of the person who uttered the sentence.

<comment><USER9> >In the humanities ("Geisteswissenschaften", and similar disciplines) the situation is different. Knowledge is rather believable and not falsifiable, but only accepted on the authority of the person who uttered the sentence.

I'm curious if you have any evidence that this is a general trend. Your original comment is also wrong; the "Frankfurt School", one of your examples, does not ascribe particular authority to its members by virtue of being part of the "school"[1] - rather, it denotes a particular tradition, very similar to the way we use the term "school" in music. A school of thought[0] specifically denotes a commitment to a particular method or set of principles, not a commitment to certain personages. Although a school may take after one person, it's not _because_ of the person but because of the content of their thought.

Besides, the Frankfurt School never claimed to be carrying out science. Other schools were, for instance, committed to certain ideas of science. These philosophical schools are ontologically prior to science.

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

[1] Habermas is a "member" of the Frankfurt School of thought, yet he is criticized by those inside and outside the school. This, at least, shows that a school of thought is not a dogmatic adherence to a person or their ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No, but he was very much Lakatos-intolerant.

</comment><comment><USER5> There may well be a method to "science" (whatever that is), or acquiring knowledge in general.

Is just that we haven't invented the 'right' language to describe the process with.

Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do. —Donald Knuth

In as much as software development is theory-building and iterative development is about hypothesis testing/experiment validation/reproduction - it is scientific/empirical.

Beyond that ... We are forever stuck with theory, which is never a good enough substitute for practice.

</comment><comment><USER11> That was a good read. I found this part:

> First of all the perceptual system cuts down this abundance or you couldn't > survive." Religion, science, politics and philosophy represent our attempts > to compress reality still further.

Very interesting to think about in the context of artificial intelligence.

</comment><comment><USER12> You need an alternative view. He provided one. A good deal. Philosophy is never about convenience.

The real question - is philosophy of science helped science or human. I am not sure.

<comment><USER13> Philosophy of science is more helpful than people give it credit for. For example, Ernst Mach basically laid a lot of groundwork for the General Theory of Relativity with his philosophical work about the nature of physical theories.

I have also personally had a couple of discussions with philosophers who worked on understanding scientific simulation and trying to approach an abstract, but accurate definition of its nature. Even just the attempt to do that forced a lot of introspection onto the scientists they talked to about their work. My takeaway was that these discussions uncovered a lot of implicit assumptions that were unknowingly made. So even if the results the philosophers wanted - a generic definition of what a scientific simulation is - might not be very useful in themselves, the mere process of getting there helped everybody develop a better understanding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> side note: feyerabend is a variation of the german word "feierabend" which consists of the two nouns "feier" and "abend", "party" and "evening" respectively. we use that word for "home time" after the work day. i.e. "feierabend! i'll call it a day and go home".

</comment><comment><USER15> > "I have no position!" he cried. "If you have a position, it is always > something screwed down." He twisted an invisible screwdriver into the table. > "I have opinions that I defend rather vigorously, and then I find out how > silly they are, and I give them up!"

By modern social convention this is "trolling".

> If he was not anti-science, I asked, what did he mean by his statement in > Who's Who that intellectuals are criminals? "I thought so for a long time," > Feyerabend said, "but last year I crossed it out, because there are lots of > good intellectuals."

This was more or less the justification used in the Cultural Revolution or "Year Zero" for murdering "intellectuals".

In the end he has a bunch of valid criticisms, but I suspect his overall outlook is, like that of a lot of people, rooted in the trauma of his time. In this case WW2, which was an extremely "scientific" war, containing both the "race science" of the Nazis plus the development of weapons of mass destruction and the use of scientific methods to maximise lethality.

<comment><USER16> > > "I have no position!" he cried. "If you have a position, it is always > something screwed down." He twisted an invisible screwdriver into the table. > "I have opinions that I defend rather vigorously, and then I find out how > silly they are, and I give them up!"

> By modern social convention this is "trolling".

Can you expand on this? That hardly sounds like trolling and more like "Strong opinions loosely held" which is an admirable intellectual stance to take in my opinion.

<comment><USER17> I like pjc50's answer, but here's an alternative take: it's a matter of intention. Trolling involves making people angry because making them angry is fun. It's not any kind of intellectual stance.

The alternative is a method of teaching or learning, where unpopular opinions are as something between a counterfactual for exploration and the best way of getting a question answered on the internet: by asserting a wrong answer.

"Strong opinions loosely held" requires the opinions to actually be loosely held. You have to admit there are other options and you have to let go when yours are shown to be silly.

On the other hand, keep in mind that intent is impossible to judge from the outside.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Feyerabend, who defended astrology and creationism..." go ahead and stop right there, that's all anyone needs to know, frankly.

<comment><USER19> " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"

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

<comment><USER20> Honestly I found this comment to be useful. Supporting astrology and creationism is a pretty damning set of facts about someone.

<comment><USER19> It's not a useful or interesting representation of Feyerabend.

The internet habit of reducing everything to its most sensational detail, and cleansing it of all context, for damning purposes, is a bad one. It's what that HN guideline is intended to cover.

<comment><USER21> There's a flipside, where certain writers get to be read with infinite charity, while everyone else has to take their lumps. Feyerabend really did make that argument -- it's right there in black-and-white in "Against Method". But since he's an "important thinker", we have to read him with more care than he wrote with.

"Against Method" is a fun book, and I enjoyed it when I read it back when the stakes didn't seem so high. But he chose to write a fun book rather than a serious one, and he can't complain when people take him seriously.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


America's Two Coronavirus Realities - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-recession-stocks-housing-unemployment-1e26bba5-f800-4ff6-a615-7cfeb751ae81.html <comment><USER2> I think there is a word for this: duality</comment>


Piper: Custom product photography - <AUTHOR> http://www.trypiper.com

<comment><USER2> Maybe I missed it, but you should show some actual examples (as in, files exactly like those for a customer). The small pictures on the booking page don't look to great to me and are very hard to judge what a customer actually would get.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! We agree, an example of a photo pack would be a great addition to the site. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why Did ASP.NET Web Forms Die? - <AUTHOR> We have frameworks like Plotly's Dash that's exactly the same functionality-wise except built on React and WebRTC. So why did MSFT's ASP.NET not catch on? Poor marketing? Not open source?<p>https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/95212/when-to-favor-asp-net-webforms-over-mvc <comment><USER2> ASP.NET WebForms were just not a good implementation of this idea.</comment>


Buy Stars – Become a GitHub Superstar - angry-hacker http://githubstars.com/ <comment> angry-hacker My submission is not meant to discourage the behavior but rather share with the community that even that kind of shilling exists. Found it through searching for something relevant to Github stars.</comment>


FermiNet: State of the art approx of molecular orbitals - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/pfau/status/1169981588412817409 <comment><USER2> I'm really excited to read the paper for this! I've been pondering for a while now how well DNN's would model complex QC wave functions. Much high level quantum chemistry research involves human theoreticians finding "quirks" and other features which allow computing specific properties like say estimating quantum tunneling in photosynthesis. These involve high level symmetries or various green's functions which help correlate to different domains. But most simulation only use DFT (roughly discretized orbitals) or other "naive" optimization methods over a pure numerical solution of the ache of infer equations.

Still running true ab initio QM simulations of a few atoms can take months on a single computer (never had a chance to run simulations on a cluster or GPU). DNN's however have the ability to find higher dimensional patterns difficult for humans to find but which could significantly speed up QM simulations.

Currently doing QM simulations of chemical reactions for any number of reactions is in feasible but if work like FermiNet could make it feasible for small teams to simulate more complex chemical reactions it could open up an entire field of chemical/industrial processes to startups. As in you could reasonably simulate chemical processes sufficiently to optimize current process or find entirely novel reactions. This would significantly reduce the capital expenses most research in these areas require.

In short if I were a VC I would be _very_ keen I'm watching this field. There tremendous value hidden behind this general problem.

<comment><USER3> > In short if I were a VC I would be _very_ keen I'm watching this field. > There tremendous value hidden behind this general problem.

As someone who used to be in this very space and even tried to get a startup off the ground based on it, I can tell you with absolute certainty that this will lead absolutely nowhere.

The short of it is that literally no business will accept data that is generated this way until someone shows that every neural net model trained in this way produces solutions that are mathematically equivalent to a validated method.

At best it might be used as a filter step in some pipeline, but that's not going to have much of an effect, and certainly not something on which to bet the success of a startup.

<comment><USER4> This approach is guaranteed to give better answers than pretty much anything from standard quantum chemistry. Its limitations are (i) computational cost and (ii) the fact that many material/drug design questions cannot be answered with quantum chemistry only.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that you don't know what the sources of error are. In methods like density functional theory (DFT), or other post Hartree-Fock calculations, the sources of error are well understood. We know where the predictions break down and we know what can be relied upon.

Methods like this are difficult to verify. You don't know where the weaknesses in the model actually are and you don't know what is reliable. This is an interesting idea but has limited application and, even if the model can be understood well-enough to determine the limitations, this will not replace methods like DFT due to the cost of the calculations.

DFT is imperfect due to the limitations of the functionals and basis-sets but we know what it does well and that is a lot. It is reliable when used by someone that understands the sources of error and how to apply the methodology to the the target system in the most appropriate way.

<comment><USER4> Are you familiar with quantum Monte Carlo? This is just variational QMC, a well established method, with a neural network as an ansatz. Traditionally QMC uses ad-hoc ansatzes anyway, so this is not different.

Also, I've spent last seven years doing DFT calculations, and although sometimes one can explain the failures, more often than not it's just intransparent. QMC is actually in the core of DFT, because QMC calculations on the uniform electron gas have been used to parametrize LDA in DFT.

<comment><USER5> I'm not particularly familiar with QMC, although I do know of it.

I was just adding a comment in support of this not being a particularly revolutionary methodology because, although it may achieve spectacular results for certain systems, the limitations and mistakes of this kind of approach are completely hidden behind an opaque ML methodology of an NN.

ML has a place but NN are notoriously difficult to even grey-box and a black box model doesn't do much to actually advance the field. It certainly doesn't allow for a well-rounded assessment of failures.

As for the limitations of DFT, unless you are referring to convergence issues, I think you are completely wrong to claim that the issues with the method are not well-known and understood. We know precisely where the methodology has limitations and we also know how the functionals have been parametrised and we also know the assumptions / theoretical models upon which they are based and their limits. That is enough information to know where confidence can be placed.

I would also dispute that QMC is in the core of DFT just because it is used to parametrise LDA. As I am sure you are aware, LDA is not used for any reliable modelling. GGAs and Hybrids (And maybe meta-GGAs if we're feeling charitable...) are what make DFT a useful theory. Prior to that the results just sucked for the majority of systems!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ford recalling 2013 Escape SUVs for fire risks - <AUTHOR> http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20131126/AUTO0102/311260052/Ford-recalling-140-000-13-Escape-SUVs-fire-risks

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't necessarily think the content here is HN material; I just believe its illustrative to sometimes burst our media bubble and give us a rare glimpse into cold hard reality.

This is the fifth recall for a very modern SUV concerning fire that is _spontaneously_ ignited.</comment>


Goldman Sachs says it wants half of its entry-level recruits to be women - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/18/goldman-sachs-says-it-wants-half-its-entry-level-recruits-be-women/ <comment><USER2> I remember reading an article about gender bias in South Korea, and that female workers over there struggled to get recognition or promotion. Several large multi-nationals were supposedly setting up local offices with one of the specific goals of hoovering up languishing female talent and putting them to good use. This could be another example of one person's misogyny becoming another person's business opportunity. Capitalism to the rescue!</comment>


Street Smarts: My First Year (Running a Startup) - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090401/street-smarts-my-first-year_Printer_Friendly.html

<comment><USER2> There have been a lot of stories slamming capitalism lately, assuming it's all about giant bonuses, Wall St, and what not. But this story is a reminder of how good economic solutions make life a lot more efficient (than the alternatives).

</comment><comment><USER3> I love stories like this! Businesses coming up with unique solutions to help their customers get their work done. It does surprise me that they gave them a $10k non-refundable deposit on the spot! That's a good customer relationship.

<comment><USER4> His book "The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up" is pretty good if you have not read it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just to be clear, this would be illegal nowadays, no?

<comment><USER6> No. In New York the only thing that would be illegal is if they responded to street hails below 96th street.

<comment><USER5> So you can run unlicensed transport companies outside of a certain portion of Manhattan? I did not know that.

<comment><USER7> Non-medallion car service is legal in Manhattan, but is only allowed to respond to telephone dispatch (not that that stops them, especially near Water & Wall).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Filed under: I'm a douche" A customer experience disaster in action. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.200nipples.com/2008/11/had-a-good-run-didnt-we/

<comment><AUTHOR> External coverage here: [http://niteshok.wordpress.com/2008/11/10/effective- tribe-man...](http://niteshok.wordpress.com/2008/11/10/effective-tribe- management-200-nipples/)</comment>


The Oatmeal has raised over $1.1M for a Nikola Tesla museum - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/26/oatmeal-tesla-tower/

<comment><USER2> This is the kind of act that speaks well of a country IMO. This place needs culture & history in the form of infrastructure. Though Tesla wasn't American, his greatest achievements happened here, and less people than you think know about him. Remind them that this place is not just about burgers.

<comment><USER3> Tesla was a citizen of the United States of America- in my book, that makes him as much American as myself, or anyone else.

<comment><USER2> Yes you are right, although he wasn't born in the U.S he was Serbian-American

<comment><USER4> He was Serbian. Then he became American. That's it, just American.

<comment><USER5> Tesla was always a proud Serbian. While he took pride in his American citizenship, he always remained very proud of his heritage. To say he was just American is plain wrong. He was a strong ambassador of Serbian culture in America, even himself translating many 19-th century Serbian works to English.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this enough money to turn back on the wireless energy tower that will provide everyone in New York City with free electricity?

<comment><USER7> It's enough money to put a bid in on the $1.6M property where Tesla had a lab, not even enough to build a proper museum on the property. So: keep giving!

<comment><USER8> Actually they have a matching grant of .85M from New York so really its 1.95M raised, so 1.6 for the property and 350K left over to renovate the laboratory as a museum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My favorite intro to Tesla: [http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/ef668caf14/drunk-history- vo...](http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/ef668caf14/drunk-history-vol-6-w-john- c-reilly-crispin-glover)

</comment><comment><USER10> That's about 1,100 dead babies worth of funds. <http://www.raikoth.net/deadchild.html>

<comment><USER11> You can never do enough to save everyone or serve everything. This is something you're going to have to understand. In fact, when people argue that, it seems like the source often isn't "you could have given that money to the poor/destitute" so much as it is "I don't like that you're doing [x] instead of [y]"; or, "I don't like that this money can be saved up for cause [x] and not for cause [y]". It's as selfish or more selfish than the use of funds for ones self.

What kind of car does a person that argues this drive? Is it new? Used? Does it have more horsepower than necessary for that person to live? Well, if it does, then perhaps you could have given the excess money you paid to save another child. How about your house? Too much space? Are you renting out that excess space to someone that can't afford it? Are you giving all of your income with the exception of the little you need to save for retirement and the little you need to survive to help starving kids in this country or the next? Well, you're wasting money and that money could have been spent to save another person or bring another person you've never met through college. You selfish. arrogant. bastard.

Give as much as you wish to help those in need. Save money to help your family in their time of need; but above all, don't tell other people what to do with the money they've rightfully earned or rightfully given to causes they, at that moment, felt were more important. If a person chooses to support something another person doesn't care for, that's that person's perrogative. if they choose to pamper themselves and buy nice cars or nice houses or furniture, or choose expensive hobbies that's entirely their choice.

[/rant. bring on the downvotes]

edit: that wasn't entirely directed at my parent post. I've heard these sorts of arguments before about "that money could have gone to new-big-important- cause or old-important-cause" and I'm quite annoyed at them. Should people give money to those in need? Sure. Do they have to give everything? Not my call, not my money. Do I have a right to say where money that isn't mine should go? Not even a little. When I don't give money to those in need, am I killing them? Most likely not. There are other things that have fallen together in the world that have made their life terrible. Do I feel sorry for them? Yes.

Oh, and another thing. You know how else to help others? By consuming and by giving them jobs, even on frivolous things. Yeah, I know it sounds weird; but, when you order food from a restaurant, your meal is helping to pay the cook's wages and the waitress's wages and the table cleaner's wages and the dish washer's wages and the greeter's wages. This museum? It'll have employees that might otherwise not have jobs. Now they can acquire income and will no longer need money from others, then they can help the impoverished as well.

<comment><USER12> Well, I upvoted you. People who criticize the obviously beneficial actions of others on the grounds that they can't be classified as their favored form of (purportedly) good deed are... well, I'll stop there to keep things civil. You see this kind of nonsense all the time, even on HN.</comment></comment></comment>


Karma: Is it possible to go in to the negative? - <AUTHOR> What are the consequences? <comment><USER2> I believe so, if your comments get downvoted beyond your accumulated karma.</comment>